Tagine

A tagine is a North African stew of spiced meat, poultry or fish cooked slowly with vegetables, dried fruit or preserved lemon, named after the earthenware pot in which it is traditionally cooked. The pot itself has two parts, a shallow round base and a tall cone or dome shaped lid that traps and returns rising steam so the food braises gently in very little added water, a lid design associated with the town of Tafraout in Morocco. Common seasonings include ginger, cumin, turmeric, cinnamon and saffron, and the dish is central to Moroccan home cooking as well as to the wider cuisines of the Maghreb, including Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, and to Sephardic Jewish cooking across North Africa and its diaspora. The word tagine itself ultimately derives from the ancient Greek word for a frying pan, reflecting the long history of cooking vessels moving around the Mediterranean.