Welcome to the MoroccanCulture Blog

Discover Morocco through the taste and aromas of the real Moroccan kitchen. The food and recipes contained here are all from my own personal experience with home cooking and the eateries where local's frequent. Here you will NOT find Court/Royal food or the 'restaurant' version of Moroccan food which is French with Moroccan influences.

Here I will also dispell a few myths such as the 'tagine' which you were served in a restaurant, desserts at home and others. If you want authenticity you will get it here. Should you be looking for Moroccan 'Style', what you may have been served in a restaurant, or anything else you will not find it here though there are thousands of internet sites and cookbooks that will feed you that.

It still amazes and, to some extent, infuriates me at what I see being called MOROCCAN food and/or what people have eaten in Morocco which was called Moroccan food and is/was NOT! Surfing the web and even a food and recipe site where I am a forum host dealing with the cuisine is full of the most horrible muck called Moroccan food! Then when I make a friendly comment, this food writer and food historian, is bashed for it! If you are going to make food from any country or region, then for God's sake, make it right or don't do it at all! I really do not care if you had 'cinnamon oranges' in a Moroccan restaurant or not; you won't find this at home or at a strictly local's eatery! Simply because Moroccans were eating in an establishment does NOT make it a 'local's eatery! Harissa and Ras al Hanout are NOT Moroccan for example. Harissa is a Tunisian creation and is because Tunisia and Algeria fell in love with the hot pepper in a way in which Morocco did not. Moroccans will eschew anything over the top hot and over the top to them was not even at the top for me and my palate. I looked countrywide for a jar of Harissa,,,,,,,,,,,nope! It is served occasionally in Fes as it was a major trading centre hundreds of years ago with Tunisia so they served it and many Moroccans in Fes adopted eating it. Ras al Hanout is an Egyptian invention meaning head of the shop (ras/head al/of hanout/shop). It spread across the Middle East and cannot be found in Morocco as there are NO spice blends available there nor are spice blends made at home. Dishes are seasoned with the spices individualy and yet I continually see people adding Ras al Hanout to my recipes to 'give it a bit of kick.' If it was meant to have 'kick' it would state so. Even when I do state that this dish of such and such is meant to be softly seasoned (NO Moroccan food is highly spiced) they still go dumping in Ras al Hanout and/or Harissa when much to all of the time what they got on the table in Morocco would have been a semi-spicy sauce tomatish!! My God, if you want real Moroccan food it is here but stop changing it to suit YOUR palate and learn to love the foods as we do. Olive oil cooking I will not even get into here as I have a column I wrote some time ago and will post here. If you want to learn about and eat authentic Moroccan food then come here and if not, well then keep cooking with olive oil and dumping Harissa into everything and stop telling me about it!

Enjoy the celebration that is the Moroccan home table!