Thursday: Lamb and apricot tagine

lamb and apricot tagine. Photograph: Eric Luke
lamb and apricot tagine. Photograph: Eric Luke
Serves: 6
Course: <course>
Cooking Time: 2 hrs 0 mins

Ingredients

  • Few glugs olive oil
  • 1 kg diced lamb
  • Salt and pepper
  • 2 onions peeled and chopped
  • 4 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
  • 5 cm knob ginger, chopped
  • 2 tsp ground cumin
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 tsp fennel seeds
  • 1 tbsp harissa
  • 1 litre chicken stock
  • 350g dried apricots
  • 4-6 large tomatoes, roughly chopped
  • 100g green olives, stoned
  • 100g shelled pistachios
  • 1 bunch coriander

Heat the olive oil in a large heavy-based saucepan and brown the lamb well on all sides. Season it generously. When you have a good colour on the meat, after a solid five minutes of stirring and browning on a relatively high heat, add the onions, garlic, ginger and cook out for another minute or two, until the onions start to soften and caramelise. Add the spices and harissa. Mix really well and cook out for another few minutes so that the spices and harissa coat the meat. Add the stock. Cover with a lid, turn down the heat and simmer for at least an hour, stirring occasionally, making sure nothing is burning on the bottom of your saucepan.

After the lamb has undergone the first hour of cooking, you can cool it down at this stage and leave it overnight for the flavours to develop.

But allow for at least another hour of cooking time the next day. However if you want to make it all in one go, then add the apricots, tomatoes, olives and pistachios and cook, without a lid on, for another hour.

At this stage it should have reduced to a nice consistency and the flavours should be really good. The lamb needs to cook for at least two hours in total which can be done in one go, or split over two days.

The harissa gives it heat with body rather than outright fire, but feel free to add more. Garnish with the coriander.

Domini Kemp

Domini Kemp

Domini Kemp, a contributor to The Irish Times, is a chef and food writer