Day 8 Atlas mountains trip to a berber family to make tagine

Today we made chicken tagine under the watchful eye of a Berber grandmother in the Atlas mountains.

We started with driving to the foothills of Mt Toubkal, the tallest mountain in North Africa at 4,167m. You couldn’t see it from our terrace but you could see little villages clinging to the hillside and snow on the top of nearby mountains. When it started to rain we really felt for one of our group who had decided to climb Mt Toubkal on a two day trip from today to tomorrow. Apparently the snow line is currently at 3,000m.

The class started with making flatbread, a really sticky dough that only Berber Grandmothers can confidently “box” into shape.

Then we prepped veg and piled it ceremoniously into our tagines.

The main woman, Ehssane, then took over with copious spices and a huge cous cous pot.

Finally they were ready to be put on the traditional coal fire….

While it cooked we learned the history of the Berber people, who do not call themselves Berber, they are the Amazigh, the native inhabitants of seven countries across northern Africa. Berber is equivalent to barbaroi, this time coined by the Romans who tried to persuade these unruly locals to obey their laws.

The Arabs came after the Romans and had more luck, recognising that the seven countries they inhabited are huge and there’s plenty of room to share, resulting in the melting pot of Arab and Berber seen today. Ehssane went on to describe the shared common languages spoken by both Arabs and Amazigh, that differs in each country and described the Amazigh flag, representing the sky, the Atlas mountains, the desert and the symbol of the free people in red.

Following that, we heard all about the four day wedding ceremonies where woman go to the spa, have their henna done, listen to men talking about religion, receive money (it’s really important that it has to be money) and a ring from the groom and then party for 5-6 hours dancing the night away. Nothing new under the sun….. Although after the four day wedding, the bride then has to prove her worth by cooking everyone couscous, which we were reassured is allowed to involve the help of a grandmother.

After all that, it was time to separate the couscous grains in the really traditional way, involving two steaming sessions with cold water and oil poured over in between.

By now the tagines also needed potatoes adding and a bit more water.

A couple of minutes for the bread to cook…..

….and lunch was served.

No words are needed to describe how delicious home made Moroccan tagine is…

We went back into town, bizarrely dropping a couple of the other people on the day trip at the same hotel we stayed in 12 years ago. Then, as we were wearing “sporty clothes” we didn’t meet the dress code for a coffee in the Churchill bar of La Mamounia hotel, so we wandered into Jmaa el Fna square. Our memory of this square is a crazy place filled with snake charmers, but this time we just got hassled to go into any of the numerous restaurants there.

So we retreated into a cafe for a soothing mint tea to end the day.