The Middle East and North Africa.
A tagine's cone is a condenser: steam rising from the stew cools on the clay and runs back down the walls, so a tagine cooks for hours with a cupful of liquid.
The region's food carries its history of empires and trade routes. Persian cooking prizes rice — steamed so the grains stay separate, with a golden crust (tahdig) at the bottom — fragrant with saffron, dried limes, herbs and pomegranate; Turkish and Levantine cooking grills kebabs over charcoal and serves mezze (XXX.3); Egypt eats ful medames, slow-cooked fava beans; the Maghreb — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia — steams couscous over a simmering stew and braises in tagines. The spice blends are warm rather than hot: baharat (black pepper, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, cloves), ras el hanout ("head of the shop", a dozen or more spices), za'atar (thyme, sumac, sesame), harissa for heat. Preserved lemons, olives, dates, almonds and honey give the sweet-sour-salty notes of Moroccan cooking.
A tagine is both the conical clay dish and the stew cooked in it. Lamb or chicken with onions, spices and a little liquid go into the shallow base; the tall lid sits on top, and the whole is set over low heat — traditionally charcoal. Steam rising from the stew meets the cooler walls of the cone, condenses and runs back down, so very little water escapes; the meat braises in a small amount of concentrated, aromatic sauce for two or three hours, until it falls from the bone (XVI.4). An ordinary heavy pot with a tight lid does almost the same. The workshop compares lid and no lid.
Below: the temperature and the water boiled away from 2 L of stew over two hours at the fire you choose, with the lid on (a tagine or heavy lidded pot, most steam returned) or off (stove bench, pot model).
- Know the region's grains, spices and methods.
- Cook a tagine and couscous.
- Explain how a lid keeps water in.
- Use spice blends, preserved lemon and sumac.
Keep the steam in, keep the heat low
In the stove model a stew at a fifth of the burner loses about 205 g of water in two hours under a lid but about 627 g uncovered — three times as much, enough to dry a small tagine and burn the spices. That is why tagines need so little liquid: the cone sends most of the steam back, and the gentle heat keeps the stew at a lazy simmer rather than a boil.
Chicken tagine with preserved lemon and olives (4): rub 1.2 kg chicken pieces with 2 grated onions, 2 garlic cloves, 1 tsp each ground ginger, cumin and paprika, ½ tsp turmeric, a pinch of saffron, salt and 3 tbsp olive oil; leave an hour. Put everything in the tagine or a heavy pot with 150 mL water and a bunch of coriander, cover and cook over low heat (a heat diffuser under clay) 1 hour; add the chopped peel of 1 preserved lemon and 100 g green olives and cook 20 minutes more, until the chicken is tender and the sauce thick. Serve with bread or couscous steamed over simmering water (XVI.3). Preserved lemons: lemons packed in salt (about 10 % of their weight) and their own juice for a month.
Simmer two small pots of the same stew for an hour, one lidded and one uncovered, at the same low heat. Weigh them before and after.
Terms
- Tagine
- Conical clay dish, and the slow stew cooked in it.
- Ras el hanout / baharat
- Moroccan and Levantine spice blends.
- Za'atar
- Thyme, sumac and sesame blend.
- Tahdig
- The golden crust of Persian rice.
Sources
- A teaching value chosen for the course: the right order of magnitude and shape, not a measurement of a particular food.
- H. McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, 2nd ed., Scribner, 2004.