Moroccan Food

If you have not already heard me say it, the food here is amaaaazing!! One of my favorite things is the abundance of cheap, fresh, delicious fruit. Our favorite vendor is about a three minute walk from our house, and we buy a kilo of strawberries from him on a daily basis - for the equivalent of one Euro! 

Another tasty thing to buy from the vendors is Moroccan fresh cheese. It is a little firmer than cream cheese, with a similar flavor.

People often eat it on bread with honey for breakfast, or crumble it with olive oil, salt, garlic, and parsley and eat it with bread. Both ways are delicious!

Moroccans love sweets in all forms, and one of my favorites is nougat, which you can get with peanuts, almonds, or even flaxseeds!

The man I bought it from had about ten kinds arranged in his cart, giant blocks that he chopped up with a very intense-looking meat cleaver. There are also tons of pastries, and it seems that there is a bakery around every corner.

I think there is some French influence in the types that they make here, but the Moroccan style is clear. They use lots of nuts - peanuts, cashews, almonds, walnuts - and the sweet, thick pastes made by grinding them with sugar. While you can find croissants and other airy confections, a lot of the traditional Moroccan cookies are dense and rich. Many types are scented with orange blossom water, especially ones with almond paste filling. Another popular type is various forms of dough, either a plain batter-like dough or phyllo sheets filled with nuts, fried and then soaked in honey. Yet another type is cakes made from semolina (think couscous baked into a cake), then soaked with orange-scented honey. (Note to family: I am learning how to make some. There will be deliciousness upon my return.)

This kind is made from thin, crispy pastry dough filled with a mixture of ground almonds, honey, spices, and orange blossom water. It goes perfectly with a glass of hot mint tea.

We are incredibly lucky to have a lovely cleaning woman who also cooks when she comes over! This time she made stewed cauliflower with tomatoes and spices and a parsley onion relish. It was so full of flavor, I honestly do not understand how she does it. I'll have to watch next time she is here!

Fish is very popular here, given the proximity to the ocean. We stopped at our favorite soup place to pick up dinner the other night, and arrived just as a couple of pieces of fried fish emerged from the pan.

The owner of the stand poured some soup into bags, then pointed to the fish, wondering if we wanted to try some. I shook my head, prompting an enthusiastic but unintelligible response in a mixture of French, Spanish, and Arabic. It was accompanied by the display and repeated waving around of the still-raw filets lying next to it, as well as delicious smells wafting from the pan. His excitement won us over and we added a paper-wrapped fish to our bag of bread and soup. And he was right - so good! We happily dug in to the mild, tender white fish with crispy breading, still hot from the pan when we got back to our house.