A gourmet goodbye

I signed us up for a cooking class so that we could leave Marrakech with a good taste in our mouths.  We were supposed to meet our host/instructor at the Bab Doukkala mosque along with ten others who spoke English.   After yesterday’s rat-in-a-maze misadventure trying to scout where the mosque was ahead of time, I convinced Ella that we should take the long route through jamaa el fna along the outer edge of the Medina.  And it worked!  We were actually the first ones there.  

Then an English couple showed up followed by an Irish guy and two young Australians.  Soon we were all gathered in time for chef Khmisa’s niece (a tall, thin, dark haired woman in her twenties) to greet us in the mosque’s parking lot.  She had us immediately accompany her up the street to select the food we were going to prepare for our feast from the open air market nearby.  Nothing fancy, just some aubergines, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, parsley, and a couple of chickens freshly killed and cut-up.  

Finished with our marketing, the niece led us down a zigzagging narrow passageway to small door set in a big wall.  A short middle-aged woman opened the door.  This was Chef Khmisa.  Unlike her niece who, when we met, had formally shook our hands,  Chef Khmisa gave us each a hug and invited us into a small dining room where we were given a lesson on how to properly prepare Moroccan tea.  

Then we got up and entered the kitchen where we were posted around a table set up with spices and cutting boards.  We peeled potatoes and carrots and then we sliced and diced them.   We chopped onions and parsley.  We put the egg plants right on gas burners, potatoes and garlic cloves in a pot to boil, and the chicken pieces in a pressure cooker.  

The onions were sautéed.  Spices were added out of an array of small clay bowls filled with sweet paprika, cardamom, cumin, ginger, turmeric, and a specialty mixture of 26 different spices ground up.  Salt and pepper was added.  Also butter and orange water.  I could go on, but I don’t want to reveal the secrets of Chef Khmisa’s splendid preparation.

When everything was prepped, it was put into two large ceramic tangine dishes to be cooked.  One was for our chicken tangine, the other for the vegetable tangine.  That took another 35 minutes while everyone sat back down at the dinner table and traded travel tales.  I leave it to Ella to fill you in on the talk.

While we were talking, Khmisa’s niece brought out the four starters we had prepared. One was made up of aubergines, roasted, peeled, and mashed, with tomatoes and spices that I think is my favorite Moroccan dish.  Another was a bowl of diced and spiced cooked potatoes.  Yet another, caramelized carrots and finally fresh tomato and onion salad. These alone could have made a respectable meal.  

But they were followed by the two hot, sweetly spiced, sauce softened main tagine courses.  Outside of the alchemy that goes into balancing the spices, favoring a sweet citrus blend over fiery peppers, I think the singular quality of Moroccan tangine is that teeth aren’t required to eat it.  Whether it’s lemony chicken, or gingery carrots, the food melts on the palate.  

Cut squares of crisp filo dough melded together with dollops of yoghurt and apple slices made up our last dish.  So light, so healthy, and yet undeniably dessert.  

With a final round of hugs and snapshots, we headed back out into the Moroccan heat to dodge traffic and take a brief peek at the Koutoubia mosque.  It’s been there for a thousand years. After our epicurean delights, it seemed formidably stony and I was glad to be forbidden entry.