Cooking in the New Year Part: 1

This past weekend was a very busy one for me. Besides making bread, I also made several slow-cooked recipes. I love long weekends because you have the time to make some really interesting things. I was really craving stews and other sorts of comfort foods.

On Sunday, my roommate and I made a Moroccan meal. I have loved Moroccan food ever since I visited the country last November with my boyfriend, his sister, and two of my housemates. My boyfriend got sick about 2/3 of the way through our trip. While we were never sure if it was the food that made him sick or if he had caught a really bad cold, he had since developed an antipathy for the food. After about a year, he mentioned to me that he was ready to try Moroccan cuisine once again. I was very excited since my other roommate and I had brought back preserved lemons and saffron (not to mention cinnamon, paprika and copious amounts of pottery) from Morocco.

I had tried some recipes from Claudia Roden's The New Book of Middle Eastern Food before and really enjoyed them so I was excited to try her Moroccan dishes. I made a tagine of lamb, peas, preserved lemons and olives and my roommate made a couscous with honeyed carmelized onions and raisins.

The recipe for the tagine called for:
2 lbs. lamb meat cut into chunks
2 tbs vegetable oil
1 onion, chopped
salt and pepper
1 tsp ground ginger
pinch chili pepper or chili flakes
1/4 tsp saffron
4 cups fresh or frozen peas
2 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
Peel of 1 preserved lemon
12 green olives

This was a very easy recipe. I placed the meat, oil, onion, salt & pepper, ginger and chili pepper flakes in a pot and covered everything with water. Then I covered the pot and cooked the mixture on low heat for 1-1/2 hours until the meat was tender. Next I added the tomatoes (I used frozen chopped tomatoes that I had stored from this summer).

I peeled the preserved lemon and cut the peel into thin ribbons which I then stirred into the stew with the peas and cooked for a further 20 minutes without a cover to reduce some of the liquid while my roommate finished up the couscous.

The couscous recipe called for:
4 cups couscous
4 cups warm water
1/2 - 1 tsp salt
3 tbs vegetable oil
2 1/2 lbs onions, cut in half and thinly sliced
2 tbs butter
1 tbs olive oil
2 tbs honey
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup raisins, soaked in water for 20 minutes

Roden recommended an interesting way of preparing the couscous. First, my roommate preheated the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Then he distributed the grains in a wide, oven safe dish. He added the salt into the water and gradually stirred it into the couscous until it was completely absorbed. Next, he fluffed the mixture with a fork to break up the big clumps. After 10-15 minutes, he added the vegetable oil and rubbed the couscous and oil mixture with his hands to break up any other clumps. He then placed the dish into the oven, uncovered, and heated it for 5-7 minutes and fluffed it again with a fork.

He then prepared the honey carmelized onion and raisins mixture. He placed the sliced onions in a pan with 1 cup of water, covered the pan and cooked the mixture on low heat for 1/2 hour. Once the liquid evaporated from the onions, he added the butter and the olive oil and cooked the onions until they were golden brown. After, he added the honey, the cinnamon, the drained raisins and a pinch of salt and cooked the mixture for a further 10 minutes or until the onions become carmelized and brown. When the onions were cooked, he spread them on top of the couscous.


It was a one bowl meal with tagine spooned over the couscous.


All in all, I think that Roben's book provided some very authentic recipes. The flavors of both the dishes called to my mind several wonderful meals that we had in Morocco. I would love to make some of the more interesting dishes in the book, like the cheeses or the yogurts but those will have to wait for another day. And the verdict from my boyfriend was that it was very good.