Beef Tagine

Kaz's tagine post inspired me to dig out the tagine recipe in one of my cookbooks. I've only made this once before, mostly because it has several ingredients I don't tend to buy or use much. It also takes longer than I would like on most weeknights, although this time I did it in the slow cooker, allowing me to prepare it the night before and just leave it going.

First you chop up the following things and put them in the slow cooker (in layers as usual): carrot, onion, dried fruit - the recipe says dates, prunes and apricots, and that's what I used. Sidenote: dates look disturbingly like cockroach fruit. I cannot unsee this once it had occurred to me, and since I had to chop them up while thinking about it, now you do too.

For spices, it has cumin (lots), paprika, ginger, garlic, a cinnamon stick and a couple of bay leaves. Then you prep the meat. It says to cut up the beef, then dust it with flour and sear it. I am not entirely sure what the flour is for, but the recipe said so I did. Presumably it helps keep the meat juices inside. I'm not sure this is really a necessary step when using a slow cooker; perhaps next time I shall experiment because putting the flour on all the bits of meat was more fiddly than I would have liked. Lastly you pour in some beef stock - the recipe said 500mL but I used less because food tends to generate and retain a lot of liquid in the slow cooker.

My recipe says to serve it with couscous, so I'll go through preparing that, but I think it would also work quite well with turkish bread, wraps, or just rice. Or maybe roti or something like that. Anyway, I made couscous. You put the couscous in a bowl with cumin, pepper, salt, butter, olive oil and a spanish onion (chopped up of course). I soaked the onion first although I think next time I will do so for longer because I found the flavour to be still a bit too strong. I am not a huge fan of spansih onions but soaking them makes them much milder and, in my opinion, better. Lastly you pour over some boiling chicken stock, then put some gladwrap over the top of the bowl and leave it for 5-10 minutes to absorb the stock. Then fluff it up with a fork and serve.

This is what the couscous looked like before serving it.

And this is the final result, with some fresh coriander on top to garnish.

Conclusions:
 - Dates are tasty, even if they look creepy when cutting them up, and I should use them more.
 - Couscous is also tasty, especially with some butter and spices, and very easy and quick to prepare. I should also use this more.
 - Putting flour on bits of meat will leave your hands covered in gross floury/meaty goo.
 - Tagines are tasty and quite different to most of what I make. I should experiment more with them, although perhaps with less cumin. I'm not as much of a fan of it as the recipe-maker seems to be.

Edit: Realised Kaz hasn't actually posted about his tagine yet, just told me about it. Hurry up and post, Kaz, so my post makes more sense.