Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Lamb Tagine :: Our Version


The man conscientiously collated all the recipes from the internet, zoomed off to Tekka Market to stock up, and went to work in the kitchen. He shook out the spice bottles to make ras el hanout. Every spice merchant would have their own blend of ras el hanout. There isn't a fixed receipe. The man made his own in order to make lamb tagine.

We also made a mezze platter that wasn't the most conventional. We took it literally and put a mezze platter of salads together. There were eggplants, long beans and roasted peppers, pilaf and tuna, potato cubes, and olives. The loveliest was the carrot salad was glazed with orange juice, honey, cumin and pine nuts. When I say orange juice in this post, note that the juice had been freshly squeezed from giant sweet oranges, not poured out from store-bought cartons. This meal included alot of orange juice.

The main of lamb tagine was lovingly stewed. The shoulder meat made it so tender that the blobs of meat simply fell apart when we poked them with a fork. The man made tzatziki to go along with it. I was kinda hoping that he would do the harissa-mayonaise mix again. :p But the slightly tart tzatziki went better with the heavy meat. The couscous, unfortunately, had to be from an instant mix. Mint, coriander and parsley were added to the final mix to make it more palatable.

We made drinks to go along with the meal. A mojito of sorts. The man tweaked the recipe and used orange juice instead of lime juice. The drink was sprinkled with fresh seeds peeled from our stash of vanilla pods, mint leaves and Grey Goose vodka. Rather refreshing. The meal smelt and tasted surprisingly authentic. It wasn't too filling somehow. Good balance. There we go, Moroccan lamb tagine, even better than what we had in Bali.

6 comments:

kikare said...

As I read this post, the phrase 旅行的意義 kept popping up in my mind. For you guys, it could be about tasting food that you like so that the man can re-create it at home!

sinlady said...

i believe your home cooked lamb tajine is better, by far, than what you had in bali :)

Little Miss Snooze said...

Reading this makes me wanna eat something. anything!

Dawn said...

Of course he'd make better lamb tajine! He makes better versions of everything :)

And orange juice from a carton in a meal! Perish the thought :))

Delphine said...

Reading this post just made me hungry AND reinspired my desire to get a tagine.

imp said...

kikare: for the man, yes. not for me!

sinlady + dawn: OWWWWW. you ladies have alot of faith in him!

lms: i trust your dinner tonight will be awesome! :D

delphine: it's on a very good discount at Tangs. Go look!