Lemon Tagine – vegetable, chicken or cod (0 syns)

This lemon’y soup type dish is strong on morrocon flavour. The marinade alone is gorgeous. You can either have it with vegetables alone, add chicken or add white fish like cod. If you decide to go vegetarian, it works as a beautiful tasty tangy tagine soup with chunky vegetables. If you do add chicken, be sure to use chicken thighs or drumsticks (skinned of course) – coat them in the marinade and then lightly fry them off before adding to the dish. If you use fish like cod, remember to add it right at the end and only cook it for a few (?three/four) minutes otherwise the fish becomes rubbery and it ruins the dish. This is a very healthy and tasty dish. Personally, I like it as a vegetable tagine soup.

Course Dinner, Lunch

Cuisine Middle Eastern

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes

Total Time 45 minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

To make the marinade, mix the following ingredients together in a bowl.

2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp salt
1 lemon – the juice of
2 garlic cloves very finely chopped or half a large frozen cube
fresh coriander – one/one-and-a-half handfuls – finely chopped

For the main dish

4 garlic cloves or one large frozen cube
200 g chopped tomatoes preferably cherry tomatoes – half a tin
4 large potatoes – chopped roughly to 5 cm cubes
half butternut squash – chopped to 3 cm cubes
2 handfuls button mushrooms halved
400 ml vegetable or chicken stock I prefer chicken
half a can of sweetcorn
salt and fresh pepper to season

Optional

White fish like cod – 4 pieces do not over cook
8-10 chicken thighs – fry them off first before adding
2 x preserved lemons – if you really like a strong lemon taste

Method

If you are using chicken, make two lots of the marinade. Use one of the marinade batches to marinade the chicken for 60 minutes or preferably overnight preferably. Then lightly fry the chicken thighs in a frying pan with something like a spray or two of Fry Light.
If you are not using chicken, then just make one batch of marinade.
Par boil the chopped potatoes – not for too long. Perhaps only 5-10 minutes.
In a frying pan, add one batch of marinade.
Add the 4 cloves of garlic too. Fry for around 1-2 minutes.
Add the chopped tomatoes (preferably cherry tomatoes)
Add the stock (preferably chicken stock)
Then add the potatoes, butternut squash, mushrooms and sweetcorn.
Optional: If you are planning on using chicken, add it to the pan now (after having marinated and lightly fried it off in a frying pan first).
Optional: If you plan to add fish, don’t do so until the last 3-4 minutes of cooking time. The time to add them is when the potatoes are just 3-4 minutes from being cooked. Add the fish pieces on top of the potatoes. Cover with pan, and allow to ‘steam’ for 3-4 mins. Make sure the fish is not overcooked because otherwise it will be rubbery and spoil the dish.
Optional: you can add a couple of roughly chopped preserved lemons at this point (mix into the dish) if you want to – but it will make it quite lemony!

Recipe Notes

Please note: Frozen cubes of garlic or ginger can be found in international supermarkets and in some major English supermarket stores. One rectangular cube measures 3.5cm x 3.5cm x 1.5cm.