Cinnamon Beef Tagine #SundayFunday

Today the Sunday Funday bloggers are sharing recipes for cinnsmon. Wendy is hosting!

Stacy of Food Lust People Love, Sue of Palatable Pastime, Rebekah of Making Miracles, Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm, and I coordinate this low-stress group; we only participate when we are inspired. As I mentioend, this week Wendy is hosting. She invited us: "November 1st is National Cinnamon Day. This is a wide-open event. Share a recipe that contains cinnamon."

The Cinnamon Line-Up

• Apple Cinnamon Bread by A Day in the Life on the Farm

• Cinnamon Beef Tagine by Culinary Cam (you're here)

• Cinnamon Shortbread Squares by Food Lust People Love

• Easy Cinnamon Roll Bread with Fireball Glaze by Our Good Life

• Mario Under Water World Cake (Apple Cinnamon Cake) by Amy's Cooking Adventures

• Mexican Cinnamon Cookies by Karen's Kitchen Stories

• Soft & Chewy Snickerdoodle Cookies bySneha's Recipe

• Tilslørte Bondepiker by Mayuri's Jikoni

Let's Talk Cinnamon

Because today is National Cinnamon Day, I wanted to start off with this: not all cinnamon is the same! Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several trees and used in both sweet and savory dishes. While Cinnamomum verum is true cinnamon, most cinnamon sold is actually derived from a related species: cassia...

• Cassia burmannii is known as Korintje, Padang cassia, or Indonesian cinnamon;

• Cassia loureiroi is known as Saigon cinnamon, Vietnamese cassia, or Vietnamese cinnamon; and

• Cassia cassia is often sold as Chinese cinnamon.

The flavor is subtly different, but it's really the texture - the hardness of the stick - that I notice the most. Cinnamomum verum is the easiest to grate. If you are buying it already grated, that is less of a concern. Still, it's nice to know.

A Tagine

A tajine or tagine is a Maghrebi dish named after the earthenware pot in which it is cooked. So, it refers to both the cooking vessel and the resulting food; it is also called a maraq/marqa in North Africa and the Middle East.

Mentions of the tagine date back to Harun al-Rashid who was a ruler of the Early Muslim conquests and it appears in the 9th century collection of stories One Thousand and One Nights. At the same time, it was noted during the Islamic reign of the Abbasid Empire that stretched from the Middle East/Asia to North Africa and Andalusia.

The dish was used by nomadic Bedouin people of the Arabian Peninsula, who added dried fruits such as dates, apricots and plums to it. Tagine is traditionally cooked over hot charcoal with the shape of the lid acting as a self-basting tool. The circular base is flat with low sides and the cover is a large cone-shape that sits on the base during cooking. The cover is designed to collect all condensation and re-direct to back to the bottom.

And, yes, you will see two in this post. I have a tagine in which I cook; and I ceramic tagine in which I serve.

Cinnamon Beef Tagine

When I was considering cinamon recipes to share, I went looking for a savory recipe. And I found a dish from Morocco that uses cinnamon in a beef dish. Done! That sounded lovely. This isn't a traditional recipe as much as an adaptation of a process that I use with many different meats in the tagine. But it was a hit!

Ingredients

• 1 pound beef stew meat

• 5 to 6 cloves garlic, peeled and pressed

• 1 Tablespoon sumac

• 1 Tablespoon smoked paprika

• 1 Tablespoon ground turmeric

• 1 teaspoon + 1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon

• 1 teaspoon + 1 Tablespoon ground coriander

• 1 Tablespoon fresh minced ginger

• 1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper

• olive oil as needed

• 1 onion, peeled and thickly sliced

• 4 to 5 carrots, sliced into thick coins

• 4 to 5 celery ribs, sliced into thick coins

• 1 cup diced tomatoes or 1 cup tomato sauce

• 2 cups beef stock + more as needed

• 2 cinnamon sticks

• 2 bay leaves

• 1 knob fresh ginger, sliced in half

• freshly ground salt, as needed

• freshly ground pepper, as needed

Procedure

Sprinkle cubed beef with 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon and 1 teaspoon ground coriander and refrigerate for at least an hour or overnight. In a small mixing bowl blend all of your spices - sumac, smoked paprika, turmeric, cinnamon, coriander, ginger, and Aleppo pepper. Add in enough olive oil to create a thick paste.

Add a splash of olive oil to the bottom of the tagine along with the garlic cloves. Brown the beef cubes on all sides over medium-high heat. Stir in the spice paste and pour in the stock. Pour in the tomatoes and layer in the onions, potatoes, and carrots. Tuck the cinnamon sticks into the pot and lay the bay leaves on top. Bring liquid to a boil. Cover and reduce the heat to a simmer. Cook for 90 minutes to 2 hours. The meat should be tender. Remove the meat to a separate platter and bring the sauce to a boil. Continue stirring so it doesn't burn. But cook until the suace it thickened to your liking. Fold the meat back into the thickened sauce.

To serve: spoon the meat over saffron rice.

Here's my table with the ceramic serving tagine. We paired the dinner with a red wine from Greece.

Well, that's a wrap on my cinnamon offering for this week's #SundayFunday. Next week we will be back with cappuccino or favorite coffee recipes. Stay tuned!