SPICE UP YOU LIFE…

With this post, we’d like to introduce you to 3 essential elements of Moroccan food: tea, spices, bread.

Three products that never miss in a Moroccan kitchen: they are the base of each meal, from breakfast to dinner.

Homemade, natural, perfumed, addictive (!), they easily become part of your diet once you arrive in Morocco.

We often go with our guests to what's called 'pharmacy Berber', (let's say the equivalent of herbalist shop), where they can taste 'tea royal' and get a lot of insights about tea, spices and natural treatment.

Let’s dig a bit more into each of these products and let’s start with TEA:

'But first, coffee..' is definitely a quote we love: we can't start our day without drinking a whole moka!
However, since we've been living in Morocco, we're drinking huge quantities of tea...and we like it!

Here, making tea is an old tradition and the way to prepare it varies from zones to zones.
To make a proper Moroccan tea takes at least 40 minutes: moreover, you have to know how to pour it in order to 'wash and oxygenate' the leaves and stir the sugar

One of our favorites is definitely 'Royal tea', a perfumed mixture that includes several spices and herbs such as dried roses, star anise, cinnamon roots.

If you’re lucky enough, you’ll taste royal tea mixed with a resin from the desert, which helps the ‘tea foam’ to stay longer (a measure of quality!). The more you get closer to the desert, the more sugary the tea will be!
We often suggest tourists to ask for a tea without sugar: in this way, the sugar will be served apart and the tea will have ‘only’ the sugar used during the preparation.

Sergio is a master making Moroccan tea, thanks to the tips his Moroccan friends shared with him.

It’s a long procedure that involves different actions such as ‘saving the hearth of the tea’, throwing away what’s not good, washing and oxygenate the leaves by pouring the tea from one glass to another.

The result is delicious (if you’re patient enough!)

Let’s continue with SPICES... this is definitely one of our favorite topics and the preferred stop (again, into the ‘pharmacy Berber’) of both Ari and our guests while visiting Essaouira.
Morocco is full of spices that can be used for cooking or as medicines.

Each of these 'pharmacies Berber' has its own recipe and the mixes are made of a slightly different quantity of the spices, in order to keep the recipe unique: from Ras el Hanout to curry, including several mixes for tajines.

If you enter one of these shops, you can get lost for hours listening, tasting and smelling.
This is definitely a one-of-a-kind experience you should try at least once in your life.
(contact us to make it possible!)

How not to talk about turmeric: if you drink a small quantity in a glass of water every morning your body will see lots of benefits (natural anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, increased brain function, less risk of heart diseases, can help prevent cancer).

The most famous and perfumed is cumin: it’s used to spice boiled eggs and soups, or mixed with salt to flavor stew meat.

And now, let’s talk about the main character of Moroccan cuisine: BREAD, delicious nourishment and Ari's addiction! 

It’s used ‘instead of cutlery’: the plate is served at the centre of the table, all the guests around and each of them has his own loaf. You take a piece of your loaf and use it to eat. Everything has a different taste when you eat this way, it’s like if you’re ‘more connected with what you’re eating’, appreciating every bite.

There are lots of types of bread, we like them all, but the most important things for us is how it's made. And here you’re safe everywhere around the country! Moroccan bread is homemade and you can even make it at home and go cook it to one of the district’s bakery.

Bread has a 'complex and slow' process to rise but its ingredients are simple and only 3: flour, yeast (possibly starter) and water (and eventually salt).

It's the food of the soul, one of the most ancient one. 

It's very sad to see that lots of people 'demonize' bread, linking fat and not healthy habits to this product.
The problem is not the bread itself, but the type of bread you choose: if you buy the bread in the supermarket, which is full of preservatives, of course, you'll feel swollen.

As for the vegetables, try to buy your food in the small markets or, even better, from the farmers. 
Eat the bread made by bakers that use original recipes and natural ingredients, those bakers that make bread with love.

This topic is well explained in 'Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation' by Michael Pollan, a journey through the elements Earth, Air, Fire, and Water and how they influence the cooking process.
(You can also watch the related Netflix series).

When it comes to air, Pollan talks about bread, explaining the raising process and what's behind it...and he's chosen Morocco as a perfect background of this story.

Food heritage is something we have to safe, as it says a lot about our culture, who we are and where we come from…it says all about our traditions and habits. Keep this in mind every time you eat: the food will look different to you, not just a mixture of ingredients to fulfill your stomach.

Photo by Jason Leung, Karim Manjra, V2osk, Haut Risque, Louis Hansel
via unsplash