I was intrigued by the recipe for Moroccan Chicken that America’s Test Kitchen developed.

It was more work than I usually like to put into cooking with its brown the chicken, remove the chicken, put the chicken back in the pot, take it back out, put it back in, etc. I like recipes where you can throw the ingredients into the pot, turn on the burner, and come back an hour later to find everything is ready. Not that there are too many of those, to be sure, but you get the idea. A minimum of fuss.

Still the recipe sounded like it was worth a try, and for as exotic as it appeared to be, I already had almost all the ingredients. All that I lacked were the ground ginger, the pitted Greek green olives, and the fresh cilantro. The first and third were easily rectified, but I wasn’t sure about the olives.

It turned out that the Acme did have Castelvetrano Olives, which seemed pretty close. But then I thought perhaps Claudio’s on 9th Street might be able to do better. When I asked for Greek olives they pointed to the Castelvetrano Olives as well. Oh, well. They only cost half as much as the ones I got at Acme.

So I did a taste test, and the olives from Claudio’s were more full bodied and definitely fresher. So I used those in the recipe.

The recipe was supposed to take about an hour, but as I feared, in my tiny kitchen with next to no counter space, it was more like an hour and 45 minutes. That included making the couscous to serve with the chicken. It called for either a whole chicken or a combination of breasts and bone-in thighs, but as I was cooking just for myself I used only thighs.

For a first attempt, it turned out pretty good. Next time I’ll see if I can get real Greek olives. Maybe at Whole Foods.