One of the best things about Peace Corps has been the food experience. I’ll explain later why I clarify with the food “experience.” The Moroccan cuisine is pretty straightforward and very similar from region to region. The staples are Tajine, cous cous, beans, soups, and something volunteers like to call fat bread. The beans and soups are simple, the cous cous takes many hours of steaming and tossing and steaming and tossing to prepare, and fat bread is exactly as it sounds: bread cooked with a layer of fat, oil and limited veggies in the middle and if you are lucky ground beef or chicken. Tajine is a dish all tourists know they have to try in Morocco, and is truly the daily staple dish. The dish is cooked in a ceramic cone and base of the same name, in the center is a piece of lamb or chicken, piled on top of this is a pyramid of sliced potatoes, carrots, turnips, and other veggies that may be in season, often this means pumpkin or cauliflower in my region. Everything is generously doused in oil and some water and then cooked on a stovetop on medium heat for 30 minutes or so. After the veggies have been cooked far past any real nutritional value the meal is placed in the middle of a table and the whole family eats it using bread as a utensil. That is right, every bite of the meal contains a piece of bread and most of the meal consists of potatoes… that is a lot of carbs.
All of the dishes are cooked with a similar array of spices, the most prominent and signature of these being cumin. With all of the carbs, cumin, and oil consumed when eating with host country nationals, and the ready availability of truly fresh ingredients, I find that volunteers develop exceptional dishes of their own. As a result, when volunteers get together one thing you can always count on is good food. Next week I’ll tell you about one such experience I had recently at a Volunteer Support Network training. Oh and I’ll also talk about the training.
