Tagines...

...are getting very popular!



The name, Tagine comes from the terracotta slow cooking vessel used in most of North Africa, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.
Before we got a gas hob, my mother did all her cooking on a charcoal burner, which meant that she had to start preparing food very early in the morning.

When I was about 12 or 13, she began sending me to do the daily shopping before going to school. The freshest of meats, fish or vegetables!
By the time we all came back from school at midday, our delicious lunch was ready and waiting.

Nowadays, at Krimo's we prepare our Lamb Tagine in a large stew pan but serve it in the traditional Terracotta dish.




Most of our Terracotta tagines came not all the way from North Africa but from Sedgefield of all places.
I gave Bill Todd of Sedgefield Pottery, a drawing and he happily reproduced dozens of them for us over the years.

Though he really enjoyed making the tagines, due to new commitments, Bill is no longer able to create those beautiful dishes. We have since sourced other firms supplying genuine Moroccan tagines, but being the eternal romantic, I will honestly miss the marriage of Northern artistic ingenuity and North African culinary theatre.