Squash and chickpea tagine

I’m not sure why people at work with surplus vegetables always offer them to me, as if non vegans don’t ever eat vegetables, but I didn’t mind someone giving me a butternut squash. They’re great to have on hand because they last forever. I’m too embarrassed to tell you how long I had this one sitting around for but it was definitely months rather than weeks. The funny thing is that I was originally given it by someone because they were going away for a weekend and wouldn’t get chance to use it!

Matthew isn’t a lover of squash unless it’s highly disguised. I finally snapped and got fed up of seeing it lying around and had in mind a vague plan to do something Moroccan with this one. As if by magic that same day a parcel arrived from a good friend who’d just got back from Morocco and unexpectedly sent me a big bag of Ras-el-Hanout spice mix.

I didn’t really measure what I was doing as I was making it up and tasting as I went, but I can tell you what I did and the amounts don’t really matter.

I started by roasting chunks of squash. I didn’t use the whole squash for this recipe but I’ve frozen the rest for a quick soup one time.

I fried together 1 chopped onion, 2 minced cloves of garlic, 1 tsp chilli flakes and 1 tbsp ras el hanout in some olive oil. When the onion was nice and soft I added in the squash, 1 drained tin of chickpeas, vegetable stock and some tomato juice. The tomato juice urgently needed using but you could use tinned tomatoes or tomato puree. Then I let them cook together and added a bit more stock until I got the consistency I wanted. Then I stirred in a big bunch of chopped coriander, salt and pepper.

I served it with some barley couscous which I simply hydrated in vegetable stock and a bit of olive oil.

A very quick way to use a vegetable and it didn’t taste at all as though I’d had it for months!

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