Food: Part 1

Let's be honest. Food is one of my favorite things.  And architecture and language are all peachy keen, but food is most likely what I'll end up talking about a lot. So be ready for the longest post yet.

Moroccans love their spices, and a lot of dishes are heavily spiced. Which I love.  Not all of the foods and spices are easily translated or explained using their Arabic/Darija names. But I'm going to do my best.

And in no particular order, and with phonetic darija names:

Ginger -- S'kain'javir
Ginger is relatively new to Morocco, having migrated here from more eastern cuisine.  Even given the preponderance of souks (markets) and fresh spices, you can't get fresh ginger here anywhere.  Put it in couscous, put it in whatever. Be spicy.

Sugar -- Sucar
Sugar is heavily used here, even in what we might consider to be savory dishes. For example, bastella has chicken in sheets of phyllo dough with a layer of chopped almonds (with tons of melted butter and powdered sugar - sooo good), topped with more sugar and cinnamon. I made it once myself in the U.S. and had to approximate some things, then had it again here, and it is AMAZING (more of a special occasion dish, though, since it's a lot of time and effort).  But sugar might even show up in basics like rice or couscous. Or as a questionably granular ingredient in salad dressing...

Saffron -- Savrah (also basically the name for the color yellow, for obvious reasons)
Anyone familiar with spices knows that saffron can be super expensive, and will give foods it's distinctive yellow tint. Moroccans might include a little, little bit ("shwiya") in a dish like couscous (they are so serious about Friday couscous, it's not even funny).

Tea with Mint -- Achai wa Na-Naah
In the South in the U.S., it's a given that you get sweet tea.  Here, it's mint tea, no other options, no questions asked, period. Hot green tea base, with tons of mint leaves, and a cloyingly heavy dose of sugar. Also pretty good. I don't even like tea and I could drink this. This mint tea will most certainly be served at every single cafe you go to, and is a breakfast beverage of choice for many people. And pretty much any other meal, any time of day.  People love mint tea.

Coffee - Kahua
Coffee can be ordered "wa h'lieb" and/or "wa sucar" here (with milk and/or sugar). Also a popular breakfast drink, and served at any cafe.  It comes spiced with things like cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, and even cloves, pepper, and ginger. It all depends on where the coffee comes from, and who makes it.

(your milk and sugar coffee comes with extra sugar, in case you didn't have quite enough)

To be clear, for true coffee drinkers out there, coffee here is more like hot milk and sugar with espresso and more sugar. People tend to add less water to the actual coffee component, so it's thicker. And then add tons and tons of hot milk and sugar. You'll have a tough time here if you take your coffee black, and most people won't understand what you even mean.

 now let's diagram that coffee ratio

Couscous -- TsukTsuk
-couscous, onions ("bas'lah"), sugar, water (mah), honey (acel), salt (mel'ha), ginger, chickpeas, chicken, etc.
Rule #1: Never actually cook your couscous in the water. Get it wet little by little, so it starts to absorb the water and clump up, then cook it in a sieved double boiler, over the onions and chickpeas. Then take it out, add more water, and cook it again.
Rule #2: To eat the couscous, you clump it up in your fingers (right hand only), and form a little bite sized ball. It's a serious skill to be able to make it into the little ball and not have it fall apart, or have it be so mashed it's inedible.
Couscous is served by basically everyone on Fridays (usually for lunch), and is put out in a communal bowl. And everyone eats it as described in Rule #2. Couscous is so serious here that we get out of class early on Fridays to go home and eat couscous with our homestay families, and so the whole staff at our study abroad center can eat couscous all together.

Chickpeas -- Homaas (...hummus anyone)
Chickpeas can be a go-to side dish, and also appear in couscous or chicken.  Personally, I'm more a fan of hummus than just chickpeas, but that's more of a true Mediterranean or Middle Eastern dish, and isn't widely available here (since Morocco is technically North African).

Prickly Pear -- H'India
H'india (aka cactus fruit, cactus fig, or Indian fig in English) is the fruit from the prickly pear cactus, and only the yellow/orange variety is found in Morocco. I was lucky to get to try it, because it's a summer fruit and is almost out of season here now. The outside is cut off (it's like a thick peel with cactus spines), and you only eat the orange inner fruit.  It's hard to get used to because it's very seedy, and you just swallow the seeds. (And I know anyone in my generation saw the Rugrats episode where Chuckie grew a watermelon in his stomach from eating the seeds.) But regardless, it's a nice cool fruit, refreshing, and reminds me a little of the aftertaste of honeydew. Just try not to bite down hard.

Bread -- Hobs
I'm going to just have to do a separate post about bread. There is so much. And I really like bread.
The bread here in Morocco is an eclectic mix of french baguettes, round loaves often used to eat with (our traditional utensils are fewer and far between here), fry bread (the m'smmen is unbelievable), rolls, and all kinds of assorted goodies. I just can't even right now. It needs more time, more explanation, and more pictures than I can give it here.

My favorite breads (to be discussed in obsessive detail at another time):

Cheese -- Formage (very similar to French fromage)
Morocco was a French colony until the 1950s and likely retains some of the French love of cheese. In particular, Laughing Cow cheese (La Vache Qui Rit) is ubiquitous.  Hotels, homes, stores, cafes all have this cheese, and it's frequently (read: obsessively) eaten on bread, especially an open baguette. The plane served us lunch on the way from Paris to Morocco. Chicken, couscous, and bread with laughing cow cheese.

La vache qui rit cheese is literally sold everywhere

Ketchup
There is no darija word for ketchup, and I just put it on here because it's also so beloved and omnipresent. But it's all a lie. Ketchup isn't really ketchup. If you've been paying attention, you can probably guess that the extra ingredient is is EVEN MORE SUGAR. (isn't ketchup already basically sugar and tomato and vinegar?) Anyway. It doesn't look or taste quite right (to me, since I'm such a ketchup connoisseur), though no one can tell me what might me in it.

See that? Not the right consistency. Plus tons of sugar.