Wolfert

William Rubel, author of the magic of the fire gave me this recipe for roasting eggs in the oven for several hours, achieving the same delicious results as if he'd roasted them all night buried in hot ash in the fireplace. The egg shells and whites turn golden, while the yolks remain creamy. It's really easy with very fresh AA eggs Set the oven rack in the middle . Saok the eggs in warm water while preheating the oven to 225F. Set the eggs directly on the rack. Bake for 4 1/2 to 5 hours. You can tell when they're done: tiny drops of blackened albumin appear on the outside of the shell. To remove the shells and keep the eggs intact , roll the eggs to crackle the shells, then drop them into a bowl of cold water tosoak for 5 minutes. Slip off the shells and serve at room temperature with salt and pepper.

Thank you for that cornstarch tip. I wish I had known that years ago ! Also, thanks for hurrahs for my work.

Adam, Wow! Thank you so much. You put a really big smile on my face this morning! Are you working with the English edition? If so, i'm especially happy to read that everything works. I always worried about the metric conversions.

You are amazing. How did the seafood bisteeya come out? With inventive Moroccan recipes hopscotching all over place, I think this is one of the few "new" dishes that works brilliantly.

Thank you so much for that post. SMithy;When I am simmering on low using an earthenware pot that is completely glazed I can keep the temperature of water stable for hours. I could never do that with copper or cast iron. Can you explain?. By the way, check out the 'simmer mat,' abn import from New Zealand. It is the best heat diffuser I've ever worked with.

For the la chamba pots and Spanish cazuelas: If the crack is in the inside, simmer some milk in it. If it is on the outside submerge the cracked part ina wide pan filled with milk, bring slowly to a boil, and cook 1 hour. The crack should weld itself together, or so I am told. Manka of Manka's restaurant in Inverness confirmed that she simmers her pots in milk to keep them as strong as new.

Chef Haouari Abdelrrazak has a small restauant called Chez Haouari. When I was in Djerba he was executive chef at the leading hotel, but was planning to open his own place. I'll send you his phone number as soon as I find it. If I don't find it in time, just ask the hotel to call for the address and to book you a table. Everyone knows him. Haouari is a wonderful chef who prepares some of the finest local cooking with sensitivity and insight. He claims he just cooks like his Berber grandmother.. Having grown up in Djerba, he brings a fersh perspective to the local fish, grains, and vegetables. Actually, he was trained in Brussels and worked at a 2-star restaurant in the south of France for a number of years before returning home. He opened a cooking school for chefs and knows many of the young bright chefs in the country. He had a national radio show on cooking for Tunisian housewives, and ran the best dining room as executive chef at the same time. You'll like him: He is a popular visiting chef to the CIA in Napa whenever we have Mediterranean festivals. Matter of fact, he is coming this fall. He is a big fan of Alice Waters and believes in the sort of things Alice is known for... sustainable agriculture, schoolyard food programs, etc. He has all her books, I think he taught himself enough English to read them. When he was here two years ago, I took him to chez Panisse, and he playfully said he had arrived at a culinary mecca!! The main market is on Monday and Thursday, but everyday there is something going on. Be sure to check out the local fish market : The fish are tied up like beads on a necklace and sold by auction. Large thick slabs of olive wood are carved into fabulous large salad bowls and sold in front of the market on certain days. Ask Haouari. There is some fantastic Jewish and Berber jewelry: intricate lacy silver bracelets to buy as well as some nice woolen covers and the usual tourist stuff A good guide book will fill you in. The Djerbian beaches and the hotels are not as vulgar as many beach communties on the Mediterranean. Will you be staying on the Sidi Mahrez beach side?

A Moroccan tagine can be best described as a portable oven: the bottom filled with meat, poultry, and or vegetables, and covered with a rounded or conical top. The tagine sits about 5 inches over a bed of coals and through the simple technique of long, slow, steady cooking in this closed hot and cool atmosphere, a silken- textured meat or poultry dish is obtained along with a highly seasoned sauce. That's it for the original Moroccan tagine. With the home oven, variations have sprouted up everywhere, even in my kitchen when convenient. Cooks often place the bottom part of a tagine in the oven with a sheet of parchment paper and a flat lid and bake the tagine. It doesn't come out as well but neither does the ' pressure cooker tagine.' The pressure cooker is a substitute for the tagine and used by working women during the week. On the weekends, they switch back to the original clay tagine because the whole family complains. Or at least that is what I have been told by many friends!! There is a version of the crockpot in France made by Tefal. I guess I've never met a tagine that I didn't want! Here is mine! It looks like a tagine with a nice wide and roomy shallow bottom and it has a tall conical top. It's completely glazed. I will post a picture in a few minutes. .

You only need to soak the sandy pot once, but a year of non-use just might have been the problem. Tim Z: Your comment "not adding any water to the pot " is so interesting.

Were you using a sandy claypot? I was told to cure it by soakingit in water overnight before its first use. Another reason for cracking is when you add something cold like water to a heated pot. I did this with an expensive Emile Henri stoneware pot which really shocked me and the pot! It turned me off ever thinking of replacing it. It is unfortunate that we are all purchasing our claypots online. The traditional and secure way to test a claypot for defects is to tap it on its bottom. You should hear a definite bing.

Andie: you and Carolyn have made excellent points. Fresh ginger is sparkly and alive! I have nothing against using it in Moroccan cooking if I knew how. The spice blends of Morocco are the underpinnings of a cuisine unto itself, unusual and exotic. We would need to alter the amount of each spice in any given spice mixture where ginger plays a major role. Keep in mind, the ginger of choice in Morocco is similar in flavor to ground Jamaican, not to the more subtle Japanese ground ginger. Some tagines could take the change without a problem:the mrouzia that Adam is working on, for example, is a dreamy tagine of incredible variety in taste, aroma and texture, a dish where ras el hanout reigns. Mrouzia is part of the mqualli family of sauces, and ginger plays a roll, but a lower one in this dish than in the mqualli with lemon and olivesi discussed upthread. Since Mqualli is one of the cornerstones of Moroccan cooking, and the ginger is dominant, I don't know if I want to tamper with a giant on my first attempt. In fact,I don't know if it is worth trying that particular dish at all. I like my mquallis with ground ginger. If you can suggest a particular Moroccan dish that you know has been altered to use fresh ginger, I would love to try it side by side with a more traditional recipe. .

Hi Adam, Looks like you are off to a good start. I haven't had the nerve to try anything from that huge book, but I love reading it! Did you know that jujubes are thought to the famed sweet fruit in Homer's the Odyssey? 'Are you planning to put the spices through the finest strainer or pound them? By the way, your tagine looks very homey. I think it is ok to cook in. The scary part of purchasing tagines in Morocco is that so many of the hiighly decorated ones have lead in the glaze. Keep us posted. I know you have been following the thread: mrouzia in Morocco is in the mqualli class of dishes with the addition of ras el hanout. Sometime you might want to contact www.seasonedpioneers.com in Liverpool. I buy ras el hanout as well as a few other interesting spice blends from them. There are thousands of recipes for ras el hanout. I just like the flavor their mix produces in lamb tagines.

I was paraphrasing my teacher, Andre Guillot, who used to say "there is only good cooking and bad cooking" Carolyn: You aren't alone. Many American chefs use fresh ginger and prefer it that way. It is when you try to eat Moroccan style with the first three fingers of your right hand hlding a small crust of bread to dip into that smooth sauce that the strings just don't work. Subtle? Moroccan food? It could have been the type of cinnamon you used.

Thanks so much for starting this thread. I can tell it is going to be wonderful reading. Don't you agree with your friend Hassan that Berbers developed the art of steaming couscous?

Tagine djej bil zeetoun meslalla magdour In Morocco, spices are sold whole and ground. Whole are used for tisanes and for grinding your own at home in a brass mortar. The reason you are asked to use ground spices (except for occasional cinnamon stick or bayleaf which can easily be removed) is the sauce must become smooth. Ginger, for example, is always used ground for tagines. Onions are grated so they will dissolve. Sometimes, a second bowl of chopped onions will be added to give crunch or another texture. MOroccan food is quite complex beyond the spicing. Nowadays, some chefs in the States use fresh ginger in place of the dried and ground. That's to their taste and that is fine. I just prefer to write about traditional cooking. On the other hand, there is only good tasting food and not so good tasting food. I'll go for the former everytime no matter whether it is traditional or not.

Mqualli isn't usually browned, but I do it.. That is exactly what I was saying. Yes, almost all of the information I posted above is in my first book on Moroccan cooking. I have learned more since then and added it to the list. There is no way to correct the spelling since it is transliterated not only from Arabic but sometimes Berber. The original 1973 edition had 8 photographs. Unfortunatley, the best quality slides got lost...I have some of the rejects such as this one for tagine of chicken with lemon and smothered with olives. You don't need perserved lemons, just the juice is fine. Picholine olives are the choice ones to use. When I wrote the book they weren't available here. [

The romertopf company has a website called claypotcooking.com. There I have read warnings that the romertopf is in danger of clogged pores, thus making the pots unusable. Of course, they are soaking the pot before each use and cooking by the released steam. Fifi: I'm beginning to believe it makes very little difference whether you use a fully glazed, semi glazed or unglazed ceramic pot for tagines. Am I correct?

Adam, Both types of cinnamon are used in Moroccan cooking. The cassia is used more often in tagines; the softer 'real' cinnamon is more elegant for desserts. Bisteeya or bstilla is, to my taste, delicious with the softer cinnamon.

First: Thank you for that incredible report. When will I ever have the time to absorb all this knowledge that you are putting forth?. Second: I know Claudia Roden and she is an old friend of mine dating back to 1973. I don't always agree with her on Moroccan cooking. I believe Middle Eastern cooking is not North African cooking. Third: The sauces in Morocco are numerous but codified for over two hundred years. I'm not kidding. There are variations throughout the country, but when the word mqalli is used, it means a certain type of sauce whether it is for everyday type tagine or a special one for a holiday. The everyday mqalli uses pepper, turmeric, saffron, garlic, salt, and ginger; the chicken, if using, is cut up or left whole and is heated in the warmed oil along with the spices and turned on all sides to get the spices into the flesh. Grated onion is sometimes used to help thicken the sauce. Nowadays, tomato is sometimes added. In the traditional everyday mqalli, it is garnished with preserved lemon and olives, but you can make a m'qalli with vegetables such as artichokes and fava beans, or okra and quince instead. When cinnamon is added to a m'qalli, it is for the sweet version. Think prunes or figs or toasted almonds. There are seven other major sauces in Moroccan cooking; five of them are garnished with preserved lemon and olives; almost all can be garnished with sweet fruits instead. It is the spice structure that makes the difference. The mhammer of the upthread with chicken or lamb or beef is predominately colored red with lots of paprika. The word means reddish. Rules are to be broken, of course, but when one says m'qalli, m'ghdour, marka, m'hammer, dalaa, emchermel, massal, or kdra, ---names for certain tagines iwth special spices and unique cooking methods, most everyone in Morocco knows what you mean. of

Berbersources.com is a wonderful site and I highly recommend it. Jill, who used to teach French at Cornell, has put together museum quality items fromMorocco. I wish I could go on her trip because she has the best contacts. Without sounding like a commercial, I will tell you that I have bought lots of beautiful claypots from her. Not all are for cooking but they are beautiful and unique. She doesn't have the Riffian tagine. And, she is the only one I know who has the Slow Food award winning argan oil. There is lots of argan oil around , hers is the best. With that said, I think I better rush over to her site and get that green amlou bowl before it goes!

Egullet is so great!~ I can post a bit of extraneous material on clafoutis that I love, but couldn't fit into the revised edition of the Cooking of SWF So here it is: A local in the Limousin told me that Curnonsky dubbed the Prince of Gastronomes in the 1920's, said that a true clafoutis could only be made by someone with Limousin blood running through her\his arteries, and only if the small and tangy, sour black cherries grown in the region were used. If you didn't have the luck to be born there , then you should travel 20 km down the road to the the Correze, and make a flagnaude with their local pears.

The challenge of presenting the traditional cooking of Algeria would be exciting for you...and for us, the book buying public. It has never been easier to transpose recipes from one region to another because so many of the ingredients are here for the first time. Chefs and non-conformist home cooks need this book! If you do a hold-no-information-back type cookbook, and present the material with the liveliness and spirit you show on these forums, I think you will have a winner. I know I'll buy a copy.

From the 1973 edition Mhammer.Chicken Braised and Browned (Djej Mahammer) This is a Rabat recipe for a dish that is cooked and served throughout Morocco. In Tangier some people add a little bit of hot red pepper to the sauce and eat the chicken with sautéed potatoes; in Fez they sprinkle it with buttered and browned almonds; and in Marrakech, where it is served without accompaniment, the sauce is usually jazzed up with extra paprika, and sprigs of mint are added with the green coriander. Serves 8 1/8 teaspoon pulverized saffron soaked in ¼ cup hot water l teaspoon mashed garlic ¼ teaspoon ground turmeric 2 teaspoons sweet paprika ¼ teaspoon ground cumin Salt 2 chickens (3 pounds each) whole, with 3 livers ¼ cup grated onion ¾ cup sweet butter 4 sprigs green coriander, pounded to a paste in a mortar Mix the saffron water with the garlic, spices and slat. Rub into the prepared chickens and lay them on their sides in the casserole. Add the livers, onions, and half the butter. Pour in 3 cups water and bring to a boil. Add the coriander and simmer, covered, over moderate low heat l hour, turning the chickens from time to time. Midway, remove and mash the livers, then return them to the sauce. When very tender, remove the chickens and keep warm. Heat the remaining butter in the skillet and brown one chicken one at a time until crusty all over. Transfer to a serving platter and put in a warm oven while browning the second chicken. (They can be browned in very hot oven.) Meanwhile, by boiling rapidly, uncovered, reduce the sauce to make abut ¾ cup thick gray. Serve the chicken with the sauce pour over. c\paula wolfert, 1973,2005 Double Cooked Red Chicken Marrakech Style The generous use of Moroccan mild paprika, felfla hloua, in this classic recipe explains its Moroccan name, m’hammer, or ‘reddish.’ The double-cooking method increases the complexity and depth of flavor of the dish. Garnish with slices of preserved lemons, if desired. Note the change of garnish from the original recipe. Serves 6 to 8 5 cloves garlic, smashed L tablespoon coarsely chopped fresh cilantro l/8 teaspoon saffron threads, crushed 1 ¼ teaspoons coarse salt 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted 2 whole chickens (3 pounds each) backbones removed 1 12 tablespoons sweet paprika, preferably ‘Spanish” or felfla hloua l teaspoon ground cumin ¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper Pinch of ground ginger Cayenne 1 small onion, grated 1. In a mortar or mini food processor, mash or pulse the garlic with the cilantro, saffron, and l teaspoon of the salt until a coarse paste forms. Transfer the paste to a bowl and stir in the melted butter. 2. Re-form the chickens and tie them up with string. Rub the garlic paste all over the chickens, cover loosely with plastic wrap or foil, and let stand at room temperature for l hour. 3. Put the chicken backbones in a large enameled cast iron casserole. Add the chickens, breast side up. In a bowl, combine 1 tablespoon of the paprika with ½ teaspoon of the cumin, the pepper, ginger, and a pinch of cayenne. Sprinkle the spice mixture over the chickens and cook over moderately low heat until steam begins to rise, about 5 minutes. 4. Mix the onion into 1 ½ cups water and pour around he chickens. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer until the juices run clear when the thighs are pierced near the bone with a knife, about 1 hour. Transfer the chickens to a cutting board and remove the strings and keep the chicken intact. 5. Discard the backbones. skim off the fat from the sauce, reserving 3 tablespoons fat. Boil the sauce until it is reduced to l cup, about l5 minutes. Transfer to a small saucepan and keep warm. 6. Preheat the broiler; stir the remaining ½ tablespoon paprika and ½ teaspoon cumin into the reserved 3 tablespoons chicken fat. Add a pinch of cayenne and ¼ teaspoon salt. Put the chicken in a roasting pan, breast side up, and rub with the spiced fat. Broil 8 to 10 inches from the heat until browned on all sides. Carve the chicken and pass the warm sauce at the table. 7. 8. 9. The chickens and sauce can be prepared through step 4 and refrigerated overnight. Let the chickens return to room temperature before proceeding. Rewarm the sauce in a small saucepan over low heat What would I do today? I would use the Riffian or the Souss tagine and use one chicken (and maybe 1 or 2 chicken livers) and set the backbone-less chicken into the yoga pose upthread. Cut everything else in half and proceed with either recipe. If desired, garnish with preserved lemons or mint and cilantro.

Nancy: Your claypot is shallow enough to stand in for all tagine cooking in clay. With a crumbled piece of wet parchment and that ceramic cover from the other pot which its dome-y top, you needn't wrestle with changing to another pot. Your bourma looks as if it could carry on the spirit of claypot cooking perfectly. The dilemma that faces most cooks trying their hand at Moroccan 'tagine cuisine' is to accept the concept of the "bottom up" nature of the cooking, to cook over heat not in an oven. And to the desire to keep traditional cooking alive, flavorful and compelling, and maintaining the spirit of the food by using the right ingredients.

Thank you for having such confidence. If you have any problems converting any of my recipes to tagines from LC, don't hesitate to ask. For those of you who have purchased and cured your Riffian or Souss tagine and want to braise a whole chicken in it, you might be interested in trying out my new method of preparing and braising the oh-so-too tender American chickens sold in the market these days. I would love some feedback. From The Mediterranean Claypot Kitchen : "The chicken should emerge especially moist with an unctuous tender texture, and a special "distinctive thumb print taste" of hand-crafted food that writers now fashionably call gout de terroir -- the taste of the earth. 1 whole chicken, backbone removed Gently pound on the chicken breast and the knees in order to flatten the whole chicken. Make a small slit on each side of the lower breast to allow the leg to move freely. Pull each leg up in order to make the yoga pose called "forward bend" or Paschimothanasanalynn . Twist each wing back up over the neck and fasten legs, wings and neck with one long bamboo skewer. This should create a 1 1/2-inch thick, round shaped chicken with maximum skin exposure. Season as directed in the recipe. Follow the recipe, but place the chicken on top of the ingredients for the sauce. Cover and cook slowly as directed in the recipe. Midway in the cooking, turn the chicken over and continue cooking as directed in the recipe. " Further on in the text, I give different ways to brown the top including placing the bird on a flat tray, brushing it with some of the seasoned fat and broiling at the last minute.