Recettes

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.

Morocco3 hrBlessing

Tanjia Marrakchia

Tanjia Marrakchia belongs to Marrakech specifically, and it is named after the pot rather than the food. The tanjia is a tall, narrow clay urn with a small neck, and the dish cannot properly be separated from it: meat, spices and a little water go in, the neck is sealed with parchment and clay, and the whole vessel is buried in the embers of a hammam furnace to cook for hours. That cooking method is the reason it exists. The hammam, the public bathhouse, kept a wood fire burning to heat its water, and the ashes were free heat available to anyone who brought a pot. Labourers and workers would leave a tanjia with the furnace attendant in the morning and collect it cooked at the end of the day, which made it food for men working away from a kitchen. It is still called the bachelor's dish in Marrakech for that reason, though it now appears at celebrations, religious occasions and family gatherings as well. Beef or lamb is standard, with cumin, ginger, saffron, turmeric and paprika, and preserved lemon and olives in some households. Without a hammam the substitute is a very low oven over several hours, which gets the tenderness but not the smoke.

Morocco5 hr 20 minDebby

Chebakia, Moroccan flower-shaped sesame pastries soaked in honey and orange flower water

Chebakia (Moroccan Sesame Cookies)

Chebakia is the Moroccan pastry of Ramadan. Spiced dough is rolled thin, cut into rectangles, slashed and folded through the fingers into an elongated flower shape, fried until golden, then dropped into hot honey scented with orange flower water and finished with sesame. Its association with the fast is close to absolute. Moroccans break the fast with harira soup and chebakia together, and the two are made in quantity in the weeks beforehand. It also appears at weddings and baby showers, and is sold year round at bakeries and market stalls. It goes by other names in other regions, including griouech and mkharka. The folding is what makes it difficult and what makes it recognisable. Each rectangle is cut into five attached strips, threaded onto a finger, and turned inside out around a pinched centre, which produces the rose shape. It takes practice and it is why chebakia is often made communally, several women working through a large batch together. The dough itself is heavily spiced, with anise, cinnamon, saffron and ground toasted sesame, and mastic gum, a resin used across North Africa and the Middle East, gives it a distinctive aroma.

Morocco2 hr 30 minNympha

Maakouda, Moroccan fried potato cakes with coriander and turmeric

Maakouda (Moroccan Potato Cakes)

Maakouda is a Moroccan potato cake, mashed potato bound with egg and herbs, floured and deep fried until the outside crisps and the inside stays soft. It is street food, sold cheap and eaten either on its own or stuffed into a small baguette. Meknes is where it is most associated, and the city is described as the wine capital of North Africa. Maakouda is sold from stalls there and across the country, and it appears in Algeria and Tunisia too under the same set of spellings: maaqouda, maqouda, makouda. The comparison the source draws is with falafel, and it holds up: a cheap fried snack, sold from a stall, eaten in bread. It has simply never travelled the way falafel has. Ras el hanout is what marks it as Moroccan rather than a generic potato cake. The blend is optional in this recipe and the source strongly recommends it, and turmeric gives the colour. It is also a practical way to use up leftover mashed or baked potato, which is much of how it is made at home. Deep frying is traditional; the oven and the air fryer both work and are given as alternatives.

Morocco35 minBlessing

Mrouzia

Mrouzia is a Moroccan tagine of lamb cooked slowly with honey, cinnamon, ras el hanout, raisins and almonds until it is deeply sweet, dark and falling off the bone. It is made in the days after Eid al-Adha. That timing is not incidental, it is the whole origin of the dish. At Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice, a large quantity of meat becomes available at once, more than a household can eat quickly. Before refrigeration, mrouzia was how it was kept. The heavy seasoning, the quantity of honey and the long cooking all work as preservation, and the dish was made specifically to hold meat that would otherwise spoil. That practical origin is still visible in how it is cooked. It uses fatty cuts, it is cooked for a long time, and it improves after a day or two rather than being served immediately, which is why it is often made ahead. The flavour is at the sweet end of Moroccan cooking, further than most. Ras el hanout carries it, saffron gives its particular perfume, and the balance between honey and spice is what a cook adjusts. Tunisia makes a version, prepared differently. In Morocco it remains firmly attached to Eid, and many households cook it only then.

Morocco2 hr 45 minNympha

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.

MoroccoNympha

Shlada, a Moroccan salad of finely chopped tomato, cucumber and onion with cumin

Shlada (Moroccan Tomato Salad)

Shlada is the Moroccan tomato and cucumber salad, dressed with lemon and olive oil and seasoned with cumin. It goes by shlada 'arobiya, meaning country salad, and shlada Nationale, the national salad, which tells you how ordinary and how ubiquitous it is. Everything depends on the knife work. The tomatoes, cucumber and onion are chopped very small, so that a single spoonful carries all three rather than one at a time. The contributor is emphatic that this is the secret of the salad, and it is a fair claim: the same ingredients in rough chunks make a quite different and much less interesting dish. It also needs to sit. Ten minutes before serving lets the flavours combine, and up to an hour improves it further, which is unusual for a salad. Preserved lemon peel is the optional addition that makes it unmistakably Moroccan, and only the peel is used, never the pulp. It is eaten as a side, as a light lunch, and as a dip scooped up with khobz, the Moroccan bread. Parsley substitutes for mint, vinegar for lemon juice, and vegetable oil for olive oil, all of which are made.

Morocco15 minBlessing

Ghoriba Bahla

Ghoriba bahla is a Moroccan shortbread, crumbly and cracked across the top, made with toasted sesame, fried almonds and a great deal of fat. It is eaten with Libyan tea, Maghrebi mint tea and Arabic coffee, and versions of it are made across Egypt, Morocco and Libya. Ghoriba is simply the Arabic word for cookie, and it names a whole family rather than one biscuit. What identifies this one is the cracks. Bahla loosely translates as silly, or silly stranger, and the name refers to the fissures that open across the surface as the cookie bakes. One Moroccan guide is quoted rendering it as stupid cookies, which gives a fair sense of the affection in the name. Two fats and two nuts do the work. Butter and neutral oil together, with a little sesame oil, give a texture that neither alone produces, and the sesame is toasted while the almonds are fried, which are different treatments producing different results. The dough is deliberately crumbly and cannot be rolled: each cookie is formed by hand into a ball and pressed flat between the palms so the edges are thinner than the middle. Traditionally a special pan gives them concave backs and encourages more cracking.

Morocco45 minBlessing

Moroccan Mescouta yoghurt cake dusted with icing sugar on a plate, a light fragrant North African bake

Mescouta (Moroccan Yoghurt Cake)

Meskouta is the everyday Moroccan cake, a plain, moist yoghurt cake scented with lemon, made constantly at home and served with mint tea. Its most charming feature is how it is measured. Many Moroccan households still bake by volume using whatever container is to hand, and meskouta is built around the empty yoghurt pot: one pot of yoghurt, then that same pot used to measure the oil, sugar and flour. No scales, no conversion, nothing to look up. It is why the cake is so often the first thing children are taught to bake, and why the recipe travels between families without ever being written down properly. The result is a simple, tender cake with a fine crumb, more like a pound cake than anything frosted. Lemon zest is standard, though lime works and is a common substitution. It is served plain, or with jam alongside to spread on the slice, which is the usual way at teatime. It is not a celebration cake and does not pretend to be, it is what is in the kitchen when someone calls round.

Morocco45 minNympha

Moroccan Chicken Tagine

Chicken tagine is Moroccan slow cooking at its most recognisable: chicken with preserved lemon, olives, onion and a warm spice blend, cooked gently until the meat falls apart. The name belongs to the vessel as much as the dish. A tagine is a shallow ceramic or unglazed clay pot with a tall conical lid. The cone is not decorative: steam rises, condenses against the cone and runs back down into the base, so the dish cooks in its own recirculating moisture with very little added liquid. It works like a slow cooker and gives the same result, meat that is tender and a sauce that has concentrated rather than evaporated. The spice profile is the Moroccan signature: paprika, cumin, ginger, coriander, cinnamon and cayenne together, with honey for balance and lemon for sharpness. Cracked green olives and preserved lemon go in at the end so they keep their character. It can be made in a tagine, in a Dutch oven, or on the stovetop, and this recipe uses the last. If you cook in an actual tagine on a hob, use the lowest setting you can: raising the heat cracks the clay.

Morocco1 hr 10 minAmara

Moroccan Couscous Salad

This is couscous with roasted vegetables, chickpeas, raisins and almonds, dressed with lemon, cumin and olive oil. It is a salad in the sense of being served at room temperature rather than a leafy one: the couscous is the bulk of it and the vegetables are folded through. Couscous was first made by the Amazigh people of North Africa, who worked out how to turn wheat into fine granules, and it remains a staple across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Moroccan couscous is the smallest of the common grades, finer than Israeli or Lebanese couscous, and it is what this recipe uses. The technique is absorption rather than steaming. Hot broth is poured over the dry couscous, which has been tossed with olive oil and turmeric, and it is covered and left for five minutes. The raisins go in during that time so the residual heat plumps them. Traditional Moroccan couscous is steamed repeatedly in a couscoussier, which produces a lighter grain; this is the quick domestic method. The vegetables are roasted separately and folded in, which keeps them caramelised rather than steamed into the grain.

Morocco50 minDebby

Moroccan Mint Tea

Moroccan mint tea is green tea infused with spearmint and heavily sweetened, and in Morocco it is not simply a drink. It is a sign of hospitality and friendship, served all day, after every meal and through every conversation, and Moroccans take enough pride in it to argue over who among their friends makes the best cup. Its history is more recent and more accidental than most people expect. Tea reached Morocco in quantity through the Crimean War in the 1850s, when the British East India Company diverted shipments intended for the Baltic states and found itself with a surplus of Chinese tea to sell. Moroccans were the first to infuse it with mint, as a way of countering the bitterness of gunpowder green tea, and the combination stuck. It is drunk across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania, and in parts of the Near and Middle East. It is called shai bi na'na' in classical Arabic and atay or latay in Maghrebi Arabic. The method here involves two rinses of the tea leaves before the tea is made, one of which is kept as the essence and returned to the pot, and one discarded. That step is what removes the harshest bitterness while keeping the strength.

Morocco20 minBlessing

Moroccan Khobz

Moroccan Khobz is the daily bread of Morocco, a slightly leavened, round flatbread topped with sesame seeds and sometimes nigella seeds, baked until the crust is firm and golden and the interior is soft and chewy. It is present at every Moroccan meal from breakfast to dinner, used to scoop tagines, dip into olive oil, and accompany cooked vegetable salads. Moroccan families traditionally made their Khobz daily at home and took it to the communal neighbourhood baker (farran) to bake. This tradition persists in many Moroccan cities and villages, and the quality of local farran bread remains a point of neighbourhood pride. The bread's neutral, slightly wheaty flavour and sturdy texture make it the ideal vehicle for Moroccan food.

MoroccoBlessing

Moroccan pastilla, a layered pastry of spiced chicken and almonds dusted with icing sugar

Moroccan Pastilla (Bastila)

Pastilla is the Moroccan dish that most confounds people who meet it for the first time: shredded spiced poultry and toasted sweetened almonds, layered inside buttered pastry and dusted with icing sugar and cinnamon. Savoury and sweet are not separated but deliberately built into the same mouthful. It is celebration food. Pastilla appears at weddings, at Eid, and when a household wants to demonstrate hospitality to a guest, and the effort involved is part of the message. Historically it was made with pigeon; chicken is now standard, and the shift is one of availability rather than taste. The dish is known by both names. Bastila and pastilla are the same word under different regional pronunciations and are used interchangeably in Morocco. Its regional forms diverge considerably: Fes makes a lamb version, coastal Essaouira a seafood one with prawns and fish, and Atlas households work dried fruit in for extra sweetness. Two notes on this particular version. Its ingredient list names both phyllo dough and filo sheets, which are the same thing under two spellings. And it gives no oven temperature, deferring to whatever is printed on the pastry packet. A hot oven is what the method needs, and the figure is given below. There are a lot of almonds here, which matters for anyone with a tree nut allergy.

Morocco1 hr 40 minDebby

Moroccan Zaalouk (Cooked Eggplant and Tomato Salad)

Zaalouk is a classic Moroccan cooked salad of eggplant (aubergine) and tomatoes, gently seasoned with cumin, paprika, garlic, fresh coriander, and a touch of preserved lemon, then cooked down to a soft, almost spreadable consistency. It is served at room temperature as part of the Moroccan mezze spread that precedes most main meals. Despite being called a salad, Zaalouk is fully cooked. The eggplant is first roasted or grilled to develop smokiness, then combined with tomatoes and spices and cooked together until completely collapsed into a silky, intensely flavoured paste. It is served generously with warm bread for scooping and represents the sophisticated simplicity that defines Moroccan cooking at its best.

MoroccoBlessing

Beghrir, Moroccan semolina pancakes covered in small holes, with honey butter

Beghrir (Moroccan Thousand-Hole Pancakes)

Beghrir are Moroccan semolina pancakes, cooked on one side only, whose entire surface opens into hundreds of small holes as they cook. They are served warm with a honey and butter sauce, and they are strongly associated with Ramadan, eaten at iftar to break the fast and at suhoor before dawn. The holes are the whole thing, and they are not decoration. Yeast in a thin, blended batter produces carbon dioxide; as the pancake sets on the hot pan, the bubbles rise and burst through the surface, leaving an open honeycomb that absorbs the sauce like a sponge. That is why beghrir is never turned over, flipping it would seal the holes shut and defeat the purpose. Some regions do flip them briefly to dry the top, and those are sometimes called khringos, though in Casablanca that word means something else entirely. Fine semolina is what makes it work, and it is also what gives beghrir its pale yellow colour. Recipes vary in how much they cut it with plain flour; the more semolina, the yellower and more characteristic the result. The batter is very similar to that used for Arab qatayef, the lacy pancakes folded around fillings. Beghrir can be used the same way, though it is not traditional.

Morocco50 minAmara

Bessara (Moroccan Fava Bean Purée)

Bessara is dried split fava beans cooked soft with garlic and olive oil, then puréed and seasoned with cumin and paprika. It is street food across Morocco, most strongly associated with the north, and it is eaten for breakfast as often as for anything else. Its consistency is not fixed, and that is a feature rather than a vagueness. Made thick, it is a dip eaten from a shared plate with Moroccan bread. Made looser, it is a soup served in individual bowls, which is how street vendors serve it on cold mornings. The same pot produces both, depending on how much of the cooking liquid goes back in. Traditionally the beans were cooked for hours until they collapsed entirely and then passed through a food mill. A blender does the same job in seconds and gives a smoother result, which is what most cooks now use, and the source is right that nothing is lost by it. The condiments are not optional garnish. Bessara is served with olive oil, cumin, salt and cayenne or harissa on the side, and each person seasons their own bowl. The purée itself is deliberately mild, which only makes sense once you know that. Note that the same dish appears elsewhere spelt bissara; they are one thing. Some cooks make it with dried split peas in place of some or all of the fava beans, which gives a lighter texture and a greener colour but changes nothing about the method or the seasoning.

Morocco1 hr 30 minDeborah

Prepared couscous, fluffed with a fork in a bowl

How to Cook Couscous

How to prepare instant couscous: boiling water or stock poured over, covered, left to steam, then fluffed. This is a technique page for a staple ingredient rather than a recipe for a dish, and it is filed as such. Couscous is North African, specifically Berber in origin, and it is a staple across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Its status was recognised by UNESCO in 2020, when the knowledge and practices around couscous were inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in a joint submission by Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. It is not a grain, despite looking like one. Couscous is pasta, durum wheat semolina moistened, rolled into tiny granules and dried. Three sizes are common: Moroccan, the smallest; Israeli or pearl couscous, about the size of peppercorns; and Lebanese, the largest. The traditional method has nothing to do with pouring boiling water on. Couscous is steamed, usually more than once, in the upper chamber of a couscoussier over a stew whose vapours flavour it as it cooks. That is how it is made for a proper meal in North Africa and the results are much lighter. Almost all couscous sold in supermarkets is pre-steamed and dried, which is why the rehydration method here works.

Morocco20 minFoodChef

Kefta mkaouara, Moroccan meatballs in a tomato and onion sauce

Kefta Mkaouara (Moroccan Meatballs in Tomato Sauce)

Small beef meatballs browned and then finished in a tomato and onion sauce with ras el hanout. It is Moroccan, and the fuller name for the dish is kefta mkaouara. The name belongs to an enormous family. Kefta, kofta, köfte, kufta and kafta are all the same word rendered from different languages, and versions of the dish run from Morocco through Egypt, Turkey and the Levant to South Asia. What distinguishes the Moroccan one is the seasoning, ras el hanout, the North African blend that varies by spice merchant but typically runs to a dozen or more spices, and the tagine format, where the meatballs finish in a shallow tomato sauce rather than being served dry. The size matters and is easy to get wrong. Moroccan meatballs are small, the source compares them to a large marble, because they are eaten communally from a shared dish with bread rather than plated individually. Larger ones do not work the same way. Eating it is part of it. The tagine is set in the middle of the table and everyone scoops from it with pieces of Moroccan bread, traditionally with mint tea afterwards. A separate Egyptian kofta recipe exists on this site. The two are relatives rather than duplicates: different meat, different spicing, different country.

Morocco55 minFoodChef

Moroccan Lamb Chops with Chermoula herb marinade served over rice with lemon, a fragrant North African grilled lamb dish

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.

Morocco25 minFoodChef

M'hanncha, Moroccan coiled pastry filled with almond paste

M'hanncha (Moroccan Snake Cake)

M'hanncha is almond paste rolled inside thin pastry and coiled into a spiral. The name means snake, which is exactly what it looks like. It is Moroccan, and it is celebration food. **It is built on almonds, which the title gives no indication of.** The flavourings tell you where it sits historically. Orange flower water and cinnamon with almonds is a distinctly North African combination, and it reflects the Persian and Arab influence that runs through Moroccan sweets, the same lineage that gives the region its almond pastries, its rose and orange blossom waters, and its habit of scenting sweet things rather than simply sweetening them. Mastic, which some recipes include, comes from the same direction. The coil is functional as well as decorative. Made large for a gathering, guests break portions off the end rather than cutting slices, which is how it is meant to be served. Warqa is the traditional pastry, a Moroccan sheet made by dabbing loose dough onto a hot pan, thinner and more pliable than filo. Filo is the standard substitute and is what this recipe uses. The source's ingredient list is badly scrambled: quantities have shifted onto the wrong ingredients, so it calls for two cups of melted butter and half a teaspoon of ground almonds. Rebuilt from the method.

Morocco1 hr 15 minNympha

Matbucha, a slow-cooked Moroccan dip of tomatoes and roasted peppers

Matbucha (Moroccan Tomato and Pepper Dip)

Matbucha is roasted peppers and tomatoes cooked down slowly with garlic and paprika into a thick, dark, jammy dip. It is Moroccan Jewish in origin and is now eaten across Israel and the wider Middle East as a mezze staple. The name says what it is: matbucha means cooked salad in Arabic, which describes both the dish and the crucial technique. This is not a fresh salsa but something reduced by half over an hour or more, until the water has cooked out and the peppers and tomatoes have concentrated into something closer to a preserve. Rushing that stage gives you a thin tomato sauce, which is a different and lesser thing. Its journey is worth recording. Matbucha travelled from Morocco to Israel with Jewish immigrants in the mid-twentieth century, and it is now so established there that it is sold in every supermarket. In Morocco it is served as part of a mezze spread; in Israel it is understood as an appetizer. Same dish, slightly different place at the table. Red peppers rather than green is not incidental. The source notes that green peppers turn bitter in matbucha, which is correct, red peppers are ripe and sweet and reduce into something quite different. It freezes well, which is why the recipe makes three jars.

Morocco1 hr 25 minNympha

Msemen (Moroccan Layered Flatbread)

Msemen is a Moroccan flatbread made by spreading dough paper-thin, dotting it with butter and semolina, and folding it into a square, twice, before frying. The folding is what creates the layers, and the layers are the entire dish. The name is a description of the method. Msemen means oiled in Arabic, and the recipe uses a great deal of oil: on the work surface, on the hands, in the dough, dotted through the folds. That is not excess, it is technique. Oiled hands slide over the dough rather than tearing it, which is how you get it thin enough to see the surface through. The double fold is the structural step. Spread thin, dot with butter and semolina, fold into thirds, dot again, fold into thirds the other way. Each fold multiplies the layers, and the semolina between them keeps them from fusing, which is exactly the job flour does in a laminated puff pastry, arrived at from a completely different direction. Two things separate msemen from its Moroccan neighbours. Beghrir is the yeasted thousand-hole pancake, a different thing entirely. Rghaif is a broader family name that msemen belongs to. Cooking them in the order they were folded matters. The first ones have rested longest and spread most easily.

Morocco1 hr 30 minBlessing

Sardine meatballs cooked in a spiced Moroccan tomato sauce

Sardine Meatball Tagine

Tinned sardines puréed with egg and breadcrumbs, rolled into balls and cooked in a spiced tomato sauce. It is Moroccan, and the source is right that it is the forerunner of the sardine meatball sandwiches sold widely on the coast. Sardines matter enormously to Morocco. The country is the world's largest exporter of tinned sardines, the fishery is a major part of the coastal economy, and sardines are cheap and abundant enough to be genuinely everyday food rather than a delicacy. That economic fact is why a sardine kefta exists at all, ground sardine is now sold ready-prepared at Moroccan fish markets, which the source notes and which tells you how ordinary the dish is. The technique is standard kefta construction applied to fish. Puréeing rather than flaking is what makes the mixture hold together, since sardine flesh is soft and would fall apart otherwise, and the breadcrumbs and egg do the binding a meat kefta would not need. The spicing, paprika, turmeric, ginger, coriander and cumin, is the Moroccan tagine vocabulary rather than anything specific to fish. The source's discussion of sardine oil in paint and linoleum manufacture is accurate and not especially appetising; it has not been carried across. Nor have its omega-3 claims.

Morocco50 minFoodChef

Seffa medfouna, saffron chicken buried under sweetened vermicelli with almonds

Seffa Medfouna (Moroccan Buried Chicken with Sweet Vermicelli)

Seffa medfouna is saffron chicken hidden inside a mound of steamed, sweetened vermicelli, dusted with cinnamon, icing sugar and ground fried almonds. Medfouna means buried, and the concealment is the whole presentation. **It is finished with a cup of ground almonds, which the title gives no indication of.** It is the clearest example on this site of the Moroccan savoury-sweet axis. Saffron chicken cooked with ginger, turmeric and pepper is buried under vermicelli that has been sweetened with butter and icing sugar, studded with raisins, and decorated with cinnamon and almonds. Neither element is subtle, and the point is that they arrive in the same mouthful. This is the same tradition as pastilla, and it reflects the Andalusian and Arab influence that runs through Moroccan festive cooking. Seffa on its own is the sweetened steamed vermicelli or couscous, served as a dish in its own right. Medfouna is the version with meat concealed inside. The vermicelli is steamed four times. That is not an exaggeration in the method, repeated steaming with resting in between is what makes it light rather than claggy, and it is the same principle as double-steamed couscous. It is a dish for a table with several courses on it, not a weeknight.

Morocco3 hr 15 minBlessing

Sfenj, Moroccan ring doughnuts fried golden

Sfenj (Moroccan Doughnuts)

Sfenj are Moroccan doughnuts made from a very wet yeasted dough, shaped into rings by hand and deep-fried. They are crisp outside, chewy inside, and sold hot from street stalls across the country. The dough is the whole difficulty and the whole point. It is deliberately too sticky to knead or roll, closer to a thick batter than a bread dough, and that high hydration is what produces the light, chewy, open interior. Working it with dry hands is impossible, which is why the method has you keep a bowl of water beside you and wet your hands before touching it. Adding flour to make it manageable would be the obvious mistake and would give you a dense, ordinary doughnut. The street version is worth picturing. Vendors lift the finished sfenj from the oil with skewers and thread them onto a ribbon of palm leaf so customers can carry several at once. Some ask for them flattened and returned to the oil for a second fry, which makes them crisper still. Timing matters more than most fried things. Sfenj are eaten hot; cold, they go tough and lose the contrast entirely. The source's stated oil temperature is worth following, it is more specific than most.

Morocco4 hr 30 minNympha

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.

MoroccoFoodChef

Taktouka, a Moroccan cooked salad of roasted peppers and tomato

Taktouka (Moroccan Pepper and Tomato Salad)

Taktouka is roasted peppers and grated tomato cooked down with onion, garlic, cumin and paprika into a thick warm salad. It is Moroccan, also popular in Algeria, and it is a mezze dish rather than a leaf salad. The name explains the texture. It comes from the Arabic taktak, meaning to grind or pound, and the vegetables end up soft and broken down rather than crisp. That is why the source opens by pre-empting the obvious question, why a salad needs a recipe, and it is a fair point: taktouka requires cooking, and cooking is most of it. It has regional names worth knowing. In eastern Morocco it is called flifla; in Algeria, felfla mechouia. Zaalouk, the aubergine version, is its closest sibling and works the same way. Grating the tomatoes rather than dicing them is the technique the source recommends and it is a good one. Cutting a tomato in half and grating the cut face against a box grater extracts the pulp and leaves the skin behind in your hand, no peeling, no blanching, and a smoother result. This dish is closely related to matbucha, the Moroccan-Jewish version, which is on this site. Matbucha is cooked longer, without onion or cumin, and the two are genuinely distinguished by community and by seasoning rather than being the same recipe under two names.

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