Cholent

A typical cholent  (Wikimedia Commons)

Irving Naxon was inspired to invent the device now called the slow cooker by tales of his great grandmother putting her stewpot in the cooling but still hot oven of the baker in her home village of Lithuania. The type of stew she made is called cholent, and the lore and variety of that stew is, to me, an interesting little piece of history.  So a few months ago, I decided to make my own batch of cholent.

I looked for recipes on the Internet, but quickly found that cholent recipes vary greatly by region.  I decided upon this recipe from Morocco because it sounded less boring than most of the cholent recipes I found.

I made several modifications to the recipe which, in retrospect, were probably bad ideas.  One was to limit the honey called for in the recipe to about two tablespoons (half the amount called for in the recipe) because I had only that much honey on hand.   Another was to substitute shelled hard boiled eggs for the raw eggs in the shell required by the recipe.

The resulting stew was bland, with rubbery, tasteless hard boiled eggs.  If I make another pot of cholent, I will definitely use raw eggs in the shell, and be much more generous with spices. 

EDIT (3/4/2015):  I've been asked what recipe I used for my cholent attempt. I think it was this one--it has the correct amount of honey--though I didn't recall beef bones with marrow being a component (I know I didn't use marrow bones in my stew).  http://www.grouprecipes.com/105827/cholent-from-morocco.html