A friend was celebrating her birthday with a dinner party. I offered to bring a vegetable dish to share. When she said she was planning to serve couscous, my mind immediately went to tagine. It's delicious, spicy, and traditionally served with couscous.
I based the meal on the vegetable tagine recipe over at Green Kitchen Stories. I'd made it for family before, and it was a total winner, so I decided to make it again. As we all do, I made some tweaks. Here's the link: http://www.greenkitchenstories.com/moroccan-vegetable-tagine/
I did not feel like digging my tagine out of the cupboard (I still need to season it anyway), so I used a large, heavy copper pot. It works just as well, though you do need to be more careful not to let the steam escape if you give it a stir during cooking time.
Let's start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start.
Here are my ingredients: one sweet potato, two carrots, one can of diced tomatoes, one lemon, garlic, onions, a bunch of cilantro, dried apricots, raisins, two zucchini, a can of garbanzo beans, ginger, cubed butternut squash, and some spices: paprika, cumin, coriander, and cinnamon. Not pictured: homemade harissa.
Next, prep the ingredients:
Chop the onion and put it into a heavy lidded saucepan with a tablespoon or two of oil. If you keep the heat fairly low, you can forget about it while you do the chopping.
Measure the spices into a bowl. I used 2 parts each of cinnamon and cumin, 1 part coriander, 3/4 part paprika, 3/4 par ras el hanout, about 1.5 parts chopped garlic, and a
part of microplaned ginger.
Cut up the veggies. Peel the carrots and cut into large chunks. If you bought a whole butternut squash, peel it and cut it into chunks, too. The recipe suggested 2-inch chunks, but I went a little bit smaller. Just try to make sure it's all about the same size. Cut the zucchini into chunks slightly bigger than your squash and carrot. Slice a few of the apricots. You'll want a fist-sized pile. Put all of this in one place. Check your onions and stir them.
Get together the wet seasonings. Zest the lemon and juice it into a bowl. Chop a good handful of cilantro. (I just cut off about half of the tops and chopped that. Don't worry about getting some stems in; they're tasty too.) Add a blob of harissa.
This smells amazing.
Crap! The onions! Look at the onions! They should be translucent but not brown. If they are brown, no big deal; the end product will just taste a little different. Dump in the dry spices and stir. It will stick quite a bit, and the spices won't totally distribute. It will also smell suspiciously sweet because of the cinnamon. No worries, I promise!
Turn the heat up to medium low or medium if you had it on very low heat while you did your prep. Dump in a can of diced tomatoes and all of the wet seasoning ingredients and stir.
Let it simmer for a little bit until all of the herbs and spices are evenly distributed.
It looks kind of like really watery salsa, but it doesn't taste a thing like it. Add in your bowl of veggies and stir to distribute the sauce somewhat. (If you used a pot the was too small, this will be tough to accomplish.)
Let it come up to bubbling, then turn the heat down slightly and cover. Let it simmer for about half an hour. I gently stirred once. If you do, be careful to not let the steam escape. After half an hour, add half a can of rinsed chickpeas and a handful of raisins, then re-cover and let bubble for another five minutes.
Serve with couscous. Top with more cilantro and harissa if you want to. A sprinkle of chopped mint is good here, too.
