Food Markets in Rabat, Morocco
By Beebe Bahrami, Ph.D.
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Food markets in Rabat. Photo
courtesy of Adrienne Alvord. |
Lunch time was still a good two hours
away but the old city center, Rabat’s fortress-walled medina built
in the 12th century and then rebuilt and expanded in the
17th century, was filled with the midday shoppers and the
smells of fragrant spices from cumin, paprika, coriander,
cilantro, briny preserved lemon, garlic, onions, saffron,
and olives. Someone somewhere in this maze was making a
chicken and olive tajine, that complex, rich, fresh
and spicy terracotta vessel-baked stew for which Morocco
is famous.
This was a daily conundrum during the
year I lived in Rabat: No matter how satiated I would be
before going food shopping, I always became exceedingly
hungry once I entered the medina. It was a hunger
brought on by so much good food, be it the daily market
offerings or the master chefs in their private quarters
above or behind the kiosks who were preparing lunch or dinner
for their families and enveloping the medina with magical
aromas.
The importance of food indicates the
supreme importance of family and friends in Morocco and
people will take time in preparing it and eating with others.
Slow Food, Buy Local, Buy Fresh are the rule not the exception
here.
When you enter one of the Rabat medina’s
several stone-arched gates off of Hassan II Boulevard and
step to your left or right, taking one of the few central
streets, your senses are engaged: it is an intense, colorful,
fragrant-rich, succulent, and immensely gregarious place
to be. To your right or left might be the women selling
flat breads and crumpet-like pancakes. The women are dressed
in their crème or mushroom-colored jellabas,
hooded robes. Some have hennaed hands, indicating they may
have recently attended a relative’s or friend’s
wedding. Their breakfast goods and breads are stacked like
a money-counter’s coins on small tables before them.
Behind them the old wall and trees around a tiny shrine
offer shade and calm.
Deeper in the maze-like streets of the medina are
the fruit and vegetable sellers. Some are in orderly kiosks;
others sell produce on oilskin cloths on the ground, but
all offer only fruits and vegetables that were just harvested
and local—baby artichokes, carrots, zucchini, okra,
green beans, tomatoes, buttery green lettuce, and endive
among many other seasonal choices. In the morning there
are also fishermen who have just hauled in their coastal
catch and are setting up scales right on the path so as
to get the fresh fish swiftly into capable hands.
Morocco is a land of varied landscapes,
with two coastlines, one Atlantic and the other Mediterranean,
four mountain ranges, valleys and plains in between, and
finally, the desert at the most southern end of the country.
This rich diversity guarantees a bountiful and varied local
diet. Rabat’s coastal climate feels like that of southern
California, while its growing seasons are more like those
of northern California due to rain throughout the year.
Amidst all this, women shoppers rub
elbows, vying for the best produce and bargaining. As they
walk past or negotiate for room at a kiosk counter, their
long jellabas shimmer with their myriad jewel-toned
colors of emerald, fuchsia, orange, scarlet, violet, lapis,
and lemon.
The women shoppers’ children,
despite the fierce verbal skills and poker faces of their
mothers, cast mischievous glances and big, glowing curious
eyes at the rich dynamic, textured, colorful, and time-honored
market world around them.
Further down, there are the butchers.
One is waiting for his next customer, leaning forward with
his elbows resting on a stack of sheep and cows’ feet
cut at their elbow joint. His head just fits between the
hanging display of kidneys and livers on one side and tripe
on the other. Beyond him are older men, in their wooly brown jellabas and
white skull caps shuffling through, looking at each display. One
stops at a spice stall, taking in the sand dune mounds of
paprika, cumin, coriander, curry, turmeric, fennel, cardamom,
caraway, and saffron.
Not far away is an old man, he must
be as old as a medieval wizard and looks just like one with
his long white beard, golden silk turban and sparkling blue
eyes. He is selling dried rose buds, ground henna, terracotta
skin scrubbers for the bath, loofa sponges, and herbs and
amulets to cure, protect, and procure the user’s wishes.
If you stop and tell him your concerns, he will offer his
advice as to the right herbal mix for you. (He often sold
me beautiful tiny rose buds, which I used in both cooking
and in making foot baths smell good. Each time I saw him
he would give me a lesson in Moroccan Arabic, laughing
kindly at my efforts to drop as many vowels as possible,
a distinguishing aspect of Moroccan Arabic. Also, Berber
is a native language and very widely spoken, as is French,
followed by Spanish, Italian, German, and many other languages:
Moroccans are incredibly multilingual, reflecting their
geographical place in the cross-roads of human history.)
The medina itself is a medieval
walled-in city within the larger city of Rabat, as is the
case with medinas in other parts of Morocco. It
has indoor and outdoor caverns, a few main thoroughfares
and infinite capillaries that seem to shift as regularly
as the daylight and shadow across the narrow passages. Further,
beyond the food markets, lay carpets, ceramics, wood-work,
jewelry, clothing, music recordings, and much more — much
of this is along Rue Souika, which is the main street you
will encounter upon entering any gate from Boulevard Hassan
II, and on to the other main street in the medina, the Rue
des Consuls. Two peripheral areas at each end of the medina also
boast remarkable flea markets offering purely Moroccan treasures
amidst lots of second hand junk and colonial era pieces.
If you walk all the way through the medina toward
the ocean side, you will come upon a stretch with a view
out over the ocean. You can cross the main road, Rampe Sidi
Maklouf (carefully), toward the fortress, the Kasbah des
Oudayas and explore this small walled neighborhood overlooking
both the river and the ocean.
Within the Oudaya is a lovely Andalusian
Garden, a recreated remnant of the 17th century occupants,
the moriscos, who arrived here as exiles from Spain
around 1609 and made the fortress and the medina below their
new home. For the first half of the 17th century, the moriscos also
made Rabat an independent pirate republic. In the Oudaya
you will see indications of this, the most pronounced being
the canon at the highest point, which point in three directions:
across the river at Sale, up river, and out over the ocean.
Before the Iberian refugees were absorbed by the Moroccan
Sultanate in 1666, they were fiercely independent. This
meant they were at odds with the folks in Sale (one canon),
with anyone coming down river (a second canon), and filtering
who they let in or out from the ocean-river mouth passage
into their harbor (the third canon). In the Oudaya you will
also find their 17th century palace, a fine example of late
Muslim-Christian-Jewish Iberian styles brought back to Morocco
and fused with local aesthetics.
The medina everywhere in Morocco
(every town and city has one and every village has a market
square) is alive with people there to buy their daily food.
Many people still do not rely on refrigeration or the concept
it represents, less than day-fresh food. The medina also
being its own neighborhood in the city of Rabat, many people
also live in the medina’s numerous labyrinthine back
streets that wind away from the shopping area.
The beauty of traditional food shopping
in Morocco is that you buy it every day, buy it fresh, buy
it locally, buy it seasonally, and buy it from your neighbor
who is also cooking a killer tajine, better than
anything you’ll ever eat in a restaurant. Home cooks
are the masters and chefs study with them if they are wise.
This is not to cast aspersions upon restaurants—there
are some stellar ones that are definitely worth visiting—but
nothing compares to what is bubbling away in a home kitchen.
A drive in the surrounding country reinforces
these realities as one witnesses the activities of people
who still know how to grow local, seasonal, and healthy
food. A common scene is a woman churning butter in a heavy
linen sack that is suspended between two poles with her
rocking it back a forth; a man and a donkey pulling a cart
with baskets full of flower blossoms ready to go to market
to sell for making flower water; cherry pickers selling
just-picked ripe ruby red globes or white truffle sellers
advertising pyramid-piled truffles on upturned ten-gallon
cans on the roadside. Beyond them are sweeping fields of
spring green and cadmium red poppies.
Recommended culinary souvenirs are saffron
and ceramics. If you love authentic cooking tools, select
a terracotta tajine dish to carry home. Ceramics are a diverse
undertaking; each city and region produces its own distinctive
styles of shapes, colors, and painting designs. And as for
saffron, it is grown in southern Morocco, around Taliouine,
south of Marrakech and available in almost any marketplace.
Some consider the Moroccan saffron of a lesser quality than
Spanish or Iranian varieties, but I am an advocate for terroir in
all its manifestations. You can taste the unique mineral-plant
composition of Moroccan earth in Moroccan saffron. This
holds true for the red wines produced in the Fez-Meknes
valley (Amazir is my favorite), and those wonderful
white truffles sold roadside in spring in central Morocco.
Other Rabat Markets
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Markets in Rabat. |
There are also some little treasures
for food shopping outside the medina. The petit marché, is
on Place Pietri in the heart of the more modern city, whose
architecture speaks of its colonial French occupants as
well as of more modern structures associated with an independent
Morocco. Here, you will see the flower market, le marché aux
fleurs, in riotous color year round and with flower
vendors and flowers of every imaginable variety, African,
Asian, and European. Steps leading to an airy underground
space take you to the little covered food market that boasts
a good butcher, cheese sellers, a sausage vendor, herbalists,
and specialty foods imported from France.
Every neighborhood has several bread
bakeries and pastry shops, both staples of the daily diet.
Just follow your nose and eyes. Most bakeries are excellent
and excel in both Moroccan breads (whole grain flat breads
being my favorite) and French breads (baguettes being as
good as in France).
Throughout the city each neighborhood
also has a fruit and vegetable seller who might have a little
kiosk along a high stone wall or in a row with other small
specialty shops. On the roadside you might also see someone
with their coal fire and vat of oil making puffy fresh fried
donuts. Another roadside merchant might have coals on which
he is roasting corn. Toasted nuts are another street snack
specialty.
Just below the Oudaya is a craft center
where ceramics, leather goods, wood crafts, and more are
sold. Moreover, further up river in the Rabat-Sale river
valley is a potter’s guild where artisans have gathered
in shops and buildings like a small village in and of itself.
This is a fine place to buy locally made ceramics, baskets
of all shapes and sizes, jewelry, and others artisanal goods.
This perspective on local, seasonal,
Slow Foods might seem challenged by the presence of superstores
in Rabat. But one of my fond memories of food shopping in
Morocco was visiting the hypermarche, hypermarket, Marjane,
ironically, in Rabat and Sale’s river valley, the
region’s traditional farm land that produces much
of the local vegetables and fruits. I was worried about
what this mega store would do to the incredible selection
of locally grown and sold seasonal foods. I entered the
store behind a Moroccan family who, like me, were there
to take in the new phenomenon. Parents, children, grandparents,
an aunt and uncle, and a cousin moved through the store
as a unified group the way tours go through museums. They
went from product to product, display to display, and fruit
and vegetable to fruit and vegetable. Even though they were
in the convenient and fast hypermarket, they would not be
rushed. If the food did not meet their standards of freshness
and taste—they picked items up, felt them, smelled
them, eyed them closely—they would resume their old
ways of shopping from local green grocers and fishmongers
and butchers (this I overheard them say to each other as
I followed in their wake). Subsequent trips to Marjane taught
me that ease and convenience in Morocco will only go as
far as quality and taste meet traditional standards. In
other words, Moroccans are lovers of food with very high
standards.
Beebe Bahrami is a freelance writer and cultural anthropologist specializing
in travel, food and wine, and cross-cultural writing.
Related Topics |
Culinary
Travel |
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