Moroccan Cooking experience
This past January 2011 I traveled to Morocco with my friend Sydney. Before arriving I knew I wanted to take a cooking class. On a discussion forum I found the email for Lalla Nezha, I local young Moroccan woman living outside of Marrakesh. I took a chance and without knowing anything else beside an email address, I sent her a message inquiring if she did indeed offer a cooking course. Sure enough she responded with the schedule and price. It all sounded great so Sydney and I signed up. The day of our cooking course we were to meet in the Medina, Jama el Fna at 10am. So there we were standing in the square waiting and waiting with no idea who exactly we were expecting. After 10:30am passed we started to get nervous, was the cooking class really happening? We noticed four other tourists waiting as well. We asked them if they were taking the same class and they said they were. Around that time a small taxi pulled up, asked us if we were taking the cooking class and told us to get in. We all looked at each other confused but climbed in anyway. Seven people in a small taxi it was the quite the sight to see.
The taxi driver took us to the spice market were we met the helpers from the cooking class. They explained to us that Nezha was sick today but that the cooking class was still going to happen. From there on out things went smoothly. We spend about 30 minutes in a spice shop, were they explained all the combination of spices used for Moroccan dishes and teas.
We were then taken to the vegetable market were we picked out the ingredients for the course, everyone was really friendly and at the olive stand the man even invited us behind the counter. The only part that was not very pleasant was when we went to the meat market and picked out the chicken (live) that we were to cook. That experience was a little difficult.
We were then brought to Nezha’s house where we prepared a feast, first we started with Moroccan flat bread and an omelet of preserved lamb. We then prepared Moroccan mint tea (green tea with mint and lots and lots of sugar.
For the main course we had fried eggplant with fresh tomato sauce, roasted red peppers and last but most important our homemade tagine. Everything was cooked outside and turned out delicious! We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting and eating.
On my blog I have included a recipe for Moroccan lamb and prune tagine.
If you are interested in taking the same cooking course in Marrakesh Morocco email, nezha_cook@yahoo.com
