Log In


Reset Password
Lifestyle

African tagine makes delicious vegetable stew

The African cooking vessel called a tagine is a predecessor of the modern slow cooker.

Long before the slow cooker, there was the tagine: a clay cooking vessel from northern Africa whose conical lid promotes condensation and moisture retention, bathing the stew inside (also called a tagine) with steam and coaxing its ingredients to silky tenderness. In Morocco, it was the original set-it-and-forget-it cooker, set on bricks over coals and left to do its thing for hours.

Don’t you feel a little warmer just thinking about it? This winter’s cold snap has me, and pretty much every cook I know, scrounging for new ways to take the chill off. When a particularly brutal stretch hit recently – freezing my pipes and knocking out water in my kitchen – I filled pitchers of water (and did more than one load of dishes) in an upstairs bathtub, cranked up the heat in my townhouse and pulled out my tagine.

To be honest, I’ve had the thing for years without using it; I got it from friends who, well, had it for years without using it. It looks striking on my tower of pots, with its dramatic red lid, but for some reason I had never before put it through its paces.

Maybe it was the height of the tagine, which takes up pretty much the whole oven, requiring rack-shuffling to make it fit. Or maybe it’s because I associate tagines so strongly with lamb, poultry and other meats, and, well, need I say more?

But the fact is, vegetables – especially roots – cook wonderfully in a tagine, and they pair just as well with traditional ingredients: dried fruit, honey, warming spices like cumin and cinnamon, nuts. Best of all, just when I was wanting to avoid washing more dishes than necessary, these stews can come together in just one pot. (If you don’t have a tagine, don’t let that stop you from making one of those dishes: Go with a Dutch oven instead.)

Traditional clay tagines can require special attention to be appropriate for both stove top and oven use; you need to heat them gradually or place a diffuser on a burner. But mine, made by Le Creuset, is the best of both worlds: It has a cast-iron bottom that can handle the highest of direct heat (and works on my induction stove), letting me brown ingredients if I want, and a glazed stoneware lid that works just the way a tagine should.

To inaugurate my tagine, I tried a recipe from Sally Butcher’s wonderfully witty The New Middle Eastern Vegetarian: More Recipes from Veggiestan (Interlink, 2014) that calls for many of my favorite winter staples: turnips, carrots, shallots, prunes. And when it emerged from the oven just 40 minutes after going in (turnips don’t take nearly as long to cook as, say, lamb shoulder), the result was just as intoxicatingly fragrant – sweet and savory – as any tagine I’ve had in the best Moroccan restaurants.

I don’t know whether it was the turned-up heat in my townhouse or the magic of the tagine, but within eight hours after I pulled it from the oven, my pipes had thawed and I could do dishes in my kitchen again. After I washed the tagine, I didn’t return it to the tower but left it on the countertop. Just in case.

Prune and Turnip Tagine

Servings: 4 to 6

MAKE AHEAD: The cooked tagine may be refrigerated for up to 1 week. Serve with couscous or bread and a salad.

NOTE: Toast the almonds in a small, dry skillet over medium-low heat for a few minutes, until fragrant and lightly browned, shaking the pan as needed to prevent scorching. Toast the sesame seeds, separately, in the same way.

Ingredients:

8 ounces shallots

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon unsalted butter (may substitute olive oil)

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1½ pounds turnips (4 medium or 6 to 7 baby turnips), peeled and cut into large chunks

2 medium carrots, scrubbed well and cut into ½-inch pieces

1¾ cups no-salt-added or homemade vegetable broth (see recipe at washingtonpost.com/recipes)

¼ teaspoon saffron threads, soaked in a splash of boiling water

About 10 ounces (2 cups) soft pitted prunes

1½ tablespoons runny honey

½ teaspoon fine sea salt, or more as needed

½ teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper

¼ cup sliced almonds, toasted (see NOTE)

1 tablespoon sesame seeds, roasted or toasted (see NOTE)

½ cup loosely packed cilantro leaves, chopped

Method:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. If using a tagine, set the oven racks to easily accommodate it.

If the shallots are particularly large and multi-lobed, separate them into individual lobes.

Heat the oil and butter in a Dutch oven (or the base of a cast-iron tagine, if you are using one) over medium heat. (If your tagine is made of flameproof clay, start over low heat and gradually increase it to medium.) Add the shallots, toss to combine and cook, stirring occasionally, until the shallots are lightly browned in spots, 2 to 3 minutes.

Add the cinnamon, ginger, cumin, turnips and carrots, and stir to combine. Cook for a minute or two, until the spices become fragrant, then pour in the broth and soaked saffron threads. Increase the heat slightly to bring the mixture to a boil, then turn off the heat and stir in the prunes, honey and the ½ teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Taste, and add more salt as needed.

Cover and transfer to the oven; bake until the vegetables are tender, 30 to 40 minutes.

Uncover; sprinkle with the almonds, sesame seeds and cilantro. Serve hot.

Nutrition information per serving (based on 6): 320 calories, 5 g protein, 60 g carbohydrates, 10 g fat, 2 g saturated fat, 5 mg cholesterol, 300 mg sodium, 9 g dietary fiber, 36 g sugar.

Adapted from The New Middle Eastern Vegetarian, by Sally Butcher (Interlink, 2014).



Reader Comments