Tagine, Recipe or CookWare

Topic: Tagine

I had my first experience yesterday in cooking with a tagine. I chose a traditional Moroccan recipe of chicken with preserved lemons and olives which turned out to fantastic if not an easy recipe to find directions for. At first glance you can find a variation of this famous recipe in just about every Moroccan cook book or web site  specializing in dishes of the region but  that’s where the similarities end or are maybe just blurred. The word Tagine means both the cooking vessel, or the stew cooked in it. Both are Berber in origin and date probably as  far back  as recorded history. Certainly there was mention of the Berbers as long ago as predynastic Egypt.  These nomadic people probably used some form of tagine even then.

Getting a Tagine can be easy, they are sold over the web and in many stores like La Sur Table which specialize in exotic cook ware. Finding a modern recipe which actually uses the tagine is another matter.  Every source for tagine recipes refer to the term as a stew not the cooking pot. Even in so called traditional Moroccan cook books, the recipes are cooked in mainly in dutch ovens or flame proof casserole dishes.

So I went about “creating” my own version of the dish combining two variations with a little creative license thrown in. Sometimes I like to think of myself as a cook, other times as a chef, but except for not getting paid I think the difference is being able to think outside the recipe box and come up with a tasty dish. Which is what I did, and will include it with recipes on this blog as soon as I can. Look for it.

Cooking the chicken in the tagine, (don’t buy one just to serve in), not  if you enjoy Moroccan cuisine, created the most moist and succulent bird I have ever cooked, and I have never cooked a dry bird in my life!  

Advertisement