"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."

"Don't think, feel....it is like a finger pointing towards the moon. Don't concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory!" -Bruce Lee

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Vegetable Tagine

Inspired by Fink's absolutely delicious tagine I tried a few years ago, on Thursday night I thought I'd have a go at making one myself. Tagine and couscous is just so yummy, and definitely the sort of thing that warms you up when the weather's all cold.

So I did a bit of investigating, and decided to mix up a few different recipes to see what happened. I remembered that Fink prepared his over a few days, and most of the recipes on the Internet pretty much agreed, but I was feeling impatient and wanted to eat it that night, so that's what I did!

I combined Fink's lamb tagine recipe with Anthony Worrall Thompson's version, with a vegetarian version called Jossy's Moorish vegetable tagine found on Times Online, with a bit of extra customisation from me. I think it turned out pretty well, although funnily enough I saved some of it in the fridge overnight, cooked it up as a side to go with supper yesterday and it was so much more delicious and nowhere near as spicy hot! So, if you fancy using this recipe, I would recommend leaving it to stew for a nice long time.

Serves: 2/3

Ingredients:
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 1 tsbp tomato purée
- 1½ tbsp paprika
- 1 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1½ tbsp ground ginger
- 2 tbsp ground cinnamon
- some ground black pepper
- 1 x 400g tin of plum tomatoes, chopped
- 1 large onions, grated
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1 red pepper, cut into small pieces
- 75g flaked almonds
- 55g/2oz sultanas and raisins
- 115g/4oz dried apricots, cut in half
- 55g/2oz dates, cut in half
- baby carrots
- 600ml/1 pint vegetable stock
- 1/2 tin of chickpeas
- 1 tbsp clear honey
- 2 tbsp coriander, roughly chopped

Method:

1. Put the baby carrots (each chopped in half) on to boil for 5 mins.
2. Put the olive oil and lemon juice into a separate (I used a wok) under a low heat.
2. Mix in the tomato puree, paprika, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, black pepper and ground ginger
3. Next add the chopped plum tomatoes and red pepper, and let it simmer for a while.
4. In a frying pan, fry the grated onion and garlic until lightly browned, then add this to the wok.
5. Strain off the carrots and add to the wok.
6. Add a cube of vegetable stock to the wok, along with some boiling water.
7. Leave to simmer for about half an hour.
8. Add the flaked almonds, raisins, sultanas, dates, apricots and chickpeas, then leave to simmer for another half an hour.
9. Lastly, add the honey and then the coriander.
10. Serve with lemon and coriander flavoured couscous.

I think the key to making this work is to keep trying it to make sure that the flavour is right, and definitely leaving it to simmer on a low heat for as long as possible, because it will just make it tastier!

I'm afraid I don't have any photos because we gobbled it all up! Tonight, we are travelling North in our food style and heading for Spain.. it is tapas night! I will try and remember to take some photos this time..

3 comments:

Mum said...

Sounds absolutely delicious!

Unknown said...

Didn't take you long to have a go then... ;)

kipperfrog said...

haha I know.. I got there in the end!