After watching Gordan Ramsay's Best Restaurant on North African cuisine, it made me book a ticket to Morocco.
Just kidding. But it did get me to hunt for some Moroccan food nearby the city. The one dish that caught my eye was the lamb tagine. This dish is filled with exotic ingredients: coriander, saffron, turmeric, cumin, ginger , cinnamon, apricots and even more. All these ingredients are then slow cooked inside a cute looking tagine. The interesting feature about this tagine (clay pot) is its shape, which is pyramid like to allow condensation to drip back down to the bottom of the stew.
Anyways, I wanted to replicate this dish even without a tagine. So instead of taking an hour and a half to build up the exotic flavors from the stew, I bought a ready made packet of Saffron Moroccan Tagine Sauce. This packet already has a lot of sugar and flavor, so you will need to dilute the sauce and add more vegetables and seasonings.
After you try this, you would want to fly to Morocco ... Please take me with you.
Time: 40 minutes
Calories per serving: 300 (75 calories from the sauce, lamb 125 calories, carrots/onions/tofu 100 calories)
Serving size: 3-4 bowls of stew
Ingredients: Whole Foods and Trader Joe's
Just kidding. But it did get me to hunt for some Moroccan food nearby the city. The one dish that caught my eye was the lamb tagine. This dish is filled with exotic ingredients: coriander, saffron, turmeric, cumin, ginger , cinnamon, apricots and even more. All these ingredients are then slow cooked inside a cute looking tagine. The interesting feature about this tagine (clay pot) is its shape, which is pyramid like to allow condensation to drip back down to the bottom of the stew.
Anyways, I wanted to replicate this dish even without a tagine. So instead of taking an hour and a half to build up the exotic flavors from the stew, I bought a ready made packet of Saffron Moroccan Tagine Sauce. This packet already has a lot of sugar and flavor, so you will need to dilute the sauce and add more vegetables and seasonings.
After you try this, you would want to fly to Morocco ... Please take me with you.
Time: 40 minutes
Calories per serving: 300 (75 calories from the sauce, lamb 125 calories, carrots/onions/tofu 100 calories)
Serving size: 3-4 bowls of stew
Ingredients: Whole Foods and Trader Joe's
- Whole Food's lamb shoulders( 2 pieces for $4) and lamb rack (1 piece for $5.00)
- ginger (2 thin slices)
- Saffron's Moroccan Tagine Sauce ($2.99)-half of the package
- onion-diced up
- tomatoes-wedges and hand squeezed
- cinnamon-2 pinch
- garlic powder-3 pinch
- carrots-1cup
- firm tofu- pan seared
- black pepper-5 pinch
- garlic-3 cloves minced
- Sear the Lamb: add some olive oil, then sear the lamb+garlic powder for 5 minutes (medium-rare), then place it aside
- Stew: use the rest of the lamb's oil to cook the ginger/onions/garlic (cook for about 5 minutes medium heat), then add half of the Saffron sauce packet+add 1 1/2cup of water (medium heat, 10 minutes), add the carrots and lamb (low heat for 10 minutes), add the pepper/cinnamon
- Tofu: I'm trying to avoid carbs, so I'm using tofu here to soak up the delicious stew. pan sear these on the side and place into the stew right when you serve
