Today I spent almost the whole day in the kitchen cooking for a celebration and I was totally inspired! so once everything is ready, I have taken some pictures and my guests and have tried and approved the dishes I will share some of the recipes with you!
But before that, I’m sharing another recipe to the tagine series (see the first one in here). This one is probably one of the most characteristic Moroccan tagines recipes you can find since is made of lamb (a staple of Moroccan cuisine) and a mixed of vegetables. The typical vegetables used for this kind of dish are onion, tomato, carrot, aubergine and courgette, but I customised it with some different ones I had available and ready to use for a quick week day supper. And the result, as with everything cooked in a tagine, was superb!
Tagine is a clay cooking pot with a conical lid typical from Morocco that also give its name to the stew that is prepared on it.
I have wanted a tagine as long as I can remember. However, when I finally visited Morocco I was living sort of a nomad life and it wasn’t too practical to accumulate house-ware and furnitures, so I didn’t buy it although I had to restrain myself not to came back with carpets, lamps and kitchen-ware to furnish a full house.
But fate is capricious (a saying in Spanish) and last weekend when walking around a home store, I saw one and decided to buy it this time! I’m not sure were I’m going to put it in my already full kitchen cabinets, but after trying the meal I prepared on it I can assure you is totally worth it! The outcome is absolutely different of the one you would get cooking the same recipe in a regular cooking pot (I know because I’ve tried it before).
I started by a vegetable tagine, but I will for sure explore many other options with my new star utensil! Just writing it is making me crave for another one… Let’s go to the recipe now:
Marrakech is a very stimulating place, a feast of images come to my mind when I remember it: men chatting and having tea in the street, the hectic Souk full of colours and fragrances, the cheerful flowers in its gardens and avenues, women gathering under the shadow of the olive trees at the Ménara Garden, the storks nesting in the Badii Palace, the fresh and beautiful mosaic courtyards, the magnificent Koutoubia Mosque and much more… and of course food was not an exception, absolutely inspiring: refreshing mint tea, fragrant tagines (I specially remember a surprising lamb and fig tagine that I was incapable of imitate at home), fresh taboulé with grilled meat dinners at the lively Djemaa el-Fna square and the fresh grilled seafood and fish in the nearby coastal town of Essaouria.
Since I have visited it, I cook a Moroccan-inspired dish once in a while. Besides, as the Moroccan community is quite big in Spain, I am lucky enough to have an authentic grocery store locally, where I buy couscous, sometimes a delicious Moroccan flat bread, excellent beef and some of my spices like Ras El Hanout, a spices mixture which blend originally vary with the merchant selling it, but it is supposed to have the best of the house. And for us, the ones with not souk nearby, it depends on the brand. Today I am sharing a vegan rice soup perfumed with Ras-El-Hanout, I hope you get inspired by it and travel with your taste buds to Northern Africa with me!
Around the Bowl 
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