Blogosphere Supper: Alu Parathas and Sweet&Savory Veal Tajine

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I hope you will forgive my telegraphic style today. I have a very mean cold (actually, I think it’s too mean to be just a common cold, it may be the flu). It practically paralyses me since yesterday morning.

Two days ago I made what I call a “blogosphere supper”. I do that a lot, selecting recipes on culinary blogs I read and make a supper out of them.

I made Moony’s Sweet and Savory Veal Tajine (Gastromoony) and Meenakshe’s Alu Parathas over at Hooked On Heat.

We really enjoyed these. I didn’t have the patience to reduce the tajine sauce correctly. I think the flu was beginning to kick in that night. But everybody loved the supper and Éric asked I make it again soon. He particularly liked the sweet-savory taste of the tajine.

I had to cut up the dried apricots in tiny bits because in this home, they supposedly do not like dried apricots. Of course they didn’t notice them and they ate everything without mentioning the apricots.

My sons and their cousins ate the Parathas leftovers for breakfast the day after. Since I had potatoes filling left I made them again for lunch that day and they all disappeared quickly.



Moony’s Sweet and Savory Veal Tajine

It’ll take you about 15 minutes to sweat 2 or 3 cut-up onions, 1 parsley branch, (I also added a celery branch took near the heart and with lots of leaves on it, finely diced), 6 dried apricots (also good with dried figs) and 3 tablespoons raisins in a pressure cooker containing 4 generous olive oil tablespoons.


Add the following seasoning: 2 teaspoons sugar, 1 pinch cinnamon, ½ teaspoon ginger powder, ¼ teaspoon black or white pepper, ¼ teaspoon turmeric, few saffron threads and salt to taste.


Add to this onion confit 350 g of boned veal (almost a pound) and brown the meat for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, boil some water and peel few carrots. Moony prefers using organic carrots when making a tajine because they keep a nice bright color and they stay firm. Traditionally in Meknès and Fès we cut the carrots match-stick style for tajines but you can cut them the way you want.

Add half a cup boiling water to the pressure cooker and close it tightly. Count 10 minutes cooking after the pressure cooker starts whistling. Open the cooker and allow the sauce to reduce by bringing it to a strong boil for 5 minutes or so.

Serve at once.

Like Moony, I find the next best thing to cook a tajine when you don’t have the traditional cookware is the pressure cooker. I find the slow cooker dries-up the meat, drawing its juices out. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, just allow the veal to cook slowly under medium-low heat in a covered pot and 20 minutes before it’s cooked, add the carrots. Allow to cook, covered. Then un-cover and give it a good boil to reduce the sauce.