?Cous cous is ours,? says chef Rachid of Casablanca restaurant at Double Tree Hotel by Hilton in Gurgaon. It is a revealing comment since cous cous is claimed by more than one North African nation, namely, Libya, Algeria, Mauritania and, of course, Morocco. But I am going to take his word for it. After all, he is the only Moroccan chef in town! Coming from a part of India that isn?t really known for its cuisine, I am somewhat intimidated by people who have more illustrious culinary heritage. And I haven?t really thought about where cous cous comes from. To be honest, I haven?t really thought about cous cous all that much. But as it turns out, it?s something every good Moroccan housewife knows how to make. Take some drum wheat, sprinkle water on it, hand roll it into pellets, pass it through a strainer and then dry it out in the sun and there is your cous cous, the staple of Moroccan cuisine. It is a whole meal in itself consumed by the family after Friday prayers.
Little is known about Moroccan cuisine because it hasn?t quite caught the public imagination in the way Lebanese food has. But interestingly, its flavour palate is far more similar to Indian cuisine than one would imagine. Take, for example, the spices. It boasts of as many spices in the cooking as ours. However, unlike Indian food, where spices are tempered, thereby releasing a sharper flavour when cooked in oil, in Moroccan cuisine, spices are used for marinating and don?t come in direct contact with the oil, hence releasing a gentler flavour. Like our garam masala, Moroccans have ?Ras-el-hanout?. A blend of 15 spices, it is sharp to the taste and used sparingly, but is nonetheless a staple of the cuisine used in everything from marinades to tagines (traditional flavourful stews of meat, fish or chicken), distinguishing Moroccan food from other Arabic food for its use of spices.
The primary methods of cooking are braising and stewing, making the cuisine, in its essence, a healthy one. The meats are slow-cooked in their own juice for hours. At Casablanca, chef Sethi tells me that the meat is marinated overnight and then put on flame in the morning, so that the tagine may be ready by lunchtime. No compromises are made in the method. The food is not particularly oily. Remember, this is a part of the world that cooks in olive oil. However, it is on first taste a little too salty, making me ask, do they have salt substitutes in Morocco?
The saltiness comes from preserved lemons, an essential ingredient in Moroccan cooking. At Casablanca, they make them in-house. The lemons are imported from Italy for their flavour and size, and then slit open?four clean slits (like one does to ward off an evil spirit)?and stuffed with rock salt. For a month and a half in summer and two and a half months in winter, the lemons sit under the kitchen counters in a dry and cool place. Once ready, the rind of the lemon is used to flavour the food and the pulp is discarded. Depending on how long you let the lemon rind sweat with other ingredients determines the saltiness. One can assume that most chefs let it stay a while because it?s also what lends the cuisine a distinctive flavour.
Monu Thankappan, the Tibetan-Malayi manager, executes a service style that complements the tradition of Moroccan eating, which is, like with most Arabic cuisines, a communal experience. The portion sizes are generous, circumventing the strictures of fine dining and a main course is enough for two people. It is said the influence of Morocco?s French colonisers is underlined by the presence of bread, that is, khobz as a standard meal accompaniment. A crusty bread, khobz is used as an eating instrument and served with all the dishes along with harissa sauce and olives. People insist that tagine must be eaten not with spoons, but with khobz.
According to the chef, the complexity in cooking Moroccan food comes from the skill required to balance the savoury and sweet elements of the ingredients to prepare one dish. A good example is the pastilla. A flaky pie of chicken mince dusted with sugar, it is an unusual preparation that leaves one asking for more. The origins of cous cous may be debatable, but the intricate balancing of flavours that Moroccan cuisine attempts to achieve is indeed all its own.
Advaita Kala is a writer, most recently of the film Kahaani. She is also a former hotelier having worked in restaurants
in India and abroad