The maiden voyage
Funny how things work out so perfectly some times. Marcos and I have been married for 8 months already. When we got married, we set out to buy each other a gift. He is always so generous with me, but I thought it would be nice to commemorate the day with something exciting.
I bought him a whole lot of juggling equipment, basically replacing all of his daily used highlighter pink stage balls and bright white clubs. Juggling is one of his great passions. He told me to select anything I wanted. Anything. I settled on wanting a nice watch. Blah, how boring!
I finally walked into Macy’s yesterday and met Julianna who helped me try on every watch that we could afford. We laughed about how people screw up our similar names. We got to talking, and she was excited that I nailed his passion for the wedding gift. She said, “You know, my husband just nailed my passion after 11 years”. He got her all the art supplies she could want, down to the finest detail on her preference of weighted paper. She lit up at the thought of her own delight on Christmas morning. I felt so happy for her.
So, to Julianna, if you are reading this, I was so inspired by your passion. I didn’t go back for the watch after all. I asked Marcos for the biggest dutch oven Le Creuset makes, at least the biggest one I could find. I did go back to Macy’s today. I got a 7 1/2 US quart cobalt blue round cast iron dutch oven. It is so big, I thought my oven rack was going to sag under the weight of it.
And it made my heart sing to think that I will cook meals for my family in this pot for as long as I can lift the darn thing.
On our maiden voyage, I prepared a tajine style Moroccan vegetable stew with saffron and preserved lemon, full of protein from garbanzo beans and spiked with the tiniest bit of ginger. The recipe is from the most fantastic cookbook I own, Classic Vegetarian Cooking from the Middle East & North Africa by Habeeb Salloum.
Moroccan vegetable stew
6 servings
2 tbls butter/vegan Earth Balance
2 medium onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
4 tbls cilantro, chopped
1 hot pepper, sliced
3 medium potatoes, gold or red, diced small
2 carrots, sliced thin
1 can garbanzo beans
4 tomatoes, diced
1 tsp grated ginger
1 tsp cumin
pinch of saffron
salt and pepper to taste
1 preserved lemon, sliced
1/2 c pitted green olives
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. In a large fry pan, saute onions, garlic, cilantro and pepper in the butter for 10 minutes on medium to high heat. Combine the onion mixture and all other ingredients except for the lemons and olives in a casserole dish, dutch oven or tajine. Cover and bake for 1 1/2 hours or until the vegetables are cooked. Spread the lemons and olives on top of the stew, replace cover and bake for an additional 10 minutes. Serve hot.
**This recipe only requires a 3 1/2 quart pot or casserole dish. I doubled the recipe for my new pot.
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