Tajine of sweet potatoes and veal

At Paris-Store up in Blois the other day we bought a couple of big sweet potatoes. We can get sweet potatoes at the supermarkets here in Saint-Aignan fairly often, but the ones a Paris-Store are a lot less expensive — 1.50 € a kilo, compared to 2.79 € or more at the local supermarkets.

The question then was what to do with them. Just bake them and have them with melted butter? Puree them and have them as a side dish? Make a pie?

Onions are a basic ingredient in tajines.

As usual, the Internet provided the answer. The idea of making a sweet potato tajine [tah-ZHEEN] came to me, and I found a couple of recipes pretty fast. The first one was for a tajine of sweet potatoes and veal, and I had a package of cut up veal shoulder in the freezer, waiting for an opportunity.

It's nice to be able to get good sweet potatoes.
These were white, not yellow, inside.

Tajines are easy to make. The main thing you need is the North African spices — some combination of turmeric, cinnamon, cumin, ginger, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and others. Curry powder would serve the purpose, with a little extra cinnamon and ginger added.

Veal shoulder — but boneless chicken or turkey
thigh meat would be good too.

A tajine is meat and vegetables, or just vegetables, simmered in water and broth with all those spices until all the flavors mingle and the ingredients are well cooked and succulent. It's a Moroccan-style stew, often cooked in an earthenware dish. Usually there are raisins, almonds, or dried apricots in the sauce for added richness.

Brown the meat, onions, and garlic with
the spices, and then add water.

I used veal in the tajine I made yesterday, but it would be really good with chicken thighs, for example, or some other pieces of chicken or turkey. The advantage of veal is that it is boneless and cooks up very tender. Turkey or chicken breast might be dry. But boneless thighs would be really good.

Tajine of sweet potatoes and veal with Moroccan spices

Here's the recipe:

Tajine of sweet potatoes and veal

2 lbs. veal, cut into 1" pieces
2 large sweet potatoes
2 large onions, sliced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
½ cup raisins
6 dried apricots, cut into dice
2 Tbsp. fresh chopped coriander or basil
3 Tbsp. olive oil
2 bay leaves
1 tsp. ginger
1 tsp. turmeric
1 tsp. sweet paprika
pinches of cumin, cayenne pepper, and cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. black pepper

Peel and slice the onions and chop the garlic. Saute them along with the meat, the garlic, and all the spices spices in 2 Tbsp. olive oil in a big pot. Brown the meat and onions well, stirring to keep them from sticking. Then pour in enough water the just cover the meat. Put a lid on the pot and let it cook on low heat for 90 minutes, or until the meat is tender.

Meanwhile, peel the sweet potatoes and cut them into big chunks.

When the meat is close to done, add the sweet potatoes, raisins, and dried apricots to the stew and turn up the heat just a little. Let that simmer, covered, for 30 or 40 minutes longer, adding water as necessary to keep it all moist but not soupy. When the sweet potatoes are done, it's ready.

We made some roasted millet, which is cooked like rice, to go with our tajine yesterday, but it would be very good with couscous or even rice. Or just as it is — the potatoes are starchy, after all. It was good and filling, and I'm sure the leftovers will be even better today or tomorrow.

Translation of tajine recipe

Châteaudun

I got back from Paris yesterday at about 7:00 p.m. I had taken a long slow drive up there on Sunday, through Vendôme, Châteaudun, and Dourdan, as well as innumerable villages, to drop CHM off at his apartment. We had lunch at the Café Louis-Philippe yesterday and then I drove back to Saint-Aignan.

A window in the Sainte-Madeleine church in Châteaudun

Here's a translation of the tajine recipe I posted yesterday with some notes I added. French recipes are pretty cryptic sometimes, I know.

Tajine of Chicken with Carrots and Raisins

4 chicken leg/thigh sections (or one whole chicken, cup up)
4 large carrots (or more to taste)
1 onion
Ras el hanout* to taste
½ tsp. ground cumin
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 cup or so of water
a handful of raisins
salt & pepper

Brown the chicken pieces in olive oil at medium heat until they take on a golden color.

Peel the carrots and cut them into large pieces.

Cut the onion into slices and add it to the pan to cook down for 5 or 6 minutes with the chicken.

Then add the carrot pieces to the pan along with the spices, salt, and pepper. Add about a cup of water.

Cover the pan and let the chicken and vegetables cook at the simmer for an hour or more (I let mine cook for about two hours on very low heat). Test the carrots for doneness and when they are getting close to being ready, add the raisins and let them cook for about 15 minutes so that they swell up.

For a golden finish, put the whole dish under a hot broiler for two or three minutes before taking it to the table.

Serve with boiled rice or steamed couscous grain.

* Ras el hanout is a blend of "warm" spices that can vary from 6 to 21 ingredients. I have two packages of Ras el hanout that I bought on different days. One contains coriander, turmeric, cumin, pepper, caraway, mild red pepper, fennel, and fenugreek, all ground finely. The other is just cumin, turmeric, ginger, nutmeg, coriander, and cardamom. You can make your own blend or just put in pinches of many of these spices along with pinches of allspice, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, curry powder, and so on.

Here's a blend of ground spices for Ras el hanout that I found in the Joy of Cooking:

• 2 Tbs. ground ginger
• 2 tsp. each black pepper, allspice, nutmeg, mace, cardamom, cinnamon, and turmeric
• 1 tsp. coriander
• ¼ tsp. each cloves and cayenne pepper

That's ground cloves of course.

Tajine de poulet aux carottes

Tajine de poulet aux carottes et raisins secs

Still more food. It's such a big part of daily life here in Saint-Aignan and France. On Thursday I had bought a big bag of carrots. And I had a chicken in the freezer. Poulet aux carottes, I thought, like boeuf aux carottes, with onions, white wine, and smoked lardons (pork).

Couscous

Then I looked on the web for recipes and I found a Moroccan tajine with chicken and carrots. It sounded good so that's what we made. With onions and Moroccan spices: turmeric, cumin, ginger, fenugreek, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and so on. I added some raisins for the last ten minutes of the cooking time. It turned out to be delicious. Served it with couscous.

Here is the recipe, in French:

Tajine de Poulet aux Carottes

4 cuisses de poulet
4 carottes
1 oignon
ras el hanout*
cumin
1 cuillère à soupe d'huile d'olive
eau
une poignée de raisins secs
sel, poivre

Faire revenir le poulet à feu moyen dans une cuillère à soupe d'huile d'olive pour qu'il soit un peu doré.

Préparer les carottes, les nettoyer, les éplucher, les couper.

Couper l'oignon en lamelles, l'ajouter au poulet.

Mettre les carottes avec le poulet, rajouter le ras el hanout, et le cumin. Saler, poivrer. Mettre également un peu d'eau (3/4 verre d'eau).

Laisser cuire environ 1 heure et servir. Un quart d'heure avant la fin de la cuisson, ajouter les raisins secs.

* Le Ras el hanout est un mélange d’épices « chaudes » qui peuvent varier de 7 à 21 épices. C’est un assaisonnement typique d’Afrique du Nord pour tous les plats orientaux et couscous. Littéralement, Ras El Hanout signifie « Toit de la Boutique ». Le mélange peut être composé de : Coriandre, Piment fort, cumin, Fenugrec, Gingembre, Poivre noir, Carvi noir, Cumin, etc.

Here's a link to the topic that includes a translation of the recipe above.

Tajine of chicken and prunes

When I got up this morning at 7:00, I looked out the bedroom window and saw thick fog hanging in the still air out over the vineyard. It was warm yesterday — the temperature hit 26.5ºC, about 80ºF, and weather reports say it will hit 30ºC today, or 86ºF. Good. We haven't had any hot weather since July.

Now at 9:00 a.m. the sun is shining brightly, the fog has burned off, and the sky is blue. It's beautiful. And what are our plans for the day? We need to saw some logs down to the size that will fit into our new woodstove so that we will be able to have nice fires when the weather turns cold and rainy in November.

Meanwhile, a few days ago I mentioned that I was going to make a tajine of chicken with prunes and almonds over the weekend. I did, on Saturday. Here's how it turned out.

Tajine de poulet aux pruneaux et courgettes

I decided to serve it with boiled potatoes rather than rice, because I was planning to make a rice pilaf with okra the next day. Besides, I had a sack of red potatoes in the cellar that needed to be used. This dish would also be good served with couscous grain.

I love to cook with prunes. At one company I worked for in Silicon Valley, there was a woman named Ellen (hi, Ellen!) whose family had been in the plum-growing business in California. We often traded recipes, and all of us in our workgroup joked about the marketing decision to call California prunes "dried plums" because prunes have an image problem in the U.S.

Americans think prunes are food for old people. Did you know that in France they are considered a fine delicacy, and in Japan they are considered a miracle food? Many of the prunes sold in France these days come from California, but the best French ones come from the town of Agen in southwest France, not too far from Bordeaux. In French, plums are called prunes and prunes are called pruneaux.

I love to cook rabbit, lamb, pork, and poultry with prunes. Plum jam is my favorite confiture. Later today, I'm planning to drive ten miles south from Saint-Aignan to pick plums in a friend's orchard. If I get enough, I'll make jam.

The recipe or idea for a tajine of chicken with prunes was mine, and then I found this recipe on the 1001 Délices web site. Here's my translation.


Tajine of chicken with plums, zucchini, and almonds

Ingredients:
8 chicken drumsticks
1 bowl of prunes (dried plums)
1 cup of whole almonds
1 tbs. of honey
3 zucchini (courgettes)
4 tbs. ras-el-hanout spice mixture*
1 tbs. lemon zest
2 large onions

Instructions:
Brown the chicken in a little oil. Add the onions cut into rings. Then add the ras-el-hanout spice mixture* and stir everything together so that the spices coat the chicken pieces.

Add the water, the prunes, the lemon zest, the almonds, and the honey. Let it cook on very low heat for 40 minutes.

Then add the zucchini cut into fairly thick rounds. Let it simmer for another 25 minutes to make sure the zucchini is cooked.

Serve with couscous grain or with boiled potatoes.

* Ras-el-hanout (sometimes spelled raz-el-hanout) is a
blend of various spices, sometimes up to 25 of them.
The ras-el-hanout I have is made of ground turmeric,
cumin, ginger, nutmeg, coriander, and cardamom. You
could easily make your own, or use curry powder.

Here's a list of my modifications and some pictures:

The recipe calls for 8 chicken drumsticks but I had and used a whole chicken cut into 6 pieces. Walt likes the chicken breast, and so do I. I left the thigh/drumstick sections whole, and they made a second meal for us as leftovers. It was really better the second time around, by the way.

The recipe calls for two large onions, but I had four small ones. In general, French onions are smaller than American ones. You could use shallots, and I think it would also be good with some garlic in it.

The recipe calls for 4 tbs. of the spice mixture, and that's what I put in. I think it was too much. Half the amount would have been plenty, in my opinion. (And I wouldn't have wasted so much ras-el-hanout, which is hard to find.) I also added a dash of cayenne pepper and a pinch of cinnamon to the spice mixture I had.

I had one monster yellow crookneck squash from the garden, so I used that instead of zucchini. I peeled it, cut it in half the long way, and scraped out the seeds with a spoon. I cut the squash flesh into fairly thick sticks.

I didn't pit the prunes because I wanted them to remain whole and not melt into the sauce. Just tell your guests or family that the pits are still in the prunes. The recipe calls for a very vague quantity of prunes. Use as many as you want. The more the better... within reason.

And you might notice that I forgot to put in the almonds. I had planned to toast them in the oven and add them at the last minute so they would be toasty and crispy. We were already eating when Walt said: "I thought this was going to have almonds in it." Next time maybe I won't forget them.

Next time, also, I will use less spice and I will serve the tajine with couscous grain. And I think I'll make it with lamb instead of chicken.

Tajine of chicken, tomato, and honey

Back in the spring we decided to buy a tajine, which is a North African cooking dish, so that we could start doing that kind of cooking. Well, it's a long story, but I broke the tajine dish. Don't ever try to cook on the stove top in a terra cotta dish.

This is a tajine. The lid is a chimney but is shaped
so that steam condenses and falls back into the dish
as the food cooks.

But that accident didn't stop us from cooking the dishes called tajines. This morning I made a tajine of turkey, tomatoes, onions, honey, and sesame seeds. I used ingredients I had in the house (tomatoes from the garden) and based my dish on a recipe I found in a book called — what else? — Tajines (© 2005, Hachette Livres, Hachette Pratique, Paris). The recipe in the book is called Poulet aux tomates et au miel — chicken with tomatoes and honey.



Here's my version of the recipe:

Turkey with tomatoes, onions, and honey

1 turkey thigh/leg portion (or about 2½ lbs. of chicken)
3 tbs. olive oil
4½ lbs. tomatoes
2 medium onions
1 shallot
salt and pepper to taste
½ tsp. ginger
½ tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. cumin
½ tsp. cayenne pepper (optional)
a pinch or so each of turmeric, coriander, and cardamom
2 tbs. toasted sesame seeds

Peel and seed the tomatoes. The easiest way to do this is to drop the tomatoes into boiling water for 30 seconds or so and then transfer them to a bowl cold water. The peel splits and comes right off. Cut the tomatoes into big chunks and remove the seeds and liquid so all you have left is the nice tomato pulp.

Peel and slice the onions and the shallot.

Heat the olive oil in a pan and brown the turkey (or chicken) pieces for 5 to 10 minutes. You can use chicken thighs or drumsticks or a mixture of the two, or you can use a turkey leg as I did. Once the chicken or turkey is browned on all sides, remove and reserve the pieces.

Put the sliced onions and shallot in the pan with the remaining olive oil and let them cook a minute or two. Add more olive oil if you need to. Then add the tomatoes and all the spices (not the sesame seeds) to the pan. Stir everything together well and put the chicken or turkey pieces back on top of the tomato mixture. Cook covered on medium heat for 45 minutes or so.

After 45 minutes, remove the cover and let the sauce reduce on medium-low heat. Be careful not to scorch it; stir frequently. After 30 minutes or so remove the chicken or turkey from the sauce and keep the pieces warm.

Stir the honey into the tomato sauce, which should be well thickened. Let it cook with the honey for two or three minutes.

Meanwhile, toast the sesame seeds in a dry skillet if they aren't already toasted.

Pour the tomato sauce over the chicken or turkey pieces. Sprinkle toasted sesame seeds over it all. Serve hot with rice or couscous or pasta.


The honey gives the spicy tomato sauce just the right amount of sweetness, and the toastiness of the sesame seeds goes really well with it. I like the heat of the cayenne pepper, but you could do without it if you wanted.