We Interrupt this Soap Opera to Bring you a Cookery Show...

Last year (or was it the year before – time flies!), Nicky and I travelled to Morocco for a much needed week's break.

Far from the tourist throngs on the coast, we stayed at an old Pasha’s palace in Taroudant, a walled town nestled at the foot of the Atlas Mountains.

I loved the place, the people, the culture, the fabulous landscapes up in the mountains. I also developed a taste for Tagines.

Shortly before we left, Nicky, the fluent Francophone, haggled at one of the spice stalls in the souk and came away with the most amazing range of spice mixtures you could imagine, together with instructions as to what to use with what. We split the spices when we got back and since then I’ve been developing a line in home-cooked Moroccan cuisine.

Tonight for the first time, thanks to a kind birthday gift from my folks, I’m able to cook up a meal in a proper tagine.



After coating the meat in the special “35 spice” mixture and lightly browning it off in some olive oil, I throw in some more spice, stock, vegetables, juice and preserved lemon, pop the lid on and just shove it in the oven for at least an hour.

Stewart is mighty impressed at the highly flavoured and beautifully tender meal that emerges. It seems a shame to tell him how easy it is…