So glad we made it to Morocco last year for a wonderful week in the Médina of Fes, and then visiting Rabat and Casablanca. It might be a while until we return now, so the closest we’ll come will be trying out some of the recipes we learnt at Nur Restaurant Cooking school with celebrity chef Najat Kaanache.
Najat was trained in Europe at restaurants like El Bulli and is quite a character, passionate about her restaurant and teaching others. https://najatkaanache.com
Najat welcomes us into the kitchen when we arrived at the restaurant for our 4 hour cooking marathon and explained the courses we would be cooking. She then handed over to her Assistant Chef to guide us through the actual hands-on experience as she had to zip to support a young friend who was in the selections for the Moroccan Soccer team!
We began by making a Moroccan spice paste which would be the base for a number of the dishes and salads. Then quickly moved onto making the Mafrouk or Moroccan flatbread from scratch.
We prepared the vegetables for 7 vegetable couscous and learnt how to “massage” and make couscous, grilled eggplants and peppers over the open gas flame, made a fish tagine, cummin carrots .
It was a busy few hours even with two helpers. We were the only people booked in as we had chosen a private class. This was excellent as we got to ask questions and get really hands-on, but then we had to eat it all ourselves as well!
Fish tagine with lemons, red capsicum and tomatoes with spice paste
It was a great experience and the food tasted very authentic even though we had cooked it! The recipes were also all easy to recreate at home which we will now be doing to relive our memories as international travel seems like a thing of the past or a long way into the future right now.
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