The first person who educated me that tagine is first, a cooking vessel before its namesake was passed on to the stew it helps cook was Brittany. In October we were eating at a delicious Moroccan restaurant (see link in caption) in Irving/Dallas, Texas and she told us she used to have a “tagine.” Puzzled, knowing that three of the dishes ordered by us were tagines, I thought, well I used to have a donut, but then I ate it! Or I used to have a lot of foods, but them things don’t last very long! She then explained to my ignorant self that the dish is named after the pot used.
Glad I could share the info :) ! Here is the wikipedia link.
The inspiration behind this week’s FFD was Anthony Bourdain. Still reading his Cook’s Tour, I came across a definitive passage on tagines last night. So I thought I’d also share an excerpt.
The waiter brought a big tagine of bubbling-hot kefta, set it down on the table and removed the top. A tagine – I should explain to avoid confusion – refers to the cooking vessel of the same name. Nowadays, since the introduction of the pressure cooker, it is used largely as a serving platter. The tagine is a large, shallow, glazed bowl, with a sloping, conical top like a minaret’s peak. Nomadic people used to carry them from camp to camp preparing slow-cooked meal-in-one fare over open fires, using the tagine as an all-purpose stewpot. It was a low-maintenance way for women to cook: Simply put the food on the fire, then move on to other pressing chores, like tending to livestock, gathering wood, nursing kids, making bread – all this while the stew (also referred to as tagine) cooked. In Morocco, if you didn’t know already, like the James Brown classic, it’s a man’s man’s world. The women cook.
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