A pretty rubbish tagine

Now, I don't think I am good at cooking vegetarian meals. I've been dreaming of cooking a wonderfully tasty, beautifully spiced, exciting, good-for-you veg tagine ever since Tim and I decided to go meat free.

It's a perfect type of veggie dish after curry - spicy, interesting... Right? NOT!

Well, not the way I made it.

I came across this Seven Vegetable Tagine recipe on the BBC Good Food magazine website.

I always follow the recipies pretty religeously at first, but I didn't have preserved lemons, olives and mint. Maybe this is where I went wrong.

The result was, is... dull. It has all the right flavours, but it lacks depth of flavour, this sense of savoriness  It tastes like boiled/steamed veg covered in Moroccan spices, not a marriage of all the ingredients.

Raisins in cous-cous were about the only exciting element of the dish. And I made so much I'll have to eat it tomorrow too as well as feeding it to Tim. So - sh-sh-sh everyone - don't tell him it's not that great.

Well, anyway, you live and learn. I polished it off with some deeply savory cheddar with my mother-in-law's apple chutney.