Sardine Tagine

Sardine tagine is the everyday fish dish of Morocco's Atlantic coast, from Casablanca to Essaouira to Agadir. Morocco is one of the world's largest sardine producers, and sardines are cheap, abundant and eaten everywhere: grilled, fried, stuffed, and in this tagine. The dish layers fresh sardines with sliced potatoes, tomatoes and bell peppers in a tagine, pours chermoula over everything, and steams it covered until the fish is just cooked. It is the kind of dish made on a weeknight, not for guests, and its simplicity is its virtue: four or five ingredients, one pot, half an hour.

The sardines are soft and oily, steeped in the garlic-coriander chermoula; the potatoes have soaked up the fish oils and tomato juices, the peppers are sweet. Eat it with bread, bones and all if the sardines are small enough.

Sardines are an oily fish, and that oil is the flavor base of the whole dish: as they cook, the fish oils render into the vegetables below, flavoring the potatoes and tomatoes from within. The layered construction is deliberate — the sturdier vegetables (potatoes) go on the bottom in direct contact with the heat, the more delicate tomatoes and peppers in the middle, the fragile sardines on top where they cook by steam. The chermoula, applied between the layers, permeates everything as it heats. The tagine lid traps the moisture from the fish and vegetables, creating a self-basting environment.