Beef Tagine with Honey, Prunes and Apricots

Another wonderful pressie I was lucky enough to get for my Birthday was a Tagine, now I have hankered over one of these for such a long time, gee, could it be at least a couple of years now??

Anyway, I was given this wonderful tagine, a gorgeous splash of red for my kitchen, and it goes rather well with that other showy splash of gorgeous red in the kitchen, my lovely new Kitchen Aid mixer.......ahh red, the new pink....., sorry, got a bit carried away there....

Today I found a recipe for a beef tagine, whew, the list of spices almost took my breath away, but they were all in the spice drawer so just got to work and assembled the most glorious flavour sensation.

While the tagine was cooking the kitchen smelt like you could just package it up with a ribbon and be happy forever, wonderful aromas.

As couscous isn't a fave in this neck of the woods, we decided on rice as the accompaniment.

There will be more tagines in our lives.

The recipe I loosely based our tagine on was 'Fragrant Moroccan Beef, Date, Honey and Prune Tagine' from Recipe Zaar. The recipe called for ras el hanout spice mix or their substitution, well on a whim I Googled 'ras el hanout', and while Recipe Zarr called for 4 spices this little lovely called for no fewer than 12, well.........ya gotta give that a go now don't you!

So here is the list of ingredients I used.

For the Ras el Hanout spice mix

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seed

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

For the Tagine

500grams cubed beef, - I used round steak

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

1 large clove garlic, minced

1 carrot, peeled and cut into chunks

1 400 gram can diced tomatoes

6 pitted prunes

6 dried apricots - the recipe called for dates, but -... well you know the story

1 scant tablespoon honey

1 cup beef stock

2 rounded teaspoons of the ras el hanout spice mix

Assemble the ras el hanout spices, they will keep for a month in an airtight jar.

Heat the tagine base over a medium heat, add the olive oil and when heated add the beef cubes and turn to brown all over.

Add the onion and garlic, followed by the carrot chunks, stirring through the meat to pick up the lovely juices.

Add the spice mix, stirring all the while so that all those lovely spices coat everything and don't catch on the bottom of the tagine.

Pour stock into tagine, stirring again

Add the tomatoes, prunes, apricots and honey, stir well and cover with tagine lid

Lower heat and cook slowly for about 1 - 1 1/2 hours, If the beef was tougher the cooking time would have to be longer

The dish was lovely but the pics were not.

Mmm, yummy