This simple North African lamb stew, spotted years ago in Frances Bissell’s The Pleasures of Cookery (great title), is a handy winter dish for company—but I haven’t made it for a while.
Six French friends are coming to lunch tomorrow so I’m preparing it today. That way the taste should deepen while the panic levels lighten in the morning.
I once cooked this and was puzzled by the reduced volume–much less than usual. Then I spotted the bowl of beans hiding in full view on the counter–I’d forgotten to put them in!
All the ingredients, save the meat, looking eager to get started.
for 8
1 boned lamb shoulder (about 2k/4lb meat)–cut up into bite size (1″ish) pieces
3 tbs olive oil
4 garlic cloves–peeled & chopped
3 onions–sliced
1 1/2 tsp each whole cumin seeds
1 1/2 whole coriander seeds
24 dried apricots*–halved (the yellow ones show up prettier than the untreated variety I normally like)
1 1/2 pints stock–I use organic vegetable cubes
2 large tins (cans) of flageolet beans (little green ones)–drained
salt and pepper
A bunch of fresh coriander (or parsley)–chopped
Heat the oven at 160°C/325°F/Gas Mark 3.
Seal the meat in the hot olive oil, using a large frying pan–(you will probably have to do this in batches).
When nicely browned, remove it to the ovenproof casserole from which you will serve it.
Gently fry the onions and garlic in the fat and oil left in the pan, without browning them.
Fold in the whole spices and let them cook a little.
Add almost all the stock and let it reduce a bit.
Add the apricots.
Season this mixture well, with salt and pepper and pour it into the casserole.
Add a handful of coarsely chopped parsley or coriander.
In a separate pan heat the drained beans with the remaining stock.
When hot, add the beans with the stock to the casserole and turn everything over carefully.
Bring it all to a simmer on the top of the stove, then cover and place the casserole on a low shelf in the oven.
Cook for about 2 hours, checking after an hour to see if it needs topping up with stock—being careful not to lose the intensity of the sauce.
Serve over bulgar wheat–or if you prefer, cous cous or basmati brown rice.
Remembered the beans this time!
* Dried apricots are especially suitable for anyone, like me, watching blood sugar levels. http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/apricots-blood-sugar-9889.html
Robin Ellis 
Beautiful dish and cannot wait to try
This looks phenomenal. I am deflnitely going to make this. ❤
Robin my mouth is watering,we will be having this very soon.
Thank you for the recipe. I purchased a tagine in a Christmas sale, “my first tagine”. You guessed correctly it has just sat in it’s box in the kitchen cupboard. Hadn’t any Idea what to cook for the first time. So tomorrow deep breath, here goes your recipe will be my first try. Wish me luck!!!!!!!
Depends what size tagine (a friend gave me one years ago and it took me ages to use it!) you have–you may have to adjust the amounts. Good luck, Jane!
Apricots and lamb go so well together! One time instead of retying a butterlflied leg of lamb around stuffing, I laid the stuffing (including apricots in a somewhat North African seasoning) in the pan, and opened up the meat, fat side up, over it. Took rather less time, and was quite tasty.
Now for questions about the recipe:
what would you call the tinned flageolets verts were you in England or the US? I can tell they’re likely a broad bean, but not limas. Would butter beans work? I’m sure that cannelini, and certainly tarbais, would!
I agree with you about the yellow ones looking better–I suppose one snacks on the unsulfured, but serves the pretty ones. I grew up when the only “fruit leather” one could find was the Indian/Middle Eastern rounds of apricot–and my little Lebanese mom bought them when she could as treats.
I tend to use liquid stock or the More Than Gourmet glaces/essences to make a stock with water. They are less salty than many “quick stock” products, and I grew up on a low-sodium diet (from inside, as well!). I do like to make my own stock, but we’re short on storage for the needed bones for the meat stocks, and my belle-mère doesn’t understand why I want to do it! When going for vegetable stock, unless someone is allergic to fungi, I go for mushroom stock, as any self-respecting mushroom addict does. It’s the umami that drives that decision.
In the US, we tend to call the leaves cilantro and the seeds coriander–and the previously unaware person looking for Italian, or flat-leaved, parsley can mistake those leaves for each other. My husband, who claimed to dislike cilantro (from salsas with crisps), then couldn’t tell the difference–which I certainly can–between it and Italian parsley.
You say, “seal” the meat, where I would have said “brown” or “sear”–is this a UK/US variant? I’ve recently been taught to salt the meat as you’re browning it, rather than later, by food writer Michael Pollan. I can’t even remember what Raymond Sokolov’s advice was in The Saucier’s Apprentice, which was my education in making stocks and sauces: the book being packed up does not help my memory!
I note you sauté the onions & garlic–do you tend to sweat them, caramelize them, or merely soften them? Do you crush your spices before cooking them?
I love black and red rices, which are typically left with their brans, barley, spelt, and quinoas. In the Whole Foods Market in Cupertino (Apple Computer-land), they have bulk rices by the dozen–I think there are at least two dozen different rices alone, many of which I had never heard of before.
I use bulgur wheat, with which I grew up, primarily in tabbouli, and like the finer cous-cous. The larger “Israeli” couscous doesn’t do it for me–more for you who like it.
I never get to ask these questions from a silent cookbook! So glad I can ask you, Robin.
Marina in The Valley of Heart’s Delight, CA
Flageolet is the only word I know for these green beans. Sweating is accurate–in this case you don’t brown them. I’ll try Micael P’s advice–one of my heroes. Butterflying a leg o’ lamb is something I’m going to try too–thanks for reminding me.
I have not butterflied a leg of anything edible…yet. I did, as an older teen, take apart a chicken once, just to see if I could do it. Did fine–but do not ask me to carve poultry.
Would you be able to take a larger or less obstructed photo of the label on the tin aux flageolets? Remember to tell your felines that satisfaction will bring them back, should their curiosity go awry. Yes, I have always been a curious person.
When my husband and I were getting married, not that many years after the first two Poldark series, he asked his mom to bring the family recipe file cards, so that he could type them into a recipe file on the MacPlus.
I took a look at the jottings, and my not-so-inner Editor took over. I made a template/format to follow, including finding out who so&so was (not my family, *I* didn’t know where they fell in his family tree), filling in details, hashing out the instructions, and I really need to spend a solid week bringing it up to date since the last major edit, 3-5 years ago.
We have it printed out, in a giant clip that can hang off a hook on the refrigerator. Of course, I entered my own recipes. Anything new gets an entry date: the earlier ones get a guess as to when they were first used.
Hello Robin : Looks another tasty meal. Lamb is my favourite meat, not too sure about the apricots. Once invited to a dinner party where the food was Indian but the main course contained apricots & it was not to my taste (however the apricots were only cut in half, I thought this was far too big & had to leave them). I am nervous about cooking meat with fruit – still a stickler that fruit is for afterwards as a sweet.
What do you advise ? Still no snow here; lovely winter sun & was sitting out in garden eating breakfast at 7.am today as I watched & listened to all the birds eating their breakfast in my garden. Delightful. Enjoy your day 🙂 Shawdiane UK
🍀Shawdiane
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Follow your instincts.
HI, Robin. Success. The tagine came out of the cupboard, ingredients adjusted as you advised. Half the amount of the ingredients suggested served three to four with brown rice. So I now know the tagine is a four portion. I hope your dinner guests enjoyed the meal as much as my husband, daughter and I did. Thank you for an excellent recipe, great especially on a cold winters day. The tagine is now a part of my kitchen. Jane.
Their is an excellent chicken tagine recipe in Delicious Dishes for Diabetics…
Love apricots, lamb not so much. What meat would be the best substitute?
Thank you very much!
Barb
Your preferred choice of meat don’t you think?
I started digging into Moroccan cuisine seriously about five years ago; our guests absolutely love the various tagines I make and some actually call ahead to ask if I’d make a tagine for them. This sounds wonderful — It’s already printed out and in my file. Thanks for providing all the weight and temperature equivalents — and thanks for that delightful performance in She Loves Me on TV years ago! 🙂 Will
Thank you, Will! She Loves Me suited TV I thought-a chamber musical.
saffronrose: I looked up flageolets and the suggested substitution should you be unable to find them was navy beans.
Thank you! The last time I used small navy beans, they never softened–after two days of simmering! I’ll try another size next time.
I actually know a gentleman of your family name, in SF (I’m down the peninsula in San Jose). Chris is a dear–a retired butcher and does lamb to perfection when he grills it.
We have access to so many different varieties of old-time & heirloom/heritage dried beans these days–at least in the SF Bay area–that I’d have a hard time sticking to what I can always find at the corner market. I had the “misfortune” to walk by the Ranch Gordo “booth” at the SF Ferry Building after an author signing last summer (at another shop, this one enclosed), where they forced me to give in to the interesting scents of their samples. My parents didn’t take to dried beans/legumes/pulses, so I alwys avoided them. Not any more!
Marina
Hello Robin, I like this recipe (among many others) and am wondering what you would suggest as a substitute for the beans, so that it’s still fairly hearty but not, well, bean-y …beans and I don’t get along. xo Susan
Hi Susan–can you take chickpeas? or cook it without adding the beans and serve it over rice/cous-cous…
Let me know…
Susan, Robin once left the beans out by mistake and it still tasted good! –MW
That’s a nice challenge to my lamb and vegetables cous cous that friends and family love! I love lamb – it is one of my favourite meat and I must try this one with dried apricots. I have still to try chichen tagine and I think a “terracotta pot” large enough (the one I use for “pasta e fagioli”) would be ok without buying a proper “tagine pot”…I hope….I must do the experiment before inviting….
Sounds delicious. As an alternative to couscous or bulgur, consider trying finely chopped, blanched cauliflower. It has a mild flavor and soaks up the sauce like grains, but a lower glycemic index.
Thank you, Kevon, I like cauli–what a good idea.