Morocco is by far my favorite country of the ones I've visited since moving to Doha. That fact is mostly due to its AMAZING and unusual food. It's not like the usual Arab-Mediterranean food that's so often associated with Middle Eastern cuisine. You won't find too much hummus, moutabal, tabouleh, or dolma. Instead, you find a lot of tomato based foods (made with the freshest of tomatoes of course!), a lot of fresh baked breads, a lot of steamed vegetables, eggs, seafood, and lamb or goat. Here's a somewhat brief list of my faves from this trip and last...
Harrira - A popular type of soup that's made a different way by every chef but has a few essential properties. It has a creamy stock (either veggie or meat based), lots of legumes (lentils or chickpeas), usually some chopped veggies (onions, tomatoes, etc), and a variety of spices (coriander, cumin, safron, ginger, salt, paprika, you name it!). Some variations even have bits of pasta in it. Any way it's prepared, it's an excellent hearty soup.
Moroccan Salad - Chopped tomatoes, onions, green peppers, and sometimes garlic, soaked overnight in vinegar and oil. Simple but awesome. It probably has another real name, but this is what it's called on all the menus.
Tajine - A dish of veggies (carrots, zucchini, potatoes, parsnips, sometimes onions) and some sort of meat slow-cooked in a huge terra cotta vessel over a fire for several hours. It's basically the Moroccan version of a crock pot. Never cooked with couscous in the vessel.
Couscous - Moroccan version of pasta. And I'm not talking about the stuff that fluffs up instantly when boiling water is added. The real deal is made wit semolina moistened with water and "kneaded" much like bread is kneaded, more like a motion that's scrunching it up in your hands and then pilling it out to make the beady consistency. Then it's steamed over a boiling pot vegetables. Served with the vegetables on top.
Berber Omelette - Just a regular old omelette, but with a vegetable mixture cooked into it. The mixture usually consists of tomatoes, peppers, garlic, and onions with heavy spices such as cilantro, salt, paprika, cumin, cayenne, etc. and cooked in a skillet before adding in the eggs for the omelette. It's nice and juicy and a good chunk of fresh baked khobz soaks the juice right up off the skillet. Yum.
Tea - Last but certainly not least is the drink so popular here that it's named after the country - Moroccan mint tea. But again like the couscous, it's not made with one little bag and a bit of sugar. It's a long process of boiling water, letting loose green tea sit and steep in a little bit of water, clarifying the bad stuff out, boiling the good stuff some more with added water, adding an unbelievable amount of sugar (usually a chunk the size of a fist for one pot that serves maybe 10 at most), mint or some other local flavoring like aramis or absinthe (not the alcohol), and finally into your cup. It's as addictive as coffee. I think I had withdrawal for the first couple of days when I got back.
Those are the biggies. Other tasty discoveries included: Snail soup in the Marrakech marketplace, roast sheep's head, the Moroccan version of shawarma, nomad bread (an incredibly dense wheat bread baked over hot rocks without leavening agents), berber honey (which is like regular honey except its sweeter, tastes like vanilla, and is cloudy), lezazat (the Berber version of trail-mix, ours had dried figs and dates, peanuts both salted and covered with sweet crunchy stuff, and these interesting little sweet cracker pieces). Moroccans even have their own wine industry! This doesn't even touch the northern region which is more of a marriage between European and Moroccan fair (not to mention way more seafood).
We even had the chance to share a little bit of an American culinary tradition while we were there. The one night we stayed in a nomad camp, we knew we were going to be able to have a bonfire there so I picked up a few bags of marshmallows in the supermarket before we hiked off to the camp. After dinner was over, we started the bonfire and I busted out the marshmallows. We found some good roasting sticks, and went to town. At first, our hosts were a bit skeptical. They also didn't realize the buggers would be so hot right out of the fire, so I hope I didn't burn anybody! I might have eaten about half a dozen marshmallows out of the 4 bags we brought with us to the camp. They went wild over them! I'm glad to have contributed to a little bit of cultural exchange...
No comments:
Post a Comment