Morocco in the Pantry: Chermoula, Matbucha, Preserved Lemon, Ras el Hanout and the Jars That Get You to Marrakech in Ten Minutes
Moroccan cooking has a reputation for patience. A tagine simmers for hours under its conical lid; a proper couscous is steamed three times over the stew, fluffed by hand between each; a bastilla takes a day. All true. But the reason a Moroccan home cook can put a remarkable dinner together on a Tuesday is that the flavor of the cuisine lives in a small set of preserved things that are made in quantity and kept ready: a herb marinade, a cooked relish, salted lemons, a spice blend, cured olives. Have those jars, and the slow food becomes fast. This is that pantry, jar by jar, and what to do with it in ten minutes.
Chermoula
Chermoula is the marinade of the Moroccan coast, from Essaouira to Tangier: cilantro and parsley pounded with garlic, cumin, paprika, a little chile, lemon and olive oil, sometimes with saffron or preserved lemon folded in. It exists for fish, which is rubbed with it and grilled, baked or slow-cooked with tomatoes and potatoes in a tagine, and it is equally good on chicken, roasted vegetables, chickpeas and a fried egg. Villa Jerada's chermoula, from a Seattle company founded by a Moroccan-born chef who sources spices directly from the country, is the jar to keep; a spoonful stirred into a can of chickpeas with olive oil is dinner, and a whole fish rubbed with it and roasted is a dinner party.
Matbucha
Matbucha is the cooked salad that opens most Moroccan meals: tomatoes and roasted peppers simmered slowly with garlic, paprika and chile until they collapse into a thick, sweet, smoky relish, eaten cold or warm with bread. The name means "cooked" in Moroccan Arabic. It went with the Jewish community of Morocco to Israel, where it is on every table, and it is the ancestor of shakshuka, which is matbucha with eggs poached in it. New York Shuk's matbucha with olives and mint, from a Brooklyn company founded by an Israeli couple cooking their Moroccan and Middle Eastern heritage, is the version on our shelf. Warm a jar in a pan, crack two eggs into it, cover for four minutes, and you have shakshuka; cold, it is the first thing on a mezze table, and our snack dinner guide builds a whole Moroccan evening around it.
Preserved lemon
Whole lemons, quartered, packed in salt and their own juice for a month or more until the rind softens and the bitterness mellows into something floral, salty and intensely lemon. Only the rind is used, rinsed and chopped fine; the pulp is discarded. Preserved lemon is what makes a chicken tagine with olives taste Moroccan rather than merely lemony, and a teaspoon lifts a vinaigrette, a pot of beans, a roast chicken, a bowl of couscous or a dish of olives. Make them yourself in ten minutes and wait a month, or buy a jar; the pickled goods collection has them when in stock.
Ras el hanout and the spice shelf
Ras el hanout means "head of the shop," the merchant's own best blend, and there is no fixed recipe; a good one has twenty to thirty spices, warm and floral rather than hot: cumin, coriander, cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, black pepper, cardamom, allspice, rosebud, sometimes lavender or grains of paradise. It seasons lamb, couscous, roasted carrots and squash, and a pinch in a pot of chickpeas or lentils does more than any single spice. Beside it, a Moroccan kitchen keeps cumin, sweet paprika, cinnamon, saffron from Taliouine in the south, and dried chile, and the quality of each matters; our spice harvest piece explains why a fresh-crop cumin tastes of something and an old one of nothing. The blends and single spices are on the spice shelf.
Harissa, the neighbor
Harissa is Tunisian, not Moroccan, but the two countries share a border and a table, and the chile paste, dried red chiles pounded with garlic, coriander, caraway and olive oil, is in most Moroccan kitchens beside the chermoula. It goes into couscous broth, onto grilled meat and into the spoon of oil that dresses a bowl of soup. A fruity hot sauce stands in when the jar is empty.
Olives, argan and almonds
Morocco is one of the world's largest olive producers, and its table olives are wrinkled, oil-cured, black and intense, or green and cracked and marinated with chermoula and preserved lemon. A dish of them opens every meal. Argan oil, pressed from the nut of a tree that grows only in the southwest, is nutty and toasted and used raw on bread, in amlou, the almond-and-argan spread, and drizzled on couscous. Almonds appear in the sweet-and-savory dishes the cuisine is famous for, the lamb tagine with prunes and almonds, the chicken bastilla under cinnamon sugar, and in the pastries served with tea.
Mint tea
The national drink is green tea, gunpowder, brewed strong with a large handful of fresh spearmint and a great deal of sugar, poured from a height into small glasses to raise a foam, and served three times, each glass a little different. It is hospitality made liquid; refusing it is difficult. Gunpowder green from our tea shelf, a fistful of mint, sugar to taste and a pour from as high as you dare is the whole recipe.
Three dishes in ten minutes
Shakshuka. A jar of matbucha warmed in a skillet, two eggs cracked in, covered four minutes, a scatter of parsley, bread for the yolk.
Chermoula chickpeas. A can of chickpeas drained and warmed in olive oil, a heaped spoon of chermoula stirred through, a squeeze of lemon, a spoon of chopped preserved lemon rind, olives on the side, bread.
Chermoula fish. A fillet of any white fish spread with chermoula, sliced tomato and a few olives around it, twelve minutes in a hot oven, preserved lemon over the top. Couscous or bread. This is the dish the jar was made for.
The chermoula, matbucha, olives, spices, tea and hot sauce are at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, and ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com. The mint is at the grocery, the pour is up to you, and the third glass is the sweetest, as the proverb says.
