So Many Dishes

I’m not sure exactly how long it’s been since Ben and Annie gave me a traditional clay tagine for Mother’s Day, but I know that I was still teaching. So that makes it at least 11 years old, and it’s probably a couple of years older than that. It was a two day process to season it before its first use, and I make sure to cook in it at least every two months or so, because if you don’t use it often enough, you have to go through the entire seasoning process again.

A clay tagine looks substantial, but it has to be treated with care. Most importantly, you have to use it over medium-low heat. If the heat is too high, the clay will crack. Ben broke his clay tagine that way, so I’m really careful when I use mine. I also have a tagine with a stainless steel base, also a gift from Ben and Annie. It can be used over higher heat, and it’s larger, so it holds more. But I prefer the way the clay tagine cooks, so that’s always my first choice when I cook Moroccan food.

Sometimes, however, I really should use the larger tagine, and that was true tonight. I made chicken with rosemary and potatoes tagine. I’ve made this before, and it’s delicious. It’s skinned chicken pieces with onion, fingerling potatoes, and rutabaga, seasoned with garam masala, fresh rosemary, honey. I add golden raisins in place of figs, and serve it over pearl couscous, garnished with harissa. It’s delicious.

By the time I got all the ingredients in the tagine, however, I had it seriously overloaded. The lid went on with no problem, so I thought it was fine. But the conical lid of the tagine means that all of the condensation falls back into the vessel. That means that you don’t need to add extra liquid but still get a very moist dish. What it also meant was that, since the pot was so full, liquid leaked out from around the lid and onto the burner. The honey in the dish meant that I ended up with a burnt mess on my burner. The tagine itself was easy to clean; the stove, not so much.

For all that, it tasted wonderful and was not a difficult dinner to put together. I had everything prepped and ready to go, because I didn’t want to miss the action of the football playoff game, since my Eagles were playing. It took longer to cook than I anticipated, but that was because of overloading the tagine. But it was absolutely worth the extra time.

I hope your dinner was equally delicious. Happy eating !