Gargoulette à l'agneau (or Tunisien lamb stew if you prefer)!

My tastebuds were tantalisingly tickled when holidaying in Tunisia a couple of years ago. One of the lamb stews --Gargoulette à l'agneau-- that I was fortunate enough to have sampled there was to die for and I set myself the challenge of recreating the dish at home.

It was a reasonably simple dish to make with little room to go wrong - except that I did go wrong somewhat by overdosing on the tomato concentrate when making the marinade consisting of onions, garlic, cloves, coriander powder, 4 spice powder, saffron, thyme, rosemary and olive oil. Moving on, the next step was to seal the earthenware pot in which the stew was to be cooked for 45 minutes (in Tunisia, the dish was cooked and served in a sealed clay pot like in the picture below). To recreate this effect, I used some dough to seal the edges of the earthenware pot that I was using.











All in all, despite the overpowering tomatoey flavour, it wasn't a bad effort (was scored 8/10 by my fellow diners). The meat was very tender and succulent, and there was plenty of rich sauce to douse over the cous cous that I had made as an accompaniment to the stew. (And if I may add as somewhat of an afterthought, the cous cous was very successful - I made it with avacado, lime, mint, chicken stock and scotch bonnet chilli.)










(In case you haven't guessed, the flaky coating on the lid is the dough that I used to seal the pot with!)