Moroccan Fish Tagine (Mqualli)
Ingredients
- 2 pounds firm fish, or eel
- 1 batch chermoula marinade
- 2 bell peppers, any color
- 1/3 cup olive oil
- 1 large onion, cut into rings, optional
- 1 carrot, or celery stalk, cut into thin sticks
- 2 large potatoes, cut into thin slices
- 1 teaspoon ginger
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
- Pinch saffron threads, crumbled
- 2 to 3 tomatoes, seeded and cut into thin slices
- 1 lemon, cut into thin slices, or 1 preserved lemon, quartered
- Handful red olives
Instructions
- 1
Make the Chermoula and Roast the Peppers - Gather the ingredients.
- 2
Make the Chermoula and Roast the Peppers - Make chermoula marinade. Reserve and refrigerate half of the chermoula, and mix remaining half with fish.
- 3
Make the Chermoula and Roast the Peppers - Cover fish and refrigerate, allowing it to marinate for two hours or overnight.
- 4
Make the Chermoula and Roast the Peppers - Roast peppers, peel and seed them, and cut them into strips. Or, alternatively, slice raw pepper into rings. Set aside.
- 5
Make the Tagine - Pour olive oil into a tagine, and distribute onion slices across bottom. Criss-cross celery or carrot sticks in center to form a bed for the fish.
- 6
Make the Tagine - Mix potato slices with ginger, salt, pepper, turmeric, and saffron, and arrange potatoes around perimeter of tagine. Top potato with tomato slices, then distribute reserved chermoula over vegetables.
- 7
Make the Tagine - Add fish and its marinade to center of tagine, and arrange strips of pepper on top of fish in a decorative manner. Garnish tagine with lemon and olives, and sprinkle salt and pepper over all.
- 8
Make the Tagine - Cover tagine and cook over low to medium-low heat for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, or until the fish and potatoes are finished. Reduce sauce if necessary until it is quite thick.
- 9
Make the Tagine - Serve tagine directly from dish in which it was cooked, with Moroccan bread for scooping up the fish and sauce.
