Moroccan Beef Tagine

Moroccan Beef Tagine, with Sweet-and-Sour Couscous

I don't like pretentiousness in cooking, life is hard enough for us all without everything being raised to the level of a competitive sport, complicated by faddishness and the feeling that only a very specific kind of superior person is "in the know" in terms of exotic concepts, by means of which the rest of us are supposed to feel inadequate. Well, a tagine is essentially a stew, traditionally undertaken with the poorest, least choice cuts of meat and can happily be undertaken in a pot on the stove. 

Beef short rib, or briske, as cut by the friendly butchers at Kloof Super-Spar

While for a festive occasion (and in line with the North African feel) it is probably worth investing in making Sweet and Sour Couscous, plain old rice will also do, just fine. After all, cooking is about sharing, and as Maya Angelou puts it so superbly well: "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

The recipe itself has been already been adapted, in that traditional Moroccan tagines would usually employ either mutton (lamb) or chicken in their preparation, while this uses short ribs of beef, also known as brisket, and I in turn adapted a recipe from Williams Sonoma to beef up the vegetable components.

Since I was doubly fortunate, first in being given a beautiful, hand-decorated tagine from Morocco as a farewell present from the Women's Group: 

Beautiful Morrocan and Arabian Objets d'Art

Secondly, I was given a bottle of ras el hanout tagine spice from the Williams Sonoma store, courtesy of Cindi, scuba dive tour diva who lives in San Francisco. I therefore was obliged to make a tagine, and once embarked upon the process, found that all my doubts as to difficulty evaporated as quickly as the mist when the sun shines upon it.

Although your traditional tagine would probably be heavier on the meat, I added way more vegetables, based on the premiss that more in this regard is better than less (and you only need look at the new food pyramid for confirmation of the wisdom of that concept).

Secondly, I decided, in line with the original concept of a tagine, to braise the meat without searing it, since, after all, the original ceramic tagines, being pottery, do not allow for browning of the meat, and the finely ground spices are liable to be burnt while searing, which seems a waste of wonderfully, delicately fragrant spices, such as the ras el hanout (or "top of the shop") spice mixture I was fortunate enough to receive. For those who cannot access it, however, this Ras el Hanout Recipe will suffice (and I will be surely using this when I run out of mine).

The secrets to this particular stew are long, slow simmering (whether in a tagine on top of hot coals, in a lidded pot in the oven or even bubbling away on the stove); the concept of braising is that minimal water is used in a closed container with poor cuts of meat over a long period of time until the meat, literally falls off the bone and all the vegetables have turned into a thick, delicious gravy.

Moroccan Beef Tagine Recipe

Meat rub:

The bits of brisket should be at room temperature, and rubbed in a mixture of the following (which you will have pre-mixed before placing on the dry pieces of meat), at least one hour before starting the stew.

Brisket rubbed in the meat rub 

3 Tablespoons ras el hanout spice (if you have trouble finding it, try this: Ras el Hanout Recipe)

1 Tablespoon sweet paprika

1 teaspoon salt (preferably Maldon Smoked Sea Salt to go with the smokey flavours we are striving for, but really - any salt will do)

1 teaspoon pepper, preferably so finely ground it looks "white" - in South Africa, we actually sell "white pepper" which is wonderfully fragrant

Ingredients for the meat rub

For the stew:

2.5 kgs of short beef ribs

1 large butternut

250 grams carrots (about 6 large carrots)

5 onions

12 cloves garlic (but then again, I like garlic)

½ cup wine

½ cup beef stock

olive oil

1 can tinned tomatoes, or 250ml pizza tomato paste - (1 cup)

Take out your largest pot, and place oil in the bottom. Chop the onions up small, and brown at high heat on the stove top (if it starts sticking too much, liberally shake red wine into the pot to deglaze). 

Onions, carrots, butternut, sous-sous for the stew, sorry tagine

Add the carrots, peeled and chopped small, and the butternut, also cubed into small pieces (the smaller the pieces, the quicker they'll melt into gravy), and continue cooking. Finally, add the meat, which does not have to have been seared first, though if you do wish to brown it and use up another pot to wash in the process, by all means, feel free to do so. Add the red wine and the beef stock, and put lid on top and leave to bubble merrily but quietly.

Tagine, at the beginning of the stewing process

I am not a great advocate of using tomatoes too soon in a stew, as they can make it quite bitter, so I tend to add the tomatoes towards the end of the cooking time, but a good hour before you need to serve it. In fact, I'd be utterly inclined to leave the tomato out altogether - I did so once, without ill effect, though the result was that the dish was somewhat sweeter, and better complemented the Sweet and Sour Couscous. Alternatively, you can add, towards the end, some of the pizza tomato paste you have learnt to make, which, since the tomatoes have been skinned and de-pipped/de-seeded and pre-cooked, will make a lovely mellow addition to this delicious dish.

The tagine is done

Cooking time needs to be at least two hours, however, the result is absolutely stunning if you leave it to simmer, gently, on low heat, for four hours, until the meat simply slides off the bone and the vegetables are all one delicious, mushy gravy where you can't even pick out one solid piece of any kind of vegetable out of the pot. As a busy mum, I often start a dish like this in the morning and then simmer over time, switching the stove off as I go out-and-about. 

This is best eaten with Sweet and Sour Couscous, which perfectly complements the sweet meat.