Pumpkin and Lentil Tajine

Ever since I had this blog, I have been trying various ideas to turn the Halloween pumpkin into something tasty. I already have some good recipes that I like, but I have recently found a few new ones and I have been anxious to try them. One intrigued me so much that I bought an extra pumpkin last week to try this dish before the pumpkin sitting on my porch will be available for cooking.

This recipe, as you can tell from the title of this post, comes from the Moroccan cuisine. And I must say that preparing pumpkin with oriental spices is my favorite way to turn this rather sweet and bland vegetable into a dish that is zesty, flavorous, and even spicy.

Moroccan cuisine, and particularly tajines, are my latest culinary fascination. They can make a wonderful and rich one-dish meal. Since my daily home cuisine is most often vegetarian, especially the vegetable tajines sounded very appealing to me. Moreover, unlike the meat tajines, they do not require very long cooking.

Tajine is traditionally made in a special, conic-shaped ceramic pot with a lid, which is designed for slow cooking. But if you do not have a tajine pot, this dish could be made in a regular non-stick heavy duty pot. It can be made entirely on the stove, or fried first and then finished in an oven at low temperature until soft.

Pumpkin and Lentil Tajine
(Serves four)

Ingredients:
1 lb of pumpkin (already peeled off and cut into cubes),
1/2 cup green lentils,
4 cups vegetable broth,
1/2 cup olive oil,
1 medium onion, cut in half and sliced,
4 garlic cloves, chopped,
2 tsp paprika,
1 tsp turmeric,
1 tsp ground cumin,
1/4 tsp black pepper,
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper,
1/2 tsp salt,
2 tomatoes, cut into large cubes,
3 tbsp tomato paste,
1/4 cup raisins,
3 tbsp chopped flat leave parsley,
2 tbsp chopped cilantro.

Preparation:
1. Wash lentils and place them in a medium pot. Cover with broth and cook until lentil is tender but not soft. Set aside.
2. Heat the oil in a large heavy duty pan. Add onion, garlic and spices. Fry for about 2 minutes, until everything is mixed well and fragrant.
3. Add pumpkin cubes to the pot, mix well with spices, and cook for about 5 minutes.
4. Add tomatoes, tomato paste, and lentils together with the broth. Mix all the ingredients gently.

5. Scatter raisins on the top of the vegetables and reduce the heat to low.

6. Cook for about 20 minutes until pumpkin and lentils become soft. If you use a tajine pot, or any other oven-friendly pot, you can transfer it at this point to an oven and finish it there.
7. Sprinkle with parsley and cilantro on top and serve.

Fish Grilled with Chermoula--A Moroccan Sauce

After many fascinations with different exotic cuisines, for example Indian or Afghan, my most recent has been Moroccan. So in the upcoming months I will be sharing more recipes from that part of the world. Last week I even bought an original tajine dish to make my experiments more authentic.

But my first steps in the Moroccan cuisine were very simple. I made an easy green sauce called Chermoula that is used mainly to prepare fish and sea food but I also saw a chicken recipe with it. I fell in love with this marinade instantly.

Very fresh and aromatic, thanks to herbs and a touch of spices, chermoula tastes great on any fish. Even more, it can make an ordinary and imperfect fish taste better. I once baked mahi mahi in parchment paper to keep it moist but, eventually, it still seemed excessively dry. Yesterday, I made mahi mahi again, but I marinated it with chermoula and grilled and it came out delicate and moist.

I make my chermoula most often from a whole bunch of parsley and cilantro, keep it in a fridge, and use it when I need it. I put it in a jar and drizzle with olive oil, which preserves chermoula from discoloration. This way I can keep it in a refrigerator for a couple of weeks.

Fish Grilled with Chermoula

Ingredients:
1 lb of mahi mahi fillets or any quality fish,
1 small bunch (about a well-packed cup) of chopped fresh coriander (cilantro) leaves,
1 small bunch (a cup) of chopped flat-leaf parsley.
3 garlic cloves,
1/4 cup olive oil,
juice from 2 lemons (about 1/4 cup).
1 tsp paprika,
1 tsp ground coriander,
1 tsp ground cumin,
1/2 tsp black pepper,
1/2 tsp salt.

Preparation:
1. To make chermoula, put parsley and coriander leaves in a food processor. Add garlic and pulse until it acquires the consistency of a pesto.
2. Add lemon juice, olive oil, and all spices. Blend until it creates a smooth paste.

3. Spread a couple of spoons on top of the fish until it is well-covered with chermoula and let it marinate for 4-6 hours, preferably overnight.
4. The rest of the marinate transfer to a tight closed small container, cover with a tbsp of olive oil and keep in refrigerator until next use.
5. Preheat the grill to about 350F.
6. Place fish in a metal rack and grill on both sides. It will take about 10-20 minutes depending on its thickness. Serve with couscous or salads.

Radish Salad--With Exotic Dressing

For a very long time I have been trying to convince my kids to eat radish. No success so far. One prefers cucumbers, the other tomatoes but none of them is into radish. I have a lot of sentiment for radish, which years ago, in early spring was often the only fresh vegetable available in Poland and the first one that was growing in my parents yard. As a child I loved it sliced on bread with butter, just sprinkled with salt and dusted with dill. The other times we sliced it and together with fresh aromatic cucumbers served on farmers or cottage cheese. A little bit similar to that is one radish salad I posted some time ago with ricotta salata, one of my favorite spring salads.

The other day I bought two very fresh and pink bunches of radish, hoping that this time at least one of my boys would like it. But I was left with all the beautiful radishes for myself. That was an opportunity to try a new recipe, which I found in my always inspiring Met Home magazine. It was called Moroccan. All the ingredients were indeed coming from the Moroccan cuisine but it was new to me that radish was popular also over there. Radish made that way is mostly marinated in a special sauce and then topped with goat cheese. Without that topping it can be served as any dinner and meat accompaniment. Radish served with sweet goat cheese and bread make a very satisfying whole meal, which I really enjoyed last Saturday.

Moroccan Radish Salad

Ingredients:
2 bunches radish (about 4 cups) sliced,
4 oz of goat cheese, room temperature,
1/4 cup sliced, toasted almonds,
1/4 cup sliced dried apricots,
1/4 cup minced scallions,
2 tsp rice vinegar,
2 tsp lemon juice,
1 tsp harrisa (North African chili paste available in Middle Eastern groceries),
2 tsp honey,
1 shallot, minced,
1 garlic clove ,minced,
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil,
3 tbsp fresh cilantro leaves, chopped,
salt and pepper.

Preparation:
1. Wash radish and slice it.

Place in a medium bowl. Add chopped cilantro and mix.

2. In a small bowl mix vinegar, lemon juice, harrisa, honey, shallot, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. Pour over the radish.

3. Put goat cheese in a small bowl and press it with a fork until soft. Add almonds, apricots, scallions and extra pepper. Mix well. You can do that using an electric mixer.

To serve, divide radish between four plates, top with goat cheese and serve with bread.

Chicken Tagine with Preserved Lemons--A Bit of Moroccan Flavor

There are three dishes that are most often made with preserved lemons: chicken, fish, and lamb. Lamb and chicken are usually made tagine style, that is slowly cooked in a special dish with a shallow bottom and a conical cover. So far I have tried chicken and have been making it from time to time. It is the most classical dish coming from the Moroccan cuisine tradition.

Before I made for the first time, I had been looking everywhere for a most complex and interesting recipe. All of them called for the same ingredients--chicken, preserved lemons, olives and spices. But when I read different reviews not everyone who tried this dish liked it. Most complaints concerned the sourness of it that overshadowed its other subtle tastes, particularly, when the dish was made with green olives, which seems to be the most popular recipe. And it seems that even the mildness of couscous that the chicken is served with did not help diminish its acidity. Many people who tried out this dish would never make it again.

I decided then to make this dish a bit differently. I added carrot and raisins, which I thought would help offset its sourness. Both ingredients are often used in the Moroccan cuisine and also sometimes in different type of tagine dishes. A typical tagine calls for a meat with bones, which gives out its flavor through long cooking, but I used chicken breast tenderloins. To make sure I get a maximum flavor from it I made sure the chicken was organic and free range. I cooked them much faster in a regular heavy bottom cookware, but I think the taste was similar to what it would be if I did it as a slowly cooked dish.

Chicken Tagine with Preserved Lemons
(Serves four)

Ingredients:
4 chicken breasts with bones or 8-10 breast tenderloins,
1 red onion,
6 carrots, peeled and sliced,
1/2 cup raisins,
2 preserved lemons,
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 tsp turmeric,
4 anise star fruits,
1/2 tsp ground ginger,
2 inch long stick of cinnamon,
1/2 cumin,
1 tsp paprika,
pinch of saffron powder,
1/4 tsp black pepper,
1/2 tsp salt,
chopped fresh coriander and parsley,
olive oil for frying.

Preparation:
1. Mix 3 tbsp of olive oil with garlic, salt, and pepper. Rub the chicken in it and let marinate for about an hour.
2. Preheat a frying pan and fry chicken breasts until gold. Add sliced onion and carrot, and fry for about two minutes stirring from time to time. Add to the pan all the spices: turmeric, paprika, ginger, saffron, cumin. Let the chicken parts coat in spices.
4. Cut preserved lemons alongside into thin slices. Add to the pan with chicken.

5. Let it cook covered for about 40 minutes (about 30 will do if you use tenderloins) until the meat is tender.
6. Add chopped parsley and cilantro on top of the dish.
Serve with couscous and salads.