Tagine Cuisine

At Christmas, Santa, in the guise of one of my nephews & his family bought me a Moroccan tagine. Actually it wasn't from Morocco but from the Hairy Bikers but you know what I mean. I spent some time looking at recipes but found that if you Googled "Tagine Recipes"  what you actually got in many cases were recipes for tagine dishes but cooked in a normal oven casserole dish. Now I wanted none of this pseudo nonsense. If I was going to launch Kojak's Kitchen down the tagine trail it had to be the pukka stuff or not at all! Having blithely trumpeted this I have of course had to modify my aspirations since the average British house does not not cater for cooking over a charcoal fire except:-
(a) If you have a barbecue in the garden and
(b) If you are prepared to do it under an umbrella.


The lean mean cooking tagine

 Since I do not have (a) and have frequently done (b) I have to settle for using the oven. Kojak's kitchen is rather bijou and cupboard space is very limited so the bright blue tagine sits on top of a wall cupboard. As is the way with things on top of cupboards the intention to immediately use it faded slightly.

A few weeks ago I received a telephone call from the same nephew. He was taking his eldest daughter down to an Open Day at Chester University and could they come down and stay the night before? This would save them a very early start from their home near Newcastle. Now as chance would have it I was looking into the kitchen as we spoke and naturally the tagine leapt into guilty view. To forestall the inevitable question "Have you used it" I had to quickly renew my researches into tasty tagine dishes. Because nephew and great niece were uncertain about the precise time of arrival the use of the tagine was quite appropriate since  it's basically a Moroccan slow cooker and once prepared, the dish can look after itself in the oven quite nicely for an hour or three.  You may be surprised, dear reader that I am old enough to have a great niece. In fact I have a clutch of great nieces and nephews. I put my youthful appearance down to clean living, moderation in all things and a sparing use of alcohol... here endeth the fairy tale....
One of the cardinal rules about tagine cooking (I only know this because I read about it) is that you don't lift the lid because the conical shape is designed to ensure that evaporated liquid rises and then drops down on the contents to keep them moist at all times. Because I was a tagine virgin I had warned nephew that the meal would either be a superb surprise or else we'd be having the dish of the day from the local chippy. In the event, the dish, chicken with potatoes, carrots, onions and herbs & spices, turned out well although I must add that if you feel compelled to add some pre-soaked brown lentils make sure you arrange them all at the bottom so they absorb the juices. Even great niece, who is a bit picky about food, had seconds. Nephew had third & forths so  I think it was a success. In hindsight I should have taken a photograph but we were too busy eating....