Tagine week: Eggplant and Pumpkin Tagine with green chillies

Now that the evenings are much cooler, we have dusted off the tagine and gone a little overboard with it.

This is a hearty vegetarian tagine, prompted by our pile of delicious butternut pumpkins and late season eggplants and zucchinis (although of course we used tromboncino).  This is a bit of a staple recipe in our house whenever we have too much of any of these vegies (usually this time of year).

Eggplant and Pumpkin Tagine with Whole Green Chillies
 

Sauce:

100ml olive oil

2 large onions, finely diced

3 cloves garlic, crushed

1 heaped TBS coriander seeds

1 heaped TBS cumin seeds

1 heaped TBS caraway seeds

1  TSP ground allspice

2 TSP sweet paprika

1 TSP chilli powder

1 TSP ginger powder

2 x 400g tins chopped tomatoes

6 long green chillies

1 TBS honey

600ml water

Vegetables:

1 kg pumpkin diced

2 small eggplants

2 small zucchini

100mL olive oil

150g cooked chickpeas

100g black olives

Greek yoghurt (to serve)

Use a mortar and pestle to grind coriander, cumin and caraway seeds to a fine powder. Sieve to remove husks. Mix with other remaining spices.

Heat oil in frying pan, sauté the onions and add the garlic- fry until browned. Add the spice mixture to the frying pan and cook for a further 2 minutes.

Add tomatoes, chilli, honey and water and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and simmer uncovered for 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Bake the pumpkin in the oven for 15 minutes.

Cut the eggplant and zucchini into medium sized chunks. Salt and leave for 20 minutes. Wipe off excess water and sauté in olive oil in batches.

Add all the vegetables, chickpeas and olives to the tomato sauce. Add more water if the sauce is too thick. Bring sauce to the boil, season with salt and pepper. Serve with couscous and plenty of thick Greek yoghurt.