We were with a tour company that specializes in the craft and cultural aspects of a country. We visited the major cities with their souks and medinas (Casablanca, Rabat, Fes & Marrakech), some smaller cities with their ceramic and rug makers (Chechaouen, Zagora, Taroudant, Essaouira), and a few small towns in the mountains (Ouezzane, Bzou) which had weaving cooperatives. We felt the sea breezes & smelled the commercial fishing boats of the Atlantic Ocean, the rolling hills & silvery-green olive groves leading up to the Rif Mountains, the hairpin turns (with no guardrails!) and snow covered peaks of the High Atlas Mountains, the sandy dunes, date palms and camel riding in the Sahara, and the beautiful, lush, agricultural valleys along the Anti-Atlas mountains, which of course brings me to the food.

 

To begin with, we had A LOT of tagines! For those not familiar, “tagine” refers to both the name of the edible dish, as well as the conical vessel in which the dish is cooked. The vessels for cooking are made from clay which has been glazed; the bottom is a dish, with slightly high sides, topped with an inverted cone, which, when over the dish, helps to trap the steam, keeping the food moist. (The most utilitarian tagines are made from clay, the decorative ones, which are often just used for serving food, can be glazed white and beautifully decorated, frequently with intricate indigo patterns) We had several chicken tagines with preserved lemons and olives, along with beef tagines, generally with potatoes & carrots (not unlike a pot roast, and occasionally overcooked!), though the more interesting & tasty beef tagines were served with prunes or other fruit. The Moroccan culture is big on the sweet and savory food combinations, which I happen to love, but it was a bit of a surprise to some of the people in our group.

 

There were two highly memorable meals throughout the trip. The first was in Fes, where we were invited to the house of our Moroccan guide, as his wife and family prepared an incredible meal for us. They live in an apartment, and their living room has what appeared to be built-in benches with cushions on three sides of the room, so all 19 of us crammed around the room.

 

They started off with mint tea (it is impolite to refuse mint tea when offered) and a few homemade traditional cookies, like the gazelle’s horns, a half-moon shaped cookie with almond paste. In the living room and hallway, there were 3 round tables set, and we moved to those. The first thing out of the kitchen was the pastilla, a traditional dish of the sweet & savory sort.

It is typically made with pigeon, though this was made with chicken (as it commonly is, though I would have loved to try the pigeon!). The meat is cooked, shredded, and mixed with ground almonds, honey, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, and a bit of beaten egg; it is then wrapped inside a special phyllo dough, and formed into a large flat disk. It’s baked and then sprinkled with powdered sugar and cinnamon before serving. It was out of this world! I loved it!

 

The next dish was a couscous with lamb and seven vegetables (the number seven has a special significance in the Muslim culture, but I don’t know the exact meaning). Now generally speaking, couscous in Morocco is lighter and fluffier than the stuff we get out of a box here in the States. Typically, it is made from hand – semolina flour is rubbed between slightly damp hands, which produces the tiny granular pieces, and can come in many different sizes. Steaming it (as opposed to boiling it) also helps to produce a lighter-texture.

 

The dish that was served to us was a huge mound of couscous, with the lamb and vegetables – carrots, potatoes, zucchini, parsnips, amongst others, piled on top, adding to the enormous look of the dish.  The succulent lamb went nicely with the veggies, and some golden raisins also provided a nice flavor contrast. For dessert, a large ring of homemade flan with fresh pomegranate seeds for garnish (the poms in Morocco were huge!), which we were barely able to eat due to all the other food! Remember how I said we were seated at three tables? They made three of each dish for each table – the pastilla, the couscous, and the flan. Their kitchen was tiny, I have no idea where they put all this food as they were preparing it! It was truly an honor to have been invited to their house, and extremely gratifying to have a home cooked meal.

 

The other real memorable meal was at a place called Riad Maryam, in the small city of Taroudant. A riad is a combo hotel/restaurant, and this place was run by a gentleman in his early 50s, I’d guess, and our waitress was his 20-something daughter, Maryam. We sat in the open-air courtyard at the center of the building. There were Gnoua musicians (one of the ethnic tribes in Morocco) playing and a young boy dancing. The food started with a pureed vegetable soup with a bit of fish broth in it.

 

Then came the vegetables – sautéed zucchini with a light tomato sauce, baby eggplants, fava bean & green pea salad, tomato & cucumber salad, and one more I can’t remember now! We ate tons of the salads, thinking these were our main course. Well, we were wrong! They then brought out tagines, which we politely sent back because we were stuffed (we told them to give them to the musicians…. I am sure they did not go to waste, but I felt horrible we were turning away their hard-prepared food). They insisted on dessert though, and we’re not foolish enough to resist. It didn’t disappoint! What came out of their kitchen is like nothing I had ever seen. Crisp layers of a phyllo-type dough were layered with a creamy sauce, that I can best compare to a crème anglaise with orange flower water and honey mixed into it. Cinnamon and chopped nuts were also between layers, of which there were probably twenty. It looked fantastic, and tasted even better! The crisp phyllo, the creamy sauce, the crunchy nuts…. a truly unique dish (it’s called a keneffa, I am fairly certain), that I am now in search of a recipe for! (If you have one, please let me know!)

 

So, I hope I have made you hungry and piqued your curiosity in Moroccan foods! It’s a unique country and culture, with strong and proud food traditions. There’s so much more I could talk about (olives, preserved lemons, goats who climb in trees....), so come stop by Westgate, and I can tell you more about it and share some recipes.

     

 

 

Yours in food,

- Suzanna the Foodie