It’s a wonder this recipe is not more popular than it currently is. It is the perfect blend of vegan, healthy, gluten-free and spice. And I love spice. I am recently curating recipes across Africa and this sauce fits perfectly into any setup as a sauce, stew, marinade or just something to be eaten on its own. It also can be used as a base for other recipes such as chermoula chicken tagine, chermoula pasta, chermoula spiced chicken. This sauce is basically a combination of your favorite greens and spices. Although in practice, you can throw in whatever green vegetables and/or herbs you like, authentic chermoula is made with three major herbs: Cilantro, Mint, and Parsley.
Other variations of this dish suggest adding a bit of toasted cumin and coriander seeds. This step adds a whole load of flavor to the dish. In this recipe, I used lentil and pumpkin seeds as a flavor base (because I wanted to try something different). It’s as simple as putting these seeds on a dry skillet for about 5-10 minutes until you smell the flavour (you’ll know when it’s ready).
To spice up the herbs, use some onions (I like red onions, just a lot more flavour), chilli peppers, ginger and garlic.
This dish can also be completely vegan by skipping any form of seafood or meat but rather complementing it with some mushrooms. I find the Japanese shiitake mushrooms to go perfectly with this. Rather than for a non-vegan feast, oxtail, lamb, or hake fish is the perfect combo. Start by marinating the meat. For the marinade, use a blend of chili peppers, ginger, garlic, onions, lemon juice, and some salt. And let this sit for about 3-6 hours. You can also marinate the meat in a bit of the chermoula sauce itself (exactly what I did), it’s that versatile.
If you are using lamb, you can grill the meat or simply toss it into the sauce while it cooks. Oxtail however has a much longer cooking time than the sauce itself. So you need to cook it in a
