Meal prep doesn't have to be boring! Sometimes all it takes is a little inspiration.
I really enjoy Middle Eastern and North African cuisine, and Morocco happens to be a place I'd love to eventually visit. So upon doing a little digging, I found that tagines are the quintessential Moroccan meal! They're typically a beautiful blend of sweet and savory, but have plenty of room for you to play around with the flavors.
A tagine is not just a recipe for a meal, but it also refers to a specific type of pot.
The tagine is a pot, similar to a cast iron or dutch oven, but the lid is shaped like a cone which allows for the moisture from the steam to return right back down into the tagine. When referring to the meal, a tagine is much like a stew but with less liquid. So it's not a soupy recipe, but more of a thick mixture of delicious flavors and textures. Everything turns out extremely tender and delicious, but it is most certainly not a soup. So that's why you won't typically find tagine recipes calling for adding a broth or much liquid at all.
I was feeling inspired, and so I opted to throw together a tagine with what I had on hand for my weekly meal prep and it turned out great! Traditionally you'd serve a tagine with couscous, but I opted to use faro instead for a higher protein and higher fiber carb source. There's lots of room for creativity in a tagine, using what you have in your pantry or fridge or even opt for a vegetable only version! I don't have a true tagine pot, so I used my large cast iron and lid which worked out really well. You could also turn this into a crockpot or slow cooker meal as well.
Ingredients:
1 lb chicken breast
1 can pinto beans (or garbanzo beans)
1 can of crushed tomatoes
1 onion
4-5 cloves of garlic
4 carrots
4-6 pitted medjool dates
1/4 cup raisins
1 tbs cinnamon
1 tbs ginger
1 tbs coriander
1 tbs cumin
1 tsp nutmeg
Optional:
2 tbs pistachios
2 tbs almonds
Steps to make:
Peel and chop the onion and set aside. Chop the carrots into 1/2 inch thick coins and set aside. Mince the garlic and set aside. Roughly chop the pitted dates and set aside.
Sprinkle your large cast iron, dutch oven or tagine with olive oil and heat to medium high. Once the oil is hot, toss in the chopped onion and sauté for 5-6 mins until it becomes translucent.
Once the onions have cooked through, toss in the minced garlic and sauté for 2-3 minutes. Be careful not to let the garlic burn, so watch it carefully.
Pour in the crushed tomatoes, add the seasonings and combine. Reduce heat to medium low.
Gently fold in the beans and chopped carrots (or chopped vegetables you chose) until they are well combined with the tomato base.
Once the vegetables and beans are combined with the base, fold in the chopped dates and whole raisins.
Generously salt and pepper the chicken breasts and then nestle them into the tagine in the pot.
Once the chicken is inside the tagine, cover the pot and bring the heat down to a simmer for about 45 minutes.
While the tagine is cooking, make your couscous or rice to go alongside it.
Optional: toast some sliced almonds and pistachios in melted butter to top off your tagine!
I opted to measure out my tagine by first removing the chicken so that I could ensure I was getting enough protein. So I used 1/2 cup of cooked faro, topped it with a generous portion of tagine and then about 3oz of the chicken. Sprinkled 1/2 tbs of toasted nuts on top and 1 tbs of plain hummus. You could also sprinkle some lemon juice on this as well for a bright acidity!
Macros (for faro, chicken, tagine base, nuts and hummus):
41 g carbs
15 g fat
25 g protein
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