Terrific Tagines & Couscous @ Las Cosas

I attended the tagine cooking class at Las Cosas this week. I have been curious about this piece of cookware for a while. We used for one of the recipes in the lamb cookery class.

Class Description: The wonderful spices of Morocco are celebrated in this class that features the use of the tagine cooking pot. Anyone who has ever tasted food prepared in this amazing casserole, or who loves the fabulous flavors of the Mediterranean, won’t want to miss this menu that includes: Eggplant Salad, Flatbread with Zahtar and Baba Ghanoush, Tagine of Chard, Snapper Tagine with Chermoula, Lamb Tagine with Preserved Lemon Couscous, and a Sweet Dessert Couscous with Dates to finish. (Hands-On)

Per usual the menu items were divided up among class members. This class was maybe 11-12 students. I worked with two classmates to make the Braised Swaii Tagine with Chermoula and the Preserved Lemon Couscous.

Braised Swaii Tagine with Chermoula

This recipe was fast and easy. It involved the food processor and tagine. We started with making the chermoula which is both a marinade and sauce.

We started with coriander seeds, black peppercorns, red pepper flakes, and saffron.

And ground it up with a mortar and pestle. You can use a spice grinder also.

Next we started chopping some ingredients to make the processing easier. Here are the chopped onions.

And the chopped parsley.

And the chopped cilantro.

Smoked Spanish paprika, olive oil, and kosher salt to add to the food processor.

All the ingredients are put into the food processor – coriander, black pepper, red pepper flakes, saffron, kosher salt, smoked Spanish paprika, onion, parsley, perserved lemon peel, perserved lemon, and lemon juice, olive oil, cilantro, and garlic.

After processing, we had a nice paste.

This is the swaii and we seasoned each side of fish with salt and pepper.

Then we put the paste on each side of the fish. We put all the sauce on the tray with the fish for 30 minutes.

The fish was placed in the tagine with all the sauce.

We cooked it for 20 minutes with the tagine covered and served it from the tagine.

Preserved Lemon Couscous

The ingredient tray for this dish contained vegetable stock, cardamom, red pepper flakes, butter, couscous, preserved lemon, cilantro, parsley, salt, and pepper.

First we melted some butter in a saucepan.

Then we added the couscous and mixed it together.

In a second saucepan, we put the vegetable stock.

We brought it to a boil and then added the red pepper flakes and cardamom.

Next we poured the stock mixture into the pot with the couscous mixture and cooked it covered for 10 minutes.

While that cooked, we chopped some parsley, cilantro, and perserved lemon.

When the cooking was done, we fluffed the couscous with a fork.

We added the cilantro, parsley, and preserved lemon to the pot and mixed it in. And it was ready to serve.

The Other Menu Items

Za’atar Flatbread includes bread and topping. Bread – flour, yeast, water, sugar, and olive oil. Topping – za’atar, olive oil, and lemon juice.

Baba Ghanoush – eggplant, garlic, tahini, lemon juice, yogurt, red pepper flakes, kosher salt, olive oil, and parsley.

Moroccan Lamb, Fennel & Date Tagine – olive oil, red onion, fennel bulb, garlic, lamb stew meat, cayenne pepper, ginger, cumin, coriander, allspice, kosher salt, dates, chicken stock, and cilantro.

Tagine of Swiss Chard – Swiss chard, onion, cilantro, salad oil, smoked paprika, salt, pepper, rice, and garbanzo beans.

Eggplant Sambal – shrimp, shallots, garlic, jalapeño pepper, water, basil, eggplant, peanut oil, coconut milk, hoisin sauce, sugar, and salt.

I think maybe the Eggplant Salad in the class description got accidentally replaced by this.

Sweet Dessert Couscous – butter, almonds, walnuts, sugar, sugar, couscous, milk, salt, dates, vanilla, orange zest, and confectioner’s sugar.

In the class, we used three tagines. Two of them were Le Crueset and one was Emile Henry. Tagines can go on the stove or in the oven. We used stove top recipes, but if you think you will have in oven and stove top tagine recipes, make sure the one you get can do both.

Three of the class recipes are in Chef Johnny’s cookbook – Cooking with Johnny Vee: International Cuisine with a Modern Flair.

• Moroccan Lamb, Fennel, and Date Tagine (p. 23)
• Preserved Lemon Couscous (p. 24)
• Smoky Baba Ghanoush (p. 176)