Modern Moroccan

Tagine of Monkfish, Potatoes, Cherry Tomatoes and Olives

Page 71

Cuisine: Moroccan/Algerian/Tunisian | Course Type: Main Courses

(1 review)

Tags: tomatoes potato braise fish lean fish olives black olives green olives cherry tomatoes supermarket fish braised fish new potatoes tagine monkfish BLW-proof

Recipe Review

17th July 2013

friederike from Berlin,

Very nice! There is a catch, however.

The main problem is that the recipe calls for monkfish. Monkfish is a relatively expensive dish, and we noticed that it was a bit difficult to get the timing right, to make sure that everything turns out cooked at the exact time. If you're not sure you can do that, I would use cheaper fish. We did, but we also made it extra difficult by using two kinds of fish, tilapia and pangasius, and of course one of them was slightly overcooked when the other one was just cooked. To my surprise, I really liked pangasius in this dish, I actually thought it was cod.

The dish also produces a sauce that is very thin. This might have been partly my fault - I didn't buy cherry tomatoes but slightly larger ones, so they had to be cut in half before cooking, which might have made them release their juices - but all in all I think it's better to add less water, especially in the beginning. Alternatively, you could also take out the fish and boil down the sauce a bit, but you'll risk cooling down and/or drying out the fish. DH also thought that the dish wasn't flavourful enough; I didn't, but I understand what he means.

We used green olives, which worked equally well.

Edited 13 February 2016:
Grrr, I hate recipes that hide laborious instructions in the ingredient list! This one includes two green peppers, grilled until black, skinned, de-seeded and cut into strips - this took me quite a while, so why isn't all this in the recipe text?

We used pangasius again, and it worked really well - the good thing about pangasius in this dish is that it holds it shape really well, as does monkfish. We used only 50 ml water this time (and the sauce still was very liquid) and we used black olives, but other than that no salt, as we had kiddo eating with us, and that worked really well. As I was in a rush (see above), I didn't have time to cook the tomatoes and green peppers properly and they ended up having quite a lot of bite, more than I wanted, but in the end, that wasn't a problem.

I also finally compared two recipes I thought were merely similar, this one and Casa Moro's Fish Tagine with Potatoes, Tomatoes and Olives, and it turns out they are near-identical! This one uses monkfish and two green peppers, while the other one uses just any white fish and four green peppers, but that's about it!