Roast Cauliflower Tagine
Stew and I attempted our very first tagine last week. We found a recipe on
Good Housekeeping for a roast cauliflower tagine and made a couple of adjustments to make it our own. Essentially it was fairly easy to make, but it did take a little while. This was mainly down to the fact we made our own harissa paste. You can easily buy this in any supermarket for a couple of pounds, but as we were very kindly bought a mortar and pestle for Christmas, we like to make our own. So this added on a little time to our prep, which wasn't the best idea for a Monday night, when we'd both had a stressful day at work and were starving! So for the purpose of this recipe I will pretend that we used a shop bought harissa paste. However if you would like to make your own, here's a
recipe that we use all the time. It's fairly simple - dried chilies, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, garlic, oil and salt.
We paired our tagine with fluffy quinoa and bulgar wheat, plus a side of natural yogurt. I found the yogurt essential, as the tagine was a little spicy. It was nice to have the cooling element. Tagines are often serves with couscous or quinoa, however I think it would be great with brown rice, to add that little bit of crunch.
Ingredients (serves 4):
- 1 large cauliflower, cut into florets
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 2 small red onions, chopped
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tbsp harissa paste
- 1 tin chickpeas (we substituted for black eyed beans as we had no chickpeas)
- 50g dried apricots, chopped
- 100g pitted green olives
- 400g tin chopped tomatoes
- 50g spinach
- 1 handful of fresh coriander, roughly chopped
- Natural yogurt to serve (remove if vegan)
- 150g quinoa and bulgar wheat
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Add the cauliflower, 1 tbsp olive oil, the cumin seeds and salt/pepper to a baking tray. Mix around and roast for 30-35 minutes, checking halfway and turning if necessary.
- Whilst your cauliflower is roasting rinse your quinoa and add to a medium sized pan. Add 400ml water, bring to the boil and then simmer for 20 minutes.
- Add the other tablespoon of olive oil to a large pan on a medium heat, and add the onions. Fry until softened (approx 7-10 mins).
- Add the coriander, cinnamon and harissa. Stir in the chickpeas (or other type of beans), apricots and olives. Mix thoroughly.
- Add the tin of chopped tomatoes and fill the empty tin halfway with water and add this too. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 15 minutes.
- Drain any excess water from the quinoa and let stand for a further 10 minutes.
- Stir through the spinach and roasted cauliflower to the tagine mix. Add the fresh coriander, fluff up your quinoa and serve everything with a healthy spoonful of natural yogurt.
