Tagine

As there are now only 4 recipes left to be cooked from Donna's magazine, I am branching out and cooking some of our regular favourites as well as trying new recipes. Last night I tried a new recipe for a favourite dish. A lamb tagine.

I do have a tagine to cook in, but of course, along with every thing else I own it's in storage – a familiar refrain from me I know ;-)

As a substitute I simply used a casserole dish from the beach house kitchen and proceeded as usual.

The recipe asked for a multitude of spices … sweet paprika, ground coriander, ground cumin, ground ginger, chilli powder, cinnamon, pepper, ground cardamom, allspice, lemon zest and salt. I mixed them all together with some olive oil and lemon juice and covered the chunks of lamb. Then marinated them in the fridge for the day to combine all the flavours! Can you imagine the wonderful spicy aroma coming from this bowl as I put the plastic cover over it?

It was simply a matter then of adding some stock, more lemon juice and cooking in the oven for 1 hour. To add to the Moroccan flavours, I added some dried apricots and dates ( the recipe asked for raisins, but I prefer dates) and cooked for another 40 minutes.

To serve I ladled the lamb over some couscous, dolloped on some thick Greek yoghurt and sprinkled some pistachio nuts and parsley.

We both really enjoyed it!