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.