Lamb Tagine - Sort Of

I haven't made this for quite a while - I think I might have bored everyone by making it too often a few years ago. Anyway, I dug out my scruffy notes from way back then and I've decided that I still like the dish. One of the main reasons I made it that often is that, even though it may take a while, it's really easy to put together and very comforting on cold nights. It's not what you'd call authentic, though.

Lamb Tagine 1
I normally serve this with couscous (possibly flavoured with lemon or with some roast veg added) but it's also good wrapped up in flat breads and served with a side salad.

Serves 2

350 g boneless shoulder of lamb, cubed
2 tbsp sunflower or other neutral-flavoured oil
1½ tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp minced fresh ginger
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, very finely chopped
6 (or 8 if small) dried apricots, preferably the dark, organic kind
Chopped dates, about half the volume of the apricots
2 tbsp chopped preserved lemon flesh
2 tbsp sesame seeds
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tbsp runny honey
1 tbsp pomegranate molasses

In a bowl, mix the cumin, coriander, paprika and ginger with the oil and toss the cubes of meat in the mixture until they are lightly but thoroughly coated.

Brown the lamb lightly in a frying pan big enough to hold it all in one layer. Add the onion and fry for another 4 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the garlic and continue frying for another 2 minutes. Add just enough hot water to cover the meat, partially cover the pan and simmer very gently for 1½ - 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Don’t let the meat dry up entirely - top up with a little water if necessary. At the end of this time the meat should be very tender and the water should have largely evaporated.

Add the apricots, dates and preserved lemon. Place the sesame seeds in a dry frying pan over a low heat, keep the seeds moving and when they start to darken slightly, add them to the meat mix. Pour in the honey, half of the lemon juice and the pomegranate molasses. Add enough water to create the amount of sauce you'd like – less if you're serving in wraps, more if you're serving with couscous. Cover and simmer very gently for another 30 minutes.

Adjust the seasoning and add as much of the rest of the lemon juice as you think it needs.

Popular posts from this blog

Palestine Soup

Image
Palestine soup has nothing whatever to do with Palestine. It seems to have been given that name because it’s made with Jerusalem artichokes. Jerusalem artichokes have nothing whatever to do with Jerusalem and aren't artichokes. Anything that odd just has to be good. In fact, it’s one of my favourite vegetable soups and it so happens that it’s also very easy to make and, thankfully, low in fat. I first came across Palestine soup in cookery books dating back to the early 1900s, but I think the dish is a fair bit older than that. Most recipes combine the Jerusalem artichokes with turnips or potatoes, which maintain the creamy white colour of the finished soup. I like to add carrot, which provides a nice touch of sweetness but does change the colour. (Unless you can find a heritage variety of white carrot). A few years ago, Mark Hix published a Palestine soup recipe with some hazelnuts added, inspired by Auguste Escoffier’s ‘Purée de Topinambour’. The hazelnuts enhance the flavour
Read more

Hollygog Pudding

Image
For this month's Random Recipe challenge Dom of Belleau Kitchen has asked us to come up with desserts and to pick a random recipe from one of our cookbooks dedicated to desserts, cakes or puddings. I suppose it just proves that I like more general cookbooks, but after a quick search through the bookshelves I found only one such book: “The National Trust Book of Traditional Puddings” by Sara Paston-Williams, published in the eighties. (Although this particular book is now out of print the National Trust currently sell several books that cover much the same ground and seem to be derived largely from this original collection of recipes). There were two recipes on the randomly chosen page in the book: I could have selected a roly-poly pudding, but who could turn down the opportunity to make something called Hollygog pudding? The original recipe comes from Kiddington in Oxfordshire and, in fact, it is a kind of roly-poly pudding filled with golden syrup and cooked in milk. Not the
Read more

Duck Apicius

Image
Ever since I picked out a modern interpretation of an Apicius pork dish in Dom’s first ever Random Recipe challenge (and that was quite a while ago now) I’ve been playing around with some of the other recipes (I use the term loosely) in this text from ancient Rome. Since my Latin is a little rusty, I’ve lazily resorted to translations I’m afraid. A brief QI style digression: There are actually ten “books” in the Apicius writings that (sort of) add up to a complete treatise on cooking. The books are named in honour of Apicius, who was known for his love of fine food, but were actually compiled long after his death. And I think that’s more than enough facts for now. You need a fair amount of imagination with some of the “recipes” in Apicius: there are few exact quantities given or methods described and some of the ingredients, such as the plant silphium or laser , no longer exist.  So I feel justified in bringing you a fairly free adaptation of an Apicius sauce for duck (or, as A
Read more