1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (180 page)

Although sold prepared across North Africa, salted lemons are best homemade, and seasonings differ with the region. For purists, salt, lemon juice, and a judicious span of time make up the cure, although some cooks add peppercorns, cinnamon, bay leaves, cloves, or coriander, which enhance their flavor but limit the lemons’ uses to certain dishes.

Most traditionally, the lemons are quartered vertically, cut to the base but not through it, so that all the sections remain attached. With coarse sea salt pressed between the sections, they are reshaped and then tightly layered into glass jars and covered with freshly squeezed lemon juice. Standing in a warm corner of the kitchen, or on a shelf in front of a sunny window for three to four weeks, the lemons gradually turn a rich gold and their rinds tenderize and take on a satiny sheen. Once pickled, they will
keep without refrigeration for almost a year, and almost every part is usable, most especially the rind and the syrupy pickling juice, although the pulp is prized as well.

Preserved lemon is a key ingredient in many Moroccan
tagines
(see
listing
), as well as an array of sauces and salads. But one of the simplest and most subtle uses is a relish of diced salted lemon rind tossed with pitted, brine-cured black olives and seasoned with a few drops of lemon juice, dried oregano, and flecks of dried hot chile peppers. The relish lends itself to American-style barbecued ribs and chicken as well as it does to Moroccan dishes, so it’s the ideal way to incorporate preserved lemons into your own repertoire.

Where:
Jars of preserved lemons are available in most markets devoted to North African and sometimes Middle Eastern foods.
Mail order:
Zingerman’s, tel 888-636-8162,
zingermans.com
; Marky’s, tel 800-522-8427,
markys.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Arabesque
by Claudia Roden (2005);
Mourad: New Moroccan
by Mourad Lahlou (2011);
epicurious.com
(search preserved lemons 2005);
foodnetwork.com
(search salted preserved lemons).

Morocco boasts several justly celebrated varieties of oranges, including the sweet-tart navels and Valencias; tangy, vibrant blood oranges; and the sophisticated, bitter bigarades (Seville oranges), used for marmalade. Inspired by their palate-tingling flavor and glowing, sunny color, which makes any dish look festive, Moroccans and other North Africans work the juice and dried or grated zest of oranges into fish, meat, and vegetable stews, as well as pastries and cakes. Not surprisingly, all taste best just-picked, and one of the purest ways to appreciate the essence of Moroccan oranges is as freshly squeezed juice, widely available in souk stalls and street stands around the country—a heady way to start the day, or a midday pick-me-up.

Most beautiful, however, are Morocco’s exquisite, polychrome orange salads, each so simple that a description is practically a recipe. One of the most popular contrasts peeled and thickly sliced oranges with shiny black olives, diced garnet-red onion, and emerald parsley, dressed with lemon juice and olive oil and spiced with cumin and chiles or cayenne. For a salad that suggests pure gold, grated raw carrots top peeled orange sections tossed with orange blossom water, cinnamon, and a touch of lemon juice and sugar. Red radish finely grated over orange slices or segments evokes a sunset, and needs only the slightest drizzle of lemon juice and olive oil, and a sprinkling of sugar and orange blossom water. The same salad made with grated, seeded cucumber instead of radishes has a cooling, spring-morning appeal.

Simplest, and perhaps most refreshing, is a salad of several different types of oranges, in colors that range from pale yellow to deep orange to blood red, thinly sliced with a light dressing of orange juice and a touch of olive oil. For slightly sweeter salads that can be served as dessert, chopped dates, raisins, almonds, pistachios, or walnuts may be added to sliced oranges, with a dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, and orange blossom water and sprinklings of cinnamon and confectioners’ sugar as the final touch.

Where:
In Paris
, Timgad, tel 33/1-45-74-23-70,
timgad.fr
.
Mail order:
For oranges, Hale Groves, tel 800-562-4502,
halegroves.com
; California Oranges, tel 559-539-2251,
californiaoranges.com
; Cross Creek Groves, tel 800-544-8767,
crosscreekgroves.com
.
Further information and recipes:
A Taste of Morocco
by Robert Carrier (1997);
The Food of Morocco
by Paula Wolfert (2011);
food.com
(search north african orange salad);
saveur.com
(search orange and radish salad).

Variation of cooked whole fish.

Although whole fish cooked with citrus-accented sweet sauces and dotted with fruit and nuts may sound strange to some, variations on that dish are much favored throughout the world, from China to eastern Europe. Nowhere is such a dish so highly prized as along the North African coast. The preferred fish there is of the firm-fleshed, oily type—eel, shad, carp, mackerel, and bluefish, although swordfish and snapper, mullet and sea bass are also common.

Adventurous eaters who seek out these savory-sweet North African fish dishes, in restaurants or cookbooks devoted to the foods of this region, will be rewarded with a whirl of new flavors to experience. At their best, the dishes contrast the rich ocean flavor of the main ingredient with the exotic spicing of the sweet-sour garnish. Shad with stuffed dates is a specialty of Fez, in Morocco, and it takes considerable patience to prepare, starting with large, soft dates (ideally from Tafilalet in Morocco, though California-grown medjools work well, as do prunes) that are pitted and stuffed with cooked rice that has been seasoned with almonds, cinnamon, and ginger. The dates are placed in the whole, gutted fish, which is then baked with a crusty cinnamon topping.

For the Moroccan dish known as
hut benoua
, whole fish is stuffed and coated with almond paste flavored with cinnamon, ginger, saffron, and orange blossom water; the finished product is spicy-sweet, with distinctively toasty, nutty overtones.
Tasira
, also Moroccan, is made with sea eels in a sauce of soft-cooked onions and raisins or chopped dates, with aromatic spices and sprightly hints of orange and lemon juice. Food historians speculate that these dishes might be the forerunners of the famous sweet-sour fish dishes of the Jewish ghettos in Venice and Rome, still served throughout the diaspora, particularly on Rosh Hashanah.

Where:
In Fez
, Restaurant Al Fassia (in the Sofitel Fes Palais Jamias), tel 212/535-634-331;
in Tunis
, Dar El Jeld, tel 216/71-560-916,
dareljeld.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Traditional Moroccan Cooking
by Madame Z. Guinaudeau (2004);
The Food of Morocco
by Paula Wolfert (2011);
epicurious.com
(search sea bass moroccan salsa).

There is no combination like lamb and quince.

The softly simmered stew known as
tagine
in Morocco (see
listing
) is called
maraqat
in Tunisia, and few recipes are more intriguing than the version called
maraqat al-safarjal
, a combination of tender chunks of lamb and tart and winey quince. Resembling very hard, sour apples—they are never eaten raw—quince are thought by some to have been the divine “golden apples” of Greek legend. Whether or not that is true, it’s no myth that quinces lend a creamy, applesauce-like texture and a neatly astringent contrast to the rich, supple lamb in maraqat al-safarjal. Seasonings of rosewater or dried rose petals, coriander, onion, cayenne, and ginger only enhance the elegant result, just as they do to similar sweet-and-savory Moroccan and Algerian dishes made with lamb and prunes or pitted dates scented with cinnamon.

Mail order:
For tagine cooking vessels, Tagines by Riado, tel 305-888-1799,
tagines.com
; for quince, Melissa’s Produce, tel 800-588-0151,
melissas.com
.
Further information and recipes:
A Mediterranean Feast
by Clifford A. Wright (1999);
Arabesque
by Claudia Roden (2006);
marthastewart.com
(search lamb and quince tagine);
saveur.com
(search lamb quince and okra tagine);
chow.com
(search lamb and quince stew).

Doughnuts smothered in honey.

The relationship between this irresistible, honeyed pastry and the child’s toy on a string is a mystery—if, in fact, a relationship exists at all. What is clear, however, is the appeal throughout North Africa of these lusciously syrupy sweets.
As the puffy, ring-shaped crullers emerge from the deep-fryer, they are punctured and then drenched with a golden coat of honey scented with the zest and juice of oranges, for a rich and oozing texture. Despite the fact that they are too tender and gooey to actually dunk, the Tunisian yo-yos are delicacies Dunkin’ Donuts might be well advised to adopt.

Doughnuts, of course, are internationally beloved, but the Tunisian yo-yo bears particular resemblance to the syrup-coated
koeksisters
of South Africa (see
listing
) and
sfenj
—which are richer, yeastier rings, also honey-soaked, and are considered Hanukkah specialties by Moroccan and Israeli Jews. Some versions of yo-yo are merely dusted with confectioners’ sugar after being fried, while others are glossed with a syrup perfumed with lemon juice and orange blossom water. Nontraditional though it may be, a nice scoop of vanilla ice cream or lemony sherbet set in the middle of a yo-yo turns the casual sweet into a stylish, tempting dessert.

Further information and recipes:
A Quintet of Cuisines
by Michael and Frances Field (1970);
Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco
by Paula Wolfert (1987);
foodgeeks.com
(search tunisian doughnuts);
food.com
(search orange doughnuts with honey).

The appealingly starchy
gari
—cassava meal ground to the texture of grits—is the basis of the dish known as
gari foto.
For what could be considered a West African answer to fried rice, the gari is first steamed, then sautéed with onion, garlic, and tomatoes seasoned with ginger and salt, and fiery red chile peppers are stirred in. For a finish, beaten eggs are scrambled in, adding their sunny hue to the lightly golden gari. As with fried rice, and with the same economy, bits of leftover cooked fish, meat, or poultry may be added to the mixture to make it even more substantial.