The scents of the souk
In 1970, Belgian writer and tireless traveler Albert t'Serstevens wrote L'Itinéraire marocain. In his travel diary, he describes Moroccan society and, of course, does not overlook the importance of the organization of meals and the pomp that surrounds the country's cuisine: " Next, the bread that is part of every Moroccan meal is brought to us, in these tall wicker baskets with pointed lids. As a first course, we'll be served long skewers of mutton, from which we'll detach the pieces with our fingers, as the entire meal, according to custom, will be served without fork or spoon. To keep our fingers from getting too greasy, we'll use pieces of bread, but after each service we'll be given a basin and ewer to wash ourselves in, with soap and a sponge towel added at the end. A majestic couscous is then presented, in two successive parts, the first made up of meat and vegetables, the second a high pyramid of ground, steamed wheat, mixed with raisins and spiced with chilli. The chosen meats and vegetables are removed from the dish with the fingers, and from the mound of cooked wheat, bite-sized pieces are formed into balls and stuffed with raisins before being eaten. This custom, which is practised in high society as well as in the Berber douars where we have been invited, is not at all unseemly, no doubt inconvenient for the neophyte, but one soon comes to practise it without damage. Drinks include water, mint tea or orange juice, which is better suited to this very spicy cuisine than wine. [...] Fruit desserts in overflowing baskets, hot, very sweet coffee"
There's no denying that Moroccan cuisine boasts a wealth of flavors, smells and colors. Although rarely spicy, it nevertheless employs a particularly impressive array of aromatics. Spices(attar) are everywhere, and you'll have no trouble believing that after a stroll through the spice souk of any medina. Although some spices have been imported to Morocco by the Arabs for thousands of years, many ingredients - such as saffron from Taliouine, mint and olives from Meknes and oranges and lemons from Fez - are grown locally and exported internationally. Common spices include cinnamon, cumin, turmeric, ginger, paprika, coriander, saffron, cloves, fennel, anise, nutmeg, mace (the fragrant orange husk that covers nutmegs), cayenne pepper, fenugreek, caraway, black pepper and sesame seeds. Twenty-seven spices are traditionally combined to create the famous ras el hanout spice blend (literally "at the head of the grocery store"), which is also used in Algeria and Tunisia. It includes the most common spices, such as cinnamon and cumin, as well as the most unusual, such as dried rosebuds or iris root powder. Common herbs in Moroccan cuisine include mint, parsley, coriander, oregano, peppermint, marjoram, verbena, sage and laurel. Although they are moderate consumers of chillies, Moroccans are very fond of harissa, a fiercely spicy paste of chillies and garlic.
Without necessarily talking about fresh produce, which is best enjoyed on the spot, the souks are a great opportunity to discover numerous Moroccan products to bring back in your luggage (spices, preserved lemons, harissa, pickled vegetables, olives, etc.) at very low prices compared to those in France. What's more, most will be of superior quality, especially the spices, which are often much tastier. Merchants will be delighted to introduce you to products with countless and sometimes surprising therapeutic virtues. Beware, however, of a few little deceptions. This is particularly true of the saffron sold in some souks, which is in fact made up of the fine petals of marigolds, a very slightly aromatic orange flower, a far cry from saffron's inimitable flavor. A saffron pistil is very thin and long, and can be recognized by its unique blood-red color.
There are many souks in Morocco, although some have very few food stalls. The term "souk" is vague and also refers to all kinds of products: pottery, cosmetics, clothing, jewelry, etc. The souks of Marrakech, Essaouira, Rabat, Agadir and the El Henna souk in Fez are just some of the many souks where you can shop and dine. Not to be missed, Casablanca's Marché Central offers a surprising diversity of delicacies, while gourmets can stroll past the hundreds of stalls overflowing with the tastiest dishes in Marrakech's Place Jemaa el-Fna.
The Moroccan cuisine, dishes with various products
As well as spices, Moroccan cuisine makes good use of the vegetables that abound in the country. While the scorching heat of the Sahara and the harsh winters of the Atlas mountains limit the cultivation of certain species, much of Morocco has a mild climate all year round, offering great possibilities in terms of cultivation: eggplant, bell pepper, tomato, potato, zucchini, pumpkin, cucumber, carrot, turnip, artichoke, onion, but also all kinds of fruit, including citrus fruits (lemon, orange and mandarin), plums, figs, dates, apricots and grapes, which are used for both sweet and savoury dishes. Lemons, in particular, are preserved in salt and water, where they end up giving what are known as preserved lemons, with a particularly powerful taste. Olives are also essential to Moroccan cuisine. Tasted as they are, they are also used to garnish many dishes, not to mention olive oil, which plays a major role in Maghreb cuisine. Cereals such as wheat, barley and rice, as well as legumes such as chickpeas, lentils, broad beans, split peas, etc., are used in abundance.
Lamb and mutton are very common, as are beef and chicken, and to a lesser extent duck and pigeon. Snails(halzoun) are one of Morocco's most popular market snacks, simmered in a spicy sauce. With almost 3,000 km of coastline shared between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean, fish and seafood abound in Moroccan cuisine: sole, swordfish, tuna, turbot, mackerel, shrimp, eel-conger, snapper, spider crab, lobster and all manner of mollusks. The kingdom is also the world'sNo. 1 exporter of sardines, a fish that accounts for around two-thirds of its catch.
The basics of Moroccan cuisine
Although in Morocco the line between main course and starter is subtle, not least because some salads or soups are sometimes hearty enough to make up an entire meal, the menu often begins with appetizers, notably cooked vegetable salads or savory pastries. Ideal for a touch of freshness, chlada is a simple blend of tomato, cucumber and parsley. Conversely, there are many cooked salads - albeit served cold or warm - containing tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, beet, potatoes or carrots, generously garnished with olive oil and aromatic herbs. This is the case with taktouka, a preparation based on diced tomatoes, peppers and onions, which have been preserved for a long time. Matbukha combines the same ingredients, but is much spicier. There's also zaalouk, similar to eggplant and tomato caviar. Sweet and sour is a very successful concept in Morocco, with more surprising salads containing oranges flavored with cumin, cinnamon and coriander and decorated with black olives. The rarer bakoula is a salad of mallow leaves (a close relative of hibiscus), sometimes replaced by spinach, and flavored with preserved lemon. Halfway between a hot salad and a stew, chakchouka consists of tomatoes and green peppers stewed in a pot before cracking a few eggs into the boiling sauce. Served with bread. There are also many soup recipes in Morocco. Harira is one of the best known. This chickpea or lentil soup is traditionally served during Ramadan, accompanied by sweets and dates. It is made from diced meat - including offal - onions, saffron, chickpeas or lentils, all mixed in boiling water with flour until the mixture is fluid. Traditional harira is often accompanied by rice, tomato and coriander. Chorba is very similar, but with the addition of vermicelli. Simpler, bissara (or tamarakt) is a very thick split pea or broad bean soup.
A great place for frying
There are also many types of savoury pastries, which can be eaten at the table for the more sophisticated ones, or on the go for the simpler ones. Many are made with feuille de brick, which is not a raw pastry, but a kind of crêpe, very thin and rather tough, used in many Maghreb recipes. A little hard on the surface, it becomes deliciously crispy when brushed with oil and placed in the oven. Of course, we're all thinking of pastilla, a puff pastry made from an impressive number of brick pastry sheets containing a stuffing of poultry (chicken, guinea fowl, partridge or - more refined - pigeon), onions, almonds, hard-boiled egg and coriander. To decorate, powdered sugar and cinnamon are sprinkled on top. Some modern versions include a seafood filling. Briouats or briwats are also made from brick pastry: these triangular turnovers are usually filled with minced meat (beef or lamb), onions, preserved lemon, and sometimes cheese. There's also a sweet version with almonds. The term "brik" is a distortion of the Turkish word bürek, a meat, spinach or cheese turnover found from Greece and North Africa to Central Asia. In Morocco, it's quite different, as it's stuffed with tuna or hard-boiled egg. Makouda are small fried potato croquettes with herbs. A typical street market snack, msemmen is a kind of elastic, nourishing patty sometimes stuffed with a mixture of minced meat, onion, tomato and chilli; although it is more commonly eaten as is, sometimes with a drizzle of honey, especially during Ramadan.
Meals and religion
An essential pillar of Islam, Ramadan is observed with great rigor in Morocco. From sunrise to sunset, observers are forbidden to eat or drink. Depending on the Hegira lunar calendar, its date changes every year according to the new moon, but it always lasts around 30 days. At sunset, the fast is broken(ftour or iftar) with the traditional harira, which is eaten alongside beghrir (small honey pancakes) and chebakia (fried cakes coated in honey). This snack allows you to wait until the real dinner, which takes place later in the night. Ramadan ends with Eid el-Fitr (literally "Feast of the Breaking").
Couscous, tajines and grills
After the many appetizers, soups and salads, if there's any room left over, it's time for the main course. Emblematic of Moroccan cuisine, couscous is so well known and accepted in France that it has even been voted one of France's favorite dishes. For the record, "couscous royal" is not a traditional Moroccan dish, but a French invention that allowed customers in France to enjoy a variety of meats with an "oriental" vegetable sauce. In reality, couscous generally consists of a single meat and several vegetables, usually served with semolina, which differentiates it from tajine, which is usually served with bread.
There are almost 140 varieties! It can contain merguez, lamb, chicken or even meatballs. There are, of course, many vegetarian versions, as vegetables are just as important as meat in this dish. Seven-vegetable couscous is a specialty of Rabat and Casablanca, containing carrots, zucchini, turnips, chickpeas and more. You can also try couscous with onions and caramelized raisins(t'faya) - which also contains lamb - or couscous belboula made with barley semolina. Couscous with khlii is a classic recipe, the only difference being that instead of fresh meat, khlii is added: lamb confit in its own fat, with a very strong taste. On the coast, you can also enjoy a finely spiced fish and seafood variant. Almonds, pistachios, dried fruit, preserved lemons and pigeon or duck meat are also used in some couscous recipes.
Another must-try dish is tajine. The term refers both to the recipe and to the round dish with raised edges and a conical terracotta lid. A good tagine (mutton, lamb, chicken, etc.) should simmer for several hours in its own juices, seasoned with a few spices (ginger, turmeric, cumin, etc.). First simmer the onions, spices and tomatoes, then add the meat, cut up with the vegetables and spices. Fruit can also be added. The whole thing must then be stewed over a low heat, to retain all its flavor and softness. Unlike couscous, a tagine contains very little liquid apart from the cooking juices, and is served with bread rather than semolina. Of course, there's the inevitable chicken tagine with preserved lemon and olives, as well as the mrouzia, a common tagine for breaking the Ramadan fast, made with lamb, almonds and prunes. Fish and seafood tagines (especially shrimp) are also popular.
Offal comes in all shapes and sizes: calf's feet, tripe, liver, brains, intestines and sheep's head. Although reserved for a discerning public, certain recipes are well worth a detour, such as tihane (stuffed veal spleen), mokh mchermel (lamb brains in tomato sauce) or boulfaf (lamb liver brochettes in crépine sauce). Grilled meats, especially kebabs, are an inexpensive and very tasty snack. At the entrance to a market, in the street or by the side of a road, they are cooked for a minute: a cheap and delicious "snack". Some grilled meats are more classic, such as the famous merguez, made from beef and/or mutton, which of course tastes much better on the spot. Keftas - spicy lamb or beef meatballs - are often grilled, but also served with a tomato and coriander sauce, into which a few eggs are sometimes cracked during cooking. Otherwise, the famous méchoui is the ultimate in grilling. A festive dish requiring a great deal of time and attention, it consists of a whole lamb roasted on a spit or in the oven. Traditionally, male lambs were raised to graze on mugwort, giving their flesh a unique aroma. After 4 to 5 hours of cooking, the meat melts in your mouth.
The sweet pleasures of Morocco
Moroccans are particularly fond of sweets. Orange blossom, honey, almonds and cinnamon are among the ingredients most commonly used in Moroccan pastries. Most are naturally presented in bite-sized portions rather than as a single cake.
Among all the specialties is of course the baghrir, a very spongy type of pancake of Berber origin, served warm with melted butter and honey. Often served during Ramadan, chebakia (mkharqa or griouche) is a rose-shaped fried pastry with serrated edges that is then soaked in syrup. Delicate gazelle horns(kaab el ghzal) are small crescents made from thin shortcrust pastry and filled with almond paste and orange blossom water. The simpler feqqas are small cookies reminiscent of Provençal almond croquants. Ghriba are very crumbly cookies generally made with powdered nuts or grated coconut. Very popular, makrouds are bites of fine semolina filled with date paste, fried and soaked in syrup. Sfenj - which translates as "sponge" - is simply a type of doughnut. The more classic meskouta is a simple crown-shaped cake flavored with orange juice. The surprising sfouf, or sellou, is a highly nutritious dessert made from toasted flour mixed with melted butter, honey, sesame and almonds, resembling sand.
Although originally from Greece and Turkey, baklava has made its way to Morocco. It consists of a multitude of paper-thin layers of filo pastry surrounding a filling of walnuts, pistachios and crushed almonds, soaked in a syrup of cinnamon, orange blossom and honey. The same is true of kadaïf or kenafeh, a very common dessert in the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Palestine), which consists of two layers of angel hair surrounding a layer of soft mozzarella-like cheese(nabulsi), which melts into the cake and is then flavored with pistachios and rosewater. Lastly, pastilla au lait or knéfa resembles a crisp brick pastry millefeuille topped with orange blossom-scented milk cream and decorated with almonds.
Local drinks
To quench your thirst after a few of these often very sweet pastries, nothing beats a glass of mint tea. At the heart of social life in the Maghreb, it is traditionally prepared by the head of the family and offered to guests as a sign of hospitality. Tea is consumed throughout the day as a social activity. Although the arrival of tea in the Maghreb - which originated in China - is open to debate, it is thought that the plant began to be consumed in the region between the late 18th and early 19th centuries. By the early 20th century, mint tea was already a widely democratized beverage. Mint is generally used on its own to flavor the tea, but in winter a number of warming herbs such as wormwood are added. Made from green tea, fresh mint leaves, sugar and boiling water, the proportions of the ingredients and the brewing time can vary considerably. It is poured into glasses high enough to rotate the tea leaves at the bottom of the glass, while gently aerating the tea to enhance its flavor. Unlike tea drunk in China, where the water is just hot enough to avoid making the tea bitter, in Morocco the water is bubbling. To compensate, a lot of sugar is added, about one teaspoon for every 10 cl of water. Traditionally, the tea is blended three times. This gives each glass of tea a unique flavor, described in this famous Maghrebian proverb: " The first glass is as sweet as life / the second is as strong as love / the third is as bitter as death. "
Although it extended far into North Africa, the Ottoman Empire never incorporated Morocco into its immense territory. As a result, coffee - an extremely popular beverage with the Turks - didn't arrive in the country until the French protectorate. Today, with the growing number of foreign tourists, most restaurants and hotels are equipped with coffee machines, although tea remains the most popular hot beverage. Beyond tea and coffee, fresh fruit juices will quench your thirst at any time of day. Orange, grape, pomegranate or - more surprisingly - beet, they're not to be drunk just anywhere, though. Some unscrupulous retailers inject water into their orange juices to make them more profitable. Beware, as tap water is not potable in Morocco, and this kind of practice can lead to severe discomfort when you wake up in the morning.
Although Islam forbids the consumption of alcohol, Morocco remains quite flexible, especially where tourists are concerned, and beer, wine and spirits are readily available in international restaurants and hotels. The most common beer is Flag Special, a light blonde, while Casablanca is stronger. Brewed in Marrakech, Casablanca and Fez, Stork is another good Moroccan beer. There are also a number of European brands. It's no exaggeration to say that Morocco produces the best wines in the Maghreb. The kingdom's wine production is concentrated in the north of the country, in the Fès and Meknès regions. Worthy of mention are Gris de Guerrouane, Boulaouane and oustalet, Cabernet President, but also Thaleb, Père Antoine, Bonassia and Cardinal Amazir in the red wine category, and chaud-soleil and Valpierre in the white category. Although around a third of Moroccans claim to drink wine regularly, you won't find it in small, popular restaurants, but only in relatively expensive places aimed more at tourists. Finally, mahia is an alcohol made from figs at 40°. Previously made by small family businesses, it is now produced industrially in Casablanca. A perfect digestive to round off a meal, it is often drunk with coffee. It also makes excellent cocktails with fruit juice.
