Hi Megan

As promised here is the Moroccan Meatball Tagine I made on Sunday. The recipe, once again, is not my own and can be found here: http://moroccanfood.about.com/od/tipsandtechniques/ss/how_to_meatball_tagine.htm

If anyone ever decides to make this, here is my feedback. The very first step calls says “Begin by Grating or Chopping the Tomatoes”. Can I just say whatever you do, DO NOT GRATE THE TOMATOES. They are slippery feckers that are not designed to be grated and I think I grated more finger than tomato doing this. The next time I will definitely be blanching, peeling, deseeding, then chopping.  Somehow at the time I decided that that process was more labour intensive and being a person who is fond of a shortcut I thought grating would be easier. I can tell you now, it’s not.

As you know, the tagine dish was a present from a friend who has just returned from a trip to Morocco. Thanks Paula. She also brought me some premixed tagine spice which I used instead of the spices listed in the recipe. I figured the Moroccans known how to make their national dish.  Otherwise I followed the recipe exactly. I wanted to use lamb mince but the butcher didn’t have any so I got some premium quality steak mince for the meatballs.

I made one major mistake, I added too much water after the meatballs. Once I put the lid on the dish it just kept spilling over and burning on the hotplate. I ended up straining all excess liquid out which resulted in sauce being not quite as wet as I would have liked. I served it with lemon, coriander and pine nut cous cous and an unhealthy dose of pride. I was delighted with myself. It looked so impressive on the table. The flavours while being fragrant and colourful were still quite subtle and definitely not overpowering. All  in all it was effin delicious and I’ll definitely make it again.

Susan, my housie and Jonathan her boyf were suitably impressed, even though Susan does think that eggs are evil. I thought the eggs were pure genius myself.