Last week when Carlo and I met his family in Carlsbad, his brother gave us some more Meyer Lemons from his garden in Tucson. Last time he gave us some, I made the delicious Lemon Curdy Pudding. However this time I wanted to make something savory with the lemons, so I made Moroccan Chicken with Green Olives and Lemon. This recipe feeds four people at $1.89 per serving.
The recipe says that you can use either Meyer lemons or regular lemons. The Meyer lemon is a cross between a lemon and a mandarin orange, so it is sweeter and more fragrant than a regular lemon, plus it has much thinner skinner too. If you don’t have a Meyer lemon hook up like we do or a tree growing in your yard, you can use regular lemons but I would suggest cutting them up into thinner slices than the recipe calls for so they can caramelize a bit easier while cooking. The recipe reviews also suggest different ways to make the dish with regular lemons too.
Once again we used Mary’s Free Range leg quarters from Whole Foods to make the dish, and they tasted great. They hold up really well while braising or grilling because they are air chilled and aren’t injected with lots of water that makes them shrink when they cook. I highly recommend checking out the Whole Foods meat department and picking up a few packages, even though when we went to Whole Foods over the weekend, they were out.
The Moroccan Chicken with Green Olives and Lemon turned out great and was really easy to make. All of the sweet spices in the sauce paired nicely with the tartness of the lemon and the briny olives. The Meyer lemons totally cooked down and you could eat them whole with pieces of chicken. We just ate the dish on its own with a green salad, but next time, I will cook up some couscous to soak up that good sauce.
Glad the Meyer lemons were handy! I’ve still got plenty of ripe ones left from last year, and already this spring’s new crop is developing. There’s dozens of green baby lemons a couple inches in diameter all over the tree already. But the blood orange isn’t doing so well since it’s just a new little guy, it’s just got two tiny green fruit on it, so I’ll be lucky if I get any blood oranges this year.
Les, we would love some more Meyer lemons when we come to Tucson in a couple of weeks. They are great and I’ve found more recipes to make with them.