Cooking and Cosmetics
We love love love food. Our year away, we have been trying to live like the locals everywhere. And in part, that means eating like the locals. We cook and bake as much as we can, though baking is usually quite limited due to kitchen resources. We have made sure to learn the local cuisine, cooking methods, ingredients, dishes, etc.
Morocco has been interesting. It is a type of cuisine we were completely ignorant of before we got here. Though it’s quickly become our favourite cuisine of all the places we have been this year! The foods they make here are so flavourful and delicious, with tons of spices but never spicy (aka hot). We wanted to learn more about how to cook these amazing foods, which are often cooked in a completely different way from anything we have ever attempted before.
We decided to book a cooking class with a local woman for Valentine’s Day. We didn’t realize at first it was Valentine’s Day, but thought it was a very appropriate way to spend our day together with the people we love doing something we all love. Najle was amazing! Not only did she grow up here, she also went to culinary school. She was so incredibly nice and also a wealth of information. We picked up so much knowledge from her that we have already put into practice! She was also amazing at involving the girls.
Our day started in her home, where we gathered in her comfortable sitting room trying her six different types of homemade Moroccan cookies, chatting as a group to get to know each other a bit, and learning all about Moroccan mint tea. There’s so much we learned from her and others about mint tea, that we will save this topic as a separate blog post!
Next up was going out shopping at the local butchers and produce shops in her neighbourhood. We got to help pick out the produce. We always let our girls help us pick out produce when we shop, so they were thrilled to get to show off to her that they knew how to pick the perfect produce to use right away!
The standards for meat shops here are vastly different from Canada! The chickens were being brought in for the day when we got to the chicken shop. They bring in as many live chickens as they need for the day, butcher them on-site, and sell them. We saw the live ones transferred into their holding pen ready to butcher, but they had some already butchered and plucked and ready to chop into pieces for us. That said, we have been around other chicken shops here where we have seen the chickens being butchered. The girls understand this is part of how chickens get to our table and weren’t too horrified. Today, we stood around with the various cats that were hanging out inside the butcher shop, watching him cut up our chickens. The girls are used to this, as they see me cut apart whole fresh chickens back home a couple of times a year. So, they were interested but definitely more interested in watching the cats. The cats, on the other hand, were more interested in watching the butcher, because as bits fell from the worktop, the cats snatched up the raw chicken to feast on!
After grabbing beef, chicken, produce, and water, we went back to her house. She already had all the spices, and taught us tons about spices! The main four spices used in Moroccan cuisine are salt, pepper, ginger, and turmeric. They are in basically everything. When you have vegetables/savoury, you also add cumin and paprika. The cumin gets added to the food right away if it’s to be cooked for 20 min or less, as cooking cumin for more than 25 min will destroy its flavour. If you’re cooking something for more than 20 minutes, you add cumin at the end. If you are cooking something slightly sweeter that involves fruit, you use cinnamon and ras el hanout, which is a 35-spice blend unique to Morocco. It’s delicious! Tons of tajines use raisins, prunes, etc. that you would use these sweeter spice blends in.
We also learned about saffron, which is used as a special treat or for fancy meals here. While we didn’t cook with it today, she taught everyone how to know if you’re buying real or fake saffron, as it is quite common to find people selling fake saffron in Marrakech. The fake saffron is the silk from inside corn on the cob, dyed to look like saffron. Some of the tips she gave us were to put a piece of saffron on a liquid to see if it floats (it should) and if the colour comes out slowly or quickly (should come out very slowly), also how to look at the threads and how they are connected and how they are two-toned. The smell and the colour transfer onto your skin when you rub it with wet fingers are other indications. It was all so interesting, and we went home to check the saffron we had bought. We had tried to be picky and get real saffron, and were relieved to find out we did buy the real saffron!
She cleaned everything and set us up at our workstations with our own tasks. We spent the next few hours cutting, grating, chopping, mixing, and assembling. The girls spend a lot of time in the kitchen with us and are quite accomplished at food prep, cooking, and baking and jumped in with enthusiasm. We worked on prepping veggies, making side dishes, and rolling up meatballs.
In total, our group of 16 participants made three main dishes (veggie tajine, meatball and egg tajine, and chicken and lemon tajine) and four side dishes (cucumber salad, tomato salad, zucchini side dish, and eggplant side dish). We sat down to a big feast as a group to taste all our creations. Wow! All three tajines were delicious, as were the tomato salad and zucchini side dish. I think the zucchini one in particular will become one of our staple veggie side dishes when we go back home, assuming we can find some mini zucchinis easily enough! The girls and I did not like the eggplant dish, and none of us liked the cucumber salad. I don’t think we are a family that generally appreciates or enjoys eggplant, though. Most people in our group loved that one!
After a full day of culinary delights, we stayed for a second experience with her. I absolutely adore argan oil. I have extremely dry and moderately sensitive skin. I have been making my own homemade face oil for at least 8 years now, which uses argan oil as a base and makes my skin feel sooooo nice. I have also used just straight-up argan oil when I’ve run out and haven’t had time to make my mix yet. Since booking our trip to Morocco, I’ve been excited to stock up on argan oil. The problem is, tons of people sell it around here, but most of it is fake! You can go into reputable places, but then they charge a small fortune for it.
Najle offers a class where you learn about argan oil and make your own. Not only do you know you’re getting something authentic, but you actually get to learn something and have fun getting your hands dirty!
Most entertaining to us was to learn that the argan nuts grow on trees and the nut is surrounded by fruit. They know that it is ready to harvest when the goats go to the trees and eat all the fruit, leaving the nuts behind since they can’t digest them. What we failed to understand at first and just about died laughing at later was that the goats actually hopped up into the trees to eat the fruit!
They actually make culinary argan oil, which I didn’t know. You need to roast the argan nuts first when using them to make argan oil for consumption. Otherwise, it’s too bitter. For cosmetic purposes, you just use the raw argan nuts, though.
First, you put them into this device that I do not know the name of, where you crush them and turn them into a paste. It looks a little like a volcano, and you put the nuts in at the top and use a handle to turn the cone in circles to crush the nuts.
After, you take the paste and put it into a bowl. You slowly add water, one spoonful at a time. You mix the water into the paste until it’s incorporated, kneading it like bread dough, and adding water in small amounts as you go. The point is to absorb the water so that it expels the oil out since water and oil do not mix. We had to knead the paste-like bread for quite a while, maybe 20 minutes. Once you start to notice your hands getting oily, it changes really fast! You need to stop adding water, or it turns into a mushy mess. Which Jon and Katia learned the hard way. Thankfully, there was another lady who also stayed to learn to make argan oil, and she let Katia jump in with her and help her out. She was soooo kind!
In the end, we pressed enough oil out of the argan paste to bottle three 100 mL bottles, which we brought home with us. That’s about how much I go through in a year, so should last me for a little while. Though I’m tempted to go buy some more while we are here! I asked about what they do with the rest of the paste, which hardens into a solid block after you press the oil out. Because you’re pressing by hand, there’s always going to be some oil that remains in it. They use the hardened paste to make soaps (like the famous black soap they sell everywhere and use in the hammams!), grind it up to make exfoliation powders, and other cosmetic uses.
I’ve found that the quality of the argan oil here is significantly better than what I buy back home. I just ran out of my argan oil from home and have switched to using my newly made argan oil, so I have a pretty good reference for comparing. I haven’t added anything to it, and wow! It’s so rich and moisturizing. I love it. Jon’s using it as aftershave and I’ve started using it in my hair to help keep the frizzies at bay while I have no blow dryer here and leave my hair in its naturally wavy state. I didn’t think I’d ever find a product that would truly eliminate my frizzies and not make my hair feel icky or weighed down, but a few drops of this argan oil is unreal! I used Moroccan oil for several years, but it isn’t even remotely in the same league as this pure argan oil. I’m in love and will need to find a way to keep getting my hands on this truly pure and amazing argan oil when we are back in Canada!
This was a long day, but a day full of so much hands-on fun and learning that it passed by so quickly! We have already put our cooking skills to the test, making the lemon tajine, meatball and egg tajine, tomato salad, and zucchini side dish here at our riad! Needless to say, a tajine dish has been added to our “to buy when we return to Canada” list so we can continue to make some delicious tajines back in Canada! And our next travel-themed dinner party just might have to be a Moroccan food night!