To Build a Tagine

A few weeks ago, I took a trip with some of the guys from Freedonia to Picturesque Lake Village, a small, picturesque village not far away that's renowned for its lake. Anyway, we spent the afternoon hanging around, walking in the mountains, enjoying the lake (which is now overflowing with water that has been gone for more than a decade), playing soccer, and cooking tagine. I’m fairly sure that I’ve mentioned tagine at least once in the course of chronicling my adventures, but I don’t think I’ve quite yet done justice to Morocco’s National Dish.

To start, tagine is not actually a specific dish in the way that we could say that haggis is the official food of Scotland; it’s more like how sushi is for Japan – a style of cooking that can take many forms. Tagine, however, is nothing at all like sushi. First of all, it’s cooked. Second of all, it’s cooked in a reasonably large, two-part ceramic dish made of a plate-bowl on the bottom, and a funky cone top. Finally, tagine is best known for its slow-cooked, simmery goodness, whereas sushi is best known for reduced-price happy hour specials and nagging anxiety about mercury poisoning.

And, unlike sushi, you probably are mostly unfamiliar with tagine. Unless, of course, like me, you went through a brief infatuation with Trader Joe’s Moroccan Tagine Simmer Sauce that ended in heartbreak when Trader Joe decided to cut the Moroccan tagine from his line of simmer sauces. Well, I have good news that should be able to jump you to at least Step 6 or 7 in your Emotional Reconstitution Plan: Trader Joe has clearly never been to Morocco, or ever eaten anything remotely resembling a tagine. And the real one is much better.

So let me tell you how to make the real thing. To begin with, you’re going to need a fire. (For the interested or completely helpless, Jack London discusses many of the dos and don’ts of how to do this.) There are those who might tell you to just cook the tagine on the stove. These are very bad people. The best is to cook it outside over a real fire. Other options include building your fire inside, in your living room, for example, or getting a small brazier and charcoal (widely available in Morocco, possibly less so in the states). One important note will be that you’ll want to make sure that your fire area is ringed with rocks to keep the fire from spreading and burning down your favorite picnic area or neighborhood. It’s also important for holding the tagine dish over the fire, so make sure that you have at least three or four larger and reasonably stable rocks evenly spaced around the fire. One even more important note is to be sure to check for scorpions before moving any rocks. This is especially serious if you’re making your fire in the living room since, well, you really don’t want scorpions in there. Trust me.

Here’s what you need to make a fire:

• Wood
• Lighter
• Paper (for starting the fire, obviously)
• Rocks
• Scorpion Awareness

Now that you have the fire ready, you’re going to want to start gathering your ingredients. Come to think of it, you’ll probably want to start gathering your ingredients some time – possibly even a day or two – before you build any fires. However you decide to go about it, here’s what you’ll want to make the chicken and vegetable tagine, the most quantitatively delicious of all tagines:

• 3 – 4 Onions
• ¼ Chicken
• 4 – 5 Potatoes (medium-sized)
• 2 Green Bell Peppers
• 1 Zucchini
• 2 – 3 Carrots
• 1 Hot Pepper
• 3-Dirham Mélange
• Salt
• Knorr (chicken-flavored)
• 3 Tomatoes
• Saffron
• 2 – 5 tbsp Vegetable Oil
• Water

Here’s what you’ll need to cook it:

• Tagine
• Knife
• Spoon
• Pot Holders of Some Kind

Now, once you’re ready, it’s time to construct your tagine. To begin, you’ll need your base: onions. Cut the onion into rings and put them on the bottom (only one layer). These are generally going to be welded to the bottom of the tagine by the time everything is done, but you’ll be able to eat some of it – which still tastes good – and they will give their flavor to everything else. Now that that’s done, put the chicken on top and in the center of the tagine, and then cover it with another layer of onion rings. Cut the potatoes into slices, and place them on top of all the onion and chicken, and then toss on any remaining onion rings. Potatoes in Morocco tend to be much smaller than potatoes in America, hence why there are so many more called for in this recipe than you might expect to use. If you’re using big potatoes (ie, American-sized), you’ll probably only want two or three.

Ok, now that you have your bottom filled out, it’s time for the artistry. First, take your bell peppers, cut them into long strips, and make a star out of them from the rim of the tagine and converging in the center. Do the same for the zucchini and intersperse these slices between the peppers. Cut the carrots in a similar fashion as the peppers and zucchini, but make a ring of the slices around the rim of the tagine. Top it all off with your hot pepper, which should be uncut and in the convergence point of the other peppers and zucchini.

Finally, after all of this, you need to add the flavor. This is the point when Emeril Lagasse would say “bam!” Moroccan chefs do the same. The key to flavoring your tagine is the 3-dirham mélange, which is what you have after you go to your favorite corner store and ask the clerk for three dirhams’ worth of ground ginger, black pepper, paprika, and cumin all mixed together. You want to take about a golf ball’s size of this and smother everything with it. Also salt (to taste). Moroccans use a lot of salt, but you can do what you want. Then you need to add some Knorr. Knorr is a brand name of bouillon cubes, so get one, unwrap it, and sprinkle the contents on top. Since we’re making a chicken tagine, I recommend a chicken-flavored Knorr, but, again, you’re really on your own about this.

At this point, you may have noticed that you still have some tomatoes lying around, and may be questioning yourself as to whether you’ve correctly followed the preceding directions or have created some kind of hideous bastardization of Moroccan cuisine. Well, fear no more; you’ll now cut the tomatoes into rings, pop them on the top of everything, and breathe a sigh of relief. It’s important that you keep the tomatoes above everything else because you don’t want the water to get all up in their business. That would be bad. It’s also important to note that now that you’ve added something to the tagine, you need to give everything another round of your 3-dirham mélange. And sprinkle on some saffron, but before you do, make sure that you have the right kind of saffron. Moroccans use what we call “Spanish saffron,” which is essentially yellow food coloring (though in its natural form it’s a beautiful, florescent orange color), and not authentic saffron, which costs thousands of dollars and is kept in a locked case in the spice aisle. If you did happen to buy this latter kind, however, I would recommend saving it for another use and getting some of the cheap kind for your tagine. In my experience, you can't really taste it anyway.

Once you’ve the right saffron in place, it’s time to wet everything with vegetable oil. This recipe calls for 2 – 5 tbsp, which is noteworthy for two reasons. First, everyone here just pours it on, so I’m not entirely sure how much is really used. Second, they pour on vegetable oil until they’re satisfied with what they’ve done, so just pour until the inscrutable exhortations of your soul compel you to stop. As a last step, pour in about a cup of water. It is extremely important that you pour the water in around the edges so as not to get it on the tomatoes. Why, you ask? I haven’t the faintest idea. It’s just really important.

Now you’re finished. Except for the cooking – you haven’t done that yet – and you’ll probably want to before eating raw chicken. To cook your tagine, you’ll want to put on the lid and put it all on top of the fire, which should be fairly self-explanatory, but remember to use the big rocks to hold it up and out of the fire. The tagine is going to cook for about an hour, though any chef who knows his or her way around fire pit for cooking tagine will tell you that you cook it until it tastes good. This should be especially useful for any first-time chefs that have never tasted a tagine before. Also, while the tagine cooks, you’ll ask yourself any number of the following questions:

• Is the fire hot enough?

- You’d better hope so. Why not add a little wood every once in a while to make sure? Be careful not to add too much at any one time, though; you want heat, not flames. Flames burn things, particularly everything in the bottom of your tagine.

• Is the water evaporating out and not accumulating in the tagine?

- That’s a very specific question, but a good one. If you notice a significant amount of liquid moisture in your tagine, you’ve done something wrong. Get rid of this by propping open the tagine a little with your spoon. If you notice a significant absence of liquid moisture in your tagine, you’ve done something else wrong. Resolve this problem by adding in a little more water.

• Can I have some tea?

- Sure you can. Just don’t expect me to make it for you. What do you think this is, a short-order restaurant? Just put it all (see below) in the teapot and put that straight into the fire. Try not to use your hands to take it out, though, if at all possible.

Here’s what you’ll need to make some tea:

• 1 Teapot
• X Teacups, where X = the number of people who plan on drinking the tea
• Tea
• Sugar
• More Water

After you’ve had enough tea and waited until your tagine tastes good, you’ll most likely be ready to eat. Good, that means the tagine is done, so eat it.

Here’s what you’ll need to eat the tagine:

• Bread, Unsliced

Just take the bread, pull off a piece of it, and use that to scoop out and eat whatever you can. Undoubtedly, you’re going to get tired of not being able to scoop anything out and dropping everything that you do scoop out on your pants. When this happens, remember that you don’t have a fork (see lack thereof above). Deal with it. Or, use your hands. Who’s going to know the difference? The scorpions? You already got rid of them.