Friday, May 29, 2015

FFWD - Celebration Week #1: The AHA Moment - Lamb Tagine with Apricots


This week for French Fridays with Dorie, we have to choose your favorite, loved the most, best recipe in FFWD to share this week and explain why, and share our top 5 favorites.

There are many recipes in Around My French Table that I really loved.  When I went back through my FFWD posts to make a list of the recipes that I liked the most, I noticed that a recurring theme was Dorie's meat and fruit combinations - chicken tagine with sweet potato and prunes, duck with kumquats and pork with mango and lychees.  Accordingly, it made sense to me that I would choose one of these meat and fruit dishes as my AHA! moment.  It was hard to pick one dish over another, but I landed on Dorie's Lamb Tagine with Apricots.

 
This tagine pairs meat with fruit in a classic sweet and savoury combination, and jazzes it all up with a mix of spices.  My experience is that the tagine tastes best next day, when the flavours have had time to develop and meld.
 
I have made tagines before Dorie's, but not all of them hit the mark.  This one is particularly good, and tastes fabulous with Dorie's cardamom rice pilaf, or ordinary brown rice.
 
In addition to the Lamb Tagine with Apricots, five of my other favourite dishes from AMFT are:
 
 
To see  what the other Doristas regarded as their AHA! moment from AMFT, visit the LYL section of the FFWD website.

23 comments:

  1. So much fun to see your favorites listed. What a great theme for this week's post. You made so many things and learned so much through this adventure!

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  2. You've reminded me that I should really use my tagine again. It sits on a table as a decoration but I have loved everything that I have made in it! :D

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  3. hmm, simply damn delicious!!!
    lamb with apricots sounds really good...
    Dedy@Dentist Chef

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  4. You definitely have a theme going on there! Good for you for being able to narrow it down so much!

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  5. Great picks, Gaye! I'm so happy you are having a great time stateside with the East coast Doristas.

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  6. Thanks Adriana - I had a great time. Have just arrived home.

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  7. Your picks are a bit more daring than mine! I had forgotten about the Lamb Tagine! I made that for a friend and he loved it:) I need to make it again. Glad your trip went well. I hope your recovery time will be brief:)

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  8. Great choices. This was not easy to do, there were too many good recipes to choose from.

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  9. I think I inherited my love of fruit with meat from my mom. The lamb tagine was lovely although it may be Bill's least favorite FFwD recipe!

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  10. I have to agree that the meat and fruit combo was unique. Its not something I would typically gravitate to but we certainly relearned that with this group, huh? Great choices!

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  11. Great choices, Gaye! I loved the Lamb Tagine…and making the duck breasts was something I really enjoyed! We have made some really luscious meals, during our 4 and ½ years of French Fridays!
    Glad you are home safe! It was such a pleasure to meet you and Tim! A highlight for sure! Happy Weekend!

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  12. Wonderful choices, Gaye! The meat and fruit combinations in this book are quite lovely. I've learned so much from this book and cooking along with all of you.

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  13. I like your list and have actually made 4 out of 5 of them. Now that it is summer here I can make the duck with peaches. Have a great week and see you next Friday.

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  14. Great choices. I loved the lamb tagine too! So many delicious recipes. So much fun to see everyone's choices! The double-carrots made my list too...

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  15. Love that you found an actual theme amongst your favorites - how fun. I loved the tagine as well and if you recall, I was the silly one who bought one in an antique/flea market because it was gorgeous and did not even know what it was. So happy to find out it's use and christen it with a Dorie recipe :) These celebration weeks are fabulous ~

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  16. Great choices! The pork with mango and lychees was one I made and photographed but never posted. We loved the fruit and meat combos too! :)

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  17. First off, congratulations for finishing ALL the recipes! That's quite a feat!
    Second of all, I want to tell you again how much I enjoyed meeting you in person!
    Finally, I love your list. I wonder if you knew how much you enjoyed the fruit/meat combo. As you know, these are recipes I had to struggle with because of Howard's savory + fruit aversion. I'd rather be eating at your house.

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  18. Betsy, likewise - it was so much fun to meet you, and thanks again for taking the time to catch up while I was in the US. I went through all my FFWD posts to prepare my list and was amazed at the number of times that I said I loved the meat/fruit dishes.

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  19. Nice theme! I do think Dorie combines sweet and savory flavors very well. I keep meaning to make the chicken b'stilla again.

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  20. She certainly did have a lot of salty-sweet combinations, also in her baked goods. I didn't love all of them, but those duck recipes really were amazing and I think that I've repeated all of them by now.

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  21. It is interesting to see the themes that everyone came up with - I noticed that I had a strong affinity with the fish and seafood section.
    Some of Dorie's sauces for meats were absolutely wonderful and I would not ever have tried them outside of this book

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  22. So many good recipes! I look forward to revisiting many of them now that we have completed the book.

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  23. the lamb tagine was so good! i loved it so much! :)

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Thanks for dropping by!