A taste of North Africa at home.

I visited Morocco a few years ago on a tour with my University. Loved it, the people and the food. It's very hard to recreate the food as our ingredients are slightly different, and I don't know about you but I don't have a massive clay oven to throw my tagines into... This is a simple and basic Moroccan inspired (I'm not claiming this as authentic Moroccan, it's like saying Chicken tikka Masala is Indian or Sweet and Sour pork balls are Chinese...) but it is really nice regardless.

Makes a LOAD for the freezer:

1kg Braising steak or Leg of Lamb
2 Medium Onions, medium sliced
2 carrots, chopped
2 Sticks of Celery, chopped
2 Bay Leaves
2 Cinamon sticks
6-8 cloves of garlic, crushed/chopped
1tsp pepper corns
1tsp whole cloves
2-3 Fresh green chillies
1 tbs honey
1/2 Jar of preserved lemons
2 tins of chickpeas
125g whole, blanched and peeled almonds
125g sultanas or raisins
1 litre of stock
2tsp ground cumin
2tsp ground coriander
1tsp ground cinnamon
1tsp ground cloves
Fresh mint and coriander
salt, pepper.
sunflower oil

First, trim and dice your meat. This is best made with leg or shoulder of lamb... but it can be made with cheaper stewing beef. Brown the meat off in your largest roasting pot in batches. Place on a plate and set to the side.

Add more oil to the pot, throw in the cinnamon sticks, wholes pepper corns and cloves, and the bay leaves. Fry for a few seconds then add the onions, garlic, carrots and celery. fry gently for 10 mins. Add your spices, stir. Add the almonds, chickpeas, browned meat, sultanas and chopped chillies. Season well. Add enough stock to cover the ingredients by 1/2 inch. Add your chopped preserved lemons and honey. If you cant get preserved lemons just all thick slices of fresh lemon.... but it is worth using preserved lemons. Its one of the main binding flavours of the dish, it's like fish sauce in Thai green curry, soy sauce in stir fried rice, etc.

Stir, place the lid on the pot and simmer gently until the meat is very tender (2 hours for braising steak, 3 for stewing steak, 1h30mins for leg of lamb, 2h 30mins for shoulder of lamb). About 15-20mins before serving add a handful of finely chopped mint and coriander.

Serve with plain rice, spicy oven cooked potatoes or cous cous.