Moroccan meatballs

With all the Christmas roast meat I really felt like a different kind of dinner this week. A while back I spotted that a fellow Daring Cook had tried out a Moroccan meatballs recipe for our December 2010 challenge. In that version it was served with a poached egg (poaching was our challenge for the month). Looking for a slightly less rich dish after all the Christmas excesses I actually served it without the egg, but it would clearly be delicious with one. We had steamed rice and spinach instead.



The Moroccan Merguez Ragout recipe has a wonderful blend of spices, both in the meatballs and the accompanying ragout. I'm always going on about how much I like Moroccan and Middle Eastern food, so no surprise that I liked the dish, but Dan also particularly loved this, so thanks to Audax for a very delightful dinner!



Find the recipe here.

Moroccan Pancakes, completely ignoring the written recipe!

We had a vegetarian dinner tonight and Dan didn't even complain. I'm getting there - I'll win him round eventually!

It was a Moroccan recipe of stuffed pancakes, but given that I amended every constituent of the recipe I'm not sure if I should be counting it. Still, it was rather tasty, and I think the filling could be used for other dinners too, maybe mixed with rice for a pilaf style dish.

The filling was 1/2 onion chopped and fried gently until soft, then I added 150g spinach and let it wilt. I then chopped that all up finely and mixed it with some mashed up chickpeas (a 200g can should do it), a good handful of coriander leaves, 1 grated courgette and 1 beaten egg. Season to taste and add a shake of ground cumin and ground coriander.
I used 4 gallettes (which I have posted about before) and spooned the mixture in, wrapped them up and put them in a baking dish. I spooned 100g sheeps milk yoghurt over the top and baked them for about 15 mins at 180C.

(The original recipe used a bechemal sauce rather than yoghurt, no spices in the mix, and normal pancakes instead of gallettes.)

Moroccan flavours for winter warming

When I went to Morocco I didn't get to taste a single morsel of the food. I was playing on a cruise ship, we docked for less than 24 hours and I had to be back on the ship for rehearsals at lunchtime. What a shame that now seems.



This week's recipe was Moroccan roast lamb, so I decide to keep the theme running and have a go at homemade houmous too.
The lamb was good. Roasted with butter, garlic, and cumin, and served with couscous and roast Mediterranean vegetables. The only problem with it was that on a cold British sunday what you really want with roast lamb is rosemary, garlic, gravy and roast potatoes. A good dish for a springtime meal though I think.



The houmous on the other hand, I was proud of. Made from scratch, including soaking the chickpeas overnight, it was firmer and less oily than the shop variety. I expect that canned chickpeas would be absolutely fine, but it seemed not quite in the spirit of the project to use them. At least not the first time.

Houmous
100g dried chickpeas
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon tahini
1-2 garic cloves - crushed
Olive oil
Salt and black pepper

Cover the chicpeas in cold water and leave to soak overnight.
The next day rinse the chickpeas, put in a heavy bottomed pan, cover in cold water, bring slowly to the boil. Skim off any scum that forms on the surface, reduce the heat and leave to simmer with the lid on for 1 1/2 - 2 hours until the chickpeas are tender.
Drain, reserving a bit of the cooking liquid. Put into a food processor with the lemon juice, tahini,garlic and seasoning and blend until smooth. Mix in a little olive oil and some of the cooking water until the houmous reaches your prefered consistency.
Taste and adjust to your own preferences - personally I like my houmous fairly lemony but not too oily. I also added a little sprinkle of paprika at the end. A few toasted cumin seeds are also a good addition.
Enjoy!