How to Make a Moroccan Tagine

6:09 PM | Labels: couscous recipes, fast dinner ideas, how to cook tagine, moroccan couscous, moroccan food, moroccan tagine, tagine recipe, where to buy a tagine

Despite my numerous disclaimers stating that this is absolutely not a cooking blog, I've contradicted myself yet again. In my own defense, this recipe is dedicated to a certain tagine-shopping, yoga-loving, math class-teaching, cute baby-making, Minneapolis resident. :)

I'm going to keep it very simple and start with the basic tagine, nothing fancy.

Things to remember:

• A new tagine takes a few times to get seasoned so that it can cook properly. If your first few attempts turn out less than stellar, don't give up.

• Cook on a low flame over a long period of time. If you crank up the heat, it's just going to burn and turn black and crusty on the bottom. Gross.

• A little water will show up midway into the cooking process but it's normal. Most of the vegetables have water in them and it starts to sweat out, creating a pool inside the tagine. This is a good thing as it helps to create steam.

Ok, so let's begin:

First you want to add a capful of olive oil to the base.

Side note: You may want to invest in one of these to disperse the heat evenly.

Add salt, paprika, coriander, and whatever other spice you want and mix well.

For this particular recipe, I used one cute little zucchini,

a carrot, a potato, some peas and 2 onions.

Chop everything up like this. (there's also a bowl with

the rest of the onions that didn't fit on the board)

Cook your meat (in this case, turkey) for about 5 minutes

while you're chopping the veggies.

•Add the onions and then flip the meat over and put it on top.

•Try to mix them with the oil a bit.

(It seems like that's way too much onion, but it cooks down

and nearly disappears by the time it's done.)

Put the carrots in first and try to keep them covered with the other veggies. If you open the tagine and they feel the air, they can turn out hard and weird. I like to arrange everything in a pile on top and then place the potatoes all around.

Put peas wherever you want and if you like, you can add freshly chopped parsley. I like to sprinkle a little pepper, cumin, and paprika to the potatoes. I also put a few shakes of salt, but not too much.

•Cover the tagine and turn the heat down to low.

•Let it cook for 20 minutes and then check on it.

•You might see some water in there but don't worry--it will

cook down and the potatoes will "drink" it.

•It should take about an hour to cook so check on it

every 20 minutes. You don't need to stir it.

That's it! This is what it looks like when it's all done.

It's kind of like a veggie party with meat underneath.

Sorry, this looks kinda gross, but here's how you eat it: You take bread (I prefer hand-made whole grain bread from the bread guy downstairs) and with a little piece, you smash everything together. Keep in mind that when you eat tagine, you only eat from the area directly in front of you. You never want to reach across and eat from someone else's spot.