There are always some classic recipes that simply say “Shabbat.” The dishes that make it to the table every Friday night. It might be chicken soup or a brisket or special dips. For my family, one of the favorites is a Moroccan olive chicken, a dish I only ever cook in honor of Shabbat.

On busy weeknights, my cooking style is all about health and speed. Dinner has to be on the table in less than an hour. Usually I throw some fish, chicken or ground beef on my outdoor barbecue and serve it with fresh salad and rice or roasted potatoes. (Lately, my daughter Rebekah and I are loving the Japanese purple and white sweet potatoes. We wrap them in parchment paper, then an outer layer of foil and bake them. A super creamy, extra delicious side!)

Fridays are different.

In fact, my Shabbat cooking usually starts on Thursday night, when I will try to bake desserts and prep some salads. I bake my challah or I prepare my sourdough to be baked early Friday morning. The incredibly warm, comforting aroma of freshly baked bread permeates the house and that Shabbat feeling begins to come alive.

On Fridays, “I work from home,” literally answering phone call after phone call and responding to emails and messages on my iPad. Meanwhile, my cellphone is perched on a tripod as I try to film my cooking for our Instagram reels. (Follow us @sephardicspicegirls for lots of fun, fresh content.) Fridays are the day when I make lots of elaborate, time-consuming dishes for my family and guests.

In Morocco, my mother had household help and didn’t have to work. When she arrived in Los Angeles and began to work full-time, she had to navigate the kitchen in a different, more efficient way. She was very big on using her pressure cooker to soften meat and relied on the oven to roast chicken for simple meals.

Soon enough, she began preparing her once slow, simmered, olive chicken tagine in the oven. The resulting dish was just as flavorful as the original recipe, but there were so many fewer steps.

Traditional olive chicken tagine gets a marinade and sits in the fridge overnight. Then the chicken is seared in a pan to release the juices. The chicken is removed from the pan, the olives are added and sautéed with the juices to create a reduction. The chicken is roasted in the oven and returned to the pot to simmer some more. The chicken simmers and braises for hours.

I don’t know about you, but my mother didn’t have the luxury to spend hours in the kitchen and neither do I. I learned from my mother to simplify the steps of many old school Moroccan dishes, while still retaining the fabulous flavor.

My mother was so clever in the kitchen. One of her shortcuts involved red and green peppers. For many Moroccan dishes, peppers have to be sans peel, a time consuming and messy process. She would bring home a big bag of peppers, wash them, chop them into quarters, bag them and freeze them. A couple of days later, she would take them out and the skin would peel off so easily. Then she would refreeze them in small packets, so that she always had peeled peppers whenever she needed. She used them in her tomato matbucha, her Spanish chicken and rice and her braised meat and peppers in the pressure cooker.

One of the most essential ingredients for olive chicken is preserved lemon. Like my mother, I always have a jar of preserved lemons in the refrigerator. But if you don’t have any on hand, there’s a really clever hack that I learned from Eti Abehsera, the mother of my son’s school friend. You just take a lemon or two. Wash, slice, dip in kosher salt, place in a bag and freeze overnight. The result is pretty darn close to the original. I know my mother would have loved this clever trick!

This recipe for olive chicken is really authentic. The only variation is that I add white wine (because my mother always did). You can use chicken stock or water or even a bottle of beer. The main thing is that a slow braise with briny olives, preserved lemon and pungent, aromatic spices results in a heavenly dish of moist chicken and flavorful gravy.

This is my family favorite — I can hear the sighs of contentment when I serve this olive chicken. I smile when I watch my grown children happily spoon the juices over their rice.

I hope you will enjoy making it for your family.

—Rachel

Have you noticed that spatchcocked chicken has become a thing? Rachel noticed it on social media and informed me that all the kosher butchers are selling spatchcocked chickens now. She thought it wonderful that she didn’t “have to perform surgery on the chicken!”

To spatchcock a chicken, or to butterfly it, is to remove the backbone, allowing the bird to be completely opened and flattened out.

I smiled when she told me this because when I met Alan, his father dreamed of opening a fast food restaurant selling roasted butterfly chicken. Thankfully, he stuck to his day job where he was very successful.

Cooking chicken in this method is foolproof and failsafe, resulting in vibrant flavor, and juicy, moist meat that falls off the bone.

Rip this page out and save this recipe for your Passover menu.

—Sharon

Moroccan Olive Chicken

Marinade

1 cup olive oil
2 Tbsp sweet paprika
1 Tbsp turmeric
1 pinch saffron threads
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1 red onion, grated or finely chopped
1 cup finely chopped Italian parsley
1 cup finely chopped cilantro
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 whole preserved lemon, roughly chopped
1 spatchcocked chicken
1 24 oz can pitted green olives in brine
1 cup white wine
1 cup water

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Place all the marinade ingredients in a medium bowl and combine.

Place chicken in a roasting pan and gently massage half the marinade on all sides of the chicken and under the skin. Set aside the rest of the marinade.

Place the olives in a bowl, then cover with boiling water and let stand for 10 minutes. Rinse several times with warm water, then drain well.

Chop the olives coarsely and combine with the remaining marinade.

Spoon the olive mixture on top of and around the chicken.

Pour the wine and water around the sides of the roasting pan, making sure not the wash the marinade off the chicken.

Place the chicken in the oven for 45 minutes.

Cover with foil and continue to roast for another 45 minutes (add additional water if the liquids are drying up).

Turn temperature up to 400°F

Uncover and roast for 15 minutes until skin is golden brown.

Remove from the oven and spoon juices over the chicken. Serve over couscous or rice.

Note: Recipe can be made ahead and reheated, and freezes very well.

Sharon Gomperts and Rachel Emquies Sheff have been friends since high school. The Sephardic Spice Girls project has grown from their collaboration on events for the Sephardic Educational Center in Jerusalem. Follow them
on Instagram @sephardicspicegirls and on Facebook at Sephardic Spice SEC Food. Website sephardicspicegirls.com/full-recipes.