Aunty Michelle's lamb tagine

We've eaten this in England and France, and it's fab. Today was no exception.

You'll need:

1kg cubed, boneless lamb (I did it today with lamb shoulder on the bone, and just cooked it for longer)

1 tablespoon ground ginger
1-2 teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon turmeric
1 1/2 teaspoons paprika
1/2 teaspoon chilli powder

3 garlic cloves
4 large onions, finely chopped or grated
olive oil

1/2 teaspoon salt
a handful of dried apricots
50g raisins/sultanas
50g flaked almonds
1 tablespoon honey
300ml tomato juice (I used water and a good squirt of tomato puree today)
1 can chopped tomatoes
300ml lamb stock

Stick the oven on at about 170 degrees C.

Mix the spices in a bowl, add the cubes of lamb, and coat evenly. Brown the lamb in a large frying pan (you'll probably have to add some olive oil to stop it sticking). Sling into your casserole dish. Fry the onions and garlic in the pan, until soft (again, you'll probably need a little olive oil). Tip these into your casserole dish too.

Add the apricots, raisins, flaked almonds, honey, tomato juice, chopped tomatoes and lamb stock, and season with a little salt. Cover your dish, and cook in the oven for at least 2 hours. You could do this on the hob too - just be prepared to add a little extra water if it looks a little dry.

Eat with couscous, and the inevitable courgettes.

Chicken, pepper and apricot tagine

This one was also made in the slow cooker, due to the fact that the oven is kaput, and keeps tripping the electric...

You'll need:

a couple of large pieces of chicken (I used a leg/thigh combo)
a handful of apricots, chopped
an onion, finely chopped
1 yellow pepper, chopped into smallish pieces
1 orange pepper (ditto)
chicken stock - enough to cover the chicken and vegetables
a heaped teaspoon each of cinnamon, cumin and turmeric
lots of black pepper and a little salt

Brown the chicken pieces, and place in the stockpot/tagine. Chuck in the apricots, onion, and peppers. Heat up your chicken stock, and add the spices to it - then carefully cover the vegetables and chicken with liquid. Don't use too much (whether you're doing this in a tagine or in a slow cooker), or you'll end up with spiced chicken soup.

If you're slow cooking, you'll need to stick it on medium for a good 6-8 hours. In the oven, a couple of hours in a tagine should sort it out in about 1.5, if you stick the oven on at about 160-170 degrees C.

Serve with lots of fluffy couscous.

Apricot and chocolate chip muffins

Just the thing for frosty trip north to the Alnwick Garden, to meet up with Santa at the lantern parade.

This made about 16 little cupcake-sized muffins.

You'll need:

150g dried apricots, chopped
500ml boiling water
225g self-raising flour
75g brown sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
125ml vegetable oil
125-150ml milk
100g chocolate chips (or in our case, leftover mini chocolate Easter eggs gleefully unwrapped from their foil and smashed up into little pieces)

Stick the oven on at about 180 degrees C, and line some cupcake pans with paper cases (that's your job usually).

Add the apricots to half a litre of boiling water, and leave to stand for 5 minutes. Drain, and then stand them on some kitchen paper to absorb the worst of the wet.

Mix the flour, sugar and apricots in a large bowl. Pour everything else in (including the chocolate, assuming you can stop eating it) and give it all a jolly good stir. It'll look supremely revolting.

Using a teaspoon, drop the mixture into the paper cases, and then shove the muffins into the oven for about 15-20 minutes - they're done when the tops are browned.

These are gorgeous when they're still warm and crispy on the top. They freeze well too.

Lamb, aubergine and apricot tagine

When you were really tiny, you used to like this (and throw it all over the floor). Today was a rather more sedate affair round the big glass table in the dining room table (it was too cold and windy for the balcony), but the couscous still went everywhere.

This makes enough for six (or four really greedy people).

500g lamb mince
an onion, chopped
about 1/3 of a 250g bag of dried apricots
one small-medium aubergine, diced (cut into pieces about 2cm across)
some water, or a tin of chopped tomatoes

spices - 1 teaspoon each of cinnamon, ground cumin and turmeric, and a good screw of black pepper

Heat the mince in the frying pan until it goes from pink to brown. Add the onion and aubergine, and fry for 5 minutes, until the onion goes translucent, and the aubergine has started to soften.

Add the spices, and fry for a couple of minutes.

Add the liquid - today I had 3/4 of a can of chopped tomatoes lurking in the fridge, so I stuck that in, together with some water. I usually add enough to just cover the mixture. Chuck in the apricots - I sliced them up today, but you could halve them, or even add them whole.

Bring to the boil, and then simmer for however long you have. You need at least 20 minutes, I reckon, but an hour would be more like it. The longer you leave it, the more liquid you may need to add - the apricots and aubergines absorb quite a lot, so keep checking to make sure it hasn't boiled dry...

Serve with some couscous, and whatever green salady stuff you've got in the fridge/garden. If you're feeling very fancy, you could shred some mint and scatter it on top. I haven't managed to persuade you that's a good idea yet...