Beef Tangia with HerbsToday's recipe is for a Moroccan dish, a tangia (not to be confused with a tagine). A tagine is also a slow-cooked stew and the name is applied both to the stew and to the shallow dish - with its conical lid - in which it is cooked.
My recipe is adapted
from one in Robert Carrier's Taste
of Morocco Moroccan cooking also uses smen, a clarified butter, sometimes herbed. Often it is used in quantities that look like they would readily escalate one's cholesterol reading. I prefer to use a modest amount of olive oil. In fact, as in this dish everything is dumped into the pot and then cooked, and the fat is not used for browning but rather for flavour, I left it out completely. The quantity was 100g if you want to use smen.
1kg blade steak, trimmed and diced Put all ingredients in a flame-proof casserole (above) cover and put in a pre-heated oven, 150C, for about three hours.
|
A
tangia is a dish traditionally cooked by men. Tangia refers to
the amphora-shaped earthenware vessel (left) it is cooked in.
It is filled with the ingredients then taken down to the local
bath-house/sauna (hamman) where it is cooked for several hours
in the furnace room ashes underneath the hammans. I couldn't quite
see The Spouse, casserole under his arm, traipsing around town
looking for a sauna with an ashpit, so I cooked the dish in our
own oven. A tangia should also be eaten outdoors, I am told. However,
although it was a mild enough winter's day for people to be out
in T-shirts last Saturday, the evening was pretty crisp and dinner
by the fire was a more enticing proposition.
(ISBN
0-009-960470-6) published by Arrow (1989). The original, Alami's
Tangia de boeuf aux herbes suggested either shin of beef or
oxtail. I used a good quality blade steak but I think the recipe
would be equally good made with lamb shanks.
Beef tangia with herbs
Email | ©2008 Churchill Communications