Ups and Downs of the Moroccan Foodscape

Last week I received an email from my beloved brother with the subject line, “I love America,” and a body that continued, “and our many food options. So sorry to do this to you, but I'm going to tell you anyway. I just had Salvadorean food for lunch and it was sooo good: plantain, black beans, pork, tamale, pupusa, potatoes... so yea, sorry again.”

Sorry indeed. Rub my nose in a plate of couscous, why don’t you.

Moroccan food, as any local will happily tell you, is delicious. Pungent from the slow cooking of vegetables and meats in such spices as cumin, paprika, saffron, ginger and cinnamon, it can be hearty and healthy, provided the chef uses a restrained hand when pouring in the local, truly olive-y olive oil. White beans, chickpeas and lentils are common bases for dishes. Zucchini, pumpkin, carrots and eggplant make common appearances. Meat shows up alongside dried fruit like raisins, apricots and prunes in sweet-savory pairings.

And the couscous! Suffice it to say that my friend, Laila, with whom Cath and I took several cooking classes, was utterly mortified when we told her how most Americans prepare couscous. Put a scoop of it in boiling water and let it cook for a couple minutes, right? So. Wrong. In poor rural areas, some women still make their couscous from scratch, by rubbing a dough of semolina and water through a fine metal sifter, but even the packaged stuff requires a multi-step process. The couscous must be massaged with a small amount of water and olive oil, left to dry for a moment, steamed for several minutes (preferably over the pot of cooking, spiced vegetables, so as to absorb their flavor) and then removed, with this procedure being repeated some two to six times, depending on which woman you talk to. A fluffiness results that us sad American boilers cannot even begin to fathom.

Beyond providing a pleasurable taste experience, couscous also stands as an important weekly ritual, bringing families together over a giant, communal dish every Friday (the Islamic holy day) at lunchtime. In fact, the meal is so bound to this tradition that most Moroccan restaurants won’t serve couscous except on Fridays.

I concede, then, that Moroccans are justified in rhapsodizing over the richness of their gastronomical culture. But I would also like to note that what the cuisine boasts in depth, it sorely lacks in breadth. Pin down these rapturous Moroccans, invite them to extol for you the main traditional dishes, and you’ll get something like this response from my friend Samira: “Couscous! Tagine! Pastilla! … er, couscous! … did I mention tajine?”

I love cumin – don’t get me wrong – but these American taste buds need some diversity. Forget about Salvadorean food, I would pay big bucks for a burrito, sushi, or a bowl of curry. Most Moroccans have never heard of these things. Even in the bougie, ex-pat-ie neighborhood of Rabat, there’s only one Mexican joint (always out of margaritas, I hear) and one Indian place (where Indian food is only available if the one Indian chef is on duty).

Rod and I were in the city of Ceuta for his birthday, and while it may officially be Spain, the Mexican restaurant we found was staffed entirely by Moroccans. Meaning: we had to explain to them the concept of tortilla chips. The waitress kept insisting that they didn’t have them, suggesting we get french fries instead. We persisted in pointing out that if they in fact offer the nachos listed on the menu, then there are tortilla chips. “Wait – you want the nachos without anything on them?!” “Yes!” “No cheese, no peppers, no olives?!” “Right.” “Nothing at all?!” Needless to say, the accompanying “guacamole” was a dish of blended avocado.

Eating out aside, flavor diversity isn’t actually a significant problem. I primarily cook for myself and do have access to a broad spectrum of ingredients. There are, however, some holes: pork (duh), basil, pine nuts (read: pesto), tortillas, quality soy sauce and sesame oil, tofu, black beans and feta cheese are the ones that come to mind most readily. Cath faces a more frustrating situation as someone with celiac disease, since the availability of gluten-free products is limited.

Most things are out there for the procuring. Their attainability is a different story. Special products, like bulk yogurt or certain cheeses and pastas or cans of diced tomatoes, exist only in the big, Western-style grocery stores. Rabat and Casablanca have a variety of these; Tetouan has Acima and Marjane (think: Walmart, only without the great prices), which are a half-hour walk and hour-long walk, respectively, from my apartment. I go to them as infrequently as possible, partly because they stress me out. They’re crowded; the products you want may or may not be in their regular place, and the staff certainly won’t be able to help you find them; people are buying a million and one things, and the check-out folks are slow as molasses (another product that I haven’t found here).

The experience of shopping at the small stores and markets around town is much more pleasurable. There are vegetable stands, fruit stands, people squatting on the street with just apricots or just melons or just figs (depending on the season), bakeries, butcher shops, olive shops, nut and dried fruit shops, and – my personal favorite – chicken shops, with chickens roaming around, where you can both buy fresh eggs (sometimes with feathers clinging to them) or an actual chicken: enter, ask for a two-kilo bird, and the butcher will plop a series of live ones onto a scale until he finds one the right weight, then he’ll pop into the back, kill the creature with a quick slit of the knife, de-feather it (mostly), clean it, cut it up and hand the still-warm pieces to you in a plastic bag. Can you say fresh?

As for other qualities like organic and local, I can’t speak with any authority. Certainly as concepts, “organic” and “local” don’t exist. But I have seen many a tiny plot of farmland just beyond Fez or Tetouan and nothing so far that resembles industrial systems. It’s tough to pin people down on pesticide use, since, as I said, the “organic” conversation has not yet become widespread in Morocco. They at least like to claim that their food is cleaner than ours in the States.

It’s definitely more natural looking. Not only do my fruits and veggies regularly come with patches of dirt or bruises on them, they also appear in all shapes and sizes and colors: lumpy, spotted-green tomatoes; baby zucchinis with streaks of yellow; wrinkly-with-age orange peppers; green beans with the stems still attached. To tell the truth, the couple times I’ve been in Europe this year, I was totally freaked out by the fruits and vegetables I saw. They’re too perfect. The red peppers are too red and shiny, and the apples are too uniformly apple-shaped and unblemished. It’s creepy. Really. Makes you wonder not only what you’re putting in your body but also what happened to all the less-than-perfect products. Someone told me a while ago that big banana companies throw out bushel upon bushel of bananas that don’t have that nice banana-y curve that Americans have come to expect… Shop at farmers’ markets, folks! Or move to Morocco!

Not that this naturalness comes without problems of its own. Little white wriggly worms in dried figs are an excellent example. Cuts of meat sitting out in the open air with clusters of flies landing on them are another. As long as you’re smart, though, food quality is rarely an issue (says me with the stomach of steel, anyway; Sam and Weston might disagree), and most of the tap water in urban areas is drinkable.

In short, Morocco has presented no great cramps to my gastronomical style. Other types of cramps, maybe, but you get used to those, I swear! And once I fulfill my post-Fulbright plan of opening a Taco Truck, this country will be all set.

You'd buy fruit from this guy, right?

Addendum: For three great Moroccan recipes, I direct you to the blog of Cath Skroch, the hostess extraordinaire formerly known as my phenomenal roommate: chicken & apricot tajine, as well as lubia (white bean dish) and zaalouk (eggplant-tomato dish). The rest of her blog is worth checking out as well!