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"  Years ago, before children, I came to visit my parents and made a Moroccan-ish dinner for them. Lamb, couscous, dates and mint tea, and a chickpea stew that has lived on in my memory as something spectacular. When I looked back on the recipe, though, I was unimpressed. It was a basic stew of tomatoes, onion, chickpeas and spinach, with a cinnamon stick tossed in for flavor. I bet it was good, but I wanted to try to do better. So I made a spice mix called ras el hanout (&amp;quot;top of the shelf&amp;quot;), which is normally used to season rice or couscous or as a spice rub for meats. I used it to create a vegetable stew redolent of sweet spice. The extreme way to make this would be to toast whole spices all together, then grind then to a powder. I started with ground spices that I had in the pantry: equal parts cinnamon, allspice, coriander, cardamom, cloves, black pepper, turmeric and nutmeg. Half as much hot red pepper and twice as much ground ginger.   I started the stew by saut\u00A9ing half a diced onion in oil and when it was translucent I added a heaping tablespoon of the spice mixture. Cooked that a bit until fragrant, then dumped in a big can of whole tomatoes, a drained can of chickpeas and some frozen chopped green beans. Let those simmer together for a bit, then served over couscous.  These recipes use some version of those spicy-sweet seasonings:  Moroccan Chicken and Couscous  Moroccan Grilled Lamb  Moroccan Salmon  What spices do you use most often? \u2014 Kim Walker "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/food-recipes/a43817/ras-el-hanout-5280/>