Demani

Tomorrow is a big day. 

I feel like a little kid again on Christmas Eve. How will I be able to sleep? 

'Nuala's Kitchen' (with Nuala of course) is moving to university. 

Nuala's University Kitchen 

New kitchen. New place. New recipes.  New Nuala (not really!). It's only fitting to have a new name. Nualalalala is the new name.  It is pronounced NU - LA - LA - LA. 

Tonight I have an utterly delicious meal with the family; cooked by none other then my wonderful Grandmother. (Previously mentioned here). With me going off to university in mind she made a 'university type meal' - Vegetable Tagine. You will probably be wondering what she meant by this. In her words : "an easy to make, healthy, affordable, adaptable and most importantly tasty dish". 

A Tagine is a morrocan style dish. It is basically roasted vegetables in a tomato based sauce with herbs and spices served with couscous. Root vegetables are especially cheap at this time of year (as they are in season) and extremely easy to roast. I would suggest to roast extra and then you can use them to make a range of other dishes such as soups, salads, stews or as a side with meat or fish. Also if you prefer some vegetables then you can add extra, if you don't like some vegetables you can omit them.  The main spices used was Harissa paste which is easy to find in many supermarkets. 

Serves 4 

Ingredients: 

1 courgette 

1 sweet potato

1 aubergine

1 squash 

1 carrot 

1 peppers

1 red onion 

1 tablespoon olive oil

Salt and pepper

1 onion, finely sliced

1 teaspoon Harissa paste 

1 tin of chopped tomatoes 

1 tin of chickpeas 

100g of couscous 

Optional to serve: yoghurt, flakes almonds, coriander 

Method: 

1) To make the roasted vegetables: Cut all the vegetables up into large chunks of the same size (about 1inch square); including the onions into large pieces. Put into a roasting tin and toss with olive oil, salt and pepper.  Roast in a preheated oven at C200 for about 30minutes until caramelised. 

2) To make the sauce: Gently fry an sliced onion with olive oil until caramelised in a large saucepan. Pour the tin of tomato and chickpeas into the saucepan. Add the Harissa paste and simmer for 10mins. Turn off and leave in pan until vegetables are cooked. 

3) Once vegetables are cooked remove from the oven and add to the saucepan with the sauce. Gently heat the sauce. Whilst the sauce is warming up cook couscous to packet instruction.  Serve the sauce on top of the couscous. 

Variations: 

- You can add cooked chicken chunks to the sauce when you add the roasted vegetables. 

- To make it gluten free replace the couscous with quinoa.