Crunchy Cook Recipe: Moroccan Vegetable Tagine

This spiced, fruity vegetable stew is high in fibre and gets a protein boost from chickpeas. Inspired by traditional Moroccan flavours, it's packed with flavour and served over fluffy cous cous.

We’ve made it as easy as possible for you to make this dish by packing the ingredients into a Crunchy Cook meal kit bag: we weigh everything out for you, include a recipe sheet and have filmed a step-by-step video showing you how to make it: How to Make Our Moroccan Tagine Video. Crunchy Cook bags save you time, cost almost the same as buying the ingredients in-store (we add 50p for packaging and packing), and cut food waste because you buy exactly what you need.

Find out more about the bags, including how to order them, here.

Serves 4

Time to prepare and cook: 1 hour

Ingredients
Basic recipe, ingredients included in the bag:
1 onion, diced
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 carrot, cut into bite-size chunks
1 large sweet potato, cut into chunks
1 leek, sliced about 1cm thick
10 dried prunes, dates or apricots, chopped
1 tin chickpeas, drained
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 tablespoon paprika
1 teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
Small bunch coriander, finely chopped
Small bunch mint, finely chopped
1 vegetable stock cube
200g cous cous

Not included in bag:
Salt & pepper
Oil for frying 

Optional additions:
1 teaspoon chilli powder / 1 fresh chilli, finely chopped
Thumb-sized piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated
Juice of ½ lemon

Method

1.      Heat the oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Turn the heat down low and add the onion, carrot and leek and sweat until lightly browned and the onions and leeks are softened, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic, paprika, cumin and cinnamon and cook for another two or three minutes to cook off the spices (add the grated ginger and chilli here if using).

2.      Tip in the sweet potato, chickpeas, tinned tomatoes, dried fruit, half the stock cube and 400ml of water, cover with the lid and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes until the vegetables are soft and the liquid reduced.

 3.      Tip the cous cous into a heat-proof bowl and crumble over the remaining half of the stock cube. Pour boiling water over until it just covers the cous cous. Stir once with a fork, make sure all the grains are submerged and cover with a clean tea-towel for 5 minutes. Take off the tea-towel, check the cous cous is soft (if not leave for another couple of minutes) and if so fluff up the grains with a fork.

 4.      Stir the fresh coriander and mint (and the lemon juice, if using) through the tagine and serve with the cous cous.

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Cooking Techniques Explained

Sweat: cooking vegetables gently in oil or butter so they soften without browning too much. For example, to sweat onion means to gently cook it over a low heat until it turns translucent without browning. Putting a lid on the pan helps this process by causing condensation to drop back into the pan and stop the veg drying out.

Boil: Heating a liquid until it bubbles vigorously.

Simmer: Heating until bubbles gently break the surface, below boiling point.

Dice: Cutting food into small cube shapes, about 0.5cm wide.

Crush: Usually used when preparing garlic: once you’ve chopped it as small as you can, crush it into a paste using the edge of your knife or a spoon to get as much flavour out as possible.

Sauté: quickly frying in a hot pan, in oil or butter.