Honey Chicken in Tomato Sauce

This recipe originated from Morocco and is taken from the book "The African and Middle Eastern Cookbook" from 'Anness Publishing Ltd' but changed to suit a single portion. Ingredient changes have also been made to simplify the cooking process. It is a delicious chicken dish heavy with the taste of mellowed tomato.

Ingredients

For 1	Continued...
1 tbspn oil	200 - 225 ml chopped tomatoes (½ large 400 gm tin - see note 1)
15 gm butter	¼ tspn salt
1 chicken breast	freshly ground black pepper to taste
50 gm onion (prepared weight)	2 tspn honey
½ tspn garlic (crushed)	20 gm blanched almonds
¼ tspn ground cinnamon	½ tspn sesame seeds
1/8 tspn ground ginger

Preparation

Finely chop the onion.
Crush the garlic.
Dry roast the blanched almonds and sesame seeds until golden but take care not to burn. Roast the sesame seeds separately as they will brown a lot quicker than the almonds.

Cooking

Heat the oil and butter over a medium flame in a flameproof casserole and cook the chicken for about 4 min until browned on both sides.
Add the onion, garlic, cinnamon, ginger, chopped tomatoes, salt, pepper and 100 ml of hot water, bring to a boil and simmer, covered, for 1 hour, stirring occasionally and adding a little water if needed to prevent drying.
Remove the chicken to a plate and cut in half to ensure it is fully cooked.
Increase the heat and reduce the sauce (if necessary) to a thickish consistency or to your preference.
Stir in the honey, return the chicken to the casserole and heat through for 2 or 3 min.

Serving

Serve with rice or bread of your choice (typically Moroccan corn bread would be used) and garnish with the roasted almonds and sesame seeds.

Notes

(1) About 400 gm of fresh tomatoes, roughly chopped with skins removed, can be used instead. Supermarket tomatoes can be unripe with little flavour and juice, so the canned variety as pictured are more flavoursome and recommended.

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