The Tangine Experience

I found this interesting recipe in Sunset Magazine for tangine, a food that my daughter eats often in Morocco. It is made with chicken, and many, many spices, as well as quite a bit of dried fruit--apricots and prunes. It was somewhat labor intensive to make: brown the chicken, then remove it and saute the onions and garlic and ginger. Then you add the spices and stir them a little in the oil to warm up and release all their aroma. Then you add chicken broth and return the chicken thighs to the pan, put in the dried fruit pieces, the chopped parsley and cover and cook. It is served on couscous, which is easy to prepare, adding toasted pine nuts and more chopped parsley. Some of the spices were quite pricey, too. Look in the Mexican food section and you can get some of them much cheaper than than on the spice aisle.

I followed the recipe faithfully since this was the first time I made it. And it was superb! Delicious! "More-ish" as my mother would have said. So we both had two servings and the next day, I ate the remaining large left-over serving. Ymm....

However--I do not recommend pigging out on this dish in the manner in which I did. You see, all that dried fruit...and the whole chopped onion and the four cloves of minced garlic...whew. It really promotes "digestion" if you know what I mean. If you choose to cook this recipe, just plan stay at home for a couple of days after you eat it, or at least if you can't stay home, be sure you know where all the bathrooms are in your immediate vicinity and make sure you can access them readily.

So, don't be afraid of tangine---it's delicious! But next time--I think I'll put in fewer pieces of dried fruit than the recipe calls for, or perhaps just limit myself to one serving.