I love Moroccan food. My colleagues and I did a 'Come Dine With Me' series between ourselves, which ended up taking a year to complete as we struggled to find suitable weekend time when we're all free. During that, I did a Moroccan themed menu with meze's to start then a tagine on main and finished with date truffles and an exotic fruit platter. Both of these dishes featured on the menu, and I haven't really cooked Moroccan dishes since then, so I thought I'd give it another go.
The tagine itself requires a long long cooking time, I cooked mine for 2 hours with the smaller pieces of meat, but really an extra half an hour would develop the flavours even more. People shy away from cooking them as they don't have they tagine dish to cook it with. I don't use one, I suppose the best alternative would be to use a Dutch Oven as you could start the dish on the stove and put it in the oven on 150 degrees for the next 2 hours. I used a large saucepan and let the dish simmer on the lowest heat possible for 2 hours with the lid on. This works just as well.
You really need to use fatty meat for this, there's not much point in using lean cuts when you're going to cook it for so long. I used a de-boned half lamb shoulder (creates two dinner's worth of meals for two people) cut into bite sized chunks. I have used a lamb shank before (one shank for two people), and lamb neck fillets would work well also. I would not use scrag end of lamb for this as the pieces would just disintegrate after such long cooking, scrag end really only needs 1 hour. For beef, chuck or brisket cuts would work. You could also use a whole chicken/pigeon depending on your pot size.
It's important for the meat to be very tender with a melt-in-your-mouth texture. Any other vegetables you add to the dish should only be added in the last half an hour otherwise they will turn to mush as my shallots have done.
To accompany the dish, I used a mixture of pitted dates and whole skinned almonds, which work very well with lamb. The sweetness of the dates compliments the lamb and gives the dish a very rich flavour. Dates are very filling, which is why the poor in Morocco love them as they are in abundance and can sustain you for a long time, plus you can dry them. The dark dates below are the dried variety, fresh dates are of a yellow colour and are much harder. They are delicious if you ever get to try them because they still have a sweet flavour and work well as a healthy snack food for people with sweet tooths. But bare in mind how much dates you serve to your guests!
Other accompaniments you could use are dried prunes (go with lamb), soft apricots (again lamb, but also works with beef), olives, chickpeas (works with fish tagines) and preserved lemons. Most UK supermarkets stock the Belazu brand of preserved lemons, which is what I use. They work best with chicken tagines, but can also be used with the lamb tagine as well. In fact Michel Roux Jr suggests using preserved lemons in place of the dates in his lamb tagine recipe from A life in the kitchen. This is a good alternative for people that don't like mixing sweet fruit in savoury dishes.
I find the orange and olive salad to be a great side dish for the tagine. The tangy fruit and salty olives help to cut through the sweetness and richness of the tagine. I made this one from my own recipe, but I noticed that a lot of recipes for this online suggest using black olives. I find the green olives offer the right sharpness and texture against the oranges.
Ingredients
For the Tagine
1/2 Lamb Shoulder joint, de-boned and cut into bite sized chunks
5 Shallots, quartered
150g Dates, pitted, cut into thirds
75g whole Almonds, skinned
2 cloves Garlic
1 tbsp Honey
1 tsp ground Tumeric
1 tsp Coriander Seeds, crushed
1 tsp Cumin Seeds, crushed
Water
Salt & Pepper
For the Cous Cous
1/2 cup Cous Cous
1 tbsp Butter
Water
For the Salad
2 Oranges
70g large Green Olives
1/2 tbsp Olive Oil
1 tbsp Lemon Juice
Salt & Pepper
Recipe
For the Tagine
Brown lamb pieces. Fry onions, add lamb, then add garlic. Fry for 2 minutes, then add spices. Fry until aromatic.
Season, then add enough water to cover the lamb by half an inch. Cover with lid, and put in over for 2 hours/lowest heat on stove for 2 hours.
In the last 20 minutes, add honey, dates and almonds. Serve.
For the Cous Cous
Put cous cous in heatproof dish. Cover with water. Wait 10 minutes.
Once cous cous has been absorbed, put butter on top, and place in over for 5 minutes to remove water. Separate grains with fork. Serve.
For the Salad
Remove skin from oranges and cut into segments. Add olives.
Drizzle oil, lemon juice and salt and pepper. Mix. Put in the fridge to chill until ready to serve.
No comments:
Post a Comment