Day 94: Tagines

Tagines are the new black as far as I'm concerned. Having owned one and used one intermittently over the past six or seven years, I've always liked the slightly theatrical nature of cooking and serving food in one of these. I also really like the combinations that Moroccans use in cooking meat - lamb and prune, lamb and apricot, chicken and preserved lemon. However, I've always been slightly hesitant about them too; there must be something about my Western trained cooking brain that feels that putting pottery on a flame is inviting all out kitchen disaster. I am constantly fretting about whether or not the pot is about to explode.

But tagines are a wonderfully sociable and communal way of eating. Cooking time are not exact because tagines are often cooked on open coals that can't be set to Gas Mark 4. It cooks as it cooks, you add water to keep it moist and off you go.

Traditionally Moroccans took their lunch tagines down to the Hamman and left them to cook on the smouldering coals out back whilst they enjoyed a steam and a scrub. Even now, not many Marrakechis have ovens so anything that needs baking is taken down to the local bakery where it is cooked in the big, bakery ovens.

We did a cookery course with Souk Cuisine whilst in Marrakesh (hence my sudden authority on tagines!). There were six of us shopping for, preparing and cooking a six course Moroccan meal. I was making Sardines with Chermoulah and after preparing all the ingredients and getting the dish ready for cooking, I had to trot off through the souks, pinnie on, baking tray in hand, down to the local bakery and line my dish up with the other offerings that local residents had brought to be cooked at the bakery. The cookery day was such a great experience, I would recommend it to anyone heading to Marrakesh for their holiday.

And the bonus is you get to eat it all at the end, washed down with some lovely Morroccan wine.

And from now on, my tagine is going to be coming out a lot more often. Lunches up the allotment. Dinners on the beach. That sort of thing. Weather permitting of course!