Méchoui, pastilla, tagine, couscous ... Moroccan cuisine is a matter of patience and tradition. For generations, the recipes are handed down from mother to daughter, a legacy that somehow resists the growing popularity of junk food and the cooker.
For my first family meal in Casablanca, ranges from Khadija's mother had prepared a lamb tagine with figs, prunes, apricots and dried fruits. Meat sauce argan oil, fruits, spices, everything was tasty. Rich also, this mixture of salt meat and fruit. And the smell of the dish was intoxicating. A trip to the hovering papilles.Il were no vegetables with the tagine. In the tradition, the vegetables were considered food "common" reserved for family dinner without guests. When there are guests, it is somewhat small and large dishes in the meat is served. The tradition has not changed, although there are many recipes of tagines made with vegetables. After the tagine, one of the cooks made a huge couscous with beans and small zucchini. "Couscous is the flat on Friday we eat after the prayer," said my friend.
Latifa Smires Benanni-Moroccan was the first to write a cookbook of his country. This book, Moroccan cuisine, launched in 1970, was reissued in 2001. It promotes good home cooking.
"I was anywhere in the kitchen," she said. So I wanted to write down the recipes from my mother, my stepmother and others that you had given me. I started in place of a debutante. I've tried them all! I threw away, the dishes, I swear! I was even given inedible recipes as a recipe for chocolate fish! "
Ms. Benanni-Smires said that Moroccan recipes vary slightly from one region to another. Are there several Moroccan kitchens? "There's bad and good," she says. Moroccan cuisine can not stand mediocrity. "
What, she says, the emblematic dish of Morocco? "The barbecue, pastilla and tajine of chicken with lemon confit." Moroccan cuisine is characterized by it "by combinations of spices and herbs that are simmering. For this reason, she believes that the development of this cuisine is not always "positive". She regrets the proliferation of fast food, which affects the transmission of the family kitchen, and also rejects the followers of a new way of cooking. "The pressure cooker is not to Moroccan cuisine," she said.
She also vilifies Moroccan recipe writers who propose such couscous caviar - especially as Fatema Hal, anthropologist, owner of the most famous Moroccan restaurant in Paris, Mansfield, and author of ten books of Moroccan cuisine.
Know giving and taking
Fatima Hal for his part in the book fair in Casablanca at the same time that La Presse. She came to present his latest, Tagines and couscous, published by Hachette. Fatema Hal denies promoting the new Moroccan cuisine.
"I find myself more in an emergency to keep a certain culinary tradition, "she said. We must listen to old Moroccan women. There are family secrets. The cuisine of the poor is also very interesting. But Moroccan cuisine has always evolved. It is not static. "
Fatima Hal believes that Moroccan cuisine" has always been give and take. " "What is new today will become traditional in 20 years," she adds.
"leaf pastilla came from China. The foie gras is not of French origin but Egyptian. Nothing belongs to anyone. Must be preserved but also evolve. Do you think that French chefs would Rebuchon Ducasse and where they are today if they had been content to prepare cassoulet? Couscous with caviar is a wink to say that we can do many good things with semolina. We must look to the future. "
Fatima Hal understands that our dining experiences at restaurants Moroccan from Casablanca, Marrakech and Essaouira have not reached the real pleasure of eating with family casseroles by seasoned cooks.
She believes that this dichotomy between good home cooking and restaurant cooking is a problem Morocco. "There is still no great chefs and great restaurants in Morocco, she said. We are in a situation where the transmission of the kitchen from mother to daughter is no longer as much girls work, in particular, and go to school. It is necessary that the kitchen is changing, with more training. There is a good hotel school in Rabat. It is not enough. But it will come. The country is changing for ten years. "
Source: Eric Clement to http://www.cyberpresse.ca
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