50 Fun Facts About Moroccan Food

Which dish did Morocco and three of its North African neighbours jointly add to UNESCO's cultural heritage list in 2020?

Couscous: the listing covers the whole ritual, from rolling the grains by hand to steaming them, and in Morocco the dish is the traditional family meal after Friday midday prayers.

In Morocco, a tagine is a stew and also what?

The clay pot it is cooked in: its tall cone-shaped lid catches the steam and sends it back down as it condenses, so a tagine can braise for hours in very little water.

At a traditional Moroccan table, what usually does the job of a fork?

A piece of bread: diners eat with their hands, tearing off bits of crusty khobz to scoop up cooked salads and pinch morsels of meat out of the shared dish.

Moroccan mint tea is brewed from which type of tea?

Gunpowder green: the Chinese leaves come rolled into tight little pellets, and in the pot they unfurl among fresh spearmint, never peppermint, and a generous amount of sugar.

Why is Moroccan tea poured from high above the glass?

To produce bubbles: Moroccans like their tea crowned with foam, and the higher the pour, the more froth lands on each glass.

A Maghrebi saying likens the three glasses of mint tea poured for a guest to life, love and what?

Death: the pot goes on steeping between pourings, so each glass tastes different, and the saying, worded a little differently from place to place, runs from life in the first glass to death in the last.

In a traditional Moroccan home, who prepares the mint tea offered to guests?

The head man of the family traditionally makes it himself, in front of the guests, because preparing the pot with care is the host's way of honouring them.

What does the name of the spice blend ras el hanout mean?

Head of the shop: the name promises the best the spice merchant has to offer, which is why every stall and family guards its own blend of a dozen or more spices.

Old ras el hanout recipes sometimes included Spanish fly, a toxic dried beetle prized as what?

An aphrodisiac: the beetle added nothing to the flavour and is poisonous, and at least one old spice house in Fes says it has dropped it from the blend.

Which fruit is traditionally served with Morocco's harira soup to break the Ramadan fast?

Dates: they are among the first things eaten when the fast ends at sunset, alongside the bowl of harira and, in Morocco, a plate of sticky honeyed chebakia.

Bissara, Morocco's thick winter soup or dip, is made from which legume?

Broad beans: dried, peeled favas are simmered with garlic, cumin and olive oil until they collapse into a purée, cheap street fare that is loved above all in the north of the country.

Pastilla, Morocco's sweet-savoury pie, is wrapped in which paper-thin pastry?

Warqa is never rolled out: the cook dabs a ball of wet dough onto a hot pan again and again until a tissue-thin sheet is left behind, then peels it off.

What gives Morocco's meat-filled pastilla its famous sweet finish?

Sugar and cinnamon are dusted over the crisp top and worked into a crunchy nut layer inside, so a wedding pie of spiced meat tastes half like a dessert.

Which bird is the traditional filling of Morocco's pastilla?

Pigeon: young squab is the original filling, though chicken is more usual today, and another version is filled with seafood.

Which part of a Moroccan preserved lemon do cooks prize most?

The peel: weeks packed in salt and their own juice turn the rind soft and mellow, so cooks rinse the lemon and slice the skin into tagines and salads, often leaving the pulp behind.

Argan oil comes from a tree native to Morocco and which neighbouring country?

Algeria: the argan tree's home is south-west Morocco, and it also grows wild across the border in parts of Algeria's Tindouf province; much of the oil is made by rural women's cooperatives.

Amlou, a Moroccan breakfast spread, combines argan oil and honey with which toasted nut?

Almonds are toasted, then ground with argan oil until the paste runs like peanut butter, and honey is stirred in at the end; it comes from the argan country of the south-west.

Chermoula is a North African marinade traditionally used on what?

Fish and seafood: the paste of coriander, garlic, cumin, lemon and oil is rubbed over the catch before it is fried, stuffed or layered into a tagine, though cooks now put it on vegetables and meat as well.

Rfissa, a Moroccan chicken dish, is traditionally served to which people because of its fenugreek?

New mothers: fenugreek is believed to help a nursing woman recover her strength, so relatives traditionally cook rfissa for her on the third day after the birth.

Rfissa's chicken, lentils and fragrant broth are traditionally ladled over a bed of what?

Shredded flatbread, usually flaky msemmen or paper-thin trid, soaks up the broth, a habit inherited from tharid, the old Arab dish of stew ladled over torn loaves.

Marrakesh's tanjia, meat sealed in a clay urn, traditionally cooks overnight in the ashes of the furnace that heats what?

A hammam: workmen clubbed together for the meat, sealed the urn with paper and left it with the fernatchi, the stoker of the bathhouse furnace, to bury in the embers until lunch next day.

Méchoui, the centrepiece of a Moroccan feast, is what?

Slow-roasted lamb, often a whole animal turned beside the embers or sealed in a clay pit oven, cooked until guests can pull the meat apart with their fingers and dip it in cumin and salt.

Which festival sees Moroccan families buy a live sheep and cook almost every part of it over the following days?

Eid al-Adha, the feast of the sacrifice: the first bites are usually boulfaf, skewers of liver wrapped in caul fat grilled that same morning, and the head and trotters follow later in the week.

Khlea, Morocco's sun-dried meat preserved in fat, keeps at room temperature for up to how long?

Two years: strips of meat are spiced and sun-dried, then simmered for hours in suet and olive oil; as it cools, the fat sets solid around the meat and seals it.

Zaalouk is a Moroccan cooked salad of tomatoes and which other vegetable?

Eggplant: it is cooked down with tomatoes, garlic, cumin and paprika into a soft, smoky mash that is served as a dip more often than as a salad.

Taktouka is a Moroccan cooked salad of tomatoes and which roasted vegetable?

Green peppers: they are roasted first, then chopped and simmered with skinned tomatoes, garlic and paprika until the salad is thick enough to scoop.

The Moroccan salad bakoula, or khoubiza, is traditionally made from the leaves of which plant?

Mallow: the leaves are steamed until tender, then sautéed with garlic, herbs, olive oil and lemon juice, and the salad is finished with preserved lemon and olives.

The Moroccan crescent pastry kaab el ghzal has a name that translates as what?

Gazelle ankles is the literal Arabic, though the French name, cornes de gazelle, turned them into horns; the paper-thin crescent hides a filling scented with orange-flower water.

Chebakia, Morocco's Ramadan pastry, is fried dough coated in honey and shaped like what?

A rose: a strip of sesame dough is slashed, threaded through itself and opened out into a flower, fried, then dunked in hot honey scented with orange-flower water.

Sellou, also called sfouf, is a Moroccan Ramadan sweet built on a base of what?

Roasted flour: it is browned in the oven, then worked with ground nuts, toasted sesame and honey into a rich, crumbly sweet that Moroccans also serve to celebrate a birth.

In a traditional Moroccan neighbourhood, the ferran is the shared what?

Oven: families shape their bread at home and carry it to this wood-fired public oven, where a baker bakes the loaves, and trays of pastries too, for the whole neighbourhood.

Which grain do Moroccans call belboula and cook into thick soups and rustic country loaves?

Barley: cracked into grits, it is simmered with milk or tomatoes into porridge-like soups, and it was the staple of southern Morocco before wheat and rice pushed it aside.

What is preserved, aged Moroccan butter called?

Smen is butter that has been salted, sealed and left to ferment for months or years, and unlike most dairy it is prized more the older and funkier it gets.

A Moroccan kefta tagine simmers meatballs in spiced tomato sauce and is often finished with what on top?

Poached eggs: they are cracked straight into the simmering sauce just before serving and left to set, which makes the dish a meatier cousin of shakshuka.

Taliouine, a small town in southern Morocco, is famous for growing which spice?

Saffron: for a few weeks each autumn pickers start at dawn, plucking the purple crocus flowers by hand before they open fully, then teasing out the crimson threads that become the spice.

Which citrus fruit is named after a port city in northern Morocco?

Tangerine: the word first meant simply 'from Tangier', and it stuck to the small oranges that British merchants shipped home from the port in the 19th century.

Tfaya, a sweet Moroccan garnish simmered down to a sticky confit, is made from raisins and which vegetable?

Onions: sliced and stewed gently with raisins and warm spices until soft and syrupy, they give a savoury platter of meat and vegetables a sweet, sticky crown.

Baghrir, the tender pancakes Moroccans soak in warm honey butter, are known for a surface covered in what?

Tiny holes: yeast makes the thin batter froth as it cooks, on one side only, and the hundreds of little craters left on top drink up the honey butter.

Jben, a soft staple of Moroccan breakfasts that is often drizzled with honey, is a fresh what?

Cheese: jben comes from northern Morocco, where soured milk is hung in cloth to drain for days, and it stays so mild that the nearest thing abroad is ricotta.

Which animals are famous for climbing into Morocco's argan trees to eat the fruit?

Goats: they clamber along the branches after the fruit, and the nuts that passed through them were once collected and pressed for oil, a shortcut today's cooperatives have dropped for work done by hand.

Morocco is the world's leading exporter of which canned fish?

Sardines: Morocco shipped more tins of them than any other country in 2022, and at home street cooks press two fillets around a herb paste and fry them as 'married' sardines.

Garum, which Roman-era factories at Lixus on Morocco's Atlantic coast shipped across the empire, was what?

A fermented fish sauce: the innards and small fry of the catch were salted and left to break down in the sun, and the pungent liquid was prized as a seasoning all the way to Rome.

Which creature is a common Moroccan street food, served in its broth and eaten with a toothpick?

Snails: the herb-and-spice broth they simmer in is prized as much as the meat, because Moroccans believe it helps with colds and other ailments.

Maakouda, a Moroccan street snack often tucked into a sandwich, is a fritter made from what?

Potato: it is mashed with garlic and seasoning, shaped into patties and deep-fried, then eaten hot on its own or stuffed into a split loaf as a cheap, filling sandwich.

Bocadillos, the crusty filled sandwiches sold at Moroccan snack bars, take their name from which language?

Spanish: bocadillo is simply the Spanish word for a sandwich, and the name caught on from the snack bars of northern Morocco to Marrakesh, where French is by far the stronger influence.

Which fruit gives a favourite Moroccan café milkshake its pale green colour?

Avocado: Moroccans treat it as something sweet rather than a salad ingredient, blending it with cold milk at neighbourhood juice bars, and the shake is a regular when the Ramadan fast is broken.

Which Marrakesh square of food stalls and storytellers got UNESCO recognition in 2001?

Concern for the square inspired UNESCO's whole 'Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Heritage' idea.

Sfenj, sold fresh from the fryer at Moroccan street stalls, are the local version of what?

Doughnuts: sfenj are spongy rings of yeast dough handed over plain, and the fryers open only twice a day, early in the morning for breakfast and again in the late afternoon for tea.

Besides Morocco and India, preserved lemon also featured in which 18th-century cuisine?

English: Hannah Glasse's 18th-century cookbook The Art of Cookery tells cooks to slit lemons into quarters, 'but not quite through', and pack them with salt, just as Moroccan cooks still do.

At a shared Moroccan tagine, good manners say each diner eats only from where?

The part in front of them: there are no individual plates, so the shared dish is treated like a wheel of invisible wedges and reaching into a neighbour's patch is bad manners.