Moroccan Cooking

Moroccan tajines are generally tasty loaded with a variety of veggies, various meats and potatoes including olives with an ungodly amount of oil. It cooks for several hours on a camping stove. French fries or pom-frites are very popular and typically served on the side or sometimes inside the tajine and the meat is divided last between everyone and the guest is served the biggest portion. Everyone sits close at a circular table seated on the floor, small square plastic seats or flour sacs. Using only your right hand you scoop the food with bread called hobs (xbs), it comes in a large round loaf. Cous cous is served on Friday which is known as the day of prayer. It is a long process of preparation and Moroccans use their hands to scoop it from boiling water to a large plate called an lgs3a. Ouch! Shkoon means hot in darija which we learned early on. There are several types of bread, hobbs, msinmin, binyay pastries and cakes called keeka or hellwa. My favorite is the flat pancake bread and vegetable msinmin which is harder to find but my host mom makes it for breakfast on occasion. They eat bread with apricot or fig jam, honey, butter and oil. Coffee is a weak version of Folgers’s instant coffee loaded with sugar and consists of mainly milk which I like when it’s mild. Kids love coffee and they drink throughout the day. The mint tea is also very sweet and hard to drink. Fruit is typically served after each meal and is delicious except the apples.