Not long after my cookbook, Morocco, was published, I returned to that North African country to celebrate with friends. In Marrakech, we gathered around a tagine, an intensely flavored stew of slowly braised meat or seafood cooked in a vessel of the same name. The tagine and the table were round—in Morocco, they always are—to accommodate many, and as we leaned in, shoulders nearly touching, we scooped up tender chunks of lamb with cinnamon-scented onions. A few days later, in a Berber mountain village with another group of friends, we did the same, savoring succulent pieces of turkey gently sweetened with raisins. As is the custom, we didn’t use forks or knives, but rather pieces of bread torn from round loaves, the crust firm enough to carry morsels to our mouths and the insides soft enough to soak up all the saucy goodness at the bottom of the pan.
Tagines are central to Moroccan cuisine
The tagine’s importance in Moroccan cooking cannot be overstated. As a dish, tagine lies at the heart of simple family meals—one family, one table, one dish—as well as being an integral part of festive occasions and celebrations.
Tagines can be made from just about anything, and frequently exhibit Moroccan cuisine’s fondness for combining textures and marrying bold flavors. Lamb, the country’s iconic meat, is a perfect candidate for tagine braising and an ideal foil for Morocco’s signature blending of sweet and savory flavors. The sweetness often comes from fruit, sometimes fresh (quince or pear) but usually dried (prunes, figs, raisins, apricots, dates), along with lots of onions and generous seasonings of cinnamon, ginger, garlic, saffron, honey, or sugar. Chicken is even more versatile, a blank canvas for showcasing sweet and savory flavors, as well as tangy-savory ones. Along Morocco’s lengthy Atlantic coastline, cooks create various fish tagines, too—from monkfish and bream to swordfish, eel, and blue shark—that often skew into savory-only territory, flavored with preserved lemons and olives over a base of seasonal vegetables. But whatever the protein, the flavors and ingredients in a tagine are layered and complex, producing an aromatic stew that never fails to nourish and satisfy.
The lid is key to a tagine’s function
As a vessel, the tagine is unique. Traditionally round, shallow, and made of earthenware (clay, terra cotta, or ceramic), the key to its function lies in its tall, conical lid, which captures the moisture of the slowly cooking food, condensing and returning it to the stew to keep it moist and retain its flavors. The lid is rarely closed completely because a little bit of evaporation is useful for concentrating flavors. Instead, it’s left slightly ajar; many cooks in Morocco like to wedge the end of a wooden spoon between the base and the lid to keep it cracked, and that’s how I do it, too.
Not only is the tagine’s design useful for cooking, but it’s beautiful enough to serve from. Its earthenware construction keeps food hot for a long time, too.
As utilitarian as the vessel is and as succulent as the meat or fish may be, the real reason for using a tagine is the sauce that forms while the food slowly braises. Sopping up the rich melody of concentrated flavors from the bottom of the pan with hunks of fresh bread is the ultimate reward. I hope you find that to be true as you make the recipes on the following pages—no special occasion required.