This past week’s winner of most views by a country was Algeria with 355 views.  Dininglite.blog seems to be very popular in North Africa. Both Egypt, last week’s winner, and Algeria made strong showings. I decided to make a tagine which is a dish that is widespread in North Africa. The protein component is chickpeas. John and I made the tagine with a variety of vegetables and served it in the traditional manner with couscous.

Chickpea tagine with vegetables and couscous

In making the tagine we cut back on the oil that was suggested in our recipe and omitted the sweet potato. We pared back the cinnamon to 1/2 teaspoon because a whole teaspoon seemed like a really large amount. We substituted golden raisins for the dried apricots because that’s what we had. We added cauliflower and some green beans to up the vegetables content. Here is a link to the recipe we used.

While the tagine bubbles away the kitchen is resplendent with the aroma of coriander, cinnamon, and turmeric. A tablespoon of Harissa gives the dish a nice, spicy back-of-the-throat zing. We added a little sriracha to get a front of the mouth spiciness. Now that we have tried tagine, we plan on putting it into our vegetarian/vegan rotation of dishes.

Who will win next week? So far the Philippines are in the lead with Thailand close behind. I am looking forward to finding and making a recipe from either of these countries! (FYI, previous winners are not eligible for at least 8 weeks.)