Moroccan Friends & Food

After a 30 minute drive northeast from Essaouira, we were met on the side of a road by donkey, driver and cart. We took a 45 minute donkey ride straight into the hills. We arrived at Hafida's family's home. We are greeted with a handshake, kiss on one cheek, and a double kiss on the second cheek, along with big welcoming smiles.

The home of Hafida begins at an alley way with a large blue door.

A long dark hallway leads to a hot sunny courtyard with a central planting area of tomatoes, basil, peppers and small marigolds. Each room is off the courtyard and one room is simpler than the next. Two of the rooms have one small table in the middle, a single bed and one room has a bed and a television.

The day is hot and our room where tea is served is much larger and grander with white walls.  It is carpeted from wall to wall with a patchwork of rugs. One round table is used for tea and lunch. The perimeter is lined with pillows for sitting. Fresh mint with green tea are served with sugar or without or "nusnus" which is half sugar, half without sugar.

A platter of ghiff (a yeasted whole grain bread) with argon oil and half butter is served as soon as we settle in. The ghiff was kneaded on a bowl and then formed into rounds and baked in the oven on a hot griddle.  The oven is a small cave off the floor with a pile of hot coals.

As soon as tea is served I am comfortable enough for a nap. How luxurious to come to a newly acquired friend's home and be at home enough to sleep.

One of the rooms off the hall to the courtyard is the toilet, next to that, the Hamman (bath), and then the stable, which is empty except for a lone chicken. A door opens to another courtyard of animals; chickens with chicks, goats with kids, sheep, and in the corner is a stone wall of a cave like structure. I spot a few rabbits running around in and out of their home of crevices (free-range rabbits!).

We our guided to the back field where camels and cows graze among the argon trees. There are a few very simple homes of two rooms off a courtyard as I peek behind the walls and see life - a woman and a child or a woman milking her cow.

When we return, Zahara, Hafida's mother, is making buttermilk in a ceramic vase with a plastic bag for a top. She has a pillow she places on the ground and uses as a cushion to rock the buttermilk back and forth until it is a thick yogurt consistency with small bits of butter and very sour.

Lunch will be served in two hours and today it is badez. This is a rare dish, but very traditional. The badez is a couscous and it is made the same, but this is a corn, not wheat. I ask about the corn.  It is grown in their fields, taken to the market where it is made into this grain. It is steamed twice unlike couscous which is steamed three times. It is steamed in the oven, over the dish of vegetables, making it a couscous badez.  The smokey dish is pipping hot and in Moroccan tradition all is eaten with the hands.

The men eat in a separate room and the little (perhaps 3-year old) boy wanders between the two rooms eating off each lap as he chooses.