Vegetable Tagine

A fantastic vegetable dish, easy to make and stands on its own as a main course with cous cous or as a side dish. This is a mild version.

Basically, you can use whatever  seasonal vegetables you have to hand, though hard, root style vegetable are clearly best as the longer cooking they need better absorbs the flavours.

Cut into a good sized hearty chunks:
1 leek
1 Red Onion
1 Swede
1 Turnip
2 Carrot
2 Medium sized Potatoes

Currently Fennel Bulb and Celeriac are in season and these both go well, as do sweet potato, pumpkin and parsnips.

In a large stove top to oven casserole (if you have one), heat some Olive Oil.
Then add the chopped leek and red onion together with a couple of chopped cloves of garlic and some grated fresh ginger (about a tablespoon) and cook for 5 minutes or so over a gentle heat to soften.

Tip into the pot a half teaspoon each of ground cumin, turmeric and cinnamon together with 2 teaspoons of paprika and 2 tablespoons of honey.  Cook stirring all the time for another minute than add all your chopped Vegetables and stir to coat well for another minute before finally adding 500ml of hot vegetable stock. 

Cover, bring to boil.  This can be finished by gently simmering on the top of the stove but I prefer to make it in cast iron casserole and to transfer to a 170c oven for anything from 30 to 45 minutes.

To finish I like to stir through whole almonds and fresh dates and fresh coriander leaves.

Note....

• To be more tradtional you can also dry roast your spice seeds using about 1 teaspoon of eachand then grind them up to produce a beautiful finish. 
• Use some chilli flakes or a tablespoon or more of Harissa Paste for a more authentic flavour

You can always use raisins if you have no fresh dates.

10th February 2006