Friday: Souk Cuisine

Friday morning we attended our second cooking class. This was the one I had heard good things about, and we were really looking forward to it, even though it meant braving the souks (and cries of “Ali Baba!”) once more. We met up with a bunch of twenty-somethings at the Cafe de France on the Place: a couple from Salt Lake and a couple from Paris. Our fearless leader was a Swiss woman who was filling in for the Dutch owner. It turned out that English was the lingua franca for the day, though there was an ample sprinkling of French, especially in the souks.

We were presented with a shopping list that included things like dried fruits, flour, two chickens (more on that later) and tomatoes. Oh, and one egg. There was simply no way to discern a menu from it, so we set about our task, with our guide taking us to the preferred merchants (why? She never let on) and making sure we didn’t get lost. There were some memorable moments: folks who were shocked that they killed a chicken when you ordered it (he let it bleed out while he settle the account and then plucked it and gave it to us).

At some point, we spent an entertaining half hour in a spice shop, where the shopkeeper put on a great show and explained many things, but then it turned out that there were no spices on our shopping list!

We finally ended up in a little tiny riad, about a half-room wide. This half room was our kitchen space—all six of us, plus the guide and cook, and later the kitchen helper. There were a lot of bumping elbows! I was thrilled to see lovely German knives (one small, one big), but diappointed to find that while the chef’s knife was sharp, the paring knife was quite dull.

We were handed a stack of recipes stapled together, and there were six workstations, some high, some low. My back was hurting, so I chose high. What I didn’t know was that by choosing my workstation, I had chosen the dishes I would be working on. By comparing the pile of recipes with the ingredients in front of me, I discovered I had chosen the ubiquitous Moroccan salad and a sweet carrot appetizer. My recipes called for things like peeling and seeding tomatoes and coring carrots (cutting them in half lengthwise and prying the core out), something I generally don’t bother with. In the end, Alfred and I (he was working on a samosa-type vegetable filling with young Miss Salt Lake) ended up spending over an hour peeling, coring and chopping, while the people across the room were whipping up spicy sauces and marinades, working with the now showered chicken and fresh sardines and preserved lemons and other exotic ingredients. No spices on our side of the room, sigh.

The cook spoke very little French, and none of us spoke Arabic, so it was not always easy to communicate. I found my frustration rising as I had to ask for nearly everything I needed: dishes, plates, pots, matches, oil, missing ingredients, etc. At some point, I got on the wrong side of the cook by putting the oil and vinegar in the bowl before the tomatoes, and scolding me, she wouldn’t let me chop the onion. She gave it to Alfred to chop instead.

We did eventually get the main dishes simmering away and found we could relax a bit and work together making cookies and rolling brionates. This was far more fun than coring carrots!

In the end, we had prepared feast: several salads, a hearty appetizer and a main dish that leaft us groaning (we barely touched it, we were so full). An excellent—Moroccan—wine was offered with the meal. And we still had cookies to eat and take home. And we had reservations for dinner that night—Friday is couscous day in Morocco!

Here are ‘my’ two recipes, the way I make them:

Moroccan Salad

• 1 kilo tomatoes, (peeled and seeded and) diced
• 1 red onion, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons vinegar
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Toss all ingredients together in a bowl.

Sweet Carrot Salad

• 1 kilo carrots, peeled and cut into batons
• 3 cloves of garlic, unpeeled
• 1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
• ½ teaspoon sweet red paprika
• ½ teaspoon ground cumin
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 4 teaspoons sugar
• 2 tablespoons vinegar
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Cook the carrots in boiling salted water with the garlic. Drain and place in a bowl. Peel boiled garlic cloves an dmix with remaining ingredients. Toss together and let cool. Serve as a salad.

The Marrakech Express

I had that classic Crosby, Stills & Nash song running through my head the entire flight from Bristol to Marrakech. It was pretty annoying after a while, but it was considerably better than the Ryanair jungle. I managed to turn the heel of my sock and was reducing the gusset when we finally landed.

The first thing I glimpsed through the plane window (I was in an aisle seat) was the green. This was Africa, and I was expecting barren land, even though I knew Marrakech was something of an oasis. Amidst the low greenery were purple wildflowers. Clearly it had been a wet spring, but the sun was shining, and the pilot told us it was 24 degrees. Heaven.

The airport is small, and confusing: a gentleman in a uniform insisted on seeing our passports at the door. He glanced at them, grunted and waved us in. What we were to do then was not clear until we realized that the mass of people was actually a series of queues for passport control. We found what appeared to be the shortest line, and I went off in search of landing cards. After a mere half hour in line, we were released to walk what seemed miles to the customs line, where our baggage was x-rayed. We passed that hurdle, and were looking forward to being one of those lucky arrivals who had a driver with their name on a sign when we came out. Little did we know that that's pretty much what everyone does--all three planeloads of people. The drivers were about ten deep, some of them so tired of holding up signs that they were dangling by their sides. Like people turning their heads to read book spines in the library, we wended our way through the crowd to find our sign. There, at the back!

We made a quick stop at an ATM to withdraw 2000 Dihrams, and we were on our way to the Medina, or walled city. To get there, we passed miles of brand new luxury apartments, clearly intended for foreigners. And that palm tree? It's really a cell phone tower.

Once inside the city walls, we wended our way through increasingly narrow streets until we could go no more. At that point, my door opened and an extended hand helped me out, and the man attached to it welcomed me to Marrakech. I had just met Domnique, one half of our hosting partners. With our luggage tossed into a hand cart pulled by an old man, we were led down a narrow, uneven, dusty lane to a non-descrip door. "Number 26, Dar Taliwint," explains Dom, and leads us into a delightful, peaceful courtyard of our riad.

Mint tea magically appeared, as did some little delectibles, and Dominique begins with a gentle introduction. He' s clearly experienced at helping seasoned world travellers like us deal with the shock to the system of the incredible hustle and bustle. For we had had to walk a gauntlet of merchants who were hustling us to get to the front door.


Embolded, we laid a plan for our first forray: we would walk up to the Place Jmaa el Fna (hereinafter "La Place") and try to break our 200 Dh bills to pick up a light snack. We made it about 10 paces before the hustle began: "Ali Baba! You are looking for this?" The street we were to follow was completely dug up; only ten feet wide to begin with, the muddy trench in the middle meant there was a path about a foot wide on the side. Imagine a street closure without a flagger. Now turn the cars into men, women, children, bicycles, and the odd donkey cart. You get the picture.

The Place was where it was supposed to be, and it's big. There were the orange juice carts we had heard about, and stands of dates and nuts. Flies everywhere. A glass of juice was 3 Dh, and my smallest bill was 100 Dh. We walked around trying to build up courage to break the bill. We opted for an orange juice maker. A glass (a real one, and I didn't think about how he could wash it until afterwards) was squozen in front of me, and was lovely. But the handful of sticky change didn't add up. When we went to buy dates, we didn't even have half the 80 Dh he wanted. Clearly we had been shortchanged. Alfred went back and demanded his change, and managed to get most of it. But we still paid about triple the posted price.


We were demoralized. We sat in a smelly, filthy park under palm trees and ate dates and some nuts we had brought with. Had we made a huge mistake? When did we get too old for new adventures? Sugar levels restored by the dates, we meandered past the Koutoubia Mosque, which towers over La Place. As non-muslims, we couldn't go in, but we could walk around and even glimpse in the open doorway.

The gardens next to the mosque were lovely, almost French, with trees dripping with oranges. Alfred picked one, and I consulted the map to figure out how to return to the riad. We walked through a bustling neighborhood, dodging cars, donkey carts and mopeds, and walked past a few interesting shops and signs for attractions. We felt quite cocky by the time we found the riad's front door.

We asked Dominique for a recommendation for dinner: he made reservations at Dar Mima, otherwise known as Chez Mimi. While we were relaxing with more cookies and mint tea, in walked a charming man carrying an enormous shopping bag. With a perfectly British hello, we bustled about, and it took a few minutes to discern that this was Lénaïck, the other half of our hosts. Lénaïck sat down and discussed the menu at Mimi's at length, giving me a full run down of the possibilities.

As evening fell, Younes, our young Berber night watchman, arrived and parked his moped in the corner of the courtyard. It was already 8 pm, and we had been up since four! Younes led us through incredibly narrow passageways and knocked at the cat-enhanced doorway to Mimi's.

We had found the refinement we sought: attentive and gracious waitress, delicious food impeccably presented, friendly guests at the next table. We dined for hours (the first of many couscouses), and would have loved to have had dessert, but we were literally falling asleep at the table. We promised ourselves that we would return, and headed back.


A lovely hot shower and we fell into bed, exhausted, but just a wee bit more relaxed than we had been 24 hours prior. Our honeymoon had finally begun!