Take a trip with me (culinarily of course) to Morocco. We’re going to make a classical Moroccan eggplant dish. In the process we will take a brief detour to a fascinating part of the wine country in both France and Spain, Côtes Catalanes, where we will pick up the appropriate wine for this meal.

I love full-bodied vegetarian meals. These areas in Morocco, southern France and Spain have many great examples. Tonight’s recipe is a Moroccan eggplant and olive tagine adapted from the Vegetarian Planet by Didi Emmons. I made one or two adjustments, and I was very happy with the results.

Here’s the recipe:

The recipe called for 6 plum tomatoes, but the ones I had were fairly large, so I decided to go the just 4. That was just right. The other adjustment was to replace the chickpeas with almost a cup of Rancho Gordo mixed beans I made and froze a couple of weeks ago. Definitely an improvement.

Finally, I chose not to make one of the recommended grains to accompany the dish. Instead, I sliced several pieces of Seven Stars bakery olive loaf — which went perfectly.

I also LOVE finding just the right wine to go with the meal. While the tagine was slowly simmering, I went into the wine cellar to choose the wine. My brain was rich with images of Moroccan spices on my palette (cinnamon, paprika, cumin), and I soon came up with this French wine from the Languedoc — je cherche le ciel — “I search for the Sun”. It was the perfect match!