The dish is found in Dobson’s new cookbook, The Healthy Slow Cooker, which features more than 100 recipes, including vegetarian and vegan options.

Beef, sweet potato and date tagine

I sometimes feel like a broken record espousing the virtues of Moroccan cooking in slow cookers – but its flavours and techniques really are perfectly suited to them. For this tagine, everything is literally just thrown into the slow cooker and time does the rest, making this an ideal dish to put together before you head out of the door in the morning.

Serves 4
Gluten-free

Ingredients

750g blade steak
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons sweet paprika
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon cornflour
2 red onions, sliced
1 small sweet potato, peeled and cut into thick rounds
12 medjool dates
2 x 400g cans whole tomatoes, drained
2 tablespoons date syrup
Handful small coriander (cilantro) leaves
Handful small mint leaves

Method

Heat your slow cooker to Low.

Trim off all the fat from the beef and discard. Cut the beef into large bite-sized pieces and put into a bowl. Add the cumin, paprika, ginger, cornflour and a generous seasoning of salt and pepper. Toss to coat the beef, then tumble into the bowl of the slow cooker.

Cover the beef with the onions, followed by the sweet potato and dates.

In the same bowl you used for tossing the beef, combine the tomatoes and date syrup. Roughly mash the tomatoes with a potato masher or fork, then tip into the slow cooker.

Cover and cook for 8 hours, until everything is tender and aromatic.

Stir gently, then transfer to bowls and scatter with the herbs.

Image and text from The Healthy Slow Cooker by Ross Dobson, photography by Jeremy Simons, published by Murdoch Books, RRP $35.