Chicken kadra with Chickpeas, red peppers and raisins
| Chicken kadra with Chickpeas, red peppers and raisins | |
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| Servings: | Serves 6 |
| Ready in: | 1 day, 4 hours |
| Prep. time: | 1 day |
| Cook time: | 4 hours |
| Difficulty: | 
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This recipe needs advance preparation!
Typical of a lot of North African recipes, this is a fruity and spicy dish with lots of onions, but not necessarily hot.
If you don't have a slow cooker, a casserole on a low oven or even on the hob would do just as well.
Unless you are using canned chick-peas, you will need to soak the chick peas overnight.
Ingredients
Ingredients
Printable 🖨 shopping 🛒 list & 👩🍳 method for this recipe
- 1 chicken cut into about 6 pieces, it's very easy to do, see here
- 175g of dried chick peas, soaked overnight in cold water, well rinsed and drained. 400g once rehydrated, so you could always use a can of chickpeas instead.
- 6 medium onions, peeled and chopped. About 450g when chopped.
- 2 pinches of saffron
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- Chicken stock
- 2 tablespoons smen or ghee
- 2 red peppers, roasted, deseeded and slices, see here
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 4 tablespoon chopped dried fruit ; raisins, sultanas, apricots, prunes
to serve
- lots of freshly chopped parsley
- Toasted almond flakes
- Lemon wedges
- Crusty bread or buttery cous-cous
Mise en place
- Roast, skin and deseed the red peppers and slice thinly
- Separate the chicken into 6 pieces, discard the skin
Method
- To the slow cooker, add the chicken pieces, the soaked and drained chick peas, 3 tablespoons of the chopped onions, the saffron strands, cinnamon sticks, salt and pepper.
- Add enough chicken stock to cover the chicken by about 2.5 cm (1 inch)
- Stir well and cook, covered for a 3 hours on a high setting
- After 2 hours, add the remaining onions, dried fruit, smen or ghee together with half of the parsley and half of the red pepper slices.
- Cook for a further hour
Serving suggestions
Serve, scattered with the toasted almonds and the remaining parsley and red pepper slices. Accompany with the lemon wedges.
This goes well with crusty bread or buttery cous-cous
Chef's notes
The cost of a whole chicken from Morrisons was nine pounds which seems ridiculous for a supermarket chicken [June 2014]. Next to the chickens was a huge whole turkey leg (in two pieces), weighing in at 1.4 kg. For less than half the price of a chicken.
Using the whole turkey leg, I amended the recipe slightly to my personal tastes. I also added a bay leaf, half a teaspoon of turmeric, a pinch of mixed herbs and some chilli flakes at the start, and reduced the ground pepper to just a good pinch. I've skinned the legs and cut 6 deep slashes right down to the bone so they cook evenly. I added 700ml (1.5 pints) of chicken stock, which did not cover the turkey legs, but they will still cook perfectly well, especially if you turn them at the final hour. I've roasted a whole chicken in a slow cooker and it was perfectly cooked (8 hours on low).
I've cooked this for 8 hours on low, adding the remaining ingredients for when there was 1 hour left to go.