Improvised Tagine like thing that works well if I've lots of guests, one or more of whome are vegan.

How I improvise a Tagine style of thing if i've got a bunch of gamers coming round goes like this:

Get more or less equal amounts of all of these things:

Butternut Squash, Sweet Potato, Carrots, any coloured peppers you like, Chickpeas, Tomatoes (a mix of tinned and real is best), Onions.

Drain the Chickpeas, rince, clean and slice the rest of the above into D20 sized chunks or slightly larger, except for the onions which want to be smaller.

Get smaller, but not insignificant amounts of these, maybe a small handful of each:

Figs, Apricots, dried or fresh, a combination of dried and fresh is good. Slice it all up. Garlic, crush some cloves of garlic, but at least one bulb you can just slice in half.

Throw all of the above into a flat tray so it stacks up to about 5cm and chuck flaked almonds in there as well. Fuck it, chuck some pomegranate seeds or other some random fruit in there too. It’ll probably work out fine.

Ras el hanout! – Turmeric, Cumin, crushed Black Pepper, Salt, Smoked Paprica, Cayenne Pepper. Slice a whole big chilli, remove seeds or leave them in if you like or some of the nice dried chilli flakes you can get in MMM in the Grainger Market in Newcastle. Some fresh bunches of stuff if you have it, like Thyme, Coriander or parsley. A Bay leaf or two is probably useful in an undefined way. Lots of spices shaken on top of this all.

Sorry, I don’t know how to be vegan: I’d also usually add honey and some butter. There are tricks that vegans know I’m sure. I have heard of fig paste? I think this might be a good idea.

Anyway.

Pour on hot water and vegetable stock. By now you’ve completely overdone the spices. Fine. Stick it in the oven such that the water starts to bubble then turn it down to about 150/160 for a long time – two hours plus.

At the end you want it not to be watery, so if it’s looking too watery after an hour and a half turn up the heat a bit. There shouldn't be pools of water at the end, stir it round a bit so the chickpeas can absorb stuff. If it starts to burn on top you can stir it about a bit or put tin foil loosely over the top. If you still end up with water you don't want to waste that so use it to make the couscous.

This feeds many, many people and serve it with couscous.

Stacey Whittle has demonstrated that the best way to do couscous is to have it with chopped mint and coriander and pomegranate seeds.

Level UP!

This may end up looking like a mess, particularly if you've burned bits of it or left it too long and it goes a bit gooey. You can fix this and win the game by wrapping scoops of tagine-esq in filo pastry parcels, sprinkling caster sugar and almonds on top and return to the oven to cook the pastry. Caster sugar: absolutely.

This will provide a good contrasting texture to keep things interesting while also allowing it to not look like a complete mess. That's helpful.

Lamb with Butternut Squash, Garlic and things.

Veg Box!

Ok, so the veg box arrived from River Ford this afternoon - excellent as ever, amongst other things it contained wet garlic and butternut squash.

One thing lead to another and since it's a reasonably hot spring evening and barbeques were very much in evidence, quick as you like we nipped up to Morrisons (beggers can't be choosers) to get the biggest available lamb steaks on offer and some other things.

So, the butternut squash gets cut into chips and covered in smoked paprica from mmm newcastle which I do recommend. The carrots get covered in cumin. These get in the baking tray with a little oil (there may also have been ras al hanout, there usually is) and stuck in an oven at 220 degrees turned down to 170 straight away to soften and cook for an hour or so while I get the lamb sorted. Most of what I do with lamb comes one way or another from Nigel Slater's very excellent book: Appetite.

Marinade!

• Slice up the wet garlic. Wet garlic looks like a big spring onion, and is the foody find of the day.
• Chop up two or three anchovies. 
• Finely slice two or three twigs of rosemary.
• Sea salt and some smashed up pepper corns. Probably not too much salt as the anchovies will do that.

Smash all of that together in a pestle and mortar as best you can, then pour on some olive oil and squeeze quite a bit of lemon in there too.

Smear this all over your lamb steaks and leave them for as long as you can. In my case this was about ten minutes, but you know, this should really be measured in hours.

Lamb!

Get a griddle pan good and hot. A barbeque would be the ideal, but I don't have a garden. Once it's proper hot, chuck the lamb steaks on there with any marinade that's stuck to them. Any marinade that's left can be poured onto the butternut squash. The anchovies will more or less dissolve and add a saltyness to everything: this is good, but go canny on any additional salt.

Start warming up some plates. If you have steak knives they should be deployed now.

Three minutes on one side, pressed down, then a minute or so held with any fat against the pan, then onto its other side: squeeze any remaining lemon and pour any remaining marinade over it then three or four minutes on that side.

Put it on the Plate!

The lamb could use a couple of minutes to rest after its ordeal, so when you slice it it's pink but not bleeding. Sort out the butternut squash and carrots while the lamb is resting: get it all on a plate, and do not for one moment consider taking a photograph for a blog post. Do not worry about mixing tense or third/first person. Eat. Yes.