Over the past 12 years since we first opened our doors, we have been teaching a steady stream of people the art of making couscous from scratch. All because of our very first guests who wanted to learn this wonderful dish, a couple from London who stayed with us so long that they even helped do the dishes. They wanted to learn about couscous making from scratch, and so was born our most popular class.

Couscous is Morocco’s national dish, and it is prepared here better than it is anywhere else in North Africa. Other couscous nations do not produce a dish that is so light and flavourful as Moroccan couscous, and the quality and variety of produce here to dress it is without peer.

The packaged couscous you can buy at home is nothing compared to couscous made fresh, just as dried pasta is not the same as fresh…and that is essentially what couscous is.

While couscous of 7 vegetables has become one of our signature dishes, we take great pride in our innovative approach to this dish and our approach to teaching it. The many guests and participants in our one-on-one couscous making classes over the years have taken something more than just the memory of a nice time how with them, they have learned how to make a great couscous from scratch.

Amy Sherman writes about her own experience learning to make couscous from scratch on the amazing food site Epicurious.com. Click here to see her story.

Spring begins early in Morocco, and even though it has been nippy at night, there is no doubt on these sunny days that the weather has changed and that Spring is here.

On a recent trip up into the mountains just half an hour outside of town the peach blossoms were in bloom, and the landscape was as gorgeous as ever. It is at moments like this that we realise that Marrakech is just one step from Paradise.

Barabara Bertuzzi’s new book about Marrakech, Dietro Le Antiche Porte, is the benchmark for what a guidebook should be. It is so thoroughly researched that there are plenty of things that we didn’t know about even after living here for over a decade. Ms. Bertuzzi spent months living in Marrakech in the medina, meeting people, exploring, finding her way around, and in the process has created a book with real magic in it.

If you really want to experience the mysteries of Marrakech, and really want to find special, and totally unique places and things to do, then this is the guide for you. It comes today in French and Italian versions, though hopefully it will soon also be available in English.

Paula Wolfert is the author of what is possibly the most important and best book ever written on the subject of Moroccan food, its history, traditions, and recipes. Originally published in the early 1970′s under several different titles around the world, Couscous as it was most commonly known, became for many the quintessential book on Moroccan cooking and stood almost alone for decades.

Paula’s books have covered a range of subjects but always have focussed on the recipes, cultures and techniques of the Mediterranean basin. She has said that Moroccan food is her great passion and the one she keeps coming back to, and this is very evident from the warmth with which she writes.

Another thing that sets her writing out is just how well crafted each recipe is. That she is famous for cooking and tinkering and re-writing her recipes over and over until she is completely certain that they will work well for the home cook is evident in the precision of instruction as well as in their thoroughness.

People’s tastes in cookbooks have changed over the years, and readers like pictures a lot more…With great wisdom, Paula and her publisher have re-issued her book, with lots of updates and with pictures, and have updated it beautifully, making it not just the seminal book it once was and still is, but a beautiful cookbook by any measure.

Quentin Bacon’s photos are gorgeous, and bring the sense of place, the food, textures, all to life…you can almost hear the conversations, laughter, smell the delicious odours of food cooking…his style really lends itself to the subject at hand, with a real sense of the natural about them. He is one of the most talented photographers working today and that is very much in evidence in the book.

The re-issue of the book is called the Food of Morocco, and we strongly urge you to go out and buy it if you have any interest in Moroccan cooking. No book is more thoroughly researched, expertly written, or as enjoyable to look at as this one, and the recipes all work beautifully. We are doubly excited as many of the images for the book were shot on location at our luxury boutique hotels Riad Kaiss and Dar Les Cigognes. We had the good fortune and great pleasure of hosting a dinner in Paula’s honour while she was in town with Food & Wine magazine, who were writing an article about her life.

We recently hosted a dinner of 40 guests for a delicious evening of fine, traditional French cooking. Chef Hadrien ably led our team of five Moroccan dadas and reigned over the kitchen with a total calm and efficiency that was a marvel to behold.

On the menu were French classics and some delicious innovations: creamed corn soup with popcorn, a risotto of porcini and morels from the Atlas Mountains, boeuf Bourgignon, and the best tarte tatin I have ever eaten…really good.

So good, will be ready to do this again soon.

Click here to watch us making our Olive Oil for Fall 2011

Morocco possesses everything it takes to make some of the best olive oil in the world. Particularly when the olives are grown in the right conditions–dry nights, hot sunny days, and abundant water during the growing season. But in areas like the Ourika Valley, all of these conditions are perfectly met.

I have a personal taste preference for “green” olive oil, with that tart flavour that one finds in really good, fresh Italian olive oils. That particular flavour is not the one that most Moroccans like, though, where the taste preference runs to a much nuttier, ripe flavour. The Moroccan flavour preference is further encouraged because this comes from late harvest oil which yields much higher quantities of oil.

Having set out to make a green olive oil last year and more or less failed because the traditional press we used had too many off flavours in the mix, this year I determined to do it right. Taking nothing for chance I tracked down through some friends a modern press, with a centrifuge, and organised to bring the olives and begin pressing straight away.

We bought our olives through a farmer friend who was willing to put up with the mad request for green olives or those blushed purple, no black ones…this meant picking by hand, one by one. In truth, this also means no bruising and a better oil as mechanical pickers or beaters can damage the fruit.

Promptly at noon the work was done and we weighed it, and loaded into the truck–or should I say dumped…and headed out with some of us riding ON the olives, feet dangling off the back of the pickup. Real bumpkins.

When we get to the press, though, it turns out it is not the right place, so all the groundwork to get to the right one was of no use. Scrambling like mad and calling people all over Marrakech and all over the world, while standing next to the truck, donkeys, and some confused friends and guests, we finally tracked down where we were supposed to be and thankfully got there. They graciously fired up the machines just for us, and we processed the oil, a spot of green gold.

It was worth it, as the flavour turned out to be just what we were looking for.

A few months ago we had the pleasure of hosting Italian Cookbook author Barbara Bertuzzi in honour of her new book on Morocco, coming out this Fall (2011).  Because of the books gourmet emphasis and because her previous book is a sensational cookbook on the regional cooking of Bologna, we decided to create a menu of Italian and Moroccan co-inspired dishes.

22 guests joined for this incredible feast as the heavens truly opened up and we had a rain storm like we haven’t had for centuries while we sat in the warmth of our cozy dining room.  The dinner started out with an exceptionally delicious creamed pumpkin soup prepared by Chef Rachid served in shot glasses–it looked and tasted great.  This was followed by a Sabayon of sea urchins served in their shells (we had the sea urchins brought in from the coast that morning and they were so fresh).  This was followed by the delicious local fines des claires Oysters from Oualidia.

Barbara then served tortellini in brodo for which she had made the most exquisite broth.  The butcher came on his motorcyle with cooler attachment in the morning with the various cuts she required and she set the broth to gentle cooking throughout the day.  The tortellini and the broth were exceptional, though only eclipsed by the following dish.  As a main course we had the tradtional Bollito Misto of Bologna, with thinly sliced tongue, shoulder, and rib meat…all served with deliciously surprising sauces of true local colour and flavour: a vibrant purple Barbary Fig reduction and a golden quince mustard.

This was accompanied by a tajine of cardoons and lightly sautéed lentils.

For desert we had one of our house specialties which delighted our Italian guests: pannacotta au saveurs du Maroc…so we had saffron, wormwood (what absinthe is made of), moroccan mint tea, fleurs d’oranger, sage, and rose–each served in a tiny little bite-sized bowl.

All in all a thoroughly delicious evening.

Eleven years ago, when we were building the first building of what has become our first hotel in Marrakech, we used to peel off and go and grab a bite to eat at a little hole in the wall just off of the Djema el Fna, the main square.  If you are looking for it, it is the tiny place up a few stairs under the sign “La Gazelle” in the small pedestrian street running away from the Post Office.

It isn’t a fancy restaurant, and it serves only a few things: grilled meat on a spit sliced in a Lebanese style, skewers of beef, and kefta.  You can have your choice on a plate or in a round of bread.  All are served with a delicious, refreshing salad.

We have come to love that quintessential Moroccan salad, but we still think that the one served in that restaurant is better than any that we have had anywhere else.  Here is how to make it:

4 or 5 deliciously ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded, then chopped; 1 medium white-purple onion, minced fine; 1 teaspoon of cumin powder; Sea salt to taste; Freshly ground black pepper to taste; 1 tablespoon of olive oil; Juice of 1 lemon; 1�2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Chop and seed the tomatoes finely (to make a three to one proportion with onion once chopped).

Take one white-purple onion, mince it fine, and soak in a few changes of salt water for an hour, changing the water every now and again. After an hour, drain and pat dry.

In a small bowl, squeeze the juice of one lemon, and mix in a light dusting of cumin, a liberal dose of olive oil, and black pepper, stirred together to emulsify.

Stir together with tomatoes and a little chopped cilantro. Salt to taste. Should be mild, fresh, and delicious. Serves 4.

We have had many guests ask us if Marrakech, and Morocco generally, are safe, given what is going on more generally in other parts of Africa, the “Arab World”, and farther afield.

While you can never promise someone 100% safety, it is still true here as everywhere that you must be aware of your surroundings.  That said, crime, street trouble, unrest, are comparatively low here compared to most places in the world, even Europe or the United States.  Crime statistics show that incidents of violent crime are substantially lower here in Marrakech than they are in almost every major European or US city.

Of course there was a bomb here recently.  It’s important to put this in context and to see it for what it was, not some vast conspiracy.  This was an incident of a young man “going postal” as we have seen happen in the US in Oklahoma, in South Dakota, at Columbine High School, at the University of Texas, at the shooting of a Congresswoman.  We have seen this same phenomenon in the UK on several occasions, and most recently, and horribly in Norway.  We sometimes get seduced into wondering what their reasons were for doing such a thing, but the common thread is that people disconnect from society and have some horrible grudge, and end up taking it out on innocent people in the most horrific ways.

The British Ambassador to Morocco recently pointed out that the Foreign Office’s current terrorist threat assessment level for any part of Morocco is lower than that for any of the following cities: London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, New York…that means you are safer here.  The thing is when something happens in a place like Morocco, it resonates more loudly than it does in Europe because there is a lot more going on in those places that drown out the noise.

The most important thing that we can all do in our lives is to go about our lives as we always have, to try to live peacefully and freely, and not in fear.  If we change our ways, accept a loss of freedom, live in fear, then we have given those who speak the language of violence the ultimate victory.  We must all keep calm and carry on.

There were some demonstrations during the start of the “Arab Spring” but they were mostly peaceful with a few small exceptions–it only ever takes one bad apple to break a window…None of these demonstrations, however, had any direct impact on tourists, and were largely confined to areas that tourists are unlikely to go to: outside administrative offices, in front of City Hall, that sort of thing.

Since the vote in July and the intended opening up of the political landscape, Morocco has once again demonstrated that it is ahead of the curve in terms of modernising and working towards a stable and broad-based democracy–a process that has now been going on since King Mohamed the VI rose to the throne.

We believe it is safe here and that it is a wonderful country.  The Moroccan people are some of the most engaging, welcoming, and friendly people you are ever likely to meet.  They are full of mirth and wonderful surprises.  Let that be the reason you come here, and park everything else behind.

If you are excited by the political winds of change that are blowing through many, many countries today, all the way around the Mediterranean, down into Africa, and east all the way to China, then there is no better place to live it than right here.  Morocco is a safe and stable country that is changing at a responsible pace; what better way to watch history unfold than to be here and to be a part of the Moroccan Spring…see you here soon.

Of course it is Ramadan now.  For the visitor, apart from the odd restaurant that will be closed, or others with slight changes in opening hours, it is all business as usual except one thing.  This year, because Ramadan is falling during one of the hottest months, things are very quiet out there in the streets.

Marrakech is normally one of the most hustling, bustling cities in the world, and this is true during Ramadan usually as well.  The only exception is that brief moment when the sun goes down, usually lasting about an hour, when people break the fast.  Everyone has gone home or is tucked away with a bowl of soup, dates, pastries, and enjoying a delicious meal, well-earned, after a day of fasting and prayer.

Now, because it is rather hot outside, people are wanting to conserve their strength, not get dehydrated, so it is very quiet, very quiet indeed.  It is a rare and beautiful sight, and I don’t think Marrakech has ever seemed quite so peaceful.

One of the great things to do during Ramadan is to break the fast with a Moroccan family, or with anyone.  Centuries of tradition and great food and the warmth of a shared meal make it a special experience.

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