Citrus-Spiked Lamb Tagine with Apricots and Aubergine
Crossposted to 
cookbook_challenge
From The Roasting Time around the World by Rikmini Iyer.
1 white onion, roughly chopped
5cm ginger, grated
2 plum tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 small aubergine, cut into 1.5cm chunks
150-200g dried apricots (to taste)
400g diced lamb
500ml boiling lamb or beef stock
3 heaped teaspoons ras-el-hanout
1 orange, zest and juice
TO SERVE
Hot cous cous
Fresh coriander, roughly chopped
Yogurt
Put all ingredients into a lidded casserole dish, stir, cover and cook at 150C (fan)/170C/Gas 3 for 2 hours 30 minutes.
Changes, Mistakes and Subsitutions
Replaced the 2 plum tomatoes with a tin of chopped tomatoes. The tagine was quite watery as a result - I probably should have reduced the stock to compensate. Only used 100g apricots since that was all I had in the house. Served with rice and didn't bother with the coriander or yoghurt.
Verdict
I have a tagine recipe I'm already very fond of and this was not as nice, lacking the depth and richness of flavour. I suspect that the big difference is that my existing recipe coats the meat in the spices (and doesn't use ras-el-hanout as a shortcut, though I'm not sure that made that much difference) and then fries it off with the onion before the long casseroling. It also has a wider range of ingredients including almonds, saffron and honey though, again, I'm not sure that was the real difference here. No aubergine though - I might add aubergine to it next time I cook it. At any rate, while this gets points for being super simple, it loses them for flavour. If I want to make a tagine I'll use my old recipe. This entry was originally posted at https://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/778806.html.
cookbook_challenge
From The Roasting Time around the World by Rikmini Iyer.
1 white onion, roughly chopped
5cm ginger, grated
2 plum tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 small aubergine, cut into 1.5cm chunks
150-200g dried apricots (to taste)
400g diced lamb
500ml boiling lamb or beef stock
3 heaped teaspoons ras-el-hanout
1 orange, zest and juice
TO SERVE
Hot cous cous
Fresh coriander, roughly chopped
Yogurt
Put all ingredients into a lidded casserole dish, stir, cover and cook at 150C (fan)/170C/Gas 3 for 2 hours 30 minutes.
Changes, Mistakes and Subsitutions
Replaced the 2 plum tomatoes with a tin of chopped tomatoes. The tagine was quite watery as a result - I probably should have reduced the stock to compensate. Only used 100g apricots since that was all I had in the house. Served with rice and didn't bother with the coriander or yoghurt.
Verdict
I have a tagine recipe I'm already very fond of and this was not as nice, lacking the depth and richness of flavour. I suspect that the big difference is that my existing recipe coats the meat in the spices (and doesn't use ras-el-hanout as a shortcut, though I'm not sure that made that much difference) and then fries it off with the onion before the long casseroling. It also has a wider range of ingredients including almonds, saffron and honey though, again, I'm not sure that was the real difference here. No aubergine though - I might add aubergine to it next time I cook it. At any rate, while this gets points for being super simple, it loses them for flavour. If I want to make a tagine I'll use my old recipe. This entry was originally posted at https://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/778806.html.