Souk Cuisine - the cooking

The plot thickens...

We walk to a riad, and see our cooking stations set up for us in the sunny central courtyard area. What a great place to cook: tons of natural daylight, really airy and just gorgeous! The riad is owned by a Belgian guy - there are a lot of Europeans in the tourism industry in Marrakech! (Giorgina and Massimo of Le Clos are Swiss and Italian, respectively.)

This little guy is one of four turtles that live at the riad and wander around at will. Turtles are a symbol of good luck to Moroccans, and are common pets. Apparently they hold some sort of art class as this riad too, and the turtles get a new paint job every few months. The three local women who helped Gemma supervise the cooking were all pretty used to nudging them out of the way when they got underfoot.

One criticism I have for the class is that you only get to cook one part of the meal. I was on the fish tagine station, and I really had no idea what was going on with the salads, sardine app, shrimp turnover app, or the dessert. (Okay, that's not precisely true. I'm nosy, so I spent a lot of time tracking the other stations too. But I do have the most detailed info on my dish, so I'll start with that.)

Fish Tagine

We start by prepping potatoes (peeling and slicing), carrots (ditto), green peppers and tomatoes (just slicing).

Next, we make chermoula, an herb rub. It's lots of de-stemmed, chopped parsley and cilantro, chopped garlic and the flesh of 1½ preserved lemons (de-seeded).

You purée everything together with a little water with a stick blender (or in a food processor). Next, you add the spices: 2 tsp paprika, ⅓ tsp chili powder, 1 tsp cumin and, strangely enough, ½ tsp powder orange food dye (the poor man's replacement for saffron?). Chermoula is done.

You line a terra cotta tagine dish (or I'm hoping you can do it in a nice heavy-bottom pot like my trusty yellow Le Creuset) with sliced carrots, and you dot on some chermoula. Next, you coat the fish in chermoula and lay them over the carrots, in a single layer. We did two tagines, one with cod and one with monkfish.

Next, potatoes are dredged in the chermoula and laid over the fish.

Finally, chermoula'ed tomatoes and peppers are layered on top. A good glug of olive oil is drizzled over everything.

The conical chimney piece goes on the tagine, and it goes on the stovetop to cook.

It simmers over low heat for about 1 hour, until the fish and vegetables are cooked through.

Carrot Salad

Boiled carrots, reconstituted golden raisins, and blanched whole almonds make up this salad. The dressing is 1½ tsp ground cinnamon, ½ tsp ground ginger, 1¼ tsp salt, 6 tsp sugar, 1 tsp orange flower water (substitute 1 tsp orange juice and a grating of orange zest) and 2 tbsp of argan oil (substitute extra virgin olive oil, or 1½ tbsp of olive oil and 1 tsp of sesame oil). Dress while the carrots are still hot, but serve the salad at room temp or chilled.

Zucchini Salad

The zucchini we bought were small, maybe 6 inches long, and a pale avocado green in color. The zucchini are trimmed, halved, and boiled quickly in salted water with a few cloves of unpeeled garlic. Drain.

Peel and mince / mash up the garlic. Combine with the following for the dressing: ½ tbsp each of chopped fresh parsley and cilantro, ½ tsp paprika, ½ tsp cumin, 2 tbsp cider vinegar, 2 tbsp olive oil, ½ tsp salt.

Dress the salad after the zucchini are cooled (to keep the fresh herbs from cooking and turning brown).

Zaahlouk (stewed eggplant)

This dish reminds me strongly of Italian caponata, which is probably why it was my favorite of the salads. (I'm a fiend for caponata!)

First, the eggplant are sliced, and fried in olive oil in a skillet.

Meanwhile, a tomato sauce is started on the stovetop. 4 tomatoes are peeled and chopped. They're cooked with 1 tbsp each of chopped fresh parsley and cilantro, 4 cloves of chopped garlic, 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp paprika, a pinch of chili powder, ½ tsp salt and a glug of oil. It should reduce into a thick sauce.

After they are quite darkly browned, the eggplant are removed and roughly mashed by hand. A TON of oil will seep out; pour off the excess.

The eggplant is combined with the tomato sauce. Add 1 tbsp cider vinegar, and cook everything together for 5 min. Serve at room temp or cold.

Tomato Salad with Preserved Lemon

Simple enough. This one's just cored and seeded tomatoes, 2 tbsp of chopped parsley, 1 clove of minced garlic and the chopped-up rind of half a preserved lemon. Season with salt to taste and drizzle with olive oil.

Briouates with Shrimp and Rice Vermicelli

If the tomato was the simplest, this dish was by far the most complicated. It's sort of a Moroccan (and Asian-inspired?) seafood spanakopita.

To start, place a bundle of dried rice vermicelli in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Soak until soft.

The filling: Chop seafood finely (it was supposed to be shrimp and squid, but there were no squid that day so we used shrimp and monkfish instead). Give it a sauté with 2 tsp each of chopped fresh parsley and cilantro, 2 bay leaves, ½ tsp paprika, salt and pepper. Set filling aside.

In the same skillet (don't bother to wash it), sautée the drained rice vermicelli in 1 tbsp butter, adding a pinch of chili powder, 1 tsp paprika, minced garlic, 2 more tsp each of chopped fresh parsley and cilantro, salt and pepper.

Use kitchen shears to snip the rice vermicelli into small bits, 1 inch or smaller. Add the cooked seafood and cook everything together for a few minutes.

The pastry: Locally, a thin semolina pastry called ourka is used. It's the same stuff as the outsides of pastilla pies. You can also substitute spring roll wrappers, or two or three sheets of phyllo (because it's so much thinner). Brush the phyllo sheets with melted butter to stick them together.

The pastry is cut into 2-inch wide strips. Works best when they're about 10 inches long.

A small amount of filling, about 1 tsp, is placed at the end of a strip, and it's folded to the top left, then the top right, then left again etc., to form a triangular bundle. Pinch the corners as you go, to ensure a good tight seal. A little eggwash glues down the ends. Repeat until you've used up all the filling (removing the bay leaves, of course).

This is a labor-intensive step to say the least! By this time, most of the other stations have their dishes done or baking, so everyone gets in on the action!

The briouates can be deep-fried in hot oil, or placed on a sheet and baked in an oven. Serve warm.

Alternative: These things are amazingly delicious! But fussy to make. If you're looking for a shortcut, I bet the filling would be yummy wrapped in warm tortillas. Or, you could up the vermicelli-to-fish ratio and just serve it as a noodle dish.

Sardines with Chermoula

We made one more app - a baked sardine app. I'm going to blitz through this one, since it's pretty similar to the fish tagine. I actually think they're a bit redundant when served in the same meal; I'd personally use them in different menus.

You make chermoula, same as with the tagine. You take fresh, cleaned sardine fillets, and make sandwiches by smearing chermoula on the flesh side of one piece and placing another piece on top, also flesh side to the chermoula.

Coat sliced peppers and tomatoes in chermoula and layer on top. Add a few pieces of preserved lemon rind for flavor. Sprinke with olive oil.

Bake at 350°F (or 180°C) for 20 min until the juices have evaporated.

Ghribas

Dessert were these little cookies called ghribas. Since I'm probably never going to make these, I'll just copy the recipe out and leave the conversion math to you!

500g flour
100g icing sugar
2 tbsp sesame seeds
¼ tsp salt
50g unsalted butter, room temp
375ml vegetable oil
3.5g baking powder
2 tbsp orange flower water (substitute orange juice and zest, or a splash or vanilla or almond extract)

Sift together the flour and sugar. Add sesame seeds, salt, butter, baking powder and orange flower water. Mix all the ingredients together and add oil little by little, kneading until you have a smooth ball of dough.

Little balls, about 2 inches each, are pinched from the main ball and rolled until smooth between the palms. They're placed on a dimpled baking sheet, on top of the dimples.

Bake at 350°F (or 180°C) until golden brown and cracked on top.

Note on baking: You'll notice that the sardines, the briouates and the cookies all bake at the same temp. I would bake the sardines with the briouates, or the briouates with the cookies, but not the sardines with the cookies.

As I mentioned earlier, I had a blast at the cooking class. The total cost was 45€ (~$67), which I thought was completely reasonable considering the length of the class.

I know I'm going to be doing some of these recipes at home, and I hope you try them too!

Our lunch!