My husband is from Morocco and we have spent many holidays in this beautiful country during our many years of marriage. My husband's family is originally from the city of Fez, but they have lived in Casablanca for many years, so the cuisine at their home is a mix of the two regions. But if grandma cooks, then you will certainly find dishes on the table, especially original ones from Fez. I really liked Moroccan cuisine and I would like to share it with you. Many of my recipes are for these Moroccan delicacies.
Roots and origin
Moroccan cuisine uses a lot of spices.
Moroccan cuisine is also known and loved all over the world, and its roots can be traced back to the original Berber tribes. Over time, it was also influenced by nomadic Bedouins, Spaniards, Jews, Arabs and French. You will find many spices in it, which are used to create different distinct flavours of food. The most used spices are cumin, ginger, paprika, anise, black pepper, coriander and saffron.
Breakfast
What I really like about Morocco is that people still try to eat together at a big (mostly round) table. I would compare breakfast in Morocco to breakfast in a hotel. Everything that is in the kitchen is brought to the table: different types of bread, buns, rolls, scrambled eggs or boiled eggs, salami, various cheeses, butter, jams, marmalades, honey, olive oil, olives, and black and white coffee, hot chocolate and Moroccan mint tea. So you can choose what you feel like right now or a little bit of each roll.
Couscous
It plays an important role in Moroccan cuisine and is gaining popularity worldwide. It can be prepared in different ways. It is prepared sweetly with cinnamon and sugar for breakfast. For lunch and dinner, it can be served with meat and vegetables or as a side dish, or as couscous with cold vegetables. If you are invited to a traditional Moroccan Friday lunch with couscous, you have a lot to look forward to. Kuskus is placed on a large traditional plate and long-cooked meat in a tajine with various vegetables and with a pleasant taste of spices is served on it.
Tagine
Tagine in different ways.
Morocco is famous for its tajine (read tagine). Tagine is a mixture of vegetables, meat and potatoes and is served in a clay pot, also called a tagine. Tagine is like a famous goulash (long-cooked meat) worthy of a poetic description - aromatic and sentimental, spicy and spicy, also sweet and fragrant. It is a dish of tender meat, fish or juicy vegetables, cooked to perfection in a buttery sauce with fruit, herbs, spices, honey, nuts and chilli.
Tagine is usually served on a large plate in the middle of the table covered with bread and various salads. The whole family or even invited friends eat from one plate. This tradition is very famous in Morocco and many families try to preserve it. But if you are a foreigner or if you order tagine in a restaurant, you get a small tagine for one person, which looks very cute.
Tagine is made in many delicious combinations, such as beef with prunes, chicken with lemon, lamb with dates, but it can also consist of minced meat covered with eggs, seafood, or purely vegetable.
Minced meat
Minced meat is quite popular in Morocco. My favorite recipe is: Minced balls in tomato sause. Also a burger with Moroccan spices and coriander flavor. This herbal aroma is amazing. The same meat is also used to make kufta - roasted grilled meat similar to a kebab.
Fresh vegetables
Moroccan cuisine is known for using fresh vegetables and fresh pulses in every dish. It is very easy to get used to frozen vegetables, canned vegetables and especially canned legumes, which do not need to be pre-soaked and prepared. However, in Morocco, everything is used fresh, bought in the morning at the market or in a fresh food store. In the evening it is decided what will be cooked and in the morning the shopping is done. Fresh parsley and cilantro are always used.
Morocco grows its own fruits and vegetables, olives, nuts and grain, poultry, cattle and sheep are raised here. Farmers often bring their produce to shops and markets, so agricultural produce is always very fresh.
Fresh fruit and fruit juice
Just like vegetables, fruits are bought fresh every day. Fruit is served immediately after lunch. Real fresh juice is also mixed from the fruit. The most famous is the juice from fresh oranges, which you can find not very expensive on every corner. Juice is served in every cafe. Even in fast food restaurants or sandwich shops, you can order a juice mixture of your choice - they will make it in a blender right in front of you. Dates, which are naturally sweet, are added to these juices to sweeten and thicken the juice, which will keep you very full for a few hours.
Meat
Meat prepared on the grill - my favorite.
Morocco is an Islamic country, so you don't often find pork here. Chicken, beef and lamb are used the most. It is either cooked in tagine until soft or fried or grilled over direct heat. Such grilled meat is a complete delicacy and is eaten with various salads and bread, rice, couscous or fries. Sometimes you can find a few potatoes in a few tagines, but otherwise potatoes are not used very much in Moroccan cuisine.
Bisteeya
One of the famous Moroccan dishes is Bisteeya. It is a sweet and savory puff pastry pie filled with chicken, spices such as saffron, ginger, cinnamon and ground almonds. Some add a layer of hard-boiled eggs. After roasting, the surface is sprinkled with powdered sugar and cinnamon. In Morocco, many dishes are made sweet by adding raisins, almonds, dates, cinnamon, ...
Sweat Bisteeya
Chicken with lemon flavour
Another popular dish is chicken, and one of the most famous is grilled chicken with lemon flavor. It is cooked in a similar way to grilled chicken, but pickled or fresh lemons are added to it. Such chicken is eaten in Morocco with bread that is broken and the chicken is scooped up with it. Homemade fries are also served with it.
Grilled fish
Fish is a very popular food in Morocco and since Morocco is surrounded by the sea, fish is bought fresh here. Fishermen bring fresh fish to the market, where they quickly sell out in large quantities. Whole fish with tomato sauce is also often prepared on the grill.
Harira soup
Harira is a famous Moroccan tomato and lentil soup. It is usually flavored with onion, ginger, black pepper and cinnamon, but mainly contains a lot of fresh herbs such as coriander and parsley. As with many dishes, Harira is made a little differently in every family. Some families make it without meat and some with meat. Some add chickpeas, others rice or noodles for thickening. Harira is a very popular soup and is eaten throughout the year, but especially during Ramadan, during which it is served every day.
Spring rolls and samosas
Spring rolls filled with minced meat.
In Morocco, you will find many dishes created from filo dough. Whether it's a sweet almond cake in filo dough twisted into a snail, strudel or samosas and spring rolls filled with minced meat with authentic Moroccan spices, or samosas filled with shrimp in mashed potato.
Filo dough can be found worldwide, but Moroccan has a unique flavor of cinnamon, cumin and paprika.
Seffa Medfouna
It is a famous Moroccan dish consisting of small noodles or steamed couscous sweetened with powdered sugar, butter and raisins. It is one of those dishes that can be served anytime, before lunch or after lunch. These noodles are placed in the shape of a pyramid, decorated with toasted almonds, cinnamon and powdered sugar. But don't be surprised to find saffron chicken or other meat hidden inside this sweet delicacy.
Salads
The right cook will prepare one to three salads for each main course. Lunch is not lunch without salad. Moroccan cuisine has many different salads, both cold and warm. Most of them contain fresh sprigs of parsley and coriander, which will add a strong flavor and turn simple salads into very tasty salads. Such salads include tomato-cucumber salad, potato salad, beetroot salad. More complicated, but very tasty real Moroccan salads are Zaalouk (eggplant) and Taktouka (roasted tomatoes and green pepper). These salads are spread around the table in small bowls or piled nicely on a large plate.
Zaalouk is a very popular salad. It is a mixture of fried eggplant and tomatoes very well seasoned. It is served warm, but also as a cold salad with bread.
Olives
Morocco grows its own olives and as you travel through the country, you often see roadside olive farms full of small trees dotted with olives. Olives are very healthy, they contain many vitamins and also antioxidants. Morocco's human population is unusually thin, and scientists think this is due to the high consumption of olives and olive oil. In corner shops, markets and supermarkets you will find many different types of olives pickled in different ways, green or black. They are named after where they come from. My favorite is olives pickled in herbs with cubes of feta cheese.
Dates
Dried dates are one of the most popular fruits consumed in Morocco. It is a fruit that has been used for centuries in Islamic countries and has remained so until now. During the entire month of Ramadan, dried dates are used to break the fast (they are eaten as the first thing after fasting), but you can also find this fruit on the table during visits, celebrations, weddings, etc.
Nuts
Apart from cakes, many nuts and seeds are eaten as a delicacy in Morocco, but perhaps the most popular are sunflower seeds. Nuts are sold by weight and you can find them in stalls on every corner. They will wrap them in newspaper for you. People would usually buy a little of each and then sit down with them at home and prepare Moroccan tea.
Moroccan mint tea
Mint tea is served in a silver tea jug.
Mint tea is one of the most popular herbal teas prepared around the world. It is a blend of green tea with real mint leaves. Sweetened mint tea is served with or after each meal. It is cooked in a silver kettle and served hot. The tea is poured from a height into small decorated glasses. The higher the tea is poured, the better. The first glass is poured back into the teapot to mix the sugar. That must not be forgotten. Such mint tea is used more than coffee in the Moroccan household. Coffee is served at breakfast, but tea is served at lunch and dinner. Tea with biscuits or cookies is also prepared for the visitors.
Moroccan cakes
Sweet Moroccan cookies and mini cakes.
Typical Moroccan cakes are very different from the rest of the world: they are mostly dry dough very sweet and often contain nuts. Almond coconut balls, dried date cakes, sesame seed or walnut cookies are especially popular. Cream cakes are always very nicely decorated and full of colors.
Cookies are always beautifully decorated.
I would like to mention the special Moroccan cake chebakia/mkharka. It is one of the typical national cakes, which is served during religious celebrations and especially during Ramadan. It is a very sweet cake made from honey and sesame seeds.
Moroccan bread
In Morocco, bread is eaten with every meal. The most used is white bread similar to French baguettes. Bread is often baked at home, or you can buy it fresh in small bakeries on every street. A good cook will make many different breads from the same dough. White chobz (cleeb) and also tiny breads called batbout are very common.
Another interesting bread is harcha and baghrir. My favorite bread is ale msemmen, also called Moroccan pancakes. This type of bread can be eaten with sweet or savory spreads, cheese and boiled eggs. It is quite laborious to prepare it, but because I like it very much, I learned to bake it.
Argan oil
It is a rare vegetable oil also called liquid or Moroccan gold. Argan trees are currently only found in Morocco. The fruit of this tree has kernels containing a large amount of oil, which was once pressed by women by hand, but nowadays machines are used. The oil is used for cooking, but also in cosmetics.
Olive oil
Like argan oil, Morocco also produces its own olive oil, which is exported all over the world. Olive oil is used very often in Moroccan cuisine. There is hardly any food that does not contain olive oil. It is added to boiled, steamed, grilled dishes and salads. It is also served plain at breakfast and bread is dipped in it.
It is very popular in the Mediterranean diet.
Finally, I would like to thank my Moroccan friends who provided me with their photos of some dishes.
Moroccan gastronomy is unique. I hope that I have convinced you of this and that you will try to cook some Moroccan specialty or that you will go to Morocco directly!
You can find some of these delicacies among mine recipes.
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