Ras el hanout mix spices up mom’s stew with North African flavors
I made this dish for my parents at their home in Maine. My mother, who is a fine cook with a very discerning palate, described the dish as “layered,” by which she meant that it a complex and cleanly ordered succession of flavors to it.
I made the dish with deeply flavored local barnyard chicken legs, spring onions and young carrots from the local farmers market and delicate cilantro flowers from mother’s plants, which had begun to bolt.
But the dish is layered in another sense: It has evolved from a number of taste memories and culinary experiences in my life. I had originally decided to make a version of my mother’s Chicken Marengo — which I had grown up eating and which I think she’d learned from one of Craig Claiborne’s cookbooks — a chicken stew with tomato, garlic, mushrooms and green olives.
I decided to add the ras el hanout, which I noticed in my mother’s spice cabinet. It had been a gift from her oldest friends, who had introduced her to the pleasures of non-Western cooking.
I had tried ras el hanout when a Tunisian friend had introduced it me, saying that its name translated as “the grocer’s emperor” or “head of the shop,” in other words, his most prized spice.
As I decided on the ras el hanout, the dish took on a more Moroccan aspect: the North African combination of olives and dried fruit seemed a logical choice. And then I spied the cilantro flowers in the garden. I’d first tried them at a French restaurant in Paris a few years ago; their perfumed citrusy flavor was perfect for the dish and added the last, perfecting layer.
Note: Trader Joe’s sells the best ras el hanout: Their version is coarsely ground, so the spices explode on the palate.