Chickpea and Aubergine Tagine

I won't lie: the credit for this goes almost entirely to Mark. The honey and cinnamon was my idea though.

WHAT WE USED

1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
spices to taste (we used about 1tsp each of cumin, coriander, cinnamon and turmeric, plus a pinch of chilli powder)
1 small aubergine, cubed
1 tin chickpeas
1 tin tomatoes
a handful of dried apricots, chopped into chunks
a squeeze of honey

WHAT WE DID

1. Fry off the onion and garlic in some vegetable/olive oil with the spices, till the onions are soft (about 5-10 mins).

2. Empty the tins of tomatoes and chickpeas into a second saucepan (including the chickpea water), and add the onion mix. Simmer it over a low heat.

3. Add some more oil to the first pan (the one that had the onions in) and use it to fry the aubergine till it's soft (around 15 mins). There should be some spice residue in the pan, making the aubergine yummy.

4. Tip the aubergine into the chickpea stew, give it a stir and leave it to simmer for basically as long as can be bothered.

5. Add the apricots and honey (we did this when it was nearly ready, but you could add it along with the aubergine to minimise faff).

WHAT WE ATE IT WITH

Cous cous (measured by volume, about 80ml each, soaked in about 250ml hot vegetable stock for 5 mins in a bowl with a lid over it)

Salad (mixed leaves and fresh chopped tomatoes; I made a quick dressing from mustard, oil & vinegar)

THINGS TO NOTE

Mark is a way more patient cook than me. I'd have just bunged the onions, garlic and aubergine all in together, fried them for about 5-10 minutes and then added the chickpeas/tomatoes/other stuff, thus saving time and washing up (but compromising a bit on yumminess). Either way, the actual prep time for the tagine shouldn't be more than about half an hour.

Edit: Mark is also way more picky than me. He points out that I have tagged this recipe as vegan even though it contains a squeeze of honey, and honey is technically not vegan. I could write a lengthy essay about why honey is not very relevant to the reasons I try to eat vegan (and the fact that most of my vegan friends seem to agree, and also treat it as acceptable), but obviously technically speaking I did, in fact, lie. This blog should probably come with a health warning that my definition of vegan is pretty, um, fluid. I will generally tag stuff as vegan if it has trace amounts of non-vegan stuff that you could easily omit if you were really that bothered.