Tajine

On a round table, food is served in a central platter or tagine or in shallow dishes so that it can be easily picked up with the fingers.

Sometimes, in very densely populated urban areas in Egypt, one can still see children navigating their way through the labyrinthine maze of shops in the souk (marketplace) to bring their tagins to the bread baker.

A tajine is a heavy ceramic plate covered with a conical lid of the same material. The prettiest tajines, decorated in all sorts of colours and designs, come from Safi, but the best tajines for actual use are plain reddish-brown in colour, and come from Salé. The food in a tajine is arranged with the meat in the middle and the vegetables piled up around it.

[T]he term couscous is applied to the cereal along with a great variety of accompanying tajins (stews) and desserts.

One of Morocco's most famous traditional specialities tajine (also spelled tahine or tadjine) gets its name from glazed earthenware pot used to prepare it, the tajine slaoui. It consists of a saucepan with a tall, often nicely decorated, very tight-fitting, cone-shaped lid that transforms it into a sort of Dutch oven. The high "hat" lets steam circulate, making it the ideal vessel for cooking stews.

Vegetarian entrees include vegetable tagin, stuffed squash, and maklouba (mixed vegetables with rice and yogurt), and come with a choice of soup or one of four Middle Eastern salads [...].

Fresh broad beans are used when in season, the young beans added to tagines with the skin on; when more mature, the beans are blanched and skinned before cooking.

While they were finishing an excellent fish tagin—fish and tomato stew with rice cooked in a clay pot—he listened to her fantastic story.