As I sit here at the Institute at a quarter to two in the afternoon, my thoughts turn to lunch and food in general. In Morocco, the main meal is eaten at noon…and it is main, believe me. Most days I wait to eat until I get home because lunch at the cafeteria is a little too much food for me, if I intend to get anything done in the afternoon. Not that it’s not really good, just a set menu and way too much of it!
Moroccan food is generally really tasty…I haven’t had any bad food. Some is a bit bland, but a lot has been really good. From my experience Moroccan food is mainly tajines, couscous, or pastilla. Tajine or tagine, but the g is pronounced like a zh is a stew-like dish cooked in a ceramic pot directly over the flame. They can be made with lamb, chicken, fish or just vegetables…all of them usually have some vegetables in them. I have had a number of them and most are very tasty. The ones I like best have some kind of dried fruit-apricots, prunes or raisins, and often nuts as a garnish. Fruit and meat go so nicely together. I also love the preserved lemons that are sometimes used as garnish.
You are probably all familiar with couscous – in the States it’s made from durum wheat. Here, it can be made from wheat, barley or corn, or a combination of them. It will usually have vegetables and meat in a heap on top of it, often with the vegetables hiding the meat…like a secret ingredient, so you don’t know what it is until you uncover it! (There is meat hiding under the vegetables in the picture.) The secret to good Moroccan couscous is steaming it three times, which is pretty labor intensive, so it is traditionally a special dish…a Friday dish. Friday is when they go to the mosque - except it isn’t a day off here, although many businesses close at 1 PM so people can go pray. Morocco has a Saturday/Sunday weekend, which is different from much of the Islamic world, which usually has Thursday/Friday, or Friday/ Saturday, or where there is a significant Christian population, Friday and Sunday.Pastilla - I have only had a few, although I saw online that there is a restaurant that specializes in them in Agadir, which I need to find. Pastilla is this enormous flaky pastry, stuffed with meat or fish. The best one I’ve had was at the fig conference…I think it was lamb, but it was seasoned with cinnamon and raisins and was a little bit sweet…I really liked it, despite the fact that I’m often picky about sweet things. They are really beautiful to look at as well. Again, I think they are labor intensive to make, so most restaurants don’t make them unless you order ahead of time.
Every morning I have breakfast at the café attached to the guesthouse where I'm staying. It consists of baguettes sliced in half and toasted, with butter, jam, and ‘Vache-qui-rit ‘cheese’, freshly squeezed Valencia orange juice, and strong coffee with milk.
I’ve had variations on this breakfast at most of the places I’ve stayed. Bread features greatly in all breakfasts...and at every other meal. There are baguettes of french bread, but far more common are a number of versions of round breads cooked on a flat surface...either quite thin, about twice as thick as a pita in the states, or 1" or more thick. They are mostly wheat, but may have barley or other grains in them as well. I like the mixed grain ones...more like whole grain bread. Here are pictures of Berber women making two kinds of bread.Some places breakfast also includes pain au chocolat, sometimes a crepe-like pancake, and occasionally what seems like a fried phyllo dough pancake. At the Ryad in Meknès, I also had Moroccan doughnuts, which are like raised doughnuts, but not sweet at all. Coffee or tea is standard, as is the fresh squeezed orange juice. I don’t think I have had any processed orange juice since I have been here. At one or two of the big hotels, they have also served peach or other juice…bottled in Morocco, and quite tasty. Since Valencia season is over, this week the orange juice has changed to apple or banana "juice". It's more like a smoothie made with milk and bananas or apples. I had banana this morning...quite good, but a little sweet...I think they add sugar.
Agadir is a tourist place, a resort town, and while it is nice to be able to have something other than tajine or couscous, it seems like a lot of the food is pretty generic European. And it tastes generic, not anything really interesting or exciting or different...just kind of bland. The best thing I have had in Agadir in a restaurant is a hamburger and fries at the restaurant attached to the guesthouse. I think they make the hamburgers with kufta meat, which has spices and bread crumbs (or something) in it, so it’s really good.
Agadir is a tourist place, a resort town, and while it is nice to be able to have something other than tajine or couscous, it seems like a lot of the food is pretty generic European. And it tastes generic, not anything really interesting or exciting or different...just kind of bland. The best thing I have had in Agadir in a restaurant is a hamburger and fries at the restaurant attached to the guesthouse. I think they make the hamburgers with kufta meat, which has spices and bread crumbs (or something) in it, so it’s really good.
I did have some really good calamari last night at a nearby restaurant, but it was only 1/3 of the plate, the rest was utterly unseasoned rice, and very tasteless vegetables. I think the cook spent all his effort on the squid and had no time for the rest. So while I’d give the squid an A, the rest was C-, so it barely made it to B-. Picky, picky!
One of the things that disturbs me here, (and it seems in Europe, as well) is that they have followed the American model of vegetable and fruit production…to the detriment of taste. Many of the vegetables you can find in local markets are packing house rejects. Not that they aren’t fine, they are certainly not culls, but they didn’t meet some export specification, so they are sold on the local market. At least when it comes to citrus and tomatoes, that means they are harvested mature green. The citrus are treated with ethylene to give them color, but they don’t taste like much. Neither do the tomatoes…they are very pretty to look at, but have no taste. The reject tomatoes from the packinghouse tend to be the redder ones which won’t survive shipping, but they just haven’t any flavor.
I’m hoping as the mandarin season goes on, there will be more tree ripe mandarins on the market…When I was here six years ago, I remember the taste of the mandarins as being excellent. The best ones I’ve had so far came from an irrigation experiment at the Institute…so they may have been somewhat stressed – like ours, and so had more flavor. The ones in the market have been very disappointing overall.
Some of what is happening here as well is that they are changing from their traditional sour orange rootstock (bigaradier) to Citrus macrophylla in order to get earlier production, and to give tolerance to calcareous soils. But it is definitely to the detriment of flavor…all the macrophylla fruit I’ve tried seems pretty bland. The trees may start producing a year or two earlier, but I wouldn’t put my name on the fruit flavor. The fruit doesn’t seem to have the aromatics which I can smell in the bigaradier fruit even though the it is not yet tree ripe.
So the export market requirements are driving production, and it’s the same as it has been in the US – quantity vs. quality. I have talked about the importance we put on flavor and quality to a number of people, but most don’t really understand. They are looking at volume and getting it to overseas markets. However, most are pretty clear that the macrophylla fruit is not desirable in local markets because of the lack of flavor. They still have over 90% of their mandarins on sour orange, so macrophylla hasn’t taken over yet, but every new planting I’ve seen is on it. They may learn the same lesson that we have…quantity is not always the answer to economics.
One of the things that disturbs me here, (and it seems in Europe, as well) is that they have followed the American model of vegetable and fruit production…to the detriment of taste. Many of the vegetables you can find in local markets are packing house rejects. Not that they aren’t fine, they are certainly not culls, but they didn’t meet some export specification, so they are sold on the local market. At least when it comes to citrus and tomatoes, that means they are harvested mature green. The citrus are treated with ethylene to give them color, but they don’t taste like much. Neither do the tomatoes…they are very pretty to look at, but have no taste. The reject tomatoes from the packinghouse tend to be the redder ones which won’t survive shipping, but they just haven’t any flavor.
I’m hoping as the mandarin season goes on, there will be more tree ripe mandarins on the market…When I was here six years ago, I remember the taste of the mandarins as being excellent. The best ones I’ve had so far came from an irrigation experiment at the Institute…so they may have been somewhat stressed – like ours, and so had more flavor. The ones in the market have been very disappointing overall.
Some of what is happening here as well is that they are changing from their traditional sour orange rootstock (bigaradier) to Citrus macrophylla in order to get earlier production, and to give tolerance to calcareous soils. But it is definitely to the detriment of flavor…all the macrophylla fruit I’ve tried seems pretty bland. The trees may start producing a year or two earlier, but I wouldn’t put my name on the fruit flavor. The fruit doesn’t seem to have the aromatics which I can smell in the bigaradier fruit even though the it is not yet tree ripe.
So the export market requirements are driving production, and it’s the same as it has been in the US – quantity vs. quality. I have talked about the importance we put on flavor and quality to a number of people, but most don’t really understand. They are looking at volume and getting it to overseas markets. However, most are pretty clear that the macrophylla fruit is not desirable in local markets because of the lack of flavor. They still have over 90% of their mandarins on sour orange, so macrophylla hasn’t taken over yet, but every new planting I’ve seen is on it. They may learn the same lesson that we have…quantity is not always the answer to economics.
No comments:
Post a Comment