Chicken Tagine with Almonds and Honey

Morocco (Fès and the imperial city tradition — the chicken variant of the sweet-savoury honey-nut canon; the lighter counterpart to Mrouzia)

Chicken tagine with almonds and honey is the lighter, more accessible companion to the great Mrouzia lamb preparation: Gallus gallus domesticus pieces (bone-in, skin-on thigh and leg) braised in a Mhammer base (unsalted-butter, onion, paprika, cumin, ginger), then finished with whole Prunus dulcis almonds fried to golden in clarified-butter, and honey — Moroccan blossom or thyme honey — added in the final stage to glaze the sauce. The honey must be assertive enough to assert itself against the paprika-butter base without tipping the sauce into dessert sweetness: thyme honey (Thymus vulgaris monofloral) is the correct choice. The sauce is amber-red from the Mhammer base, deepened by the honey glaze, the almonds providing crunch and mild bitterness against the sweet-savoury medium. The dish appears at Moroccan wedding feasts and celebration meals as a less labour-intensive prestige preparation than the Mrouzia.

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Served with steamed couscous at a celebration meal. The honey-glazed sauce saturates the couscous grains — serve the couscous around the tagine base, not separately. Mint tea (atay) after.