Saturday 26 February 2011

Saturday Tagine.

So, last summer Matthew and I visited Morocco for two weeks, by the end of the holiday we had pretty much had enough of couscous, tagine and Berber omelettes.  But, every now again we do like to eat our own Moroccan dishes.  Tonight I made us a vegetable tagine!
In Morocco you eat tagine out of your own tagine pot, it's not dished up and served on a plate like I have done and they are also boiled for hours and hours and mine was only boiled for one hour.  BUT it still tasted lovely and you can pretty much put whatever you want in this dish as long as you have the basic Moroccan flavours like fresh coriander, garlic, cumin and chick peas.  This is a recipe that I found on the BBC Good Food website which seems pretty good, but it could do with a few more tweeks.



Ingredients:
Olive oil.
Cumin.
Fresh coriander
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
1 small butternut squash
2 large carrots
Large handful of dried apricots
1 tin of chick peas
Couscous
Flaked almonds
Chicken stock with 600ml of boiled water


Method: 

  1. Pre-heat your oven to 220'C/gas mark 8.
  2. Chop up your onions and then pour 2 tbsp of oil in to a tagine or casserole dish and gently cook the onion until soft - about 10 minutes.
  3. Add 2 tsp of cumin, salt, pepper, garlic and a handful of coriander - chopped. Stir in the harissa paste and cook for 2 minutes.
  4. Put the squash and carrots into the dish, and stir well so that they are well coated with the paste and the onion.
  5. Pour over the stock, add the apricots (chopped) and bring to a gentle simmer in the oven. Cook over a low heat for about 45 minutes until the vegetables are very tender.
  6. Meanwhile, toast your flaked almonds in a small frying pan, about 10 minutes on a medium heat will do.  Put as much couscous as you are going to eat in to a large bowl and pour over hot water so that it is just covering the couscous.  Leave to stand for 5-10 minutes until all the water has been absorbed into the couscous. Gently fluff up with a fork and stir through the toasted almonds.
  7. Add your chickpeas to the tagine and stir through 1 more tsp of cumin and another handful of coriander - chopped.  Season and then simmer for 10 further minutes.
  8. Spoon the couscous into bowls then ladle the tagine on top. Serve scattered with extra coriander and pepper.
This recipe is great for weekend dinners when you have the extra time to cook it and you don't have to use butternut squash either, you can swap it for sweet potato!  

Enjoy the tagine folks!

3 comments:

Kevin Jacobs said...

You should make your own Moroccan recipe. It's not hard.

Kevin said...

Sorry Natasha darling. I didn't mean to come across rude! I meant that it'll be more rewarding.

Natasha cooks cakes and bakes said...

Thanks Kevin, this is only the second one that I've made, now that I'm feeling more confident I think I shall start experimenting with my own recipes. :)