eats along the 33rd parallel

Here are pictures of Moroccan food:

Lamb and Quince Tajine at Al Fassi Restaurant in the Sofitel Palais Jamai Hotel, Fes.

Next is the dessert at the same restaurant on the prix fixe menu. Note the very light portion!

Bisarra - a white bean, garlic, olive oil, and cumin soup. Available from many street vendors, retail at about $1.

Addis - lentils cooked with lemon and spices and oil. About $1.25.

Hummus - not the Lebanese style you're used to, this is just cooked chickpeas. Sometimes the chickpeas are a bit hard. $1.25.

Fancy Fruit Guy - Vendor of all your favorite exotic fruits including raspberries, lychee, mangoes, strawberries, prickly pear, and the like.

A mostly finished platter of couscous. One of these fed about 8 people! I have taken cooking classes with Laila, the housekeeper, and have recipes for couscous, hummus, harcha (semolina breakfast thing), and tajine. Tajines are conical clay pots that you cook meat and vegetables in. Oftentimes, the food is cooked in big vats and then served in a tajine (that's at a restaurant). At home, you can use small to large tajines to cook up to 3 people's worth of food.

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Filed under // 2009 couscous lamb miriam morocco pictures street food tajine

Miriam: Moroccan Street Food

We've been sampling Moroccan street food, usually our lunch fare after class. No pics yet, but I'm working on it. So far we've had b'sarra, which is a Fassi specialty (from Fes). It's a white bean soup with olive oil and garlic and served with fresh, hardy bread. It's about 6 Dh which is less than a dollar. And includes wormwood tea - yes, the same stuff absinthe is made out of. Addis is currently Aaron's favorite: it's a bowl of lentils with bread and tea and goes for 8 Dh ($1). We've also tried their version of hummus, which is really just unmashed chickpeas that have been cooked with spices (served with bread and tea). That's also 8 Dh. The other day I splurged and ordered tajine. Tajines are ceramic conical dishes that you bake meat, couscous, whatever in. At restaurants (even side cafes), they usually just use a big pot and ladle it into a tajine for serving. Tajines are really single or double serving and used at home. Anyway, I had chicken tajine which was chicken so moist and seasoned... with carrots and potatoes cooked in the chicken juices. Mmmmm. The first day we went, a large group of us ate so they brought out free sides like Moroccan salad, fried eggplant, and an eggplant tomato mash-up. I really wish that they brought that to us all the time. It makes them look good to have a table of foreigners sitting in front of their stall, so they keep plying you with treats to get you to stay. And I don't think we were charged for any of it other than the main dish, which usually comes out to a dollar. I think the tajines are a whopping 13 Dh, but a nice change (especially because they have meat). It's always fun trying to talk to the people their in a mix of Fusha, Dareeja, French, and English. I think I might put my old pocket Minolta in my purse so that I can more surreptitiously take photos rather than using my big new Nikon SLR.

Filed under // 2009 miriam morocco street food tajine tea

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Miriam: Pictures of Moroccan Food

Miriam: Moroccan Street Food