Moroccan Food

"Fatima Couscous".  This is what men say to women when they are trying to flirt, or so my new friend Mohammed taught me.

Couscous and tagines are the staple foods in Morocco and it seems that everywhere we go there is some version of these dishes.  A tagine is a ceramic cooking pot that is placed over a fire.  Most often, you can find vegetables, omelettes or meatballs (kafta) inside.  They use a lot of cumin and tumeric to spice their foods inside of the tagine.

Couscous is a dish that is like a rice, it is quite bland on it's own and is often served with a vegetable broth and vegetables or meat on top.  While we were in Ait Benhaddou, we watched a couscous cooking demonstration.  I learned that traditional couscous takes 2.5 hours to cook, and is massaged at least 3 times during the cooking with olive oil.

Besides the traditional dishes, I have tried some delicious food.  The Ruined Garden in Fes was one of the tastiest meals.  It was a deconstructed tomato gaspatcho, a pigeon pastilla (which is like a pigeon pie with icing sugar on top) and a meatball and yogurt dish.

We also tried camel burgers one day.  Camel burgers taste surprisingly like other burgers, but is a bit greasier.  The spices inside of the ground camel were good enough that any odd taste from camel meat is well disguised.  I also got to have Fresh figs and prickly pears, which are two fruits I have never tried before.

A traditional dish, which I have equated to Berber Mac n Cheese is the Berber omelette.  It is grilled or caramelized vegetables (mostly tomato and onion), and once the vegetables start to get cooked, you crack eggs over top and let it all simmer together.  It is quite delicious.

Because Morocco is home to many Muslims, we have found it hard to find alcohol anywhere here.  Many restaurants are not licensed to serve.  We did however find a bar in Essaouira and manage to have a night out (Vicky, Zoe and myself).  We were told to find "Zaid" as he was the brother of the restaurant owner at the restaurant we had eaten at.  He told us Zaid would take care of us.  When we arrived at the bar, Taros, we asked for Zaid, but they couldn't find him.  We then took a seat on the rooftop terrace and enjoyed an overpriced beer.  The wait staff brought us ponchos to wear so we wouldn't get cold.  Eventually we found Zaid and he bought us a few rounds of drinks, while we chatted with some locals and listened to some Arabic blues music.  We also met a tall, curly haired man with bad teeth named Mohammed, and he gave us all Moroccan names.  I was Samira (smiley), Vicky was Aisha (happy) and Zoe was Hadija (the serious one).

Cheers to discovering new food.