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Morocco street food

Morocco's street food gave me a lot to discover! Whether from a stall, or from someone pushing a hand-cart through the busy medina (market), I was surprised how many tasty things were commonplace there, and new to me. Here are some of my favourites:

  • "Kalinti". It's a chickpea-flour-cake as a savoury snack - imagine it as a kind of vegan omelette, because that's pretty much the texture. Many times in northern Morocco we saw this really popular street-food being sold. The kalinti is served in a bread roll (like a short baguette), always accompanied by spread cheese, plus sauces and other toppings such as gherkins or meat. It's a strange combination, I think - the smooshy texture of kalinti with the smooshy texture of spread cheese?! - but it's a hearty snack, and very popular in northern Morocco! A full tin of kalinti, e.g. a round dish about 60 cm diameter, would easily sell out in ten minutes.

A street-food seller at his cart, scooping chickpeas into a sandwich

  • Chick-peas. At various places in Morocco I saw a seller with a hand-cart, selling cooked chick-peas (presumably fried with a bit of spice). You could buy a simple paper cone of chickpeas to nibble on, or alternatively a sandwich like the above kalinte, i.e. with spread cheese alongside the chickpeas. I didn't see kalinti in Marrakech, but I did see this one.
  • Bissara - a simple and hearty split-pea soup. Specialist stalls/shops simply sell this one dish, served with bread and olives. Really good value and a good meal.

And the sweet snacks:

  • "Briwate" or "briouate" are samosa-like triangles, and they can be savoury or sweet. Since I avoided the meat, the sweet ones were most interesting, e.g. filled with dates, sultanas and almond paste. My favourite was, I think, a one-off: in Fes, a briouate filled with rice and sweetened with honey/syrup. A delicious hybrid of samosa, rice pudding and caramel flavours!
  • There were many pastries, and many pastry stalls stacked SO HIGH with pastries! A favourite that I hadn't seen before was the "gazelle's horn": a crescent-shaped little sweet pasty, stuffed with rich moist almond paste.

Also juices! So many fruit juices! Many stands were simply operated by one person with a pile of fruit and a manual squeezer, which is a good thing to look for since you can guarantee the juice is freshly-squeezed and unadulterated. Some great combos that we had are peach and lemon, avocado and date (with some milk in this one, we think), and sugarcane with lemon. Simply sugarcane, crushed with a bit of added lemon, is surprisingly delicious!

I almost forgot to mention one of my favourite juices: pure pomegranate juice -- multiple times there was a stall which was simply a man with a pile of pomegranates, and a juicer. (OK, also a little tea strainer and some plastic cups.) Pomegranates are expensive, where I come from, because they don't grow where we are - so it's impressive that for an OK price he'll squeeze 3 pomegranates straight into a cup for you. The sweet-sour pomegranate juice is so great on a hot day.

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And I want to mention a couple of things that aren't street food, but

  • Zaalouk - a cold cooked aubergine salad - again a good dish for a hot day. It's really quite simple.
  • Msemen - square pancakes, with a flaky bready texture. We already know these back home, but they're very Moroccan. For breakfast we often had these with Moroccan cheese and honey
  • Mrouzia - ordinarily this would be a lamb tagine dish, but I had a vegetarian creation at NBTA in Tangiers and it really was my stand-out dish of the entire trip. The taste is sweet and dark, thanks to the honey and prunces, then there's ras el hanout, roasted almonds, and sesame seeds all over. Such delicate and complex flavours, that you don't often get in a fake-meat dish. Fabulous. Go to NBTA in Tangiers.
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