Morocco is renowned for their food,
and nothing is more iconic to their cuisine than the tagine.
So I went on a search for historic tajin recipes and I've landed on this 14th century recipe for
a lamb and prune tagine called mrouzia.
So thank you to Wanderlust Voyages for sending me to Morocco so I could learn how to make tagine
this time on Tasting History.
So here's the thing there is no one dish called tagine because
the word refers to any dish made in or served in this iconic conical cooking vessel from Morocco.
So it's a bit like calling anything cooked in an oven an oven, not terribly specific,
so when I went searching for recipes I had a lot of options but since this is Tasting History
I decided to look for historic recipes.
That makes sense.
But I also wanted something that has a modern equivalent so that I could compare and contrast the two dishes,
and this led me to a dish called mrouzia.
Now there are a number of Medieval recipes for this dish including two from
a 13th century manuscript that is often simply referred to as the 'Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook'
because the full name translates to 'The Book of Cooking in Maghreb and Andalus in the era of Almohads'.
by an unknown author and that just doesn't really fall off the tongu
but it is important to know the entire title because it shows that this food was not only
being consumed in Andalus or modern day Spain but also Maghreb which refers to an area of North Africa that includes Morocco.
There's also a recipe for the same dish in the 14th century 'Kanz al-Fawā'id fī Tanwī al-Mawā'id'
and that's the one I'm actually going to be using because not only does it give a historic recipe
but it actually gives specific quantities of each ingredient which is very rare for historic recipes
so I can better recreate this dish as it would have been made 700 years ago.
On top of that the amazing scholar and translator Nawal Nasrallah has kindly taken all of the historic Arabic
unit- measurement units and translated them into modern units which makes my job a lot easier.
So for this recipe what you'll need is: one and a half pounds or 680 grams of meat.
The recipe is not specific in what kind of meat, lamb is probably more traditional but both beef and chicken are used as as well.
4 ounces or 115 grams of prunes, these would have likely been made from cherry plums
which are small plums that are kind of hard to find especially in dried prune form so any prune will will work just fine.
Also the word for these plums that was used in the original text actually translates to cow eyes,
and I promise you it does mean plums and that is why having
a good translator is so important otherwise we would end up with a very different dish.
One and three quarters cup or 225 grams of diced onion,
2-3 teaspoon of saffron diffused in about three tablespoons of water and then strained out,
about a half cup or 70 grams of raisins, a quartercup or 60 milliliters of fine vinegar.
So you can use white wine vinegar for this but these old texts
actually mention a lot of different vinegars and how to make them and one of them was honey vinegar
and I thought that sounded interesting and then it turns out that the Middle Eastern Market near me had honey vinegar
so that's what I got and um it's it is a little bit more mild than white wine vinegar but either one will work.
45 grams of dried jujube, one and a half teaspoons of dried mint
and one teaspoon of atraf tib or another spice blend.
So atraf tib is an extremely complicated spice blend that was very popular in Medieval Arabic cooking,
and I actually made this spice blend for the hummus that I made a couple years ago which is in the tasting history cookbook as well,
but as I said it's very complicated. It has a lot of ingredients that are really hard to find
so you can use any kind of Middle Eastern or North African spice blend.
The most famous in Morocco is called ras el hanout which means head of the shop,
and it is just like the head of the shop the best spices that any shop has, so it's going to vary from place to place depending on who's making it.
I got this blend while I was in Morocco so that's what I'm using.
You'll also need some more spices, this is a heavily spiced dish. You'll need some more spices that will go into the meat
before we start cooking but we'll get to that, and then you'll finally need 1/3 cup or about 85 grams of sugar or honey.
Sugar cane was grown in southern Spain at the time and it was a very popular sweetener but
honey was also popular especially in Maghreb or Northern Africa so either one is going to work.
So the 14th century recipe says "Fry the meat with spices, and when it is done, add to it one and a half ratls water.
When the water boils, chop the onions and wash them, once in salted water and once in water.
Add them to the meat and leave to boil until the onion is half cooked.
Add the dried plums which have been soaked in water, then add the raisins and jujubes in the same manner.
Let them cook until the raisins and plums are done. If you wish, add three ūqiyyas sugar, and let it boil.
Next add saffron dissolved in water, let it boil and then add vinegar.
When the pot has boiled for a while, add in the mint and atraf al-tib and allow to simmer."
So you don't actually have to make this in a tagine, in fact today in Morocco it's usually made in a pot,
and then simply served in a tagine and there are many tagine that are made only for serving
like this one back here that I got in Morocco, you can't cook anything in it it's just beautiful to serve food.
But I am going to be cooking this in a tagine because that's kind of what makes it special is
the way that when you're cooking something in a tagine the water turns into steam and condenses in the cone,
I have one here, in the cone and then kind of rains back down onto the food so it just keeps it really nice and moist
and cooks it very evenly all over.
And I got to learn how to use a tagine while I was in Morocco last winter when La Sultano Hotel in Marrakesh
hosted me for an excellent cooking class with Chef Youssef.
We made fish tagine which was a very different dish than the one we're making today but it follows the same concept.
And if you are planning on going to Marrakesh anytime soon I do suggest the La Sultana Hotel.
It's in the old Medina so it has all the benefits of a modern day hotel
but it has that kind of old charm of Morocco that is sorely lacking in some of the more modern hotels.
It's a really wonderful place. Also a huge thank you to Wanderlust Voyages
who introduced me to that hotel and everything that we did while we were in Morocco.
They set up an amazing, amazing trip that was kind of focused on food and history because they knew that I loved food and history
and they just made it so smooth and seamless traveling there.
It is not a place that you can go without a little bit of help especially if you don't speak Arabic so I definitely suggest
checking them out if you plan on going to Morocco, and you should because it's amazing, food is fantastic.
I'll put a link in the description to where you can go plan a trip with Wanderlust Voyages.
Now when it comes to starting this recipe we have to spice our meat and the recipe is not specific
in what spices to use at this part of the cooking process so I'm going to rely on some of these spices
that are traditionally used in this dish in Morocco.
So in a big bowl I'm adding a teaspoon of turmeric, a teaspoon of ras el hanout, a teaspoon of ginger,
a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon, a half teaspoon of coriander, and a half teaspoon of black pepper, plus a large pinch of salt.
Then I'm going to add about three tablespoons of water and mix it in with the spices to make a marinade.
Then take the meat and coat it with that spice mixture and leave it to marinate for 20 minutes or so.
Once it's well marinated heat a tagine or a pot over medium-high heat and add a bit of olive oil or clarified butter,
and then transfer the meat over letting it cook for a few minutes turning it as it does.
Then pour in three cups of very hot water and lower the heat to medium and set the lid on and let it simmer for 30 minutes.
Then add in the finely chopped onion and cook it for about 10 minutes again with the lid on.
And while it cooks you can prepare your jujubes, your raisins,
and your prunes by soaking them in hot water for about 10 minutes.
And today the prunes are actually cooked usually in a completely separate pot from from all the meat and everything,
and this keeps the prunes kind of in more of a whole state and and allows them to kind of get a glaze on them,
but I'm guessing this 14th century recipe author didn't want to do more dishes so he put everything
into one pot or one tagine as it is.
So once they've soaked add the fruit to the tagine with the meat along with the sugar or honey then the vinegar and the saffron water.
Bring it up to a simmer again and let it cook for a couple of minutes before stirring in the atraf tib or ras el hanout, and the mint.
Then return the lid again and reduce the heat to the very lowest setting that you can and let it cook until the meat
just falls apart, it should take about 60 minutes.
And every once in a while you can kind of crack the lid of the tagine and move things around just to make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom,
but just make sure not to let out all of the steam.
And while our tagine cooks let us take a closer look at this iconic conical cooking vessel of Morocco.
The origins of the tagine are murky at best and that's because
what is a tagine?
Well for the purposes of this episode we have established that this is a tagine.
It's that iconic conical cooking vessel from Morocco along with any dish made inside of it,
but for most of history the term referred to a number of frying pan and saucepan type vessels.
It's believed that the term comes from Arabic which in turn came from the language of the Amazigh or Berbers.
These are the native people of Northern Africa who were the majority population in Morocco and North Africa
before the Arab migration in the 7th and 8th centuries.
So a word about these two names, Amazigh and Berber,
so both of these terms are still used today and while we were in Morocco our guide was Berber or Amazigh,
and we met many others and often when they would speak to us they called themselves Berber
but when they spoke to each other it was Amazigh.
And I asked Hamid who was our guide why that was and it turns out that
yes, Amazigh is what they prefer and that's what they call themselves but
Berber is what most people in the world know them as so it's just easier to use that term
but the term comes from the Arabic barbar which in turn comes from the ancient Greek barbaros meaning non-Greek
but that's also where we get the term barbarian so it has some negative connotations
so it's definitely fading from use.
What's interesting is that this Greek link brings us back to tagine
because many linguists believe that the original Berber word for the tagine comes from ancient Greece,
the word tagenon which referred to really any pan,
and I talk about this word in the video on Ancient Greek pancakes which were called teganites or taginites
which got their name because they were made in a pan, they were pancakes.
But while tagenon may be the origin of the word,
the origin of its use as an earthenware vessel with a lid used for cooking
is really convoluted because that probably existed soon after pottery existed
so who knows when that actually started.
It's essentially a portable oven which makes sense then why the Amazigh people would use something like that
because many were nomadic and so they could carry their portable oven, their tagine, with them wherever they went.
Though even if they didn't have this they had other ways of cooking including
digging a hole in the sands of the Sahara, making a fire and then putting different foods in there,
and covering them up to let them cook basically in an underground oven,
and I got to see this method of cooking when we made medfouna in Morocco and I did a whole video on that
so I'll make sure that that pops up after this one, and I'll share a link in the description.
Now when it comes to any more specifics on the origin of the tagine
I have to admit I'm kind of at a loss.
Similarly shaped vessels appear in art from Persia, Arabia and other parts of the Islamic world as far back as the 11th century
but typically they're shown as serving vessels rather than cooking vessels
but that doesn't mean that they weren't cooked in maybe that use just didn't make it into the picture,
and if you look online over and over and over again you'll see that
tagine started one of the first mention was in a 'Thousand and One Nights' and
maybe that's true but I have several different translations of those and I couldn't find anything
that even resembled tagine at least in its modern form so I'm thinking that maybe one of those things that
got mentioned on the internet and is just repeated over and over, and over again,
because the wording is always the same which is always something to question
because obviously people aren't going to find that original source.
I did a whole video on that too. Anyway,
maybe it's in there in the original Arabic, I don't know, I don't speak Arabic.
What is in there there being 'The Thousand and One Nights' is something else that does have to do with modern tagine,
and that is incessant hand washing before and after meals.
There's one story about a guest who came to a meal and sits there the entire time and refuses to touch anything,
and when someone asks why aren't you eating
"He replied 'Because I cannot eat of it unless I wash my hands forty times with kali, and forty times with cyperus,
and forty times with soap; altogether, a hundred and twenty times."
A little OCD but I suppose having super clean hands is better than having not clean hands
especially with a dish like tagine because even though it's it's sort of stew-like
it would still traditionally be eaten with the right hand and today if you go to Morocco you're going to get a
fork and a spoon and a knife and all that but in many private households even today they would eat a dish like this with
bread kind of dipped or just with their hand.
"The thumb and two fingers of the right hand serve instead of knives and forks;
and it is the usual custom for a person to help himself to a portion of the contents of a dish
by drawing it toward the edge, or taking it from the edge, with a morsel of bread which he eats with it."
This is why in many of the medieval Arabic cookbooks they include recipes for soap and different hand washes,
and one 13th century cookbook from the area that is kind of southern Spain Morocco area,
it includes eight different recipes for ushnan which was a sort of hand wash.
Some are really really, fancy. One says that it's meant for kings and it has
clove and nutmeg, and sandalwood and others have citronella, and all sorts of different spices and camphor,
but then there is one that he says is meant for most people and it just says
"Crush chickpeas and then sift them and use the powder to wash the hands after eating;
it will do the job."
And this is the version that the average person would use along with soap to wash up before and after eating,
and I do have some dried chickpeas but since I'm using a fork to eat my tagine
I think just some regular old hand soap we'll have to do.
So after about an hour of cooking your tagine should be done and again you can serve it right from the cooking vessel,
or you can transfer it to a fancier dish.
And here we are mrouzia the lamb and prune tagine of the 14th century.
And it is common today to put some almonds or sesame seeds on top I think just to kind of
give it some color, some contrast and color, but they won't really affect the flavor all that much.
One thing I am noticing is- and I knew this was going to happen the prunes and the fruit just kind of
turn into mush whereas the modern one where they're they're cooked separately they're much more distinct,
and again I think visually maybe it's more appealing but flavor wise shouldn't affect it,
but I guess we will see the nice thing is- wow! That meat just like falls apart.
I'm trying to get a little bit of- can't get everything there's too much in here but-
here we go.
[Chomp]
Hm!
It's so good.
It is so, so good.
First of all the house smells so wonderful.
It's just filled with all of these spice kind of smells but
everything that I ate in Morocco was amazing. Everything.
And so I'm not surprised that this is amazing either because
they just know how to use spices so well. It is not like-
it's not hot spicy, like there's no heat to it. It's actually a rather sweet dish.
That's not the spice that they're using, it's just lots of other spices but nothing is overwhelming it's not like beating you over the head with spice.
It's more like it's
hugging you with spices. It's like enveloping your your taste buds with just all of these different spices,
not a one you can pick out. It's a whole new combination.
The meat is so tender it just falls apart but then you get that that sweetness
from all of the different fruits and the sugar in there.
Honestly it's really, really sweet
and then it has meat in it and it really reminds me a lot of the medieval European dishes
that have that same flavor profile which is no wonder because a lot of those dishes came from Arabic cuisine.
What I love is that smell of the spice that's now in my house,
it reminds me of Morocco because everywhere in Morocco also smells great
not only because they're cooking with a lot of spices but they just- they have perfumes everywhere and scented oils going everywhere.
It just- it's really lovely almost to the point of overwhelming but but stops just short of it.
The other cool thing about cooking in a tagine is the the edges get crispy.
Almost burnt but not quite but really crispy and depending on what you're cooking.
Obviously it's going to do different things, if it's eggs it's a very different texture than meat but
that crispy bit, it's like burnt ends it's so good coupled with the unbelievably tender meat on the inside
so you kind of mix it all together you get a little bit of everything the texture is there, the flavor,
can't say enough good things about this dish.
Go make it. Go make any Moroccan food, it's absolutely fantastic,
can't wait to make more,
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.