Recipe + Vintage Tablecloth: Beef and Butternut Tagine

I just received my new Cooking Light magazine in the mail, and thought I would give the recipe for Moroccan Beef and Butternut Tagine a shot. Alex and I are trying to make at least one new-to-us recipe a week, as we tend to gravitate to the familiar few. It is forcing us out of the box a little, and we are finding new recipes that we are definitely adding to our repertoire. He went for a long day skiing on the mountain Sunday, so I thought I would adapt it slightly and make it in our good old slow cooker, so it would be nice and hot whenever he got home. A tagine is an earthenware pot that is typically used for this dish, so I guess I did not make it in the traditional sense, but it was a delicious slow-cooked sweet and spicy stew anyway. I think cooking it even slower than the recipe suggests made the meat melt in your mouth tender, and I simply added the butternut squash at the end, so it didn't get mushy.

Ingredients:

2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 1-lb beef shoulder roast or petite tender roast, trimmed and cut into 1-inch cubes (I found this at the Whole Foods butcher already trimmed and cubed)
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 shallots or 1 onion, chopped (I only had one good sized shallot and it worked fine)
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 (14.5 ounce) can no-salt-added diced tomatoes undrained
3 cups (1 inch) cubed peeled butternut squash (about 1 pound) (I used frozen cubed butternut squash)
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

1. Combine first 6 ingredients in a medium bowl. Add beef, toss well to coat.
2. Heat oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Add beef and shallots, cook 4 minutes until browned, add garlic, cook 1 minute, stirring frequently. Stir in broth and tomatoes, bring to a boil, cook 5 minutes. Add squash, cover, reduce heat and cook for 15 minutes, sprinkle with cilantro.

Note: I skipped all of the second step and placed the herb coated beef into the slow cooker, added the shallots, garlic, tomatoes with juice, and broth, and cooked on low for 8 hours. I added the butternut squash for the last 30 minutes.

Serve with couscous. Delicious!