Vegetable Tagine & How to get the seeds out of a pomegranate
I’ve always wanted a proper Tagine and I picked this Mason Cash beauty up in the Brown Thomas homeware sale just recently.
I had a recipe in mind – a Vegetable Tagine. One that I had read in a Grazia magazine but now that I go to look for the magazine to reproduce it here do you think I can find it? No! Household paper recycling proving too efficient on this occasion.
I had taken a photograph of the ingredients though, so that helps a lot. I find myself using my phone more and more frequently for this purpose, it’s very handy in the waiting room of the dentist etc. when you spy a recipe that you’d like to try and great for shopping list purposes too.
Speaking of shopping lists you might find it difficult to find Ras El Hanout – I got some in Tesco ages ago and ran out so this time I used a Moroccan spice blend from Marks and Spencer. You could of course concoct your own – you could mix together paprika, coriander seed, cumin seed, black peppercorn, chilli powder, fennel seed, cinnamon, turmeric, nutmeg, cloves. Concoctions vary but definitely include cinnamon if you are making your own spice blend.
The beauty of a tagine, like any stew really, is that once the preparation is done it’s a quick assembly of all ingredients and then it can be left to its own devices unsupervised giving you a bit of time to get on with living.
Extricating the seeds from a pomegranate is easy when you know how however they’re not the cheapest of ingredients unless they fall out of the trees where you live and quite frankly have been done to death in salads etc. in recent years so would you be bothered? The tagine won’t suffer without them.
How to get the seeds out of a pomegranate.
This is a messy, spattery job so wear an apron and do it over a bowl placed in the sink.
Halve the pomegranate.
Bash the outer flesh with the back of a wooden spoon over a bowl and let the seeds fall out.
Remove any bitter fleshy bits that fall in.
Vegetable Tagine
You will need:
1 large onion
2 tbsp. rapeseed oil or olive oil
3 garlic cloves
2 tsp Moroccan spices or Ras el hanout
2 x 400g cans chickpeas
750ml vegetable stock
2tbsp tomato puree
125g raisins
350g parsnips
350g carrots
350g sweet potatoes
2 tsp clear honey
small bunch coriander
pomegranate seeds (optional)
Method:
Chop the onion. Heat the oil in a large pan on the hob over a medium heat and add the onion to soften for 5 minutes.
Add the crushed garlic cloves. Cook for 1 minute.
Add the spices and mix to coat everything. Cook for 1 minutes.
Drain the chickpeas and add to the pan along with the vegetable stock, tomato puree and raisins. Turn the heat to low.
Peel and cut the parsnips, carrots and sweet potatoes into even size chunks.
Add the prepared vegetables to the pan along with the 2 tsp of honey and most of the chopped coriander.
Mix everything together well and transfer to a tagine.
Place the tagine into a medium hot oven for 2 hours until all veg are tender.
Test that vegetables are tender enough by cutting through with a knife before serving with remaining chopped coriander and pomegranate seeds sprinkled on top.
Good with couscous or a bulghar wheat salad.
Enjoy.
Til next time, Sheila.
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