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I made a big batch of choucroute garnie a few days ago. I know, it's a lot of meat. We eat it over a period of days, and some of it can go into the freezer when we're tired of eating it. The sauerkraut itself is delicious and très digeste. The only other thing you eat alongside the choucroute garnie is some steamed potatoes.

I've posted about cooking choucroute many times over the past 10 years. Here's a link to some of those posts. The meats here, clockwise from the top, are jarret de porc fumé (smoked ham hock), saucisse de Strasbourg, poitrine de porc fumée (smoked pork belly), saucisson à l'ail (garlic sausage), saucisse de Montbéliard, and saucisse de Francfort.

Yesterday morning I spent some time reading a little book called La Cuisine Alsacienne that I received as a gift a few years ago (thanks, Martine). Now I have a whole list of Alsatian dishes that I want to try my hand at: kougelhopf salé, kougelhopf sucré, tarte flambée, tarte à l'oignon, pommes de terre fumées, coq au riesling, spätzle, galettes aux asperges...

The tajine of lamb and pumpkin recipe

Tajine of Lamb and Honey-Glazed Pumpkin

1½ lbs. lamb shoulder or leg meat, cut into cubes

1½ lbs. pumpkin, cut into cubes or thick slices

2 or 3 medium onions

1 or 2 cloves garlic

½ cup raisins

3 or 4 Tbsp. olive oil

1 Tbsp. ras el hanout spice mix (or more to taste)

2 or 3 Tbsp. butter

2 Tbsp. honey

1 small can chickpeas
salt and pepper to taste

fresh herbs (cilantro, parsley...)

Preheat the oven to 160ºC (325ºF). Cut the lamb into 1-inch cubes. Peel and slice the onions and garlic. Cut the pumpkin into thick slices and peel them. Optionally, cut the slices into 1-in cubes.

Put the lamb cubes into a bowl and season them with the ras el hanout spices and salt. In a frying pan, sauté the lamb cubes in olive oil until they are well browned. Take them out of the pan and set them aside. Sauté the onion, garlic, and raisins in the same pan, adding more olive oil as needed.

Combine the browned lamb cubes and sautéed onion mixture together in an oven-proof dish with a lid. Pour in enough water to barely cover the lamb and onions. Put the dish in the oven, covered, and let it cook for an hour. Add more water as needed during the cooking process.

In a clean frying pan, melt the butter. Brown the pumpkin cubes or slices on medium-high heat, turning them carefully to brown them on all sides, as possible. Spoon the honey over the pumpkin and give it a few minutes on the heat to thicken and caramelize.

Put the glazed pumpkin on top of the lamb mixture in the baking dish and put the cover back on. Add the chickpeas. Let everything cook for another 15 or 20 minutes on low heat.

Serve with chopped fresh herbs and either rice, millet, or couscous grain.

How to make — and cook with — the tajine spice blend

I found a post on Epicurious this morning that explains how you can make your own version of the North African spice blend called ras el hanout. Here's a link. The ingredients are all standard spices you can find nearly anywhere: cumin, ground ginger, salt, black pepper, cinnamon, ground coriander seeds, cayenne pepper, ground allspice, and ground cloves. You can customize the list and the blend as you see fit.

For the lamb and pumpkin tajine I made recently, the first step was to "marinate" the chunks of lamb in the spices. (By the way, I noticed a jar of ras el hanout among the spices at our local SuperU store the other day.) Use the spices as a dry rub on the meat before you brown it in olive oil in a hot frying pan or wok.

Then take the meat out of the pan, set it aside, and sauté some sliced onions and garlic in the same pan, along with a handful of raisins, in a little more oil as needed. When the onions have softened, put the meat back into the pan (or transfer everything to a tajine or other oven-proof dish). Add a cup or two of water or broth — just enough to barely cover the meat — and put the dish in a slow oven (160ºC or 325ºF) for an hour.

All that's left to do, after the pumpkin is glazed and the meat is cooked, is to put the pumpkin on top of the meat, put the lid back on, and let it all cook slowly for 15 or 20 more minutes. Stir it only gently so that you don't mush up the pumpkin too much.

This kind of recipe is infinitely adaptable. Use chunks of chicken or turkey or even veal instead of lamb. Soak some prunes or dried apricots in water while the meat is cooking and put them in the tajine in the place of the glazed pumpkin. (Turkey, duck, or veal will work very well with prunes.) Vary the spice blend. Add as much cayenne or other hot pepper as you like. Serve the tajine with couscous grain, rice, or millet.

This was the third in an uninterrupted series on the lamb and pumpkin tajine.

Potiron caramélisé

The lamb and pumpkin tajine I've been writing about calls for caramelized cubes of pumpkin. In other words, it's a sweet-and-savory dish. The lamb is cooked with Moroccan spices including cinnamon, nutmeg, cumin, and cayenne pepper, and with onions.

For the caramelized pumpkin (or other winter squash like butternut), you cut the pumpkin in half or quarters, remove the pulp and seeds from the center, and then cut thick slices that you can peel with a knife or vegetable peeler. You can cut the thick slices into cubes, the way I did, or you can caramelize the thick slices themselves, whole.

Melt plenty of butter in a non-stick frying pan. Put the chunks or slices in the pan and let them brown on one side. It takes a few minutes. Then carefully turn all the pieces of pumpkin over, or toss them around in the pan, to try to get them brown on another side. It can be a fairly delicate operation once the pumpkin starts to cook and soften.

When the browning is done, pour a couple of tablespoons of honey into the pan and stir everything around gently. The honey will start to thicken. Put a lid on the pan for a few minutes until the pumpkin pieces are tender. Set them aside until you're ready to combine them with the braised meat you're using — lamb, turkey, or chicken, for example.

Definitely cook the meat with onions and spices. Adding tajine spices to the pan of caramelized pumpkin cubes or slices is optional. Actually, the meat is optional too. The little Tajines (Hachette 2005) cookbook I have includes a recipe for a vegetarian pumpkin tajine cooked with sauteed onions, raisins, spices, butter, and honey. The caramelized pumpkin could also make a good dessert, with pound cake or rice pudding, for example.