Smithy

Fascinating, isn't it? Yes, I'm quite sure the clay is still porous to water; we've seen evidence of the water loss. But it seems to be doing something to the fat too. I'll settle for adsorption until a better idea comes along.

... I think you are largely correct about the glazed versus unglazed tagines. I am beginning to think that there is probably not a discernable difference and that the thermal properties of the clay overshadow any effects of absorption/evaporation in the unglazed. I am sure they are there, but don't make a difference that can be seen in the cooking. ... ← I thought there was a discernable difference in the meat tenderness, at least with my chicken. Are you thinking that's an artifact of my technique, instead?

Wow, Paula. Talk about a wealth of knowledge! Thank you! First off, I may have given an incorrect impression. I can't look at the book again until tonight, but it's possible that the Djaj Mqualli is presented as Middle Eastern (as the name of the book implies) rather than Moroccan - unless that name is by definition a Moroccan, or otherwise North African, name? It's entirely possible that I picked up a recipe and misunderstood its intent. I was looking for something different to do with the chicken than I'd already done, with the ingredients I had on hand. (Now I've run out of preserved lemons.) It sounds as though I got the procedure right for using the tagine, taking the ingredients from a recipe written for Le Creuset. Do you agree? Or did I miss a step or add something in? Should I not have browned at the end? Second: I think you're saying the cinnamon didn't belong with the preserved lemons and olives, and that the recipe is a blend of two versions - one the savory, one the sweet. Did I understand correctly? It seemed out of balance for me, but people's tastes vary. Third: The sauce discussion. The flash of illumination here was enough to make people wonder where the photographer was! That is exactly how my mind works: eight major sauces, certain ingredients they'd go with, certain dish types they'd be used on. That makes sense. Have you written it that way in any of your books? Do you intend to? Or would you be willing to expound on those sauces and their applications somewhere around here?

I do, actually, have another question about the Djaj Mqualli: what to do with all that chicken. The seasonings were powdered ginger, twice as much powdered cinnamon, a bit of saffron, salt and pepper, onions, garlic, and at the end green olives and preserved lemon. For my tastes, the finished dish was too cinnamony. It's not bad - certainly better than edible - but I prefer a whisper of cinnamon on chicken and this is more of a shout. Now, what can I do with the rest of the chicken to balance out that cinnamon? What other seasonings would help balance it? I'm kicking around ideas like putting chicken chunks into a rice dish with more lemon and olives, more ginger, nuts, maybe some artichoke hearts. What about cumin? Allspice? Mace?? What other directions could I go with this cinnamony chicken meat? Would it work with tomatoes? Put it into some beans? A salad? Simmer the whole in a broth and run the sauce in a different direction? Any and all suggestions will be entertained.

Last night I did the clay pot vs. glazed ceramic pot test. In those pots I cooked an adaptation of Djaj Mqualli, Chicken with Preserved Lemon and Olives, from Claudia Roden's The New Book of Middle Eastern Food. It was an adaptation in the sense that she's written the recipe for a heavy metal pot and does the browning first. I used the "start the tagine cold" method I'm learning here, so I didn't brown the chicken first but put it under the broiler later. The two pots are close to the same size and shape. Since the lima green glazed casserole doesn't pretend to be stovetop-safe, I put it up on the wok ring. I started out over a small electric coil, thinking that would keep the heat from rising up around the sides as noted previously, and quickly learned that the heat rose and spread anyway. I shifted the assembly to a large coil so the treatment of the two pots would be as similar as possible. The Egyptian clay pot sat on a flame tamer on a large coil. Here they are, just starting to warm the spices and onions: My bad lab technique: the recipe called for adding water to about halfway up the chicken, and that's what I did. I remembered just after that step that I'd wanted to measure the difference in liquid, before and after, between the two setups. I wasn't up for disassembling the whole thing, so I sucked out as much water as I could with a turkey baster and measured it, then returned it to its pot. It seemed to be pretty even: about 1-1/3 c. in the lima casserole and 1-1/4 c. in the clay bowl. Once they had come to the boil, I had to lower the heat way down to get the slow low simmer. The clay pot was slower to respond to changes in heat settings, but each time I changed one burner I ended up changing the other, and they always ended at the same burner setting. Since the ceramic pot was sitting a good 2" off the coil I take that to mean it's a more efficient heat conductor. (My stove isn't fancy but it's fairly new and I think the burners run at the same rate.) The glazed casserole had a lid, which, by the way, did NOT stay cool the way a tagine lid is supposed to. The clay pot got crumpled wet parchment paper and a tight aluminum foil cap. I didn't think to use parchment paper in the lima casserole. Note on the slow low simmer: my probe said the temperature at the bottom of the liquid for each pot was 205*F. This is what I remembered from last time and didn't want to report. What's going on that it's below 212*F? I checked the probe. It measures boiling water at 210*F so my readings are pretty reliable. The broiled meat looked the same; neither set threw off more fat than the other. The clay pot meat is on the right. Now the differences started coming out. (1) Liquid left over: The lima pot casserole, after the meat was removed for broiling, had a bit more liquid than the clay pot, but not much more than their original differences. Neither had generated enough liquid to cover the chicken. What was significant was that the glazed casserole sauce had almost twice as much fat in it as the clay pot sauce. It was also interesting that the glazed casserole sauce took considerably longer to boil down than the sauce in the clay pot. (I used those vessels to boil the respective sauces down.) Is that because of the higher fat content in the sauce? I defatted to some degree, but wasn't up for straining out all the onion and waiting to let the sauce separate out, so the percentage difference in the two sauces probably held. (2) Meat texture: The meat looked the same, and darned pretty. However, of the chicken thighs in the lima casserole, 1 out of 5 was falling-apart tender. 5 of the 6 thighs in the clay pot were falling-apart tender. The clay-pot chicken is at the right, and glazed casserole chicken is at top. Summary: the two pots behaved more nearly the same than the clay pot vs. the Le Creuset in terms of liquid generated, fat thrown off, temperature settings, and cook times. The unglazed clay pot still generated a more tender meat, and a less fatty sauce. Do you suppose the fat's also getting schlurped into the pot? Could it be contributing to that hydraulic pull somehow? Edited to correct some photo problems. Many thanks to Fifi for her help here!

Good grief, I just realized I posted the same thing twice. Sorry, folks - <insert favorite funny story here while I pull my foot out of my mouth>

I hate to burst your bubble but the site said the same thing when I ordered mine. I just checked the tracking and it is on its way. ← You could always just organise a trip to Morocco and pick out your own ← It's crossed my mind. I missed out on my Egypt excursion this year, and don't see Morocco happening this year either. I'm trying to work out whether I have friends good enough to deal with a tagine via Insha-Allah mail...

I am eager to read more about this. Thank you for starting to educate us!

That's a brand-new trick to me. I'm looking forward to trying it. Thanks!

Paula, thank you for that. I managed to overlook this post until after I'd gone to the tagines.com web site and discovered that Fifi's jest wasn't really a joke. What perfect timing!

News update: There really has been a run on the tagines! The tagines.com web site now says, for the Rifi tagines, "Order now and allow 12 - 16 weeks for delivery" Last week it said "in stock"! Talk about mixed feelings. My self-control held long enough that I can't have that instant gratification. Now I really may as well hold off on the order.

Followup sometime later: the new Moroccan tagine cooking thread has further comparison between braising in clay pots and braising in other vessels. Those interested should make sure they check out that thread, too.

You have to understand, I have seen these pots in exactly 3 uses: (1) at our friend's flat in Luxor, where they were used to serve potatoes in tomato sauce (I think she cooked in a larger pot, considering the way the borma kept magically refilling as we heroically struggled to eat our way through the feast - hospitality and etiquette there is a whole different topic) (2) at the pottery stand, where there are oodles of wonderful clay pots of all sizes and purposes, all uncured, and (3) at our house, where until very recently this one has been holding an impressive collection of cones and pods from Southern California. However, I have seen the tagines (smaller pots, often used for moussaka, you can see one in my Braising Lab 1, or I can post another photo) in action in Egypt. The tagines have handles without holes, so there's no way to loop something through the handles to suspend the pot over a fire. The restaurants set these pots right down on the coals, or in the fireplace, or in the oven. There has to be a way to lift them out. As I recall there are tongs or a U-shaped implement on a long handle for reaching in to grab the pot. Those have to fit in under the handles. When I say "steadying point" I'm guessing, and it's just a guess, that the little triangular point fits into the crotch of the U or the tong to steady it just a bit more and keep it from pivoting too much on its handles. Now, I'm speculating on this borma and the hanging loops (main handles), but you could loop wire through the handles and then hang this pot from a horizontal rod that you could swing in and out of the fire, a la big pots in an early American fireplace. The problem is that this pot is so broad compared to its depth that it will swing like crazy if you have to stir it. You have to be able to steady it somehow, and the triangular things I called "steadying points" are strategically located at the farthest point of the rim from the hanging loops to do just that. Of course, it's also entirely possible that these loopy handles are for putting ropes through so you can hang these pots as planters (a future use for more pots at our house) and that the triangular points are there to strengthen the rim, or because they look cool, or because sometimes the pots go into a ring-shaped support and need 4-point support, or because they've been done that way forever and nobody knows why anymore. Thanks for reminding me about the different thermal characteristics of the Corning vs. these two pots. I suspect the lima pot has different characteristics than the clay too, but that they're a lot closer together. OK, it's decided. If the lima pot blows up, there'll be space atop the cabinet for a Rifi tagine.

Mm. It may be that more liquid is needed in the clay pot, to allow for the loss and concentration that happens during the cooking. That will ensure plenty of sauce at the end, for those of us who are sauce junkies. Will that overcover the meat, though? Is a tagine enough like other braises that the liquid level should really be a third to a halfway up the object being cooked? Or is it more of a set quantity of liquid to ingredients? If overcovering the meat isn't an issue, maybe a good rule of thumb is to double the liquid for a clay pot, or halve it for a metal pot, depending on which way you go. If overcovering the meat is an issue, I suppose one could live dangerously by adding water to the braising liquid as it, er, was schlurped up and out, to maintain a constant liquid level. The dangerous part would be letting the level get too low and adding too much cold water. The water would have to be hot, wouldn't it? Come to think of it, I did have to do that the other day with the lamb tagine from your web site. Come to think of it...ok, I really think the clay pots need more liquid. You absolutely should type up a djej mhammer recipe so other interested readers (especially Sackville, who asked) can try it too. If you don't, I'll be happy to do it - I logged on with that intent, but don't want to if you're in the process right now. If I do it, it will have to be from The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen. The other thing I think you could say relates to the discussion we're having right now. If you're cooking a tagine, how do you know much liquid should be there? There's a visual cue for the simmer (barely bubbling). There's a visual cue for the spice coatings (well coated, and heated until the meat is warming/steam begins to rise from the pot). There's a tactile cue for the meat (pull-apart, meltingly tender). What's the cue for the appropriate amount of liquid?

I'm still pondering some of the information above. Meanwhile, here's an edge detail of my Egyptian cooking bowl to show the hanging loops and the steadying points I mentioned upthread. Meyer lemons are in the pot for size reference and color interest. Now, I've another materials-related question to ask: I'm really interested to see what happens if I do one tagine in the Egyptian clay pot and another tagine in a glazed ceramic pot. I happen to have a ceramic casserole dish of almost the exact same dimensions as the borma. (Yes, that's my cone and pod collection in the lima casserole.) I suspect that the ceramic pot results will be similar to the Le Creuset in terms of liquid generated/retained but more like the clay pot in terms of browning, and as far as the overall flavor goes, who knows? My question is whether I dare try this particular ceramic pot on top of the stove, over low heat, over a flame tamer, as though it's a clay pot. It doesn't claim to be stovetop safe, but the more I think about clay pots and stove tops, the more I think about being able to boil water in a paper cup: as long as there's liquid inside, the cup doesn't burn. I think the clay won't break as long as the heat is low and there's something inside to help regulate it. What do you think? Fifi, this is especially directed at you, but any and all opinions will be welcomed right up to cooking time later this afternoon. My alternative, by the way, is a classic Corning round casserole. I'm sure that can take the heat, but its dimensions are different.

That makes sense, even if it makes my head hurt. Actually, it makes water sound like a cat: wants to go where it isn't. If I think about it long enough, I may actually come up with the hydraulic effect word you're looking for. Hmm. Paula's earlier description made me think of the cone as a cooling tower. Sounds like you're right on, Madam Materials Scientist. And I love the description of water galloping around!

You mentioned (see your quote) the pot has been sitting around holding pinecones. So it hasn't been used in a long time. Or ever? Do you remember whether you were supposed to soak it before curing back when you bought it? I'm only guessing but the huge evaporation of liquid might have happened due to the super dry walls of the pot. On the other hand, 1 cup of liquid for a chicken or its equal in weight in thighs doesn't need more than l cup. Tagines like braises do better with less liquid. <snippo> If the chicken came out right with the claypot, it would have been meltingly soft and juicy. Followed by broiling, you should have a crisp skin just barely holding the chicken flesh in place. Fifi: We need your help. Thanks for providing the name of the pot. I am beginning to set up a grid with names of pots, curing,et. I love your pot! It is beautiful. How high are the walls versus the diameter? I have some similar ones used in the eastern mediterranean to make moussake, and Turkish guvec (meat and vegetable stews). Guvec uses only the liquid the meat and vegetables throw off during the cooking to keep everything juicy. t. ← I really meant that I'd never used this pot for cooking before. It's a bit embarrassing to admit that, because we've had it for years, but all we ever saw this particular pot style used for was to serve potatoes in tomato sauce. I used the Egyptian tagine (which appeared in the braising experiments) and smaller bowls for moussaka, and am only now discovering the wonders of braising in general and cooking tagines in clay in particular. I finally got around to curing this pot last weekend, in order to try cooking tagines in it. The original instructions did not include soaking the pottery, and I suspect these pots would explode like your Turkish pots did if they were soaked and then coated, but I don't know. What I was shown was to wash the pottery with hot water and scrub pad (can't remember about detergent) to get the loose clay dust off, and let the pot air dry thoroughly. (Edited to add: air drying can be done in low-temperature oven, if desired.) Then coat it inside and out with molasses, set in the oven (upside down over foil works well), turn the temperature up to medium heat, and cook until done. It takes a few hours. You can tell it's done because the appearance of the molasses changes. It kind of beads up on the pot and forms a patchy crust. After the pot is cool you have to give it a quick wipe to get the loose molasses crust off; otherwise you get it all over everything you set it on. I've never had these pots (used or unused) leave water residue on furniture. That may be because I re-dry them after use. I learned the hard way that if they weren't quite dry they'd sprout a healthy mold colony (love that molasses) and I'd have to start all over. I don't know what Sabra does about that in Luxor, but I have taken to putting the pots in the oven on warm for a while after I've used and cleaned them. Caution on my terminology! I call this pot a "borma" (plural "boraam") but I think that's just a generic term for a clay pot. The Egyptians are quite specific about the tagine I used in the braising thread - that is a "tagine", pronounced more or less "DA-jin" and quite unlike the Moroccan cone-topped tagine. If there is a similar term reserved for this size and shape of bowl, I don't know what it is. I may be able to find out. Anyway, it's fun to say "borma", but keep in mind my extremely limited language skills. This pot's interior is slightly over 9" diameter at the rim - anywhere from 9-1/4" to 9-3/8" inside diameter at the top. The interior bottom where it more or less flattens out is roughly 7" diameter. It's about 2-5/8" deep. The walls of the rim are 1/2" thick except where there are two points for stabilizing it, at 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock, and two sturdy loops for hanging, at 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock. (How much longer, in this digital age, will we be able to use those expressions?) I'll try to post a photo tomorrow of what I'm talking about. The exterior is pretty round, even on the bottom, so it rocks slightly without a flame tamer, wok ring, or similar slightly larger circular stand. I'm sorry, I don't have the time to type in the recipe today. Saturdays are difficult around here.If anyone who has the book and feels up to the challenge, you have my permission. If not, I'll type it up tomorrow morning and then if you are all still interested we can discuss the claypot versus the LC. I'm very interested. If the chicken came out right with the claypot, it would have been meltingly soft and juicy. Followed by broiling, you should have a crisp skin just barely holding the chicken flesh in place. ← Thanks for those extra insights. I followed your recipe down to the quantities, but did wonder whether there's really some rule of thumb for tagines like braises - liquid should only be halfway up the meat, or some such. The chicken was quite tender and fell apart with the fork. I'm not only interested in pursuing the LC vs. clay more, I'm wondering about glazed ceramic vs. unglazed clay. I just might risk a casserole dish atop the stove on that experiment. Edited as noted above.

But really...I MUST not visit that site....tax time...tax time... ...although, they really aren't very expensive...

Welcome, TimZ! It's good to have you here! What kind of seasonings do you use on red meat after sealing (did you mean searing?) What kind of seasonings do you use on the chicken before searing? Finally, could you elaborate on what you mean by cutting the lemon in halves then frying in olive oil? Do you really mean to cut a lemon into two halves? (That sounds a bit big.) Or do you mean to cut it into slices (like coins) and then cut those in half?

That's a good point about the sauce. When I finally got it boiled down in the borma there was not very much left, but it was considerably thicker than in the LC. It almost looked like a starch had been added and not mixed in properly. I wonder, though, if the liquid is really going all the way through the sides. I was envisioning it being absorbed into the pot and then doing a slow back-and-forth exchange with the free sauce at the interface, with some liquid absorbed in the clay and unavailable for serving. I admit that might not account for nearly a 50% loss (somewhat less since the chicken still had fat to give up under the broiler). There's no noticeable moisture or color change on the outside the way you have with a clay water holder or those clay wine bottle coolers that were so popular back in the 70's. Is that because the heat from below (and with the wok ring, the sides as well) evaporates the water so quickly that it keeps the pot sides cool without being detectable on the outside of the pot? This particular pot, unlike some of its cousins in this house, has been sitting as a decoration, holding pine cones and interesting Southern California tree pods, until now. I thank Wolfert for getting me going on using it as it was intended.

Is there anyway you could share that recipe with us? I would be very interested in trying it! Your pictures and description of the dish are making my mouth water... ← I'm so glad you like the writeup! Since I began to post on eGullet I've discovered that it's a lot harder to make those photos come out than it appears. As for the recipe: I'd post a link if I knew of one, but this particular recipe may not be online. Maybe, if we asked politely, and even begged a little, the author would be willing to post it. Since she's actively participating in this thread, I'd rather she summarize the ingredients, proportions, and so on to the extent she's willing.

This report could go almost as easily back into the eGCI Braising Lab Q&A, or even the Paprika: confessions of an addict thread, as here. But I started posting about it here before I spilled almost 800 toothpicks all over my stove and counter, so I'll finish it here. Double-Cooked Red Chicken Marrakech-Style, from Paula Wolfert's The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen: Recipes for the Passionate Cook. Well, almost. The recipe calls for whole chickens, and I didn't want to cook that much. I used chicken thighs only, because I wanted to compare the dish cooked two ways: in my Egyptian clay pot and in a Le Creuset French oven (oval) of roughly the same bottom area. The geometries are different. I don't know how relevant that is. The clay pot was on a wok stand over a large coil of my electric stove. The LC was on a small burner, on my reasoning that it would transmit heat more readily than the clay pot and that the smaller coil would provide a lower heat for simmering. I used 6 chicken thighs per pot, and used exactly the same spice mix, garlic, water, etc. to the best of my ability to measure them. There were some differences in timing, since I'm being pretty careful not to overheat the clay pot and I have no such fears about the LC. Nonetheless I went slowly with both. I noted upthread that the heat from the coil came up around the clay pot sides more, with it elevated by the wok stand, than when it had been on a flame tamer directly on the coil. I realized later that I could have put the pot and wok stand over the small burner coil, and maybe concentrated the heat on the bottom. I may try that later, but tonight the LC was there and I had other plans for the back burners. Attention paprika freaks: this chicken has a lot of paprika in the coating, and it's goood. There's also garlic, cilantro that basically disappears, cumin, pepper, ginger, onion, saffron (if you haven't run out) and cayenne. The procedure seems to be what you do with tagines (correct me if I'm wrong, Wolfert, please): coat the meat with a seasoning (garlic, herbs, butter, spices in this case) , toss over low heat until things start to warm up, then add onions and water and bring to the boil. Then cover the pot, lower the heat and simmer. The LC came up to temperature first, and I had to cut its heat back. Eventually I had both pots simmering at the same slow rate, judging by the bubbles. I will not report the temperatures I measured last night, because I didn't write them down and I'm not sure I trust my memory. I do remember, however, that the simmering temperatures (at the bottom of the liquid) were within 10*F of each other. I simmered a little over an hour, and by that time the chicken in each vessel was fork-tender. Here's the Egyptian pot (borma) after liquid was added, and before the simmer started: and while simmering: Up to this point, the dishes looked the same except for the cooking vessels, so I won't duplicate with LC photos. Afterward, they diverged. The chicken in the LC was fully covered by liquid by the time the hour was up. The chicken in the clay pot was not submerged. After refrigeration overnight I defatted both dishes, rewarmed the liquid, and measured. The Le Creuset dish had 2 cups of liquid. The clay pot had 1 cup of liquid. As far as I know, both were as tightly covered during cooking. I definitely started with the same amount of liquid and solids. Here's what the clay pot chicken looked like after refrigeration (I didn't separate the meat and sauce overnight): Here's the Le Creuset version after the same treatment: That's a piece of chicken, submerged, in the upper center of the photo. There was twice as much liquid, by volume, in the LC dish as in the borma. After that step you separate the sauce from the chicken, boil down the sauce, rub some of the rescued fat (with yet more paprika and other spices) on the chicken, and broil the chicken until it's browned. Serve with the sauce and a garnish of preserved lemons. Zinfandel in the glass isn't a bad accompaniment. Dinner! LC chicken on the left, clay pot chicken on the right. Not much visual difference, especially with my photos. I've decided to blame the white plates. The differences: because the LC chicken had thrown off a lot more liquid, that made for a lot more sauce (even after boiling down) at the table. The clay pot chicken lost more moisture during the broiling stage, and the plate had a bunch of reddish oil around the chicken after that step. That must mean something, although I don't know what. I think the clay pot chicken was a bit more tender and fall-apart melty. The LC, however, did a fine job, and the chicken was plenty tender and flavorful. Both tasted wonderful. I wish, oh how I wish, that you readers could have been here for the event, but that wouldn't have left me many leftovers. I recommend you go try it for yourself. Nancy

Well...this thread is the daughter of one thread and the mother of another. If you think your Algerian mouth would disrupt the conversation, why not start an Algerian tagine thread? Seriously, I'd be interested to know how the cuisine and cooking methods shift with the geography.

I started a chicken tagine last night and did a double recipe: one in the Egyptian clay pot and the other in a Le Creuset of comparable bottom surface area. The LC sat directly on the burner, and I put the Egyptian borma on a wok stand. My take so far on the wok stand is that it elevates the pot off the electric coil, true, but then I had to turn the heat up to get a simmer, more than I needed when the pot sat on a flame tamer. I noticed that the sides of the pot got hotter than when the pot sat on a flame tamer, because the heat fanned out around the pot as air rose through the wok stand holes. Whether that's good or bad, I don't know. The wok stand certainly held the pot nicely. I'll see tonight how they turn out. A small disaster involving a box of 800 toothpicks falling out of the cabinet while I was looking for more saffron delayed me so much I had to do the "refrigerate overnight" thing. (I hereby resolve to put rubber bands around my toothpick boxes. And how could I have let myself run out of saffron? ) Nancy

I can't help you with okra recipes, but I'm here to tell you that my family had a pronounced Southern background and there was a lot of fried eggplant in my grandmother's house. I don't remember if Nana paired it with fried chicken, but I can't think why she wouldn't have. Edited to add: the fried chicken photos have not only been making me drool this week, but I've gained 5 pounds just reading the doggoned thread. My attempt was so feeble by comparison, but I still couldn't put the leftovers away and leave them alone. (That might have to do with the tight jeans, too.) Just as soon as I can put my clay pots away, I'm going to try some of these other methods.