Q for Quarantine. Not that we’re under an official one. Yet. Don’t know if we will be. It’s been… suggested… for the public good, that everyone stay at home and socially isolate, as much as possible. There was talk of making it mandatory, and talk of shutting down public transit, that went on all day Sunday and a good part of Monday, but in the end, they didn’t go that route. Still, we, along with a lot of other folk here, are, at least, curtailing public and social activity.

Other than a quick trip to the pharmacy and buying a kilo of tomatoes, I stayed in yesterday, and Henry stayed put, though he had a friend pop over to visit – we kept our distance, but chatted. At what point do we cut off any social contact in person? We’ve agreed on no more than two visitors at a time to the house for now, which I know he’s going to try to stretch to three or four, because he doesn’t seem to get how this whole contagion thing works. At the same time, we’re in a city of 15 million people and there are only 30-some confirmed cases in the city – if we assume the numbers people have been throwing about, of that being only 10% of the reality, that’s still under 400 people in a huge metropolitan area. But if that starts to really accelerate, we may well have to change that thinking.

Lots of videos (that’s going to get old fast), reading (that won’t), and a bit of time in the kitchen (also won’t). A nice vegetable and fuet sausage frittata for lunch, and then, what to do with the whole chicken I’d grabbed the night before? The last one in our supermarket Sunday eve. Random pulling of cookbooks, and online surfing, and this recipe grabbed me…. Research ensued, a compromise recipe was reached (none of them were all that different, other than in measurements – mostly the amount of honey, the type of tomatoes, and whether the almonds should be whole, chopped, or slivered).

Djaj Matisha Mesla – as best I can tell, literally, the three words mean Chicken, Tomato, with Honey – nothing wrong with the sound of that!

The aforementioned chicken and kilo of tomatoes, cut up. An onion, grated in the food processor. 2 teaspoons of salt, 1 teaspoon black pepper, ½ teaspoon saffron powder, 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, and about a 1″ cube of ginger, grated, and some honey. For garnish, some toasted sesame seeds and some whole blanched almonds.

Lightly brown the chicken in a little peanut (or other high temp) oil over high heat. I know the pan is over crowded, but the idea here is just to get a little color on the skin, not really brown it. If it was that, I’d do about half the pieces at a time.

Add everything but the honey and the two garnishes. Stir it up well, cover the pot, turn the heat down to low, and let it simmer away for about an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half, until the chicken is almost falling off the bone. Once every twenty minutes or so, give it a little mix up, just to make sure everything cooks evenly.

Fry the almonds in a little oil until lightly colored. If your sesame seeds aren’t toasted (mine were), I’d remove the almonds, and then just toss the seeds in the hot pan with whatever oil remains, it’ll be enough to lightly toast them.

After that hour and a quarter or so, this is what you’ll have. Somewhere just before this point, start cooking some rice, or pasta, or whatever you plan to serve it with. Traditional seems to be rice, with a side of flatbread. We went with just rice – cutting down on the carbs and all, you know?

Remove the chicken and set aside in a heatproof serving dish. I stuck it in the oven on low temperature just to keep warm, with a cloth over the top so it didn’t dry out.

Turn the heat up high over the liquid and tomato-onion mixture that remains, stir regularly.

Reduce it down until most of the liquid is gone and it’s the consistency of a good tomato sauce – it took about 15 minutes. Add in the honey – start with 2 tablespoons and taste it. I ended up at 3, which was just enough sweetness, and you could just get the honey flavor in the background, but some recipes go as high as 5-6 tablespoons.

Ladle the sauce over the chicken, sprinkle liberally with sesame seeds and almonds. And…

…serve! We didn’t go for fancy plating, this is just good, home cooking. It was completely delicious and I’m glad it was a dish that I stumbled across.