Category Archives: Morocco

* A Cuisine Created by Slave Women: A Review of Kitty Morse’s Mint Tea and Minarets, and a Brief Word about Dadas**

January 8, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Dealing with the death of beloved parents takes a great toll on people, leading them on journeys of self-discovery often not possible while parents still live and breathe and exert influence on their adult child’s life. Rarely does settling up an inheritance take sixteen years of patience and hair-pulling, constantly reminding the bereaved of their loss. But that is exactly what cookbook author Kitty Morse endured as she stayed true to her English father Clive Chandler’s last wishes, to preserve […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, Morocco, Photography, Southern Food • Tags: Azemmour, Kitty Morse, Leonora Peets, Marrakech, Mint Tea and Minarets, Moroccan cuisine, Morocco, Southern cooking

Another Holy Trinity of the Kitchen: The Magic of Milk, Eggs, and White Flour

September 21, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Every time I pour crêpe batter into my 8-inch Teflon*-lined crêpe pan, I see deep scratches, the ones that Habiba made with the fork she used while cooking a three-egg cheese-and-herb omelet one wintry Moroccan morning. The scratches don’t affect the pan’s performance, just as wounds and scars don’t fundamentally change who we are and how we function in the world. Pots and pans, like sugar-burned hands and fingers cut by dull knives, bear pale scars. These blemishes remind me […]

Categories: Agriculture, Cattle, Cooking, Eggs, France, French Cooking, Local foods, Milk, Morocco, Photography, Techniques • Tags: Crêpes, Eggs, Flour, France, French Cooking, Meditations, Milk, Photography

Two Moons and a Ksar

September 4, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

It’s funny how sights, sounds, and smells trigger memories, isn’t it? Tastes, too. When I photographed a blue moon the other night, a very specific image bubbled up for me.* Perhaps, in a way, you could deem it a Proustian madeleine moment. Although I didn’t really eat anything. Standing there, trying to keep the camera still as the small telephoto lens pulsated in rhythm with each of my heartbeats, I remembered a night in Morocco, in El Kalaa des M’Gouna, […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture, Arab cooking, Cooking, Food writing, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Photography • Tags: Morocco

Where Rosemary Flourished, the Woman Ruled*

August 12, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I cut the rosemary this morning, the lack of love and attention these past few weeks plainly written in its leggy tendrils, reaching too far for the sun, like arms longing for something to hug. Rosemary, the herb of remembrance. What do I remember when the piney, resinous odor of rosemary sticks to my fingers and leaves a lingering perfume on everything I touch? I remember Morocco, where I lived in a very modern house, its kitchen festooned with orange and […]

Categories: Africa, Beef, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Photography • Tags: France, French Cooking, Herbs, Remembrance, Rosemary

The Surprising French Kitchen

March 14, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

One of the best things about owning a lot of books is that I tend to forget what I have. That makes it seem like Christmas nearly every day, if you know what I mean. This morning I wandered through my house, poking at different books lounging in rather haphazard order on my rather odd collection of bookshelves. Searching for pictures of traditional kitchens, I stooped down in front of one of the Pier 1 bamboo bookshelves and pulled out […]

Categories: Algeria, France, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Spices • Tags: At Home in France, Christopher Petkanas, Dordogne, France, Mique, North Africa

Fatema Hal: The Interchange of Culinary Ideas Between Morocco and France

February 13, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

On Tuesday, Fatema’s talk (in French) is on “Maroc-France: La cuisine en partage” (“Sharing Food and Cuisine: Between Morocco and France”). Fatema will also do a demonstration on almond briwats on Wednesday March 14, at 3 at GU (Location is ICC 425), and she will give a talk at the French Embassy/Maison Française on Thursday March 15 at 7 p.m.: “Le Maroc sur la route des épices” (Morocco and the spice road). This talk will be translated in English.

Categories: Food News, France, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco • Tags: Culinary History, Fatéma Hal, Food History, France, French cuisine, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco

Preserved Lemons: The New French Staple?

January 23, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Meats preserved in wine become dry and nourishing: they dry out because of the wine; they are nourishing because of the flesh. Preserve din vinegar, they ferment less, because of the vinegar, and are quite nourishing. Meats preserved in salt are less nourishing, as salt deprives them of moisture, but they become lean, dry out, and are sufficiently laxative. Hippocrates, On Regimen in Acute Diseases A few days ago, contemplating some minutiae or other on French culinary history, I came across […]

Categories: Cooking, Food Science, France, French Cooking, Lemons, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Nutrition, Science of cooking • Tags: Culinary History, Food History, French Cooking, Kitty Morse, Lactic acid fermentation, Larousse Gastronomique, Lemons, Meyer lemons, Moroccan Cooking, Preserved Lemons

Belleville Revisited

October 6, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The Belleville market — straddling the crossroads of Paris’s 10th, 11th, 19th, and 20th arrondissements — presents the determined photographer with a tremendous dilemma: how to take pictures without being literally swept up in the crowds and jostled like a buoy bobbing in heavy seas? Although the market runs from the Menilmontant metro stop to Belleville (about 2 km.), the easiest way to tackle it seems to be to get to the Belleville stop, the beginning (or end, depending your […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Algeria, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Photography • Tags: Belleville, France, French cuisine, Open-Air Markets, Paris

Sunset at Ramadan in Morocco (Used by permission of David Young.)

RAMADAN KARIM — The Fast

July 28, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

(I wrote this several years ago and include it here as a tribute to the Moroccans I knew then and to all the people who will begin fasting for Ramadan starting on Monday, August 1. Note that while Paula Wolfert’s cookbook, Couscous and Other Good from Morocco, seems to be cited everywhere, Kitty Morse — who grew up in Morocco — has also written a number of excellent books on Moroccan cuisine.) Manage with bread and butter until God sends the […]

Categories: Bread, Morocco, Recipes • Tags: Agadir, Ait Baha, Anti-Atlas, Bread, Cooking, Fasting, Food, High Atlas, Morocco, Peace Corps, Ramadan, Recipes

French cooks Exposition Anvers 1930 women eating

Eating Around the Empire in a Day: The 1931 Paris International Colonial Exposition

June 30, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

To her sons who have extended the empire of her genius and made dear her name across the seas, France extends her gratitude. ~~ Inscription on the facade of the colonial museum, now the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration Before EuroDisney, people who might never be able to go to Tahiti or Senegal or Morocco often attended various fairs and expositions. One such exposition left a lasting mark on France: the 1931 Paris International Colonial Exposition. Twenty-five years in […]

Categories: Africa, Asia, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Morocco • Tags: 1931 Paris International Colonial Exposition, Africa, France, Louis Hubert Lyautey, Marseille, Morocco, Paris, Vincennes

Couscous in France: It’s a Long Story

June 28, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

To look at all the Maghrebi/North African restaurants in Paris, you might be tempted to think the food they serve appeared only recently in France. It’s not hard to visualize this scenario when you consider the exodus of pieds noirs and Harkis (local men who served as soldiers for France) that occurred as Algeria fought for independence from France, culminating in 1962 with the Evian Accords. Think about the numbers – guesstimates, yes: over 900,000 pieds noirs and 91,000 Harkis […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Arab cooking, Cookbooks, Couscous, France, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco • Tags: Charles de Clairambault, Clifford Wright, Couscous, Françoise Bernard, France, Francois Rabelais, Garnantua, Ginette Mathiot, Harkis, Je Sais Cuisiner, Jean-Jacques Bouchard, La Bonne Cuisine de Madame Saint-Ange, Mohamed Oubahli, Morocco, Pieds noirs

French cooks Leon Isnard cuisine africaine

Léon Isnard: Bringing the Cuisines of Africa to France

June 24, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“It seems that the word couscous is a Gallic version of “rac keskes,” which means “crushed small.” ~ Leon Isnard Whether you think about it consciously or not, the nineteenth-century European drive for overseas colonies still molds our world. Ever since the Portuguese sailed for Prince Henry the Navigator out of Sagres, an ocean-facing place now boasting a top-flight pousada, the world was destined never to be the same again. France grabbed just as hard for her share of the […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Algeria, Bibliographies, Chefs, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking, Morocco, Tunisia • Tags: Algeria, France, Henry the Navigator, Léon Isnard, Le Grand Hôtel Bourelly, Maghreb, Oran

Fatéma Hal, Queen of Moroccan Cuisine in France

June 3, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Fatéma Hal, a Moroccan chef with a penchant for busting female stereotypes, cooks traditional Moroccan food at her Parisian restaurant, La Mansouria (11, rue Faidherbe, 11th Arrondissement, Paris), opened in 1984. The restaurant began with only women working there, including Fatéma’s mother, the cooking in “the hands of women.” Unusual for France, non? One of many “ambassadors” of non-French cuisine from France’s former colonies, Fatéma Hal is a moving force in the dissemination of Moroccan cooking in France today. Not […]

Categories: Africa, Chefs, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco • Tags: Fatéma Hal, France, La Mansouria, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Paris

Cooking with Saint-Pierre (John Dory)

February 23, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

As it fell on a holy-day, And vpon an holy-tide-a, Iohn Dory bought him an ambling nag, To Paris for to ride-a.* ~~ Child Ballad #284A: “John Dory” I first met John Dory at the open-air fish market in Rabat, Morocco. He’s a solitary soul. Doesn’t hang out too much with his own kind. And he goes by many names, John does: Saint-Pierre in France (also Poule de Mer, Sea-Hen, and Dorée), Gall in Catalonia, Gal in the French Midi, […]

Categories: Africa, Fish, France, French Cooking, Morocco, Recipes • Tags: Africa, Ballads, Child Ballads, Cooking, Fish, Food, France, French Cooking, John Dory, Louis Eustache Ude, Morocco, Recipes, St. Perre, The French Cook, William MacGillivray

Sugar, Saffron, Spices — The Arab Influence on Spanish Cuisine, a Brief Meditation

June 2, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Spanish food enjoys some quite heady popularity right now. Trendy magazines and the international food punditry (for example, Matt Preston in Australia) say “Si” to Spanish cuisine and predict a continuing surge of enthusiasm for the food of the land of Don Quixote. Just about every grocery store, mundane as well as high-end, displays wedges of Manchego cheese placed temptingly near wrinkly chorizo sausages. And in case you can’t find it locally, an online store, La Tienda, sells everything you […]

Categories: Arab cooking, Beef, Cookbooks, Latin America, Middle Ages, Morocco, Spain, Spanish cooking • Tags: Al-Andalus, ArabCooking, Estremadura, Fudalat al-khiwan fi tayybat et-ta'am Wa-I-alwan, Laila Benkirane, Matt Preston, Mohamed Mezzine, Rachel Laudan, Spain, Spanish Cooking

Buttering Up

December 14, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Peppermint flavoring, almond extract, gooey candied fruit, thick dark molasses, perfumey cardamom … the list could go mouth-wateringly on and on. Christmas cooking and Christmas baking demand many ingredients not normally used in everyday cooking. And that’s what makes the holiday season such a sheer delight for those besotted with all things culinary. But one ingredient stands out, essential in many Christmas dishes, and likely resting quietly in just about every refrigerator of every serious cook. Not because of its […]

Categories: Africa, American Cooking, Butter, Christmas, Cookies, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Morocco, Southern Food • Tags: American Cooking, Butter, Christmas, Edna Lewis, Harriott Pinckney Horry, Smen, Southern cooking, Sugar Cookies

In Morocco (and Beyond), Flavor Principles

July 13, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Northern Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt)** According to Harva Hachten, in her Best of Regional African Cooking, “the North African housewife can choose from up to 200 different spices and herbs when she stops to replenish her supplies at a spice stall in the souks of the medinas.”[1] The guiding flavor principles in northern African cuisine include intricate spicing, particularly in Morocco, similar to the Persian manner. But flavor principles applied to North African cooking don’t begin and end […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Arab cooking, Morocco • Tags: Africa, Cooking, Cooks, Flavor Principles, Food, Morocco, North Africa, Preserved Lemons

Idylls of Cuisine #21

July 12, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Morocco, Photography • Tags: Food Photography, Mint, Mint Tea, Morocco

In Morocco, Kitchens

July 6, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Kitchens, a form of material culture, often determine the shape of the cuisine. By the limitations imposed by the tools, the food cooked reflects the process. A case of the medium is the message?** In the kitchens [of Morocco] there was a great assortment of wood dishes, like low corn measures, scrubbed white, as in Switzerland ; rows of round pots, in which the fires are made, called nafe ; and kuskoussoo [couscous] dishes of pottery called Keskas, the covers […]

Categories: Africa, Morocco, Photography • Tags: Cooks, Food Photography, Kitchens, Morocco

In Morocco, Bread is Life

July 3, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

When the only bread you eat comes pre-sliced out of a plastic bag, it’s almost impossible to understand that “staff of life” saying so commonly applied to bread. George Orwell’s story of feeding bread to a hungry Moroccan worker pointed out the near reverence for bread in much of the world. And, in Morocco, bread indeed is the “staff of life.” Moroccan bread exemplifies the reason for the saying, as I learned, writing the following in a letter to the […]

Categories: Africa, Bread, Morocco • Tags: Bread, Morocco

In Morocco — George Orwell, Bread, and Stirrings of Post-Colonialism

July 2, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

George Orwell spent the winter of 1938-1939 in Morocco, for reasons of poor health. Author of stinging commentaries on colonial imperialism [Full-text: Burmese Days (1934) and “Shooting an Elephant” (1936)], as well as 1984, Animal Farm, and Down and Out in Paris and London, Orwell turned his blazing pen on French Morocco that winter. The following short passage comes from his essay, “Marrakech.” (Please remember that Orwell is writing a blistering indictment of colonialism, in spite of the way the […]

Categories: Africa, Bread, Morocco • Tags: Bread, Can the Subaltern Speak?, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, George Orwell, Marrakech, Morocco, Post-Colonialism

In Morocco, Travelers’ Tales

July 1, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In the following passage, from R. B. Cunninghame Graham’s Mogreb-El-Aska (1898), Cunninghame Graham describes (in somewhat superior tones!) the spirit of communal eating in Morocco of the times (late nineteenth century):** Swani and Mohammed-el-Hosein were radiant, more especially because the Kaid had sent a sheep, which they had already slain and given to a ” master ” (maalem) to roast en barbecue. Although I personally was disappointed that we had not been able either to get an answer from the […]

Categories: Africa, Arab cooking, Morocco • Tags: Lamb, Méchoui, Morocco, North Africa, R. B. Cunninghame Graham, Sheep

In Morocco, It’s a Sheep’s Life

June 30, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Even without Islam, Moroccan culture would revere sheep — like the American buffalo, their flesh and their wool provide sustenance and shelter for people. And sheep come into their own around the feast day of Aïd el-Kebir, held seventy days after the end of Ramadan, which — in 2009 — falls on November 27.** Travelers to Morocco, or to anywhere for that matter, perceive a certain reality based on their cultural underpinnings. In what we now identify as colonial-toned language, […]

Categories: Africa, Lamb, Morocco • Tags: Aïd el-Kebir, Edith Wharton, In Morocco, Morocco, Sheep

In Timeless Morocco

June 29, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In 1917, American novelist Edith Wharton spent the month of September in Morocco. She wrote of her experiences in In Morocco (Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1920), taking an apologist point of view for General Pierre Lyautey, the French governor of the day. Of Fes (Fez), she wrote: There it lies, outspread in golden light, roofs, terraces, and towers sliding over the plain’s edge in a rush dammed here and there by barriers of cypress and ilex. … Fez is, in fact, […]

Categories: Africa, Morocco • Tags: Edith Wharton, Fes, Fez, In Morocco, Morocco, North Africa

Root vegetables for sale in Paris market

Open-Air Markets, Vanishing Communities?

August 2, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“How much more French can I get?,” I asked myself as the vendor behind the melons glared at my right hand snaking toward a cantaloupe.

Poking the tomatoes, prodding the chile peppers, breaking off a hunk of fragrant golden ginger, and deliberately bruising cilantro leaves to get a whiff of that perfume, I moved through the Parisian open-air market on Rue de Rennes, the Eiffel Tower looming behind me. There, in front of me, dozens of golden cantaloupes sat, pyramided in a perfect triangle.

Categories: French Cooking, Haiti, Morocco • Tags: Food, France, Haiti, Markets, Morocco, Paris

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life