Lamb Tajine with Prunes

I had written about the chicken pastilla recipe (recipe HERE): no more Moroccan recipes for a while! But in the meantime, I went back to Rabat for a few days with my friends. And then disaster! We spent our days baking: tarts, macaroons, nougatines, even attempts at mille-feuilles (a recipe I’ll put on the blog this year!), lots of puff pastry   (not easy in the heat, but we took up the challenge!) and of course Moroccan recipes! And so Lalla Myriam and I cooked a lamb tagine with prunes which is a marvel of sensation and simplicity! I rushed to make it again at home to photograph the recipe in the traditional tagine . You will see that the secret of tagine is a smooth sauce! It’s so good! Especially to  taste the sauce by dipping some bread in it before starting the meat and the prunes…

Put the meat in a pressure cooker (or a large saucepan or even a tajine on the stove!). 

Add spices: ginger powder, pepper…

Turmeric, saffron cube (or some real pistils) 

Add oil, butter, cinnamon and salt. 

Sear the meat well over fairly high heat at first. 

Add the onion cut in small pieces and a little water to start the cooking (50g).

Then cook for a good hour (or even an hour and a half) in a pressure cooker. If you don’t have a casserole dish, you will have to close the lid of the dish and prolong the cooking time (three hours or more!). The meat must come off the bone! It is necessary to supervise from time to time and to add a little water if necessary. 

Take some of the cooking juice and put it in a saucepan   with the prunes. They will be cooked separately to avoid pureeing them in the tagine! 

Add the 50g of sugar to the prunes. 

Continue cooking uncovered (without lid) to reduce juices. The sauce must be “coating” and unctuous, it is there all the secret of a perfectly successful tagine!

Do the same with the prune juice. The sauce becomes very smooth. If this is not the case and the prunes are threatening to mashed potato, simply pour the prune juice (without the prunes) back into the pot and reduce it again. 

Once everything is well cooked and the sauce is smooth, pour the meat and its juice into a dish (a tagine!!) and pour the prunes in their juice over it! The whole thing is truly divine! You can add blanched, fried or toasted and crushed almonds, but only at the very end, to prevent them from getting soft!