Recettes Morocco

Sweet Stuffed Moroccan Chicken

Sweet stuffed Moroccan chicken is a whole bird filled with couscous, almonds and raisins, spiced with ginger and saffron, and roasted. The sweet-and-savoury combination is characteristic of Moroccan cooking rather than a novelty. Dried fruit and nuts with meat runs right through the cuisine, in tagines with prunes, in mrouzia with honey and almonds, in pastilla where sugar is dusted over a pigeon pie. The instinct is old and probably Andalusian and Persian in origin, and Morocco has kept it more completely than most. Saffron is what lifts it and is worth using properly. It is the most expensive spice in the world by weight, but very little is needed, and it should be bloomed in a little warm water or stock before it goes in rather than added dry, which wastes most of it. The couscous stuffing does two things: it carries the fruit and nuts, and it absorbs juices from the bird as it roasts. Ginger runs through the spicing alongside the saffron, and the combination is what makes it read as Moroccan rather than generally festive. Serves three to six depending on the bird.

MediumMorocco

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

Lamb Chops, Chermoula & Rice

Lamb chops with chermoula and yellow rice is Moroccan, grilled or roasted lamb served with a fresh herb sauce and turmeric-stained rice. Chermoula is the part worth knowing. It is a North African sauce and marinade built on fresh coriander and parsley, garlic, cumin, paprika, lemon and oil, and its name comes from the Arabic chermel, meaning to rub or to marinate. That etymology describes exactly how it is used: rubbed into meat or fish before cooking, and often served again alongside as a sauce. It is most associated with fish, where it is close to standard across Morocco and Algeria, but it works with lamb particularly well, the herbs and lemon cut through fat in a way that a heavier sauce would not. Lamb runs through Moroccan cooking at every level, from long slow tagines to chops straight off a grill, and this is at the fast end of that range. The rice is coloured and lightly perfumed with turmeric rather than saffron, which is the everyday choice, visually similar, entirely different in flavour and cost.

25 minMediumMorocco

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

Mechoui

Mechoui is whole lamb or sheep, roasted slowly until the meat pulls away from the bone with no effort at all. The word comes from the Arabic for grilling or roasting, and the dish is found across the Maghreb, with the details shifting between countries. In Morocco it usually means a whole animal cooked in a clay oven over wood, a pit or domed oven that surrounds the lamb with even, indirect heat over several hours. In Algeria and more broadly in Maghrebi cooking it more often means spit-roasting over a fire. Both produce the same result by different routes: skin that crisps, and meat underneath that collapses. How it is served is inseparable from what it is. Mechoui appears at a diffa, a feast, and often at the beginning of the meal rather than the end. The host takes pieces with the right hand and offers them to guests. No cutlery is used, and none is needed, the meat comes apart between the fingers, which is both the test of whether it is properly cooked and the reason it is eaten this way. In Marrakech it is closely associated with the pit ovens of the medina, where it has been cooked commercially for generations. It is celebration food by construction: nobody roasts a whole lamb for four people on a Tuesday.

HardMorocco

Recette de Nympha · Africook

Moroccan Chicken Rfissa

Rfissa is chicken and lentils stewed with onions in a broth heavy with fenugreek, ras el hanout and saffron, poured over a bed of shredded msemen or trid pastry. The pastry takes up the broth and becomes the base of the dish rather than an accompaniment to it, which is what distinguishes rfissa from a tagine served with bread. It is a family dish above all else. Rfissa is what appears at reunions and at religious occasions, at what Moroccans call a zarda, and it is not a restaurant dish. Its most specific role is at childbirth: it is served to women who have recently given birth, traditionally on the third day, because fenugreek, lentils and the spice blend are held to support recovery and milk production. A dish with a fixed place in a family's most significant week carries a weight that a good stew does not. The bed underneath it has its own vocabulary. Served over crumbled harcha it becomes rfissa medhoussa; over cubed bread it is treda. Moroccan households commonly buy the trid or msemen from a souk or a local bakery rather than making it, because the pastry is the slow part and the stew is not.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

3 hrHardMorocco · Moroccan

Recette de Blessing · Africook