Hi and welcome to our first video about food in Morocco! So what we're doing
today is having lunch here, and then for dinner we're going to eat in the square,
which right now, as you can see, is actually pretty calm and relaxed, but at
dinnertime it goes crazy. It becomes full of people and smoke and stalls selling
food, so we're excited to show you the difference between this pretty calm
lunch up here and then a crazy dinner down there. We have been exploring the
square at night with all the little mobile restaurants that they have there.
Some of them even serve lamb's head. So I've been trying to get mentally
ready for that for the last few days and tonight I'm gonna go try to see if I can
try one of them. I don't know how that's gonna go, so stay tuned here to see if I
can do it. As you may know from our previous videos and blog posts, I am
mostly vegan or plant-based, while Gustavo is happy to eat meat at just
about every meal.
Every. Single. Meal.
Today for lunch I'm going to order a vegan
dish which is the vegetable tagine and Gustavo is going to order a meat dish as
usual which is the veal tagine. Both the vegetable tagine and the vegetable
couscous which are on the menu at just about every restaurant are called
vegetarian but are in fact vegan. For more information on eating vegan in
Morocco or at least in Marrakesh check out our previous blog post which we'll
link in the description below. We ordered a tagine specials which comes
with the tagine itself and also a soup as an appetizer -- a Moroccan soup -- and
mint tea, and it's only 15 dirham more than just the tagine dishes, which
is about a dollar fifty more. So, it's a good deal!
In a fairly thick broth, this soup
has chickpeas, lentils, bits of onion, maybe celery, herbs, and spices, and little
strands of what look like spaghetti noodles.
Mine is the veal with the veggies. So I can see some carrots here,
some olives, some pieces of potato here, and zucchini, and they always bury the
meat inside in the center.
Like Gustavo's the vegetarian tagines usually have
something buried in the center. Here you can see on top that there's preserved
lemon peel and then I'm digging away potatoes, squash, carrots, more potatoes,
and in this one, to my surprise, it looks like there's nothing hidden in
here. Usually this is where you'll find a chunk of pumpkin or something like that,
but here I just find more potatoes.
Apparently the proper way to eat a
tagine is by taking a piece of bread ripping a piece off and using that to
scoop up the food and then put it in your mouth.
This meat is so tender, it
just -- you don't even need to cut it, it just comes apart.
One of the things that
I love about the vegetable tagines and couscous dishes here is that you get
such a variety of amazing fresh vegetables all in one dish and unlike a
lot of places back home you don't have to make your vegan meal by ordering a
bunch of different side dishes of random vegetables you just get this amazing plate.
At these food stalls, they have vegetable tagines and also veggie skewers, but I've had both of those
before and so I wanted to try something new. What I'm doing tonight is having
several different vegan sides, as you can see here I have bread and sauce,
a Moroccan salad, french fries, and then I'm waiting for eggplants to come, also.
One of the things that you have to pay attention to at these food stalls is
that you're always getting upsold. So for example I ordered the eggplant
which is 5 dirhams on the menu here, and got this mixture of pepper, aubergine,
and galette, which is 15 dirham, so that's a difference of a dollar, but it adds up
when it's happening every day over and over. An option here would be to send
that back and point out that I only ordered the eggplant, in which case they
would bring it. But honestly I was curious to try the other two things too,
so I will take this one as a blessing in disguise. On other people's tables
we've seen this bright orange sauce that looked like harissa and that was what I
was hoping would come when we ordered the sauce and bread. This tastes more like
Mexican style salsa that I'm used to from home which is really really good
and I was surprised that this flavor combination is here. It wasn't what I was
expecting at all. On this combination plate I'm now trying these peppers for
the first time I have no idea how spicy they are so let's see how this goes.
Wow, that's not spicy at all. It's actually incredibly nice and sweet I love that!
This little cake is one of the things that came on the mixed plate that was sort of over-
delivered to us and looking at it, it looks like it's either fish or cheese
inside so I'm actually going to let Gustavo be the one to try this for you.
A bonus.
Yeah it's nice and doughy. I think it's potato. I don't think there's cheese here.
So I think Gretchen, you're clear to eat this.
As you can see, the eggplant has
really nice color on it and it's nice and crispy on the skin too, this is not
that horrible soggy gooey eggplant that you often end
up with so let's see how it tastes
I feel like that one could've used a little more seasoning but again it's not
gooey or slimy which are the biggest problems with eggplant so yeah it's pretty good!
This Moroccan salad looks like it's basically tomatoes onions and
some green herbs
Again, the flavors are reminiscent to me of Mexican food, or pico de gallo so
it's really interesting to find that flavor combination here where I didn't expect it.
I have no idea how to eat this...
I think this has meat somewhere...
There's not a lot of meat here. It's just pretty much bone and skin.
But I guess yeah this part here has a little bit more meat. There you go.
All right, so let's try the lamb's head.
It's not bad, if tastes just like other red meat.
I have no idea what else I can eat. I guess this here?
Another little bite.
It's good I think once you
get past the weirdness of eating a lamb's head, the taste is just normal.
If you didn't know what you were eating, it would be just like any other red meat.
We were looking for a place that served lamb's head and of course the guys here --
the barkers -- will do anything to get you to their stalls. So we got to this
place here and he said" "yeah we'll get you a lamb's head." But we don't think they
serve it here. We're pretty sure that he went to a different stall got it for us
and brought it here. So. They will really do anything to get you here.
So, when they brought the lamb's head, they also got us these spices here. I think it's salt and some other
kind of mix.
We made it back to our room at our riad after a very
interesting food experience. I don't think I'll try lamb's head anytime soon.
Which I am happy to hear because honestly it was not that appetizing to
have it sitting there on the table with its teeth showing. Yeah.
It was fine but there was almost no meat in it,
so it was just more for the experience.
The night market is really fun and really different so if you're going for the
experience then we definitely recommend it. Absolutely. As with most places here,
though, you get exactly what you pay for. The sides are a lot less expensive than
ordering the entrees at the market and I wasn't actually trying to save money, I
was just curious to try them, but honestly I would recommend going with
the entrees instead because they're a lot better than just combining a bunch
of the sides. So here's a question: would you try that lamb's head? Does that sound like
something that you would go for? Let us know in the comments below.
Thank you so much for joining us during our lunch and dinner here in Marrakech, Morocco.
If you want to keep up to date with our adventures, check out all of the links in
the description below. You'll see our newsletter there, as well as links to our
blog and our Instagram page. We're gonna do an extra bonus video next week.
This one's especially for women. So if you've never before seen a green lipstick, and
yes the lipstick itself is green, tune in to learn about this and other
Moroccan beauty products. That'll be coming out next Tuesday or Wednesday.
So give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel
and we will see you next time!
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