dresese

Tagine cookery

Two event conspired to convince me to buy a tagine. First, my Chinese clay pot broke. Secondly, I read this discussion of tagines on E-Gullet. E-Gullet is a great forum for various foodie discussions. There are a tremendous amount of very knowledgeable folks, and in this discussion on tagines, including Paula Wolfert (a cookbook author of various Mediterranean-themed cookbooks), as well as many a culinary instructor from Tunisia, and others. So, I figured I don't cook much Chinese food anymore (I'm trying to be parsimonious and restrict myself to just a few cuisines), so I'll replace my clay pot with a clay tagine.

Originally, I meant for my friend Greg, who makes nice pottery, to make me one. But I figure I better try on this one first, since I probably have a good chance of breaking it. Although I know the rules for clay pots (avoid changes of temperature, cook with liquid inside, etc), I just seem to be having bad luck lately. Possibly due to not properly seasoning or re-seasoning my clay pot. So I will learn more about tagines before asking Greg to make one.

I bought my tagine from tagines.com, and got my Rifi Tagine a few weeks later. The next weekend, which was last weekend, I made my first dish, a chicken with prunes and dried jujubes (red dates).

The tagine is like a slow cooker, so I started everything out all together, with my chicken (whole, cut up, including liver), carrots, dried fruit, cumin, turmeric, ginger powder, and paprika. The picture here is of the tagine on a heat diffuser, without the distinctive tagine "hat".

I then set it to cook somewhere around medium-low. Much like a slow cooker, it didn't start boiling until almost an hour later. Luckily, I had anticipated for a two-and-a-half hour cooking time, so I just cooked it at a little higher temperature than I ordinarily would have, and it all worked out.

After it started simmering, I put on the top, and let it work it's magic. My two-and-a-half year old daughter came in and pointed at it and said it was a castle. Ah, the charm of the tagine!

Finally, it was done. The sauce was very thick. I finished the chicken pieces off by broiling them (following the e-Gullet thread which mentioned browning at the end of the braise). I served it in the tagine, and it tasted great! And best of all, I didn't break it!