Chickpea Tagine

By Meal Times With Mathilde

Tagine is a North African dish, traditionally named after the earthenware pot it is cooked in (you can use an oven-proof casserole pot instead).

It may look like there's a lot of ingredients but quite a few are spices, which are what make this dish fragrant, aromatic, and quite frankly…delicious. If you don't have/want to buy all of them, it's worth at least investing in ras el hanout which is a North African spice blend containing spices such as cardamom, cumin, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, coriander, etc which you could use instead of all the individual spices listed below.

Recipe serves 4.

INGREDIENTS METHOD

INGREDIENTS

1 onion

2 medium carrots

1 courgette

1 small aubergine or half a butternut squash

5-6 cardamom pods

1 tsp coriander seeds

2-3 garlic cloves

Thumb of ginger

1/2 tsp ras el hanout

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp turmeric

1 cinnamon stick (or 1 tsp cinnamon)

1 tin chopped tomatoes

500ml veg stock

1 tsp harissa paste (optional)

1 tin of chickpeas or 400g cooked chickpeas

A handful of raisins/sultanas

To Serve

Couscous

Yoghurt (optional)

Coriander (optional)

METHOD

1. Start by chopping all the veg - much easier to get it out of the way first. You want fairly big chunks, nothing too small and definitely not diced e.g. carrots cut into thick slices on the diagonal

2.Heat a drizzle of oil in a heavy-bottomed/cast-iron casserole pot. Fry the onion. Meanwhile, bash cardamom pods & coriander seeds in a pestle & mortar. Open the pods, tip out seeds into a mortar and discard pods. Chop garlic & ginger

3. Add the cardamom & coriander seeds, garlic, ginger and remaining 4 spices to the pot and fry for 1-2 minutes, stirring to avoid sticking. Add the veg and simmer with the lid on for 5 mins. Add chopped tomatoes, stock & harissa if using. Bring to the boil and simmer for 45-50 minutes until the sauce has thickened, stirring occasionally

4. 10 minutes before the end of cooking, add chickpeas and raisins to pot and prepare couscous in a separate bowl. Serve the tagine with couscous, yoghurt & coriander if using

Mathilde is a Registered Nutritionist on the UK Voluntary Register of Nutritionists with the Association for Nutrition (AfN) and you can find out more about her over at her website and on instagram where she regularly posts about all things food and lots of amazing recipes.