Morocco Blogs

Moroccan Family Recipes #4: Lallati Zina’s Fassi Couscous

admin — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:30:24 +0000

If you have a favorite Moroccan Family Recipe you’d like to share send it to reviews@moroccoblogs.com

Lalla Zina is my grandmother. She’s 70 years old and she was born and grew up in Fes. She is a true Fassi woman. When she married my grandfather she was just 17 years old. She used to go to her cousins houses and they would all cook and make recipes together. This is her favorite Fassi recipe.

Lalla Zina would make this for her cousins and brothers when they would have parties. She says when they got thirsty she would make them simple green teas. Our whole family loves it when she makes this for us. ~ Salma B.

Lalla Zina’s Fassi Couscous
Ingredients:
* 1 cup couscous
* 1.5 pounds of tofu
* 1 onion
* 1 cup of potatoes
* 1 cup of carrots
* 1 cup of mushrooms
* 1 cup of celery
* 1/2 cup of walnuts
* 1 can of chickpeas
* 1 can of tomato sauce
* 1/2 cup of raisons
* 1 1/2 cups of water
* 2 teaspoons of curry powder
* 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne
* 1 tsp of paprika
* 1 teaspoon of salt

Preparation:
First, in a large pan, brown the tofu, onions, carrots, celery, mushrooms, and nuts. Then add the remaining ingredients, bring it to a boil, cover and simmer for 40 minutes. Next boil 1 1/2 cups of water with 2 tbsp of oil. AFter that, add couscous, stir, cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 5 minutes. Finally serve the vegetables over the steaming couscous.

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Moroccan Family Recipes #3: Pigeons with Sauce

admin — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:15:55 +0000

If you have a Moroccan Family Recipe you’d like to share send it to reviews@moroccoblogs.com

My mother was born in 1969 in the town of Bhalil not far from Fes. She grew up there. When she was a young girl, she was a good student and in her free time she helped her mother at home, like all good Moroccan girls do. Her mother taught her traditional recipes from the Berber culture that are so delicious. This is one of them.

Pigeons with Sauce
Sauce Ingredients:
* 4 pigeons
* 2 onions
* 2 heads of garlic
* parsley’
* cilantro
* salt
* pepper
* ginger
* saffron
* red pepper
* small cup of vegetable oil

Bread ingredients:
* 1 kg of flour
* tsp of salt
* 1/3 litre of water

To make this meal first slice the onions and put them in the bottom of a pressure cooker. Next put the four pigeons in (clean them first though!) Then chop up the garlic. After that add the salt, pepper, ginger, red pepper, and a small pinch of saffron. Finally add the oil and seal the pressure cooker. Cook for 35 minutes.

While that cooks you can make the breadd. Add the flour, salt, and water together mix well and bake in a very think pan until brown on the top.

To serve break the bread into four pieces. Arrange them on the plate. Put the pigeons in the middle and pour the sauce and onions over the top. This is a traditional Berber dish reserved just for VIPs.

My mother likes to make this in summer when the wheat is fresh and the pigeons are young.

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Moroccan Family Recipes #2 : Grandma’s Grilled Fish

admin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 12:03:02 +0000

If you have a Moroccan Family Recipe you’d like to share send it to reviews@moroccoblogs.com

Mrs. Fatiha is my grandmother. She was born and grew up in Fes and she is about 80 years old. She maried my grandfather when she was just 15 years old. At that time she used to go camping with her cousins and friends at the beach and she liked to cook this recipe for them.

Moroccan Grilled Fish
Ingredients:

* 1 kg of fish
* salt
* potatoes
* carrots
* lemon to remove the smell
* pepper

First wash the fish well and cut the carrots and potatoes up. Mix the salt, lemon, and pepper and put the mixture inside the fish. Put the fish, potatoes, and carrots on the grill over hot coals. The fish is ready in just 15 minutes and so delcious. It’s a simple dish but you really have to try it.

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Moroccan Family Recipes #1 : Meat with Black Prune

admin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:38:37 +0000

Zineb I. sends us this recipe for our Moroccan Family Recipes Series. If you have a great family recipe you’d like to share with readers at MoroccoBlogs.com just send it to reviews@moroccoblogs.com

Idrissi Mohammde is my father. He is 60 years old. He was born in Fez and grew up there. When he married my mother he was 24 years old. After a few years they moved to Holland. He’s both a traditional and a modern man, but he thinks that life has changed a lot. When he was in Holland he used to work as a Chef. Hu used to make international food but his favorite dish was Moroccan.

My father used to work in a famous restaurant in Holland. One day he received an invitation from a TV show to show them how to make a Moroccan recipe. He went and demonstrated his favorite dish on TV. It was so delicious and all the people tried it. After a week, a supermarket in Amsterdam was selling magazines with my father and his recipe in them and from then on they started to call him Mr. Prune.

The Meat With Black Prunes
Ingredients:
2 kg of beef
3 onions
a bundle of parsley and a bundle of coriander
2 scrubbed garlic
tsp of ginger, saffron, salt, and pepper
1 kg of prunes
100 g sesames
honey
cinnamon

First wash all the meat, coriander, parsley and onion. Next put the meat in a pressure cooker, cut the onion on it and add the coriander and parsley to the meat. After that add two scrubbed garlic with a pinch of saffron, ginger, pepper, salt, and close the pressure cooker, put it on the fire and wait for 25 -30 minutes.

Put the prunes in a pot of water and let simmer for 15 minutes.

After the 30 minutes, the meat is half cooked so take the prunes and add them to the meat. Then add the honey, cinnamon, and close the pressure cooker for another 15 minutes. Finally put all the meat and prunes on a dish, add the sesame seeds to decorate it and enjoy.

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Ten things you must do in Morocco

admin — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:15:13 +0000

Whether you are a visitor or a resident, the following is a list of the ten things you must do while you are in Morocco.

1) Visit the Sahara. Whether you go to Merzouga or another spot, the essential thing to do in Morocco is to visit the world’s largest desert of sand. You can ride a camel or take a 4×4 but you must see the Sahara.

2) Stroll through Chefchauen. The funky town of Chefchauen is painted blue because it has always been a refuge for those who move to the beat of a different drum. In this case Jewish refugees from Europe. It’s like being in a different world.

3) Ait Benhaddhu in the Draa Valley is a desert fortress that will make you think of Hollywood films, mainly because it has been in so many of them and yet this set is the real thing. There’s a reason Hollywood loves it so much.

4) Eat couscous with a Moroccan family. Sure, you can get couscous in a restaurant but it’s not until you are sitting around the table on a Friday watching the old folks make couscous balls that the experience truly has any meaning.

5) Get lost in the Fes Medina. Sure, everyone does it, but that doesn’t change the fact that almost getting run over by a donkey in a three foot wide stone alleyway that was built in 700 AD is an experience you’ll never forget.

6) Listen to the Call to Prayer at Sunset from a mountaintop looking over a fair sized city. One call to prayer is magical, but when you hear fifty all coming at slightly different times, it is otherworldly.

7) Wander around Tangier and imagine what it was like when the likes of William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and others were drugged out of their minds there back in the days when the ‘interzone’ drew desperados, drug addicts, homosexuals, and pedophiles.

8) Haggle good naturedly. Too many visitors don’t get the point that haggling can be fun. Pick a price you will be happy with and then see if you can get it for less. If you can’t, just don’t go over your target price. One thing is certain, keep smiling and never let them see you sweat.

9) Sit on the street somewhere eating chicken and fries and watch the locals wander past. We know, you would rather have a tajine and pay 100 dirhams for it, but give it a try. A chicken meal with fries and a drink can usually be had for between 15 and 40 dirhams and you will get to see what real life is like in Morocco. Plus, the roast chicken is almost always better than street tajines.

10) Have dessert for breakfast. This one is especially aimed at North Americans. Did you know that it’s fairly normal to have a piece of cake for breakfast? Step into a Moroccan boulangerie and order yourself a big piece of chocolate cake and an avocado milkshake for breakfast. While the average American might be surprised at using avocados in a milkshake, the average Moroccan would be just as surprised to see avocado in a sandwich with cheese…we’re not saying who is the odder of the two.

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Morocco Travel Tips from Fez ALC students #10

admin — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 15:29:20 +0000

My class at the American Language Center in Fes was terribly excited to have the opportunity to present travel advice to potential visitors of their city. Once again, I gave them the choice of me posting their work to MoroccoBlogs.com or Vagobond.com and they overwhelmingly chose Morocco Blogs. It seems that the students and many of their families already know and like this site and so this is where they want their work to be seen.

This series will showcase their advice to visitors of their city in Fes, Morocco. All work is published with the permission and consent of the authors.

Of course, not all of them had wonderful things to say….

Dear Visitor,

I’m very happy you are going to visit Fez. As you know, it is the oldest city in Morocco and one of the fourth biggest cities here. It’s a wonderful place and you have to visit the old Medina. It’s an interesting sight to see.

Take pictures of this exciting place and the nice people who live here. Of course, you should visit the many great Moroccan restaurants if you want to try great Moroccan food like bastila, couscous, tajine, rfissa, and harira. They are very delicious.

You don’t need to bring a lot of cash with you because everything is cheap here. There isn’t enough public transportation in Fes so you are probably going to walk a lot. You might also want to bring a gun or a knife because there are really a lot of thieves.

When you finish your visit to Fez, I hope you will tell me how you found it. Then, maybe I can come visit you in your country or city. Have a nice trip.

Mehdi
15 years old

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Winner of June Travel Writing Contest

admin — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 08:29:27 +0000

We’re proud to announce the winner of our June Travel writing contest. It was a hard decision as all of the entries had something that we loved about them, even the one that told us not to pick it. While they were all great, it was the images and scenes that were described by Miranda that stood out the most.

You can read her award winning entry below. Her prize is a two night stay in the Fes Medina at the luxurious Dar Othmane. Congratulations Miranda…if you ever want to write a guest post about Morocco or travel here, you are always welcome!

My favorite Moroccan destination isn’t so much a destination as it is a state of mind, though it does have a name and a place on the map.

My partner and I visited the ancient medina-city of Fes el Bali for the first time three years ago. Our love was still new and when we arrived it was like having travelled to the centre of someone else’s dream; we stood at the base of Bab Boujoloud, the gaping blue-green gate, our eyes hot, sweating diamonds onto a street paved with dust.

We held hands shyly as we explored; we learned the smell of each other’s sweat, the intimacy of shared anxieties and happinesses.

We spent our days walking imperfect circles, coming across sudden palaces, half-decayed, women scrubbing the rot of orange blossoms from the tiled floors. We never quite knew where we were and we never once felt lost.

From a good terrace we could see the curves of the city and look down onto the mysterious pear-shaped Medina and we could try to decipher it; but two thousand streets is too many to understand, and what would be the point anyway?

In the medina we were able to simply be; the air hanging always with a candid, unbridled pungency, the sky above open and honest and blue.

One night, full of meat and couscous from the Tajine, and cinnamon-spiced oranges, and chunks of hearty bread, we wandered with no aim but to quiet our bulging stomachs, and to enjoy the coolness that the dark brings. We took a turn away from the main drag, where late night merchants beckoned us into stalls full of leather bags and extravagant rugs, where children ran screaming past us and beggars rattled coins.

Suddenly it was quiet: we had come upon a small square, which once, perhaps, was fully enclosed, for along one side was a half-collapsed wall, and in one corner, a single, elegant archway. The ground was patterned with blue tiles.

We heard the echo of one last call to prayer; from our secret plaza, it sounded distant and foreign. We felt ourselves suspended in time.

Every day for a thousand years, I knew, the muezzin had sung from minarets for men to come and pray. Maybe this was the only way to mark the passing of hours here: by the clockwork of five Adhans a day.

Now it seems to me a sweet city of perpetual wandering. You are carried by the wind, driven by the whims of your own nostrils, by the way the light strikes a building; and the aimlessness of a day spent lost-but-not-lost in the medina is as beautiful as any mountain or medersa.

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Morocco Travel Tips from ALC Fez Students

admin — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:23:33 +0000

This series will showcase their advice to visitors of their city in Fes, Morocco. All work is published with the permission and consent of the authors.

Of course, not all of them had wonderful things to say….

Dear Visitor,

I don’t recommend you visit my city of Fes, Morocco. As you know it doesn’t have many view points and the night life is sooooo boring. However, if you want to come, you shouldn’t miss a tour in the old Medina and tasting some local Moroccan dishes.

One nice thing about Fes is that it has a very nice countryside around it. It’s located right in the middle of the Morocco and it is beautiful.

Mourad
Age 19

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Moroccan Travel tips from ALC-Fes students #8

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:20:50 +0000

This series will showcase their advice to visitors of their city in Fes, Morocco. All work is published with the permission and consent of the authors.

Dear Visitor,

So, you’re going to travel to Fes! Don’t foret to bring your camera so you can take lots of pictures because there are museums and other places you won’t want to miss.

You’d better make a hotel reservation before you travel because sometimes the hotels are too crowded with tourists to find a room.

You won’t have to buy a map. We have lots of news shops here and they have maps for you. Also, don’t pack warm clothes because this month it will be warm. Don’t forget your passport, visa, money, and credit card.

I’m sure you will enjoy Fes a lot.

Yasmine
14 years old

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ALC Student Travel Tips – Fes #7

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:25:31 +0000

This series will showcase their advice to visitors of their city in Fes, Morocco. All work is published with the permission and consent of the authors.

Dear Visitor,

I’m excited that you will visit my city. It is the fourth largest city in Morocco, but in my opinion it is the nicest.

In Fez, you must have a camera. I think it may be the law for tourists because there are so many beautiful places to visit. You’ll want to take your memories home with you.

When you visit the old medina, you will discover historic monuments and also don’t forget that Fez is surrounded by some simple and beautiful towns. You shouldn’t miss the countryside sight-seeing. You will enjoy it.

The weather in Fez can vary, you will come in summer so you have to know that it’s too hot, but you shouldn’t worry about it because there are many swimming pools and the neighboring cities are less hot.

I suggest you come in Spring since it’s better then than in the other seasons. I promise you that you will never regret visiting Fes.

Zineb
24 years old

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