Cooking lessons

So before Morocco becomes a distant world to me I figured I should think a little about cuisines, chillies or no.

I must admit the subtlety/lack of salt and chilli heat surprised me. You  had to pay acute attention to the food to enjoy the famous 35 spices that go into the tajines. Indeed, the tajines and couscous that we had, or could have had, for two of almost every three meals on the tour did become unsurprising.

My extreme Western pallet is used to loading in the spices and the salt and the preserved lemon like there's no tomorrow. A bit of a shorthand for the Western way of life, and our relationship with the planet, one might say. But it does make it hard to slow down and taste the vegetables.

As it happened, the little sausages at our last lunch (along with the very simple vegetables coloured with saffron and discrete spices) were a highlight. As were the deconstructed salads that came with a couple of earlier bigger dinners: Separate dishes of beetroot, cauliflower in olive oil, eggplants and zucchini cooked into a delicious pulp, and carrots with cumin and a sour orange or lemon dressing.

I suspect there's a profound message in there for me if I could listen, but the bit that will stick will probably just be the occasionally simple meal, and that fabulous dish of carrots.

For the chilli world tour, I'm thinking there needs to be a lot more done on the history of the spice trade after the Portuguese had temporarily set up Casablanca. Most of the Moroccan perspectives that we came upon were about the Desert, The Mediterranean, expanding into and returning from Spain and the Atlas Mountains. Not new products from the new world.

The Atlantic coast was a great place for strategic piracy, of course. Maybe that's how the chillies got in? In the sandals of Portuguese slaves..