Back to Morocco

Tonight we had a Moroccan meal: braised and browned lamb, Moroccan bread, and eggplant salad. I could live without the lamb. I braised it first with saffron, turmeric, ginger, paprika and so forth, and after it was tender I removed the bones and gristly parts, reduced the liquid, and browned it in the oven. Once my fingers get coated with lamb fat, I am pretty much finished with the experience, even if I like the flavor.

The bread, however, is something I make again and again. It’s a whole wheat loaf, very little sugar and no fat, with sesame and anise seeds, baked in a flat round. It smells better than any other bread.

And eggplant salad is a discovery. Our family visited Morocco in 1981, to see Aunt Betty and Uncle Mario, who were Peace Corps trainers in Rabat (you were about two years old, I think.) We stayed a week, and it was Ramadan. It was remarkably like the pictures of Iraq we see now on television, without the gunfire—such a desert, not softened by the landscaping we are used to here in Tucson. I was uncomfortable with my first experience of Muslim culture, wearing a caftan and needing to be escorted by one of the younger male cousins when I walked out of the apartment.

Later in the week, after a few days of austerity—no alcohol, that is—we went along with Betty and Mario to an expatriate picnic, and there was food and wine in wonderful abundance. We had many different eggplant dishes, and since everyone was speaking French, I was pleased to know the beautiful word aubergine.

Tonight’s salad, and most other Moroccan things I make, was inspired by Paula Wolfert’s Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco, which is worth reading even if you don’t use a single recipe. The foreword notes that Wolfert made the ultimate sacrifice in the research for the book—her gall bladder.

This salad has eggplant cubes roasted with olive oil, fresh tomatoes, garlic, onion, cumin, paprika, lemon juice, and cilantro.