From Sunday's chicken tagine to the three-day mrouzia for Aïd, from the royal-court pastilla to the tanjia cooked in the hammam embers: these are the fifteen dishes that tell Morocco at the table. Each is cooked today by Sikook chefs in your city: order, and we deliver.
The best-known dish, and the most often misrepresented abroad.
Cooked low and slow in a clay pot, never brought to a boil. Purple Haouz olives, preserved lemon the mother put up three months ago, ras el hanout from your tenth bag at the corner spice shop. The sauce stays tight, never watery. Serve with khobz to mop up.
Friday lunch couscous. Hand-rolled by the mother starting Thursday evening.
Seven vegetables (pumpkin, zucchini, turnip, carrot, cabbage, tomato, onion), onions caramelized in honey and cinnamon (the tfaya), lamb or chicken, raisins, chickpeas. The semolina is steamed three times in the couscoussier. The dish of togetherness: everyone eats from the same plate, with a spoon or by hand.
Sweet-savoury at its peak, inherited from the royal courts of the Maghreb.
Pigeon, blanched almonds, Taliouine saffron, cinnamon, orange blossom. Homemade warqa pastry stacked in layers, icing sugar dusted on top with cinnamon patterns. Two days of prep. Reserved for big occasions, never weeknight.
The Aïd dish. Three days on the kanoun, never on a stovetop.
Lamb confit in honey, golden raisins, blanched almonds, prunes, cinnamon, ginger, ras el hanout. Sweet-savoury pushed to caramel. The longer it sits, the better it gets. Keeps a week in the fridge and doubles in flavour.
The breakfast riads serve, and that we make at home every Saturday.
Flaky crêpe folded twelve times, crisp outside, tender inside. Clarified butter and fine semolina between each fold. Served with amlou: a paste of toasted almonds, honey and argan oil. With scalding mint tea, it's the perfect morning.
The bachelor's dish, cooked in the embers of the neighborhood hammam.
Veal, preserved lemon, garlic, cumin, saffron, smen, all in a clay urn sealed with kraft paper and string. Slid into the hammam's furnace embers for six hours. The hammam keeper hands it back in the late afternoon. Inimitable elsewhere: the vessel makes the dish.
The Ramadan soup, and dinner all year round.
Peeled tomatoes, lentils, chickpeas, vermicelli or rice, coriander, parsley, ground beef or lamb, tomato paste, ras el hanout, ginger. Thickened with a flour-water slurry, the tdouira. Served with dates and chebakia, or a hard-boiled egg and a wedge of lemon.
The Aïd pastry, fried then dipped in honey and sesame.
Dough with ground almonds, toasted sesame, orange blossom, anise, cinnamon. Folded into rosettes, fried, then dunked piping hot in scented honey and rolled in sesame. Keeps a full month in a tin. Essential alongside harira for the iftar.
The Berber pizza of the desert. Buried in hot sand under embers.
Semolina dough, ground lamb, onions, parsley, spices, sometimes eggs. The flatbread is buried under the sand of a fire pit, then covered in embers. Slow cooking, even cooking, desert bread.
All of Morocco's coastline in one dish. Fresh, lemony, garlicky.
White fish (grouper, sea bream), marinated in chermoula: coriander, parsley, garlic, cumin, paprika, lemon, olive oil. Cooked in the clay pot with tomatoes, peppers and potatoes. No meat, no long cooking, just fish, sea, chermoula.
The farmer's breakfast: warm, rich, cheap, perfect when it's cold.
Split fava beans soaked overnight, slow-cooked with garlic, cumin, salt. Pureed thick. Served hot in a bowl with a drizzle of olive oil, sweet paprika and cumin seeds on top. Fresh bread on the side.
Desert lamb, roasted whole in a sand-pit oven.
Whole lamb rubbed with salt, cumin, butter. Suspended in a clay oven dug into the sand, around tamarisk embers. Five hours of cooking. The meat falls off the bone. Serve with salt, cumin and mint tea, by the gallon.
The golden triangles ten cooks fold in the kitchen the night before a wedding.
Warqa pastry folded into triangles or rolls, filled with spiced ground meat, chicken-and-almond, cheese-and-herbs, or sweet almond-and-honey. Fried golden, crisp. A non-negotiable at a Moroccan wedding.
The candy of effort. Served to women after childbirth and to returning pilgrims.
Toasted flour, toasted ground almonds, toasted sesame, clarified butter, honey, orange blossom, cinnamon, anise. Served as a pyramid, topped with whole almonds and icing sugar. Very energy-dense, sweet, fragrant. A spoonful in the morning gets you to lunch.
The dish for new mothers, rich in lentils, fenugreek and crumbled msemen.
Free-range chicken simmered with lentils, fenugreek, onions, ras el hanout, smen. Served over a bed of msemen or trid pastry crumbled by hand. The sauce soaks the bread. A powerful, fortifying dish you make for someone you love.