Last night before heading off to bed, I foraged through the freezer for something that could be turned into dinner the next day. The only items left in the meat compartments were a bag of pork and ginger dumpling filling that I put aside for when the craving for steamed won-ton wrapper filled morsels happened to hit; a bag  of small perfect looking duck breasts; and a lump of what appeared to be diced beef.

I pulled out the latter and left it to defrost overnight in the fridge with not the faintest idea of what to do with it – then again inspiration at 11 pm on a Sunday night is hard to muster.

The chopped fresh dates in my bowl of breakfast porridge this morning gave me an idea for dinner. There is a satisfying and simple to make beef tagine that I prepared a while back that includes dried fruit. The recipe is Beef Tagine with Prunes on page 225 from one of my “go-to” cookbooks, called Casa Moro. Written by London based chefs Sam and Samantha Clarke (who are also husband and wife), it is a mouth watering collection of recipes gathered during the couple’s travels through Spain and Morocco.

I don’t use a traditional tagine earthenware cooking pot because I have not found one that is large enough to accommodate the volume of food I need to cook in one go. I am also a devotee of my collection of cast iron Le Creuset pots. They are heavy but unbeatable, especially when preparing savoury dishes requiring slow and steady cooking. This method of cooking is ideal when using economical cuts of meat that results in a full flavoured and tender textured dish. Perfectly nourishing, no-fuss fare in chilly weather. 

This particular recipe provides servings for four people, so for my family I doubled the quantities with the exception of the dried fruit.  Although the official recipe calls for prunes, we were out of these and so I substituted dates, about 400 grams, pitted and chopped. I also added two large chunkily chopped carrots as a way of boosting my family’s daily veggie intake, along with about 350 millilitres of chicken stock and a tablespoon of plain flour. Rather than cooking on the stove top for two hours as recommended in the recipe, I put my cast iron pot with all the braised and combined ingredients into the oven at 150 degrees for two and a half hours. I simply don’t have time to check, stir and check several times on a stove top simmering pot for that long.

I also steamed about 1.5 kg of dark green broccoli  cut into large florets and dressed with a squeeze of lemon juice, a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and a sprinkling of sea salt. 

Chickpeas are a natural fit for this type of Moroccan inspired meal, so I decided to combine them into a roasted pumpkin side dish. After preheating the oven to 200 degrees fan-forced, I tossed together 600 grams of butternut pumpkin chopped into 4-5 cm pieces, with half a teaspoon of ground cumin, a tablespoon of olive oil, salt pepper and 25 grams of unsalted butter. Into the oven for 20 minutes before adding a drained 400 gram tin of organic chickpeas to the baking dish. Stir gently taking care not to break up the cooked pumpkin and return to the oven for two minutes to heat through. 

I served the beef, broccoli, roasted pumpkin and chickpeas with steamed basmati rice. All of the children enjoyed the meal, especially my eldest who helped himself to a second serving whilst requesting for a portion to be packed into a Thermos for his lunch tomorrow.