Tagine jelbana — green pea tagine — is a Moroccan spring dish, the kind made when the first peas and artichokes appear in the market. Peas are paired with lamb or chicken in a light tomato-onion sauce, often with artichoke hearts, and the dish is gentler and more delicate than the heavy winter tagines. It is everyday home cooking, not a festive dish, and its lightness comes from using fewer spices, less fat, and shorter cooking time than a winter braise.
The peas are sweet and bright, the lamb tender, the artichoke hearts silky; the sauce is light and clean, not heavy like the winter tagines. It tastes of spring vegetables at their peak.
Peas cook quickly and overcook just as fast, so they are added late in the braise, after the meat has had its long cook. If they go in at the start, they turn grey and mushy; added in the last 15 minutes, they stay bright green and firm. The lightness of the sauce comes from using less tomato paste and no honey, unlike the sweet-savory tagines, and the spice blend is simpler: ginger and paprika, not the full ras el hanout. This restraint is deliberate, the point of a spring dish being to let the vegetables speak.
Variations
Chicken is common in place of lamb. Fava beans can replace peas. Some add new potatoes.
On the Palate
Where Tagine Jelbana sits in the Moroccan flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 5
How it's made
6 steps · 20 min
- 18 min
Brown 500 g lamb chunks in 2 tbsp olive oil; add 2 sliced onions, 1 tsp ginger, 1 tsp paprika, 1/2 tsp saffron, salt; cook 5 min.
- 215 min
Add 1 chopped tomato and water to cover; simmer covered 30 min.
- 35 min
Add 2 cups fresh peas, 4 trimmed artichoke hearts (halved), 2 diced potatoes.
Watch outAdd the peas only in the last 15 minutes — go in early and they turn grey and mushy instead of staying bright and firm.
- 48 min
Simmer uncovered 15 min until vegetables are tender.
- 53 min
Scatter chopped parsley; adjust seasoning.
- 63 min
Serve with bread.
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