Tamarind and Date Glazed Roasted Chicken with Dried orange slices

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Check out my vegetarian version of this dish, made with tofu.

This was one of those rare dishes that made me happy to be eating the same leftovers for a third time.

This sweet and tangy glaze turns a roasted chicken into something special, and each of the ingredients gives its own unique gift to the bird.

Turmeric gives the dish a lovely golden color. If your market sell fresh turmeric tubers, go for it. You can keep the extra in the freezer. If the fresh is unavailable, ground turmeric will be fine. This spice is not only good, it’s good for you—it’s a super anti-inflamatory.

Silan, date honey, is one of the symbolic foods for Rosh Hashanah, and it’s also delicious. I mean, like, eat-it-with-a-spoon delicious. Some say that when the Torah mentions honey, this, and not honey from bees, is what its talking about.

Tamarind is originally from Madagascar, and it’s used quite a lot in Indian cooking. It’s also a must-have for Sephardic cuisine. Its pleasant tartness prevents the sweetness of the silan from becoming cloying. You can also buy whole tamarind pods, scrape the gooey flesh off the big black seeds, and cook it down with water to make a paste. I’ve done it. But buying the paste is a lot easier…and faster…If you don’t have an Indian or Syrian grocery (where it’s called oot), you can find it online.

I love fresh garlic, but a sprinkle of granulated or powdered garlic can come in handy in applications where fresh garlic is likely to burn—like on chicken skin. Just make sure your garlic powder is fresh—it gets nasty when it’s old.

Fresh rosemary adds a woodsy flavor to the dish.

One of the great things about this recipe is that you can clean and season the chicken in advance and then freeze it. That’s a big deal on a holiday, when you’re probably making lots of other things. On the day, you just sauté some onions, brown the chicken for a few minutes on each side, and pop it in the oven.

I make a similar dish with preserved lemon slices. They add an exotic salty flavor and make a nice presentation on the platter, especially with a sprinkling of green herbs at the finish.

But with that said, many people avoid sour and salty foods on Rosh Hashanah, because those things represent what we don’t want in the coming year. So, I’ve swapped out slices of dried sweet orange for the preserved lemon, which makes this a fabulous dish for Rosh Hashanah.

Tamarind and Date Glazed Roasted chicken with dried sweet orange slices

Ingredients:

For the Chicken:

• 2 whole chickens, washed and cut into eighths. I like to remove the little rib bones from the breasts…. Or, you can use 3 ½ to 4 lbs of your favorite part, i.e. breasts or thighs.

• 1 fresh lemon

• Olive oil

• Kosher salt

• Pepper

• Garlic powder

• 2 Tbsp chopped fresh rosemary

• Ground turmeric

  For the day of cooking:

• A package of dried sweet orange slices

• 2 large white or yellow onions

• a little snipped parsley or cilantro

For the Glaze:

• ½ cup date syrup (available at middle eastern stores and online)

• 2 tablespoons tamarind paste

• 1 cup orange juice

• 1 teaspoon corn starch

• 4 cloves fresh garlic, chopped

• 2 tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped

• 2 tablespoon olive oil

• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

• ½ teaspoon ground allspice

• ½ teaspoon cardamom

• ½ teaspoon ground turmeric

To make the glaze, whisk all ingredients together in a small saucepan. Simmer until thickened.

Method:

• Trim the chicken pieces of any extra fat. (You can freeze the fat and save it to make schmaltz)

• Lay the chicken out, skin side down, and squeeze the juice of a fresh lemon over all.

• Drizzle a little olive oil over the meat and use your fingers to spread it evenly.

• Sprinkle with garlic powder, turmeric, a little chopped fresh rosemary, salt, and pepper. (Use less, or no, salt, if you are using kosher chickens). I’m not giving you exact measurements here. Just a little sprinkle will do.

• Turn the chicken pieces over.  Rub the skin with a little more olive oil, then sprinkle with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and turmeric.

• You may put the chicken pieces into ziplock bags at this point and freeze them until the day before you want to serve them. Make sure to remember to take them out of the freezer and put them in the refrigerator to defrost the day before!

  When you’re ready to cook them:

• Preheat oven to 350°. A hotter oven can cause the sugars in the dish to burn. Roasting at a moderate temperature for a longer time will help all the fat to render out, resulting in crispy, perfect skin.

• Cut the onions in half, root to stem, then slice them into ¼“ half-moons. Chop a few slices of the dried orange. Then, sauté the onions with the chopped orange over medium low heat in a skillet, with a little olive oil and a dash of salt.

• When the onions are softened, add the fresh garlic and a dash each of cinnamon, allspice, cardamom, and turmeric. The amounts given are approximate. Use less or more to taste.d Continue to sauté for another 2 minutes.

• Scatter the onions over a baking pan that is large enough to hold all of the chicken in a single layer.

• Add a little more oil to the same skillet and quickly brown the chicken pieces on both sides. Don’t worry about cooking it all the way through—it will cook more in the oven.

• When they’re browned, lay them out skin-side down and brush the bottoms with a little of the glaze.

• Then, nestle the chicken pieces into the onions, skin-side up.

• Slip one or more orange slices under each piece of chicken in the roasting pan. If they’re exposed they could burn.

• Pour half of the glaze evenly over the chicken.

• Roast the chicken for about 1 hour, until it is no longer pink inside. Check breast after 45 minutes because they cook more quickly than dark meat. Don’t overcook them—they can dry out more easily than the thighs. You may want to remove the breasts from the oven when they’re done, and set them aside while the dark meat finishes cooking.

• While the chicken is roasting, brush it with more of the glaze every 15 minutes or so. About 5 minutes before you take it out of the oven, top each piece with a slice of the sweet dried orange.

To Serve:

Spread the onions on a nice serving platter and arrange the chicken pieces, each with its orange slice, over them. Pour the pan drippings over all and finish with a sprinkling of snipped parsley or cilantro.