Following this recipe from the NY Times the other day, I made a sweet lamb stew with honey, almonds, and apricots. The stew is a traditional lamb tagine called Mrouzia, prepared throughout North Africa during Ramadan. I had several problems with the NY Times recipe, the first being that although the recipe calls for 3 lbs of lamb, if you look at the video instructions on the NY Times site, the chef is clearly using at least 4 lbs of lamb and is using 6 cups of stock to go with it. I used only 2 lbs of lamb, reduced the stock required by a third, and it still took way too long to reduce to the proper consistency. The stew is also very sweet. Apparently a Mrouzia uses a lot of honey as a way to help preserve the meat in places without refrigeration. But, that’s not a problem here, and all that honey just makes it seem unbalanced. Finally, I messed up and used regular whole raw almonds instead of blanched almonds (without skins). I don’t think it makes much of a difference, but every recipe I checked calls for blanched almonds.

The stew was actually terrific, especially after I balanced the sweetness a little with some fresh squeezed lemon juice. It is highly flavorful and very rich. What follows are the proportions of ingredients that I would use the next time I make this stew – less stock, a lot less honey and a little lemon to balance the sweetness.

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