Moroccan Style Roasted Chicken Wings

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 Elevating Humbleness ...

Because why? Because every crafty cook’s gotta have a cliché up his or her sleeve. And when you need it, make sure it’s a good one! And this one is a real dozy...

Every now and then a situation – or audience – arises where the accomplished cook is forced to use a culinary cliché. And culinary clichés there abound a great many out there. Each culture generally has more than one and this is a particularly overused one.

I hold forth: how many of us will ever have the opportunity to spend enough time in Morocco – off the beaten tracks and away from the tourist traps – to experience, in depth, the multitude of culinary nuances that is the ‘true and real’ cooking of Morocco?

Very few of us have access (via friends, family or expats) to the unique regional spices and herbs used in everyday Moroccan cooking in the rural villages and larger towns. Spices and herbs only available at open air markets or – possibly – small, breathless spice emporiums in the larger towns.

An example serves: Recently, I was assisting in the commercial kitchen of a Tunisian friend’s business. On a Monday morning – in the middle of hectic preparations for service – my friend, and owner of the establishment, arrives very excitedly. With great fanfare he announces that I HAVE to taste what looked, at first glance, like badly overcooked spinach and onion slathered on a wedge of rather seriously weathered pita bread. Now I have to admit to a precocious stomach: it does not take well to strange, spicy or any ‘dicey’ foods. Yet my friend’s tasting sample was amazing in it’s flavours and textures: the green stuff bitter, earthy and herby; hinting of tangy, sun-dried tomatoes and muttering of sweated onion, all supported on a robust, no nonsense olive oil. The bread was resilient, salty and singing of sun ripened ears of wheat: deeply fragrant and redolent of hard sunshine and gusting winds blowing in from the ocean.

It turns out a Tunisian friend of his had just come back from visiting Tunis for the funeral of a close relative. This party looked in at my friend’s mother on the day of his return to South Africa. Apparently my friend’s retired mother lives in an apartment on the outskirts of Tunis right up against hilly, undeveloped terrain. Once a week she takes a basket and goes out to collect the wild herbaceous plants that our sample of relish was prepared from. Simultaneously, she also picks the unique herbs that flavour this preparation. The other spices, herbs and olive oil (locally manufactured) come from a small, open air market a few blocks away from her building. The bread is sourced from a small bakery in the area and is a type of flat bread in the style of journey cake. This long lived, specialty bread is – as I understand it – particular to that part of the city. My friend’s mother had carefully wrapped a few rounds of bread in tin foil and a tightly sealed, refrigerated bottle of the green relish was thickly wrapped in news paper and unceremoniously shoved into the cool bag of the protesting, luckless traveler. How he got these reminders of a far away mother’s loving home through two sets of Customs & Duties offices I don’t want to know...

The above recollection is an example of what I was referring to earlier in this post: in the absence of in situ gained knowledge and experience, most of us are only able to perpetuate the general culinary clichés of regional cooking. These clichés are necessarily based on a wide variety of mostly unrelated sources and have to make do with herbs and spices that are internationally known and locally available.

Have I been to Morocco? No. Do I have friends or relatives there? No. This recipe is an unadulterated product of my imagination. It is an amalgamation of what I have read, seen on television and heard recounted to me by persons who were there. It represents what I can do with the ingredients available to me here, far, far away from the wind swept Mediterranean shores of Morocco.

Recipe yields: 3 – 4 Portions

Preparation time: ± 15 Minutes

Roasting time: 35 Minutes

Difficulty level: Very easy!

Special Equipment Required:

1 x Shallow roasting pan with a wire support rack

Ingredients:

Whole chicken wings	9
Marinade:
Lemon juice	45ml
Sunflower oil	45ml
Chopped garlic	10ml
Caster sugar	5ml
Ground cumin	5ml
Paprika	5ml
Turmeric	5ml
Ground coriander	2.5ml
Dried thyme	2.5ml
Ginger powder	± 1ml
Ground cinnamon	± 1 ml
Cayenne pepper	± ½ml
Salt	5ml
Sumac powder	5ml

Method:

1. Thoroughly mix all the marinade ingredients.
2. Put the chicken wings in a suitably sized ZipLoc style bag and add the marinade. Repeatedly turn the wings in the bag to completely cover it with marinade. Seal the bag and set aside to marinate 60 minutes at room temperature on the counter. Turn once after 30 minutes.
3. Arrange the marinated wings evenly on the wire rack. Salt on both sides. Roast 35 minutes in a preheated convection oven at 170°C (340 deg. Fahrenheit).
4. Sprinkle sumac over the wings 5 minutes before the end of roasting.
5. Remove from the oven, allow to cool 5 minutes and serve at once with piping hot, oven roasted potato wedges.

Comments:

• The properties and various uses of sumac were discussed in the post on Oven Roasted Chicken Mayonnaise.
• The level of chili heat for this recipe is dependant on the cook. Vary the quantity of cayenne pepper to taste. I’d suggest avoiding chili or peri-peri spices as these are blends with components that may interfere with the intended flavour profile. On the other hand, where’s the fun if we cannot experiment? It’s not as if this recipe has to be 100% authentic.
• Home brewed Ginger Beer makes an ideal accompaniment for this dish. Really, I’m serious! Brew some and try it.

 © RS Young, 2018

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