I love turkey and we had our usual splendid Thanksgiving feast this year with Andrea's family. But after the wholesome American flavors, it seemed like some exotic food would be the perfect change of pace. Over the weekend we went again to Masala Art and had some of their sumptuous Indian food, and yesterday I dusted off my tagine and tackled this recipe from Ghillie Basan.
The full title is "Beef tagine with sweet potatoes, peas, ginger and ras-el-hanout," and clearly the key to whole recipe is the last ingredient, a Moroccan spice mixture. I thought I had found a bottle somewhere but it wasn't on my shelf, so I went online to find various recipes for the mixture, usually with only 10 spices, compared to the 30 or so in the real mix, which includes some ingredients not readily available here.
Not a big deal except it brought me to the realization, which I will discuss more in my next post, that my spices are not really fresh. Using Urban Accents Moroccan Road mix as a base -- according the website it is just coriander, cumin, cinnamon and mint -- I added an assortment of other spices -- turmeric, clove, white pepper, aleppo pepper, piment d'esplette, ginger, black pepper and maybe one or two others -- all in minuscule amounts to total the 2 tsp. called for in the recipe. It was fine, but lacked the exotic zing that fresh spices would have brought to it.
Tagines are a great weekday meal because the pot does the work. I sauteed chopped onion and shredded ginger in ghee, then added 2 lbs lean beef (I used chuck) in bite-sized chunks and browned it, stirred in the 2 tsp of spice and covered with water, covered the pot and simmered for 40 minutes. Then I added 2 cubed sweet potatoes and cooked for another 20 minutes. Then 1 lb of frozen peas (a lot!) and 3 tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped, for another 10 min. It gets topped with chopped cilantro and preserved lemon (which I forgot). It worked great as a beef stew, producing a nice broth, but was missing that taste of the bazaar.
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