Tagine time in morocco

If Promi can cook, so can you…

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime

Lao Tzu, Founder of Taoism

Alas! No one taught me how to fish. But many kind chefs and bartenders have taught me how to cook and make cocktails. I think I am better at cooking than at making cocktails. If you are planning to go to a cooking or cocktail making class, do try and figure out your abilities in these activities in advance. Because you have to eat or drink the concoctions that you have prepared!!! Some of the cocktails I made could give a rhino a big headache. Fortunately, the people behind these classes are aware of people like me. So they always add a few dishes made by the chef/ bartender to your meal. That is a very welcome safety net

I was travelling to Morocco and I definitely wanted to buy a tagine (the cooking utensil) there. . Lao Tzu was on my mind.. It is not enough that I just buy a tagine. I should also learn how to cook a tagine dish so that I can feed myself a Moroccan dish for the rest of my life. Okay not that extreme. Maybe stir up a tagine sometimes at home when I am entertaining guests. . With this brainwave, I started researching the various classes that were available and shortlisted one in Essaouira. It is a quaint Medina on the Atlantic coast and was made famous as Astapor in the Game of Thrones

I chose L’Atelier de Madada for my cooking class. It was a beautiful setting. It was once a warehouse and has been recently converted into a wonderfully curated store with a cooking class and a restaurant.

I knew Moroccans took their tagines very seriously. But I didn’t gauge the level of seriousness till I met our teacher /chef Mouna. She welcomes us with a sweet Moroccan tea and told us that we would be busy for the next 5 hours!!! We were going to make an appetiser called brioutes (little fried samosas with fillings of cheese, vegetables and lamb) and a main coarse of lamb tagine with almonds.figs and apricots. It all sounded so exotic.

The chef had organised all the ingredients at our workstations, We were given a demo of how to chop onions and garlic for our tagine. It looked deceptively simple. But when I began, my tears did not stop flowing. I cook a lot at home and thought that my knife skills were decent. But Moana only wanted PERFECTION. So we slaved away for hours till the onions and the garlic were just right!. We then prepped the almonds, apricots and figs. And then we fried the onions and garlic and added the lamb steak to the tagine. They would cook for the next 2 hours. That’s slow cooking for you in true Moroccan style.

It was time to make the brioutes. The filo pastries were readymade and we went on to make the fillings of cheese, lamb and vegetables . Finally we had to twist the pastry around the fillings in the shape of a 3D triangle.. My brioutes looked extremely sad and limp. Some of my fellow cooks made really nice looking brioutes, I secretly hoped that we would bake our brioutes together in the oven and I would get to taste the better looking ones!!!! But Experienced Moana was one step ahead of me.. She made us write our names on little pieces of paper to label our individual creations.. We then popped the tray into the oven.

The next step was a visit to the local market to see the different spices and ingredients that we had used for our cooking. This was the highlight of the class for me. The Sous Chef showed us the different types of tagine that are available.. The nest stop was the spice shop and I felt like Charlie in the Chocolate factory. The aroma and the texture of the Moroccan spices were just heavenly. I knew I would be visiting this market again to pick up mob spices and tagines.

And then it was time to go back to the workshop. Our tagines and brioutes were ready.

The brioutes made by me were between a Rock and a Hard Place (apologies Rolling Stones). I made few feeble attempts to bite into them. I quickly realised that my teeth were very precious to me. So I quietly kept them aside. .

I waited with a lot of trepidation for the Lamb Tagine. When I took off my tagine cover, the sight before me was heavenly. I knew right away that this was going to be divine. I can proudly share that it was the most amazing tagine that I had ever tasted, It was the perfect balance of sweet and savoury and the lamb was cooked to perfection. The best thing about it was the sublime sauce. And I knew I had to thank our wonderful chef Moana for that. All the long hours of chopping the onions had paid rich dividend,

So if you are planning a trip to Morocco, do join a cooking class if your schedule permits. Because if Promi can cook up a tagine, so can you.