Not your average chicken stew

You know I love my slow cooker, I love chicken and I love tweaking new recipes. Well, here we have a trifecta. Yes, I was a happy bunny this week :-) And this one is an unusual recipe. The original came from my new favorite new slow cooker book: The Great American Slow Cooker by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough. I was dubious though - and not just because I am a suspicious untrusting individual, especially where new foods are concerned. If you doubt this, ask my husband about our trip to a Dim Sum restaurant whilst on honeymoon. He had to order, try everything first and only after multiple questions such as, "Are you sure it isn't some weird part of the chicken I don't want to put in my mouth", "Really? It doesn't look like beef!" and, " You wouldn't lie to me just to have a laugh when I spit it out, would you?" To be fair, I don't like seafood (which was in many of the dim sum) and they only spoke Cantonese. But, yes, I am suspicious.

Where this dish is concerned, my suspicious mind was twitching in part because it doesn't exactly have an exciting name: Chicken and Chickpea Stew doesn't just scream "Eat me!", even for someone with a love of chicken and chick peas. But the main reason for my doubts, were that the dish has an inordinate amount of ground cloves in it. I am suspicious of cloves. I bake a lot, and most recipes, even for highly spiced things like gingerbread, curries etc, the amount of cloves included is very small. Take a sniff of a jar of ground cloves, and you immediately see why, as they are very pungent indeed, and liable to overwhelm any other flavorings.

Nevertheless, on this occasion, I chose to push my doubts aside, and do a bit of sensible tweaking to make it seem more attractive a dish. This involved, at the very least, lowering the amount of cloves in the recipe, and making it more of a one-dish meal (a thick stew that you eat with a spoon), with the addition of some vegetables, more chick peas etc. And I have to say, sometimes opening your mind totally pays off :-) This is an unusual but very satisfying dish. I served it simply in bowls with some bread to mop up the juices.

Spicy Chicken and Chickpea Tagine
Serves 6-8

3 TBSP fresh oregano leaves, very finely chopped
2 TBSP olive oil
1 TBSP minced garlic
1 tsp salt
2 1/2 lbs skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut into 1" cubes1 28 oz can diced tomatoes, undrained
2 cans chickpeas/garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1 large yellow onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup fresh parsley leaves, finely chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
3/4 cup (sweet)corn kernels
2 tsp mild smoked paprika
3/4 tsp ground cloves
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tsp ground black pepper


1. Mix together the oregano, olive oil, salt and garlic into a paste. Toss in a large bowl with the chicken cubes. Set aside in the refrigerator for a couple of hours for the flavors (if you don't have time, you can skip this step).
2. Stir tomatoes, chickpeas, onion, parsley, bell pepper, corn, paprika, cloves, cinnamon, turmeric and pepper in the slow cooker.
3. Stir chicken cubes into the slow cooker.
4. Cover and cook on low for 7 hours (or high for 4 hours).