Starting off right
We started off our Moroccan Food Tour in the Paris airport where we had a delicious sandwich and pastry. Everyone kept speaking to my friend Olga (who organized the entire trip, lucky me!) in French because she has what the French call je ne sais quoi. They thought she was one of them. No one spoke to me in French, haha.
First tagine
On our first day in Morocco we ate camel burgers for lunch and for dinner we were served our first tagine in a guest house (similar to an Airbnb). We got a cooking lesson in the kitchen, where our hostess massaged the hot couscous halfway through the cooking time, making it light and delicious. Tagines are made in a special clay pot with a tower lid. She started with well seasoned chicken and stacked sliced vegetables on top, root vegetables first since they take the longest to cook. We ate many varieties of this Moroccan staple on our trip, all colorful, all delicious.
Private cooking lesson from a chef
We went to a chef’s private home in Fez, where we (with lots of help) made the most delicious thing, a pastry called a pastilla, filled with slightly sweet cinnamon flavored chicken.
Official cooking lesson from the Amal Women's Co-operative
This co-op started to assist untrained women to learn culinary skills so they can get a good paying job. They've expanded to offer cooking lessons to the public and also started their own restaurant, as they had a hard time placing workers with hearing challenges in a job. Our group made salads. Most salads in Morocco are what they refer to as 'cooked salads'.
Nous nous and mint tea
Everywhere we went, without fail, we were offered tea by our hosts. Our guide Khalid told us it would be very rude in their culture not to offer a visitor tea. The green tea was from China, served hot and often steeped in fresh mint . The tea pot was held high in the air to make sure there are lots of lucky bubbles in the tea. I also had many tasty cups of nous nous, coffee with milk.
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