Roast Cauliflower Tagine

Stew and I attempted our very first tagine last week. We found a recipe on Good Housekeeping for a roast cauliflower tagine and made a couple of adjustments to make it our own. Essentially it was fairly easy to make, but it did take a little while. This was mainly down to the fact we made our own harissa paste. You can easily buy this in any supermarket for a couple of pounds, but as we were very kindly bought a mortar and pestle for Christmas, we like to make our own. So this added on a little time to our prep, which wasn't the best idea for a Monday night, when we'd both had a stressful day at work and were starving! So for the purpose of this recipe I will pretend that we used a shop bought harissa paste. However if you would like to make your own, here's a recipe that we use all the time. It's fairly simple - dried chilies, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, garlic, oil and salt.

We paired our tagine with fluffy quinoa and bulgar wheat, plus a side of natural yogurt. I found the yogurt essential, as the tagine was a little spicy. It was nice to have the cooling element. Tagines are often serves with couscous or quinoa, however I think it would be great with brown rice, to add that little bit of crunch.

Ingredients (serves 4):

• 1 large cauliflower, cut into florets
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 2 small red onions, chopped
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tbsp harissa paste
• 1 tin chickpeas (we substituted for black eyed beans as we had no chickpeas)
• 50g dried apricots, chopped
• 100g pitted green olives
• 400g tin chopped tomatoes
• 50g spinach
• 1 handful of fresh coriander, roughly chopped
• Natural yogurt to serve (remove if vegan)
• 150g quinoa and bulgar wheat

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Add the cauliflower, 1 tbsp olive oil, the cumin seeds and salt/pepper to a baking tray. Mix around and roast for 30-35 minutes, checking halfway and turning if necessary.
2. Whilst your cauliflower is roasting rinse your quinoa and add to a medium sized pan. Add 400ml water, bring to the boil and then simmer for 20 minutes.
3. Add the other tablespoon of olive oil to a large pan on a medium heat, and add the onions. Fry until softened (approx 7-10 mins).
4. Add the coriander, cinnamon and harissa. Stir in the chickpeas (or other type of beans), apricots and olives. Mix thoroughly.
5. Add the tin of chopped tomatoes and fill the empty tin halfway with water and add this too. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 15 minutes.
6. Drain any excess water from the quinoa and let stand for a further 10 minutes.
7. Stir through the spinach and roasted cauliflower to the tagine mix. Add the fresh coriander, fluff up your quinoa and serve everything with a healthy spoonful of natural yogurt.