A Slow, Simple Route to a Moroccan Classic

Tangia of Lamb Shanks With Saffron and Cumin, Parts I and II

It has been eight years since I first made the trip uptown to 1435 Lexington Ave. and met Nach Waxman, the proprietor of New York's best-loved-by-the-cognoscenti cookbook shop, Kitchen Arts & Letters. I remember it well, because that is where I hit upon Paula Wolfert's 1973 "Couscous and Other Good Food From Morocco."

I was spellbound by her story "Tangia," about the triumphal specialty of Marrakech, which Wolfert had discovered is made by men, not women. (A director from the Ministry of Tourism rang 'round all the women he knew in trying to find an exponent for Wolfert to learn from; he was finally told that tangia is a dish of "soldiers, sheepherders and others separated from women." The director's chauffeur got the job.)

It was enough for me to wish for a tangia pot, the Grecian urn of cooking pots (deeper and built differently from a tagine), and for a cold winter's day on which to slow-simmer a stew that would be ready to reheat and serve the next day, or the day after that. In Marrakech the tangia is cooked in the furnace of the local hammam, or bathhouse, where the pot is buried in hot ashes for a minimum of 16 hours.

Failing that, I had my trusty range and decided to experiment with Wolfert's recipe. It is the sort of long and slow, but simple and effortless cooking we all love at this time of year. When you open the pot, the dish almost sighs with steamy pleasure. The same day you serve this tangia of lamb shanks, make a huge batch of spiced couscous to accompany it; you will have a feast that features the very scent of the souk. I make my own preserved lemons for a complementary condiment, along with some harissa, but there are good jarred versions around.

Food writer and British television presenter Tamasin Day-Lewis is the author, most recently, of "Where Shall We Go for Dinner?" (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007).