♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Today on Milk Street, we're going to explore the cooking of North Africa.

We start in Marrakesh.

We make a tangia, which is a meat stew with all sorts of spices and preserved lemons.

And then we go to Cairo and walk the streets to find two great vegetarian dishes.

One is a spicy cumin and coriander potato dish, and the other is eggplant in a spicy sauce.

So, stay tuned as we explore the cooking of North Africa.

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- You know, if you travel to Morocco, you'll probably go to Marrakesh.

Now, if you go to the main square-- Jemaa el-Fnaa-- during the day anyway, you will find snake charmers and monkey handlers, and people who want to take your photograph for $20.

It's pretty touristy.

Well, we went there, but we found some great food behind the scenes, sort of in the back alleys.

Now, the dish we were after is called tangia.

It's not a tajine.

We went to a butcher shop, got lots of lamb.

We got olive oil, we got butter, we got lots of spices.

And then we went to another place and got an earthenware pot to put it all in, with some preserved lemons.

And, finally, we went to a hamam, that's a bathhouse.

And underneath the hamam there's a furnace with coals.

They took some of the coals out of the furnace that was for heating the water in the baths and used that around the earthenware pot to cook that lamb for about four hours.

It was absolutely spectacular.

So, let's take that same concept, the tangia, that slow cooks do and do it here, the Milk Street way.

♪ ♪ So, before we start cooking, we should just say this is made with lamb.

Uh, of course.

Very often we come across a lamb dish.

We know a lot of people don't like lamb, so we do try to translate that, and this is chicken thighs.

So, this dish can be made with lamb.

A lot of people would prefer that.

But, we think chicken thighs is actually a pretty good substitute, inauthentic as it is.

- Inauthentic, but a lot easier to cook at home.

You know, chicken thighs still have that same tender, rich bite, and they break down really well, just like lamb shanks would in your dish that you would find in Marrakesh.

I mean, keep in mind that dish was cooking for four hours in the coals of the fire that warms up the bath houses.

So, of course, it's going to be mouthwateringly tender.

We want to go ahead and replicate the same feeling here in just a fraction of the time.

So first things, we're going to go ahead and mix in what's going to be the final topper of our dish, and that would be two teaspoons of cumin, along with two teaspoons of salt.

We are going to be using cumin in this recipe earlier on during the cooking process.

But by adding this cumin right back in at the very end, we go ahead and develop that layer.

- Well, we should also say that salt and pepper is not really used in the Middle East or North Africa.

It's salt and cumin-- that's their salt and pepper, right?

- Absolutely.

So, now that we have that garnish out of the way, let's go ahead and take a look at the base of our recipe, which happens to be three pounds of boneless, skinless chicken thighs.

Now, I'm gonna season these with a little bit of salt and pepper, so that way it already has flavor.

I want that flavor of the salt and the pepper to really permeate the meat.

Now that the chicken is well-seasoned, we could go ahead and get cooking.

So, if you wouldn't mind just bringing that Dutch oven to medium-high heat.

We're going to toss in two teaspoons of olive oil into the pan.

This oil is hot, so now I'm going to go ahead and add in two medium onions that have been finely chopped, as well as 12 cloves of garlic, finely chopped.

And we'll sauté these until they're just brown right around the edges, and that should take about five minutes.

Now, these onions and garlic pieces have browned just around the edges, so we will be adding in two teaspoons of coriander, two teaspoons of ginger, two teaspoons of tumeric, which is a very key flavor in this dish, and finally the remaining three teaspoons of cumin.

And we're just going to cook these off until they're aromatic.

And that should only take about 30 seconds.

And we're really developing a foundation of flavor here.

So, now that that is all very, very well seasoned, we could go ahead and add in a cup-and-a-half of water.

And we'll use that water to scrape up any of the caked-on bits on the bottom.

And to this we will also add in the other star flavor, our saffron.

This is a teaspoon of saffron going in.

So, that will not only lend a fantastic floral flavor, but also a really vibrant color.

- Hopefully, it's not fake saffron.

(laughter) - You know, did you know that, like, a large percentage of the saffron sold in the world is not real?

And that's... you know, you see these big piles of saffron in these markets, you go like, "Well, that's gotta be like $10,000 worth of saffron."

Well, it's because it's dried corn silk, or something else, so, you do want to get to a high-quality supplier for that.

- Absolutely.

To this mixture, we're going to add in all of that well-seasoned chicken thigh and really nestle it into the mixture in here and make sure that it's coated with a little bit of the liquid.

We'll go ahead and allow to simmer for about 20 minutes.

After that 20 minutes, we'll give it a toss, just to make sure that each and every part is cooking thoroughly.

We'll cook it for an additional 25.

And that's really going to help this chicken thigh break down into that rich, tender, fall-off-the-bone texture.

- Okay.

♪ ♪ - So, Chris, this chicken has been simmering for about 45 minutes.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to take the chicken out, and I'm going to get all of that liquid in there to reduce down for about ten to 14 minutes.

So that way, all that flavor can really intensify and concentrate.

But, it'll also thicken, so that way each piece of chicken gets coated in all of that juice.

And now, if you wouldn't mind cranking that up to medium-high heat, we'll go ahead and reduce that down until it's nice, thick, and intense.

So, as you can see, Chris, all of that sauce has reduced down to something that's really thick and coats the spoon, which means it's going to coat our chicken just fine.

So, we'll add that back in.

And we'll give that a stir.

If it starts to break down in the pan, perfect.

So, now that all the chicken is in there, we can go ahead and add in three tablespoons of butter.

But once it's in the pan, we want to go ahead and turn off the heat and remove it from any of that cooking surface entirely.

We want this butter to melt gently and kind of blend into the sauce, as opposed to pool right on top.

Now, this is traditionally cooked with lamb and preserved lemons.

Preserved lemons can be a little bit hard to find in your regular grocery store.

- And also a lot of the brands are quite bitter as well.

- There's that as well.

We don't want that bitterness, but we do still want the brightness, the slight tang that preserved lemons have.

But more importantly, we want a little bit of that brininess, as well.

So, to bring that flavor back into this game here, what we'll do is we'll throw in half a cup of olives.

These are pimento-stuffed green olives, and that's really going to give us that briny funkiness that we're looking for.

And we'll also add in a quarter of a cup of lemon juice, as well as three tablespoons of lemon zest.

Now, you don't want to reduce the lemon zest, and you don't want to reduce the amount of lemon juice either.

So, once these are stirred in, we're basically ready to eat.

- Mmm.

- If you wouldn't mind just grabbing that platter, that would be awesome.

- Sure.

- At the risk of getting us both splattered with some of this sauce, I'm going to take these out piece by piece.

And then we'll ladle all that sauce right on top.

- Mmm.

- Now, if this was lamb that was stewing for four hours, it would definitely look a lot more broken down.

But here, I kind of like that the chicken, while it is tender, does still hold its integrity.

- So you've answered the, really, existential question, is how do you get sort of fall-off-the-bone meat?

And the answer is use boneless meat.

- (laughing) - See... you're a philosopher, man, it's like... - Absolutely.

- ...it's perfect.

- And now we could spoon this sauce right over the chicken.

Well, I'd rather eat it than look at it but... - Okay.

(laughing) So, now that we have some of that sauce on there, we could go ahead and enjoy this dish.

But before we do that, we do want to add in that final touch.

So, if you would like to do the honors, we do have the cumin salt mixture from earlier.

Why don't you go ahead and top some of that off?

This was traditionally eaten without any utensils.

Because it was so tender, you could just grab a piece of it with the bread that you have in hand.

- Well, I'm going to grab my two pieces first.

- Okay.

- Right, I mean... - Oh, you'll want two pieces.

- That'll be for you.

- Oh, thank you, Chris.

- You cooked it, man.

- (laughs) - Besides which, I found two bigger pieces right here, so.

- Okay, it's not a competition.

(chuckles) - I'm gonna add a little extra.

- A little bit of extra salt?

What I'm going to do is I'm going to rip off a piece of this naan.

So, with this piece I'll go ahead and grab a little piece of the chicken.

And as you could see, it's so tender that I could just squeeze it, and it falls right apart.

- He's going to make a huge mess.

- I'm gonna use a fork.

- Mmm.

- Mm-hmm.

- Man, that is bright.

It has all the spices in it, it's got, as you always say, a foundation.

Adding that butter in it, it's bright, but it's also creamy at the same time, yeah.

- Absolutely.

- So, this recipe started in Marrakesh.

where we found out how to make a tangia, which is lamb cooked in a pot with oil and preserved lemons and spices for four hours over coals.

We came back to Milk Street and used chicken thighs instead, made in under an hour on the stovetop.

And I say the, the flavor of this is fabulous, the texture is great, and it's nice and bright as well.

It's really excellent-- thanks, Josh.

- Thanks so much.

- Not too long ago we were in Cairo and we were eating a lot of the street food.

And the thing we noticed most was how they cooked and served their vegetables.

Now, there's a liver sandwich which is very common among street vendors, but they serve with it something called patates mekhalel, which is a very spicy potato dish with coarsely ground cumin and coriander.

There was another dish we found in the street as well, which was btingan, which is eggplant.

They fry it and they serve it with a spicy tomato sauce or with spices.

Again, another way of taking a fairly bland vegetable, and making it absolutely delicious.

So, let's cook vegetables the Cairo way.

♪ ♪ - You know, if you were walking the streets of Cairo and you got a little peckish, you might want to tuck into a liver sandwich.

And they'd serve these potatoes, these cumin potatoes, with cilantro as a side dish because they're sort of spicy and refreshing next to the liver sandwich.

So, we decided to take those potatoes and make them here at Milk Street.

- Yes, and it came out delicious, I have to say.

We are starting with six cups of cold water in the pot, and we're going to be cooking two-and-a-half pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes, which have been peeled and cut into one-inch pieces so they're nice and bite-size.

So, we're going to get these into the cold water to start.

We're gonna turn this on high heat.

And we're going to add two tablespoons salt because, as you know, potatoes need a good bit of salt.

Now, the twist is we're adding a quarter-cup of white vinegar to the potato cooking water.

- Hmm.

- When the potatoes are cooked, they're going to get seasoned with more white vinegar.

But adding some of the vinegar to the water allows the flavor to penetrate deeper into the potato.

Once the water comes to a boil, we'll let these cook for six to eight minutes.

We don't want them to overcook because they'll fall apart and get mushy.

- Chris, our potatoes were ready in seven minutes.

They're still hot; we just drained them and transferred them to this bowl.

And while they're hot, we're adding another quarter-cup of the white vinegar.

Just going to sprinkle that over.

Give them a brief, gentle toss.

And we'll set these aside.

They'll continue to absorb that vinegar, and we will move on to the spices.

- Okay.

- We have that happily married couple, cumin and coriander.

(laughing) - They still look happy.

- They go everywhere together.

And we're gonna use a spice grinder for this.

We're not going to grind these to a fine powder.

We want them to just be sort of roughly ground, still chunky, because they're not only going to add flavor to the potatoes, they're going to add a little bit of texture, too.

Now, these are two different sizes, so we're going to grind them separately so that they don't get overly ground.

This was four teaspoons of cumin in here.

There we go, can you see that?

- Mm-hmm.

- There's still large pieces with some smaller pieces mixed in.

We're going to transfer these to a small saucepan, and then we'll do the coriander.

Four teaspoons of coriander as well.

Get these going.

(spices grinding) Okay, there, smell.

- Mmm.

Just from there, yeah, beautiful.

Add it to the pot, if you would, thanks.

To those spices, we're going to add a quarter-cup of oil.

Okay, now we're going to bring this on to high heat, and we're going to let that just come to a simmer.

The reason for this is we cracked those whole seeds, which brings out their flavor in a very robust way, and by blooming them in the oil, it sort of just, allows them to open up, and it also flavors the oil at the same time.

See, they're just starting to sizzle.

And at that point, we will add the garlic.

We have four cloves of chopped garlic here.

This will take about 20 seconds to start getting golden brown.

We definitely do not want to overcook the garlic here.

Take it off the heat and immediately add two teaspoons of honey, and two teaspoons of hot paprika, and that will slow down the cooking right away, and it will prevent the garlic from burning.

- This is a serious sauce.

You're not... - And this is it, that's the sauce.

- That's it?

Okay.

- Yeah, that's it.

Beautiful, isn't it?

Okay, then we have our hot potatoes that the vinegar has already been absorbed into.

The first thing we'll do is take the hot flavored oil and add it to the potatoes.

All the spices have had a chance for the flavors to blend by heating them in the oil, and then we'll season them with a teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon of black pepper, one-and-a-half cups of cilantro leaves that we chopped very coarsely.

Oh, do you smell it?

- I do, I do, and I'm...

I'm hoping I'll be eating it shortly.

- Well, we do have to let this sit ten minutes, sorry.

- Oh, to absorb flavors.

- Yes, yes, yes.

- Boy, that looks good.

- It's gorgeous.

- We'll give it one more stir before we eat.

- I can just have one, right?

- Yes.

- Mmm.

- It's going to be even better in ten minutes.

- I can see you've positioned yourself right in front of the potato.

- All I need is a bowl.

I'm not even sure I need a fork.

- (laughs) Save some for two bowls.

- For you.

- Thank you.

- For me.

I've already had a taste, so I know how good this is.

- See if they're better.

- Mmm.

- They are actually better, because the flavor is fuller.

It's more bloomed and it really has gotten into the potatoes, You know, growing up, if you sat down at noon for dinner in Vermont, the... it was always a baked potato, and the farmers could take their fist, they'd just go like this, they split it open.

That's the kind of potato I ate for about 20 years.

- I like that potato.

- Baked, and you get a fist, you open the thing up, and... this is a little better.

- (laughs) - So, if you're tired of that old Vermont baked potato, like I am, you might want to try these-- cumin coriander potatoes with cilantro.

Takes less than half-an-hour to make, has great flavor, and it goes with almost anything, including a liver sandwich in Cairo, right?

♪ ♪ - Our editorial director was in Cairo recently, and he was going to his dinner, he had reservations for dinner, stuck his head in the door, didn't like what he saw, so he walked out.

And he started wandering the streets of Cairo.

And he stopped at a couple places, and both of them had this dish, which is cubes of eggplant, and they were deep fried in Cairo, and then served either in a tomato sauce or the other place had a harissa sauce, which is a spicy chili sauce from North Africa.

So, we liked the combination of flavors.

It was a unique way of preparing eggplants, and we thought we'd bring that back to Milk Street, freshen up the recipe, not do a deep fry.

Uh, but we love the flavors.

- Chris, I'm so happy Jason skipped his dinner, 'cause, uh, I love this dish.

I love the way the eggplant's cooked and how well it pairs with the spices and the herbs.

We're going to start with whole cumin seed and whole coriander seed.

It's a tablespoon of each.

And what we're going to do is we're going to toast these, which really helps bring out their flavors.

So, you want to toast them over medium heat.

And you just want to toast them till they get aromatic.

You may see a little darkening on the coriander husks.

- This is just a general tip, is buy whole spices when you can, and then toast them in a skillet for a couple of minutes, and then grind them yourself.

If you just take that extra five minutes, you get a lot more flavor, right?

- Absolutely, especially... there's certain spices with very fleeting flavors.

I think coriander seed is one of those.

- I think that's almost ready.

- I do too.

You can see the cumin seeds change color a little bit.

So, let's go ahead, transfer that to our spice grinder.

But we're not going to grind them right away.

If we ground them right away, you're going to generate steam.

Then they're all going to stick together in there.

So, let's wait about five minutes before we grind those.

- Okay.

- In the meantime, let's go ahead and prep our eggplant.

Now, we're going to start with two one-pound eggplant.

Just regular globe, Italian eggplant.

We're going to prep these in a pretty unusual way.

We're going to cut the top and bottom off.

Then we're going to cut them into one-and-a-half-inch rounds.

And we're going to take each of those rounds and cut it into quarters.

So, what works here is that there's skin anchoring the flesh together.

If we cut it into planks and then cut cubes out of there, those pieces without any skin are just going to turn to mush.

♪ ♪ Okay, so it's those two eggplant in there.

Now we're going to toss the eggplant with six tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.

So, you're going to notice something here-- I'm not seasoning.

I make such a point of always seasoning start to finish with a dish.

In this case, we're not going to salt the eggplant because if you salted the eggplant now... - It gets soggy!

- It gets soggy, it's going to collapse under that heat.

We want it to keep its shape, and then we're going to season it while it's still hot.

So it's going to suck up that dressing.

I think it's pretty well coated at this point.

Could you hand me the baking sheet over there?

- Mm-hmm.

- Spread it out.

You want to make sure it's really well spread out, otherwise it's not going to brown as well.

We like to put a little foil down before roasting, because eggplant can make a mess on your baking sheets.

So, at this point, we're going to put this in the broiler on a rack about six inches from the element.

We're going to cook it until it's speckled and lightly charred, but not totally blackened.

And that's usually about ten to 12 minutes.

You want to rotate it halfway through so it cooks evenly.

So, Chris, while the eggplant's roasting, let's go ahead and make our sauce.

So, those spices have cooled, and we're going to go ahead and we're going to grind these.

So, we don't want to grind them too fine for the textural contrast of the crunchy spices, adds a lot to this dish.

Just four or five quick pulses should be enough.

(spice grinder whirring) To get even grinding, I tend to shake it a lot, too.

(chuckling) - No, I do the same thing, yeah.

- Pretend it's a cocktail.

(whirring stops) I think we're good there.

So, let's go ahead and add them to the bowl.

You can reuse the bowl we boiled the eggplant in.

To that we're going to add a quarter-cup of apple cider vinegar, three tablespoons of honey.

Now, you want to make sure to use a really sort of mild, basic clover honey, otherwise the flavors can be really jarring.

Next, we're gonna add a quarter-cup of harissa.

This is a really common chili paste in North Africa.

Can be made in all sorts of different forms, and you can buy it in the store.

- Yeah, I mean, I have to... (clears throat) give a personal preference here, you can buy it.

You can!

We do have a recipe at Milk Street, which is a little sweeter, has roasted red peppers in it and some sun-dried tomatoes.

It's nicely balanced, and it has a lot of flavor.

I do find sometimes, the ones... they're hotter, and they're mostly chilies.

They don't have the sweetness to it, so...

But this is convenient.

- It adds great flavor here.

A quarter-cup of the harissa, one clove of garlic.

Now, I know you hate it, but grating garlic really breaks it down and helps really disperse the flavor.

A quarter-cup of fresh mint, and then two tablespoons of fresh chopped dill.

We can go ahead and mix that up.

So, Chris, that simple sauce is blended.

Eggplant's going to take a little more time, but when it's done, we're going to take it straight from the boiler, and put it right into the sauce so it soaks it up like a sponge.

♪ ♪ So, Chris, the eggplant's been in there 12 minutes.

I gave it a spin midway through and you can see, just poke it.

And it's soft, it's not mushy.

It's not falling apart quite yet.

So, let's go ahead and transfer it to the sauce.

And you want to make sure to use a rubber spatula, so you don't damage the eggplant.

It hits the hot vinegar, and that aroma, wow.

So, it's really hot right now, and we need to wait ten minutes to allow it to cool down, but also so it soaks up those juices.

Chris, it's been ten minutes.

It looks great.

It's amazing how much of that sauce the eggplant has soaked up.

One thing I do want to check, though, there's such a difference in how things taste between how they're hot and when they're cool.

So, let's go ahead and check that sauce.

It's kind of perfect.

- (chuckles) - As are you.

(chuckles) - Another tablespoon of dill, just as a garnish.

And I'm going to go ahead and plate it.

You know, I love this just on its own with rice, but it's great with hummus.

Make a sandwich of this and hummus.

- Okay, it looks great.

The dill, you really smell the dill.

- Yeah.

- Mmm.

That is terrific-- I mean, I'm not a big fan of eggplant.

I guess you call this eggplant rehab.

(both chuckling) This has great flavor.

- It really does, I think this is, this is one of those dishes you serve people who tell you they don't like eggplant.

Eggplant surprise-- you're gonna like it!

- Well, you could probably put anything with this sauce.

I mean, the sauce is really great.

It's slightly sweet, it has the bright, toasted flavors of the coriander and the cumin.

The dill really comes through nicely.

It's great.

- I love that light lemony flavor of the coriander, it really pops through.

- So, our recipe for spicy Egyptian eggplant came from a fortuitous evening in Cairo with our editor who did not go to dinner where he thought, he ended up eating this eggplant.

We brought it back here, we made a few changes, didn't deep fry it, we actually broiled it, which I think is really a great way to do it.

And we've now rehabilitated one of my least favorite vegetables to now to one of my most favorite vegetables ever.

So, if you like this recipe, spicy Egyptian eggplant, all the recipes from this season, please go to MilkStreetTV.com.

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- Since 1899, my family has shared our passion for everything that goes into our Mutti 100% Italian tomatoes.

Only tomatoes.

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- Designed by cooks for cooks for over 100 years.

Cookware collection by Regal Ware.

Handcrafted in Wisconsin.

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AccuSharp: Keep your edge.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪