Tanjia: Veal Shanks with Garlic, Cumin and Candied Lemons

Here is a really simple and quick recipe to prepare. Perfect for a dish after the holidays. You have to eat anyway! It will take longer to cook, but the dish cooks itself! This is the principle of the tanjia. Because “tanjia” is the name of the earthen dish in which this tagine is originally prepared. All you had to do was put the ingredients in the dish and bring it to the village’s common oven. It is one of the few tagines prepared by men in Morocco. Baked before work, it was ready in time for lunch. Here, as always, it is with my friends Touria and Lalla Myriam that I prepared this delicious tagine with garlic, cumin and lemon confit. By the way, follow the news of the blog because Moroccan cooking classes will soon take place with them…!

Recipe of the tanjia:

-4 pieces of veal shanks

-3 tablespoons of olive oil
-50g of butter

-2 lemons preserved in salt

-1 large head of garlic (all the cloves, yes!)

-1+1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
-1 cube of saffron or a few pistils of saffron

-300ml of water

First, ask your butcher to cut your shanks into fairly thick slices. For the recipe in the picture, I only put 3 pieces…

You can then simply remove the hard fat around the meat if the butcher has not removed it all.

Put the olive oil and butter in a casserole dish over fairly high heat and place the meat.

Allow the meat to sear and brown slightly. It is especially to give juices that will give the sauce a perfect taste!

Meanwhile, prepare the other elements. Here the candied lemon. For the tanjia, it is advisable to take candied lemons a little particular. In fact, they are candied lemons that have aged. I had some in my closet that had oxidized…! But you can also use crystallized lemon with classic salt, which will be more yellow.

Chop the lemons and peel the garlic cloves. Then chop the garlic. It is better to chop it with a knife and it is useless to puree it or to reduce it to small pieces.

Mix the lemon and garlic.

Add everything to the casserole and then add the saffron cube (or pistils) and the cumin powder.

Add water.

That’s all! No need to add salt as the lemons are already salted. If necessary, you can add pepper. Now just let it cook. In Morocco, the tanjia is cooked in the common ovens for a long time in an earthen dish which gave its name to the dish you are eating. Many people still prepare it in the earthenware dish, but it can also be cooked in a casserole. If you want to go faster, put the pot under pressure for 45 minutes. If not, put a lid on and cook for 1h30 to 1h45 on moderate heat.

After this time, remove the lid and check the sauce. It should not be too liquid! If so, continue cooking without a lid. If the meat seems to be overcooked, carefully remove it from the pan and let the sauce cook a little until it is more glazed.

Like all tagines in Morocco, the dish is placed in the middle of the table and everyone dips their piece of fresh bread to start eating the sauce and then takes the meat in front of them…!