link Archives

* 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

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

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

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

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

Monkfish the Fish Market (Used by permission.)

Monkfish: A Little Love, French-Style

April 18, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I first gazed on his ugly mug in French-influenced Morocco, more precisely at the fish market in Rabat. And like Beauty with the Beast, I fell in love. Sea devil. Crapaud. Baudroie. Lotte. Goosefish. Anglerfish. Poor Man’s Lobster. … It seems his name is Legion (Nomen mihi Legio est, quia multi sumus) … . Monkfish (Lophius piscatorius). Two-thirds of the body is just skull. Tiny triangular-shaped teeth line the rounded jaws that some call “Jaws of Hell,” looking for all the […]

Categories: Fish, Food writing, French Cooking, Recipes, Tomatoes • Tags: Baudroie, Capers, Cuisine Francaise, Food, France, French Cooking, Monkfish, Morocco, Provence, Rabat

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

Cooking Fish — Let Us Count the World’s Ways: Africa

March 8, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

It’s Lent. That means fish to a lot of people, even today, despite the relaxed rules of the Church. But how to cook fish? How to get past Mrs. Gorton’s Fish Sticks? Many, many ways. Let’s look at what people around the world do to get fish from the seas, rivers, and lakes from their pots and pans to their mouths, starting with Africa:* *For more on African food, see Fran Osseo-Asare’s magnificent blog about cooking in Africa, chiefly Ghana. […]

Categories: Africa, Cooking, Fish, Lent • Tags: Africa, Cooking, Fish, Ghana, Morocco, Nigeria, Photo Essay, Senegal, South Africa

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

Africa on My Mind

July 30, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Africa has a way of capturing souls. Years ago, I lived in Morocco, in North Africa. The food, the carpets, and landscape enthralled me. Then came Burkina Faso. Sub-Saharan Africa. Hot. Dry. Dusty. Mysterious. And seductive. The two years I lived there, in the capital of Ouagadougou, the name an opening into a world completely unlike anything I’d ever seen. Or even dreamed of.

Categories: Africa, Burkina Faso • Tags: Africa, Burkina Faso, Food, Morocco

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life