Tagine Cooking

[anil]

On our recent visit we found that tajine, the vessel, is losing out to modern utensils, cooking methods and influences of things from the north. Mostly, from Spain but begin a former French Colony, also France.

Yet because of tradition its use will probaby live on. BTW, in the Meatpacking Dist. there is a new moroccon restaurant opened up. Do try their chicken, it is cooked in a traditional tajine, however lamb tagine is better

[Suvir Saran]

What is their lamb tagine like Anil? What are they preparing it with? DO you remember? By the way I bought my tagine at the Chelsea Market. I think the same vendor now has a restaurant. Is this the same place you are talking about?

[anil]

I thought their lamb tajine was mild - compared to my recollection of similar dish in CMN. It's on Ganesvoort St. Corner of Ganesvoort & Greenwitch St.

[Suvir Saran]

Anil,

What are the lamb tagines made with in each place? what kind of sauce?

[Suvir Saran]

I do have tagines in my own kitchen, but have cooked for friends that do not have them. The results are not really that distinct.

Is there a line of cookware that lends itself most beautifully and also practically to the cuisine of this region (not just Morocco)?

I have enjoyed using some of the Emile Henry pieces from my vast collection of them. They are both practical and a visual feast. Some of the Le Creuset pieces are also a great match.

What do you use?

[Wolfert]

My own experience has been when cooking in a tagine, the more you use it, the better it performs. I'm referring to terracotta ones, not the le creuset or fully glazed.

[Suvir Saran]

My own experience has been when cooking in a tagine,  the more you use it, the better it performs. I'm referring to terracotta ones, not the le creuset or fully glazed.

I love cooking in tagines, the terracotta ones. I have the Le Creuset one but when I make a tagine, I use my terracotta one at home. It is great.

What do you use for some other dishes from around the Middle East? Do you ever serve in some of these ceramic and porcelain dishes that one has coming from France?

I enjoy several of the bake and serve pieces that Emile Henry and Le Creuset have. Do you have any such feelings? Or are you just as happy using Pyrex or Corning? I use those too. But for Middle Eastern and Indian food, I find myself happily enjoying these French goods. Maybe I am just being silly.

[Wolfert]

I like emile henry's fait tout and gratin pan and use them both a lot..

Also, I use le creuset casseroles for all types of recipes that require slow cooking. BUT lately, I've started to adapt all my recipes to red claypot cooking---soaked unglazed ones have unique properties by which food is steamed in its own moisture. The taste is very pure.

Edited September 17, 2003 by Wolfert (log)

[Suvir Saran]

I like emile henry's fait tout and gratin pan and use it a lot..

Also, I le creuset casseroles for all types recipes that require slow cooking. BUT lately, I've started to adapt all my recipes to  red claypot cooking---soaked unglazed ones have unique properties by which food is steamed in its own moisture. The taste is very pure.

I love the fait tout and the gratin pans myself.

I also enjoy serving in the lions head soup tureen that emile henry makes.

I have enjoyed cooking in red claypots but have not done so in quite some time. I remember in India, as a young boy, I would have parties for those few friends that like me, enjoyed to cook, and at these parties, I would cook in clay pots. I have also cooked using these a couple of years back in NYC. But it has been that long.

Where do you find your claypots? What care do you have to take? Do you have vendors that sell them in the US?

[Richard Kilgore]

Wolfert says

BUT lately, I've started to adapt all my recipes to red claypot cooking---soaked unglazed ones have unique properties by which food is steamed in its own moisture. The taste is very pure.

What do you different to adapt to the clay pot, Paula? For example, in contrast to using Le Creuset. And are you extending that to using clay for gratins or other preparations for which there is no lid on the container or pot? My only experience so far with unglazed clay is with the Romertopf clay pieces now made in Mexico.

[Wolfert]

For stews and roasts I use the romertopf with hardly any liquid or fat. I raise the oven temperature about 100 degrees and cook or roast about 30 minutes longer than a regular recipe.

Even if the romertopf is made in Mexico there is no problem about lead since they are unglazed.

I don't do gratins in red clay because they aren't shallow enough. I use Columbian black clay or emile henry's gratin dish.

Edited September 17, 2003 by Wolfert (log)

[Richard Kilgore]

Thanks. I use the Romertopf for roasts, but have not used it for a stew yet. I use the EH gratins and baking dishes, but the Columbian black clay is on my new list for a covered casserole and a shallow baker. Are there red clay pots available other than the Romertopf?

[Wolfert]

there is terraware made in Pennsylvania by Chef Walter Potenza.

Check his website. He has a variety of half-glazed shallow and deep pans. The glaze is on the outside only. You stilll need to soak his pots for 15 minutes, but you can then put them into a hot oven.

The food cooks beautifully. www.chefwalter.com

The columbian is totally unglazed but it so mica rich you don't need to soak it before each cooking and it goes on the fire.

www.nutierra.com.

[Suvir Saran]

Paula, we are lucky to have you post here and share every so generously with all of us strangers, all that you have learned through years of travel and curiosity.

Many, many thanks from me, heartfelt and totally sincere.

I was in awe of you through your books and always held you in great esteem, and now I see you here on eGullet and find you just as much of a legend. Thanks!

[Wolfert]

Thank you for your very kind words.

Edited September 18, 2003 by Wolfert (log)

[mga440]

First I apologize for my not really knowing how this system works. In short I purchased an unglazed tagine and am trying to use it for the first time. It is a bit daunting as I have very

little experience in the kitchen and no experience with a tagine. Can I make the recipe below

completely in my tagine pot? Do I have to use the saucepan that you mention? If it is not too much to ask, can you tell me how I would use this same recipe but cooking it all in the tagine?

thank you in advance.

mga440

[chefzadi]

here tajine cooking with Paula Wolfert

[Adam Balic]

Four random images of the souks in Fez (2000). The images are not very good due to the camera at the time and few in number unfortunately.

The old town in Fez is an amazing place, narrow mazy streets leading to souk upon souk. I mostly hung around the food and spice souks, trying to avoid being trampled by donkeys and stop myself from saying to my friends "Its just like Medieval Europe" for the 100th time. Unsuccessfully, in both cases.

This is a small intersection in the medina, selling a range of fruit and veg. It is difficult to see clearly, but these include: Green quince, grapes, okra, plums, gourds, melons and mint.

Preserved lemons, olives, onions and peppers.

The brass/copper souk, where I chickened out of buying a couscous steamer, which I still regret. Just to the left of the donkey you can see a very large copper item, consisting of a upper and lower chamber. This is a very large couscous steamer ("kiskis") that are used for weddings. If you are hosting a wedding it is your responsibility to make sure the guests are well fed (an no doubt it reflects on you status too), these giant couscous steamers are part of this.

A more sobering image. This is the very famous leather working souk in Fez. This is an image that appears on almost every tourist guide to Fez. The skins are stripped of wool by immersion in fermeting pigeon shit, then cured and finally dyed. Our guide appologised to us because there were 'no blue vats today', but it did mean you concentrated on the poor buggers that spend their working day half immersed in reeking vats of caustic pieon shit.

Edited June 6, 2005 by Adam Balic (log)

[chefzadi]

Adam-

Your photos made my day.

[Smithy]

Adam, those photos are beautiful.

I know what you mean about the physical labor. I've watched mud bricks being made the old way, pottery being fired the old way, rocks being hauled the old way. None of that involves the bad chemicals you're showing, but they involve exhausting labor and (in the case of firing pottery or cooking the bricks) breathing some really bad air. It makes me appreciate industrial hygienists and pollution control.

Getting back to the food: what is in the baskets in that first souk shot? Beans? It looks too exposed and prone to spillage to be something moist like olives.

[jayt90]

Suvir,

Can your tagine recipe be done in the oven? i have a lousy cooktop and i do most of the brasing in the oven. Besides, i have a great terracotta cazuela with a lid, that i've just bought in Williams-Sonoma for baking tiellas, and i thought it can be great for tagines as well.

←

Tagines are made for flame cooking; that is why they are thick.

You can easily get a propane fuelled gas burner and it will work well with any tagine. That's how they do it in the Mediterranean, but not necesarily at Williams Sonoma.

[Adam Balic]

Adam, those photos are beautiful.

Getting back to the food:  what is in the baskets in that first souk shot?  Beans?  It looks too exposed and prone to spillage to be something moist like olives.

←

The green veg in the basket is mostly okra and green lemons (also possibly some pickly pear fruit). Looking at the photo again I am remined that the quinces (bottom right just behind the gourds) used here are unrips and very green.

Edited June 9, 2005 by Adam Balic (log)

[v. gautam]

From a review in the NY Times of Sabry's

24-25 Steinway Street (25th Avenue), Astoria, Queens; (718) 721-9010.

"The seafood is baked in a long-simmered but brightly flavored tomato sauce spiked with cooked cilantro and whole coriander seeds. Biting down on the occasional coriander seed releases a surge of peppery heat and the seed's floral perfumed flavor. The kitchen has mastered baking the tagines so that the topmost layer of tomato sauce is seared to a tomato pastelike sweetness but the seafood below is never overcooked."

Any comments about this technique?

[did reprise 'cooking with paula wolfert' thread and chefzadi's response about browning chickens, in the COOKING forum]

Edited June 10, 2005 by v. gautam (log)

[chefzadi]

From a review in the NY Times of Sabry's

24-25 Steinway Street (25th Avenue), Astoria, Queens; (718) 721-9010.

"The seafood is baked in a long-simmered but brightly flavored tomato sauce spiked with cooked cilantro and whole coriander seeds. Biting down on the occasional coriander seed releases a surge of peppery heat and the seed's floral perfumed flavor. The kitchen has mastered baking the tagines so that the topmost layer of tomato sauce is seared to a tomato pastelike sweetness but the seafood below is never overcooked."

Any comments about this technique?

[did reprise 'cooking with paula wolfert' thread and chefzadi's response about browning chickens, in the COOKING forum]

←

Looks to me like the tomato sauce was prepared ahead of time, since you won't get a long-simmered flavor in the time it takes to bake a fish. The seared tomato pastelike consistency can be achieved by baking the fish uncovered in a very hot oven, but this could cause it too dry out if one is not careful about the time, which is intuitive for experienced professional cooks but tends to be more challenging for less experienced cooks. Or there are possibly two layers of tomato sauce. A base of more liquid sauce and a smearing of tomato paste on top.

In the Magrheb we make fresh tomato paste or jam. It is completely different in flavor from tin canned paste.

The restaurant is Egyptian, btw. Moroccans tend to refer to dishes as tagines, Algerians and Tunisians do not. Traditionally anyway. But nowadays we use the word when we are speaking English or French. I hear in Libya restaurants serve tagines as well and call them "Moroccan or Tunisian" clearly for tourists. Because the country has it's own tradition of couscous and 'tagines'. I've never heard of Egyptian tagines, although Egyptian fish preparations could resemble any number of Magrhebi fish dishes, it's not all that complicated. Anyway, sorry to ramble but an Egyptian restaurant refering to a dish as tagine is to ring some bells of familiarity for the consumer. Which is fine by me.

[Smithy]

... I've never heard of Egyptian tagines, although Egyptian fish preparations could resemble any number of Magrhebi fish dishes, it's not all that complicated. Anyway, sorry to ramble but an Egyptian restaurant refering to a dish as tagine is to ring some bells of familiarity for the consumer. Which is fine by me.

←

I've had a number of tagines in Luxor at various restaurants. I may have had them in Cairo also. They aren't at all like Moroccan tagines in flavor or cookware, but they are stews of various sorts (lamb tagine, fish tagine, chicken tagine, etc.) I won't make a sweeping judgment about how it works all over the country, but in these particular cases I don't think they're trying to evoke Morocco, since the restaurants are Egyptian and make no reference to any other country. Finally, my moussaka pot (Egyptian) is *always* called a tagine in Luxor; that word specifies a particular type and size of pot. It bears no resemblance to the Moroccan tagine.

Perhaps the word "tagine" is drifting across countries and taking on new meaning?