I tasted my first tagine in my 20s. A newly minted New Yorker, I went out to dinner in Greenwich Village to a now-shuttered restaurant called Cookies and Couscous. While sitting by the window and sipping mint tea, my friend and I studied the menu, admired the tiny 20-seat space, and ordered tagines — lamb and chicken — and a bottle of Moroccan red wine.
We smelled our tagines before we saw them, the heady aroma announcing their arrival. The stews, perfumed with saffron, ginger and coriander, among other spices, were as delicious as they were aromatic. Alongside couscous, it was an unforgettable meal, one I’ve thought about ever since.
And yet, for no other reason than intimidation, until recently I had never attempted to make a tagine at home. I’m now here to tell you: Don’t be like me; make a tagine at home.
Most associated with Morocco, tagine is the name of a dish as well as the vessel in which it is cooked. The latter has a circular base with low sides and a hatlike dome lid in which ingredients are slow-cooked or braised. The lid’s conical shape allows moisture to condense and return to the pot, keeping the dish moist.
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Traditionally, tagines were made out of clay to cook gently over a dying fire. Commonly, a kanoun (brazier) is used to gently diffuse the heat. (I used it in the recipe below and recommend it heartily.) These days, contemporary tagines by brands such as Le Creuset are made with a cast-iron base and designed for use in home ovens.
Tagines can be made with vegetables, poultry, meat or seafood, and they are typically served alongside couscous. The recipe below, adapted from San Francisco-based Moroccan chef Mourad Lahlou’s cookbook, “Mourad,” uses chicken, as well as olives and preserved lemon. (A quick aside: Some recipes will tell you that plain lemons are a fine substitute for preserved. Don’t believe them. In a pinch, a lemon will add brightness and acid, but the salty, briny notes imparted by preserved lemons cannot be replicated. Seek them out at either well-stocked supermarkets or Middle Eastern markets, or follow this recipe for making your own.)
The version below is exquisitely fragranced. The word m’qualli, according to cookbook author Claudia Roden in her book “Arabesque,” denotes tagines “cooked in oil where there is saffron and ginger and the sauce is yellow.”
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You will notice that Lahlou’s version finishes the dish with butter. This is where the chef flexes his culinary training by employing a few French techniques, but the recipe remains straightforward and achieves deeper flavor with just a few minutes of extra effort.
He first instructs you to sear the chicken on both sides in a little olive oil (or rendered chicken fat, if you have it). This step produces some splatters, so wear an apron, and if you have a splatter guard, use it. (The results are so fantastic, however, that I, an inveterate splatter hater, don’t mind the mess.) Once the chicken is generously browned, set it aside, pour off most of the fat, and cook what appears to be an ungodly amount of onions until they are the color of an Irish setter and are soft, yielding and on the brink of caramelization.
Now the aromatics come in: Into this heap of schmaltzy onions you stir a mix of coriander, white pepper, ginger, saffron and turmeric. The aroma alone will render you weak-kneed, but you’re not done just yet. Return the chicken to the tagine, nestling it into the onions, add the broth and bring it all to a simmer. Then the domelike lid goes on top and the vessel moves to the oven to braise.
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When the chicken is cooked, you finish the dish on the stovetop by enriching the sauce with the olives and preserved lemon, while Lahlou’s nontraditional addition of butter rounds out the sauce, giving it dimension and complexity. (While in the United States, Moroccan restaurants often serve tagines with couscous, in Morocco, a tagine is traditionally served with flat bread.)
What if your kitchen, like many, lacks a tagine? Don’t fret. Any heavy-bottomed pot of similar volume — a Dutch oven, for instance — will ably do the job. In fact, if you’re planning to make this braise for a crowd, you need to look for something that can fit more food, as the former is meant for smaller yields. I suspect that on the night of my first tagine tasting, a larger batch was cooked in a big pot to serve multiple customers, which would technically have made the dish qdra (named for the big pots used for larger parties), and then parceled out into a tagine for a beautiful presentation.
Whatever your vessel, the rich blend of spices, olives and preserved lemons will result in a delicious braise that just might become a beloved recipe in your home, too.
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