Top chefs consult Paula Wolfert’s
Couscous and Other Good Food from
Morocco, which includes 20
tantalising recipes for the titular dish
and won the 2008 James Beard
Cookbook Hall of Fame Award.The Moroccan Power Lunch
Some upscale Moroccan restaurants that serve an evening
diffa (feast) to tourist hordes serve a scaled-down menu at
lunch, when waitstaff are more relaxed and the meal is
sometimes a fraction of the price you’d pay for dinner. You
might miss the live music and inevitable belly dancing that would
accompany a fancy supper – but then again, you might not.
Three courses may seem a bit much for lunch, but don’t be
daunted: what this usually means is a delightful array of
diminutive vegetable dishes, followed by a fluffy couscous and/or a small meat or chicken tajine,
capped with the obligatory mint tea and biscuits or fruit.
SEXY SEKSU
Berbers call it seksu, New York Times food critic Craig Claiborne called it one of the dozen best dishes in the world, and when
you’re in Morocco, you can call couscous lunch. You know that yellowish stuff that comes in a box, with directions on the side
instructing you to add boiling water and let stand for three minutes? That doesn’t count. What Moroccans call couscous is a
fine, pale, grain-sized, hand-rolled pasta lightly steamed with aromatic broth until toothsome and fluffy, served with a selection
of vegetables and/or meat or fish in a delicately flavoured reduction of stock and spices.
Since preparing and digesting a proper couscous takes awhile, Moroccans usually enjoy it on Fridays, when many have the
day or the afternoon off after Friday prayers. Couscous isn’t a simple side dish but rather the main event of a Moroccan Friday
lunch, whether tricked out Casablanca-style with seven vegetables, heaped with lamb and vegetables in Fez, or served with
tomatoes, fish and fresh herbs in Essaouira. Many delicious couscous dishes come without meat, including the pumpkin
couscous of Marrakesh and a simple yet savoury High Atlas version with stewed onions, but scrupulous vegetarians will want
to enquire in advance whether that hearty stock is indeed vegetarian. Sometimes a couscous dish can be ordered à la carte,
but usually it’s a centrepiece of a multicourse lunch or celebratory diffa – and when you get a mouthful of the stuff done
properly, you’ll see why.Mezze (Salad course) This could be a meal in itself. Fresh bread and three to five small,
usually cooked vegetable dishes that might include lemony beet salad with chives, herbed
potatoes, cumin-spiked chickpeas, a relish of roasted tomatoes and caramelised onions,
pumpkin puree with cinnamon and honey, and roasted, spiced eggplant dip so rich it’s often
called ‘aubergine caviar’.
Main The main course is usually a tajine and/or couscous – a quasi-religious experience in
Morocco not to be missed, especially on Fridays. The most common tajine choices are dujaj
mqalli bil hamd markd wa zeetoun (chicken with preserved lemon and olives, zesty in flavour
and velvety in texture); kefta bil matisha wa bayd (meatballs in a rich tomato sauce with a hint
of heat from spices and topped with a sizzling egg); and lehem bil berquq wa luz (lamb with
prunes and almonds served sliding off the bone into a saffron-onion sauce). If you’re in
Morocco for a while, you may tire of these classic tajine options – until you come across one
regional variation that makes all your sampling of chicken tajine with lemon and olives
worthwhile. That’s when you cross over from casual diner to true tajine connoisseur, and fully
appreciate the passionate debates among Moroccans about such minutiae as the appropriate
thickness of the lemon rind and brininess of the olives. Variations on the classics are expected,
but no self-respecting Moroccan restaurant should ever serve you a tajine that’s stringy,