Smoked Fish Tagine - 101 Cook Books

One of my favourite Christmas presents had to this gorgeous, traditional tagine.

I have wanted to invest in a tagine for a while now and my lovely eldest son picked up on this and asked the hubby to buy me one for him to give to me as my Christmas present. This gift means a lot for two reasons, the first is that it is something that I have really wanted but secondly, J took the time to listen and realise this was something that I wanted and found this one for me himself. My first born is certainly growing up at a scarily rapid rate! As this is a traditional tagine a heat diffuser is needed to prevent cracking, so once I had one I could not wait to get cooking! 

You may also see in the title I have a new theme. This is the first, what I hope to become a weekly feature, 101 Cook Books posts. Like a lot of foodies I have a huge collection of cook books. I have had a count of the books that are in my kitchen, office and living room bookshelf and have actually accumulated about 101 cook books! Before I counted them I had no idea how many I had and yes, I was amazed by the number. My 101 Cook Books posts are my way of sharing the books that I love but I am also wanting the posts to encourage me to use my books more often. Each week I am going to use one of my cook books to make a meal and I am going to blog about it. My posts will feature the recipe, tell you what, if anything, I changed and tell you a little bit about the book. Over time I hope to tell you about all of my cook books and who inspires my everyday cooking.

Today's recipe is based on a deliciously slimming recipe that I found in Slimming World Free Food Feasts. Since I started to follow the Slimming World eating plan this has to be one of my favourite go to cook books. It contains 60 fantastic "free" recipes. If you do not know how Slimming World works, "free" foods are foods that can be eaten freely, no calorie counting, no weighing and no limit except from your appetite! My Smoked Fish Tagine has been based on the Slimming World Squash, Swede and Chickpea Tagine recipe. The majority of the recipe has been followed, I have not used the garlic as the recipe states as they are high in FODMAP's but have added carrots, red pepper and smoked fish.

This is what I did...

Smoked Fish Tagine

Ingredients

6 spring onions, sliced (just the green part if you are following a low FODMAP diet)

2 tsp ground cumin

2 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp chilli powder

1 tsp cinnamon

4 tbsp tomato puree

1 butternut squash, peeled and chopped

1 med swede, chopped

800 mls vegetable stock

Juice of half a lemon

400g tin of chickpeas

2 carrots, chopped

1 red pepper, chopped

250g smoked fish, I used Smoked River Cobbler

Spray oil

2 tbsp fresh coriander, chopped

Method

1 - Gently heat the tagine using a heat diffuser if you have a traditional style tagine. If you do not have a tagine you can use a large saute pan.

2 - Spray the tagine with oil and add the spring onions

3 - Stir fry the onions on a medium to low heat for about 5 minutes or until soft

4 - Add the cumin, ground coriander, chilli powder, cinnamon and tomato puree and heat for 2 minutes

5 - Add the butternut squash, swede and carrots, stir thoroughly ensuring the vegetables are coated in the spiced tomato puree

6 - Pour over the vegetable stock and the lemon juice and bring to a simmer

7 - Place the lid of the tagine on the base and leave to simmer for 40 minutes or until the vegetables are starting to soften

8 - Add the red pepper, smoked fish and chickpeas, replace the lid and leave for a further 20 minutes

9 - Sprinkle over the fresh coriander and serve with either rice or couscous

This meal was a huge success and even J who does not normally eat swede ate the lot! This meal is full of flavours from the spices and goodness from the vegetables. This recipe makes enough to feed five plus there was enough for leftovers!

The tagine has quickly become a much love piece of stoneware that I am looking forward to using a lot in the future. You can be guaranteed that there will be many more tagine recipes coming on Hijacked By Twins!

If you have some leftovers, as we did, I can thoroughly recommend that you place some in a blender and blitz it into a tasty warming soup. It is perfect for a cold day at this time of year.

What is your favourite cook book? Do you have a lot of cook books that you want to use more often? If so why not designate a weekly meal to a cook book recipe!

Enjoy x

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