Recipe: Meatless Monday - Vegetable Tagine

I must confess straight up that I don't have one of these very cool ceramic tagine thingamies, with its lovely round spouted lid, heavy lipped plate and shiny ceramic outer casing.

I have wanted one for ages and in fact, I almost bought one just to make this recipe as authentic as possible.  But Mr YourLocalMarkets threatened that we'd need to knock out a wall in the kitchen to store it if one entered the house, so I refrained from buying one and conceded that the Le Creusset pot would make a perfect substitute, even without its lovely Moorish shape.

With pot at the ready, I set about to make this vegetable tagine for family members who are vegetarian and found the recipe at Lifestyle Food from the lovely Anna Gare.  I really only tweaked it a little, and the results were incredible.  The flavours danced around in our mouths and had the perfect combo of spices, garlic and lemony zest to really bring the pot of veggies to life.  One word of warning though: this is not a 30 minute Jamie Oliver quickie; rather, it's more when you have a few hours to prep and cook it, on a lazy Sunday perhaps.

Suitable for vegans too; just don't garnish with yogurt.

Vegetable Tagine - Ingredients
Chermoula marinade

• 1 roasted red capsicum
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 red chilli
• 4 cloves ground
• 3 tsp coriander seeds ground
• 3 tsp cumin seeds ground
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• ¾ cup coriander (50gms)
• ¾ cup Italian parsley
• 10 mint leaves
• Rind and flesh of 1 lemon (disregard pith)

Veggies

• 400gms kumera
• 3 baby fennel, quartered (or use 1 fennel, quartered)
• 5 purple carrots (you can use potatoes if you can't find this heirloom carrot)
• 1 red capsicum, cut into thick strips
• 3 baby eggplant, cut in half length ways
• 1 zucchini, cut into about 6
• 4 roma tomatoes, cut in half (I could only fit 3 in my pot as they were big roma's)
• 1 cinnamon quill
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 cups vegetable stock
• 10 pitted prunes
• 1 cup chickpeas, cooked

Method: Chermoula
Roast the red capsicum in a moderate oven for 30-60 minutes, until the skin is charred. Remove from the oven and  place in a plastic bag so the steam helps to lift off the skin. While the capsicum is roasting,  lightly roast ground coriander and cumin seeds in pan. Grind roasted cumin, coriander and cloves in a mortar and pestle. Put all chermoula ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. Add a little water if the paste is too thick to blend properly.

Method: Veggies
Coat kumera, carrots, fennel, capsicum, eggplant and zucchini in marinade mix and lightly fry in big heavy based saucepan or tagine. 

Top with tomatoes, cinnamon, bay leaf, prunes and vegetable stock. Cover and cook for about 1 hour until vegetables are tender. Add cooked chick peas and cook for a further ½ hour. Serve with couscous and natural yogurt.

The original recipe says it serves 4: however 4 of us ate and the photo at the top is the tagine after we'd had dinner, leaving us lots of lovely leftovers for Meatless Monday today. So probably serves closer to 6. 

Did I mention that this was absolutely freakin' delicious? As this was more labour intensive than most of my Meatless Monday meals, next time I make it I will double the chermoula ingredients and freeze the chermoula paste for another occasion. In fact, chermoula could become my 'pesto de jour'.*

*Kitchen cupboards may be removed soon to accommodate a lovely new shiny tagine......