Riads

One of my favorite things about Morocco:

Getting to stay in the Riads there.

Riads were former palaces or private residences that are now run as guesthouses. Every one I went to was restored beautifully and opulently decorated.

Every single one of them was a surprising find. You might be wandering a really dilapidated alleyway in the medina with a sinking fear that your hotel is on this street. They are generally marked with just a small plaque on a big, heavy door. Once you open the giant door and step inside, it's magic.

Traditionally, women were not meant to be seen, so the courtyards are facing inward to avoid any chance of interaction. This ends up being a modern blessing as well since you are now isolated from the noise and smog from an outside-facing window. Many of the riads had a pool, and most of them had a rooftop garden and patio as well. Because winters are a brief affair, the courtyards are either open to the elements or protected with a retractable roof.

The rooms were pretty swank. Most of them had very high ceilings, and completely ornate ones at that.

Our favorite one was in Rabat- Dar Karima. It was a lovely place to stay, but what made it was how the people who ran it were the best hosts.

Warm and welcoming, and they invited us to dinner with their family. Huge platters of fresh, fried whole fish. Oysters. Couscous. So much mint tea.

When it came up in conversation that we were yogis, they called their friend who was a yoga instructor and we did yoga in their courtyard first thing in the morning.

They were the best, and I would head back to Rabat just to stay with them again.

Most of the Riads only have a few rooms. It's best to book in advance. It seems like Morocco is a bit hurting for tourist dollars as there were just a few choice places that were fully booked. No one turned us down if we opted to stay an extra night either. In Chefchouen, we were the only people in our entire hotel.

Riad al Bartal in Fes was by far the most ornate. Our two-story room had a fireplace, gorgeous tile work and carpets, and a very green-thumb gardener attending the courtyard.

You felt a little bit royal staying there.

Every place we stayed had fantastic breakfasts: Carb-heavy with lots of Moroccan breads, honey, butter, cheese, jams and fresh OJ.

Compared to the relative craziness of the streets, these were all lovely places to call home for a few nights.

Cooking, Clock-Style

The food in Morocco was pretty damn good. It was about as local as you could eat. We only saw a handful of supermarchés in the entire country, and any imported food was ridiculously expensive. What wasn't grown or raised locally simply was not available to buy.

They don't have a dining out culture here. The cafes and restaurants are filled with tourist. While going out to eat is relatively cheap, local people eat at home, with family.

I was on a mission to find a cooking class. After eating a fantastic lunch at Cafe Clock and seeing they had a cooking school, I signed us up. This was exactly the kind of food I wanted to learn how to make.

Like so many things in the medina, it surprised us all. A darling maze of a 3-story cafe with a lovely rooftop is hidden down a narrow, dark alley. The place was run by an Anglo-expat and it was one of the few places we went to where English was widely spoken.

Over giant smoothies, we sat down with our instructor Surette to choose the menu that we would be making.

We choose well. Surette took us off to the market to purchase the ingredients for the meal.

The markets were filled with your daily essentials: meat, vegetables, oils, breads, sweets and piles of tangerines. Oh, the tangerines. Oh they were good. I would buy a big sack of them for a pittance, and eat a pretty much constant stream of them throughout the day.

It was fantastic to have a guide as there was just so much packed into the market souk, and about half the things were completely unknown to us.

In France, when you buy a chicken for dinner, you buy it with the head and feet still attached. To the French, this is a sign that it is fresh and a chicken without them can not be trusted. In Morocco, this just isn't good enough. You buy your chicken like this:

and then it gets slaughtered, plucked and gutted for you.

Meat was another thing that is bought very fresh. There's quite a bit of it hanging out in store fronts with no refrigeration, which puts me in full-on panic mode. I asked Surette about it. "If it comes from the fridge, we know it's not fresh and we wouldn't buy it. That meat should only be used in sausages."

Apparently, the fat from the hump of the camel is considered to be good for male virility, and good for your lungs.

This woman made the most amazing phylo dough by hand.

The breads were also quite good. I especially fell in love with a really greasy fried bread with peppers and onions called lkhbez lhar.

A bit of wisdom from Surette was, "In Morocco, we don't care about our belly or bum, we just care that the food is good."

Then she whisked us away to the student kitchen.

On the menu: Spicy lentil soup, a smokey eggplant spread, lamb tagine, and a date pastry.

The prep was very basic. We shelled peas and beans, chopped onion and garlic and red peppers.

Sort of misleading: tagines are almost never cooked in the tagine vessel. It takes too long to cook them that way. It's something that would be made in the morning, left to sit in the fire all day, and then it would be ready at dinner. The tagine dish is just for show.

And the secret to good Moroccan cooking:

A liberal hand with spice. Dried ginger, tumeric, chili powder, paprikia, a pinch of saffron and cumin goes into pretty much everything.

The eggplants were set on the stove top to blister their skins and get a nice smoky flavor going.

The blistered eggplants were peeled and chopped and mixed with peppers.

Then it is added to a pan with browned garlic and good olive oil.

Fresh dates and walnuts were chopped up and made cohesive with a good deal of honey...

...then rolled back into date-shapes...

...and then wrapped up like bon-bons in the lovely phylo dough.

They would be drizzled with butter and baked until crispy.

This was something interesting:

They are wild artichoke sprouts. It was artichoke taste without the thorns, and they were delicious. They do pick up quite a bit of sand and dirt in them, so they were soaked beforehand. This went into the tagine, which usually contains whatever seasonal vegetables are available.

After three hours in the kitchen, our masterpiece was complete. We sat down with good spiced coffee and almond milk smoothies on the rooftop deck, with the hum of the call to prayer ringing out all around us.

The lentils, spiced eggplant and breads:

The lamb tagine:

The date pastries, which were drizzled with honey.

Everything was amazingly good. Plus, it was a good fun class with a group of friends and a sweet as honey instructor.

If you are ever in Fes, I would highly recommend this even if you just have a passing interest in cooking. Here's a link to their cooking school, and they also have recipes and cultural events on their site.

Furnishing my Future Palace

I had no real intention on purchasing and lugging around beautiful large-scale handmade rugs. Being a migrant with no real home makes it difficult to buy home furnishings. I'm loathe to buy as much as a tea pot without having to seriously consider the consequences of having to pack it up and ship it eventually. But alas, I am a sucker for beautiful artwork.

There were lots of places in Marrakech that had rugs, and Fes had its fair share as well. One place in particular caught my eye- Coin Berbère. The shop, a bit more enclosed than the rest, was filled with treasures. Amazing things. Antique things. Pottery and Jewelry and carved panels and weavings. I would have gladly paid admission just to look...it was a treasure trove. Not too many souk stands get a nice write up in the New York Times either.

The owner, Mohammed (oh, everyone other guy we met shared the name) motioned for us to follow across the street and up a narrow staircase. There, a room, bursting with color.

I knew this was the man I would be buying carpets from. It's just narrowing them down that's the problem.

We talked dyes, we talked tribes, we talked spinning, we talked sheep. Each Berber tribe has their own distinctive style and pattern and palate. Indigo, saffron, flowers, cochineal, roots, and henna are all used to make the amazing colors. Everything is handspun, hand woven, by Berber women, working for a pittance, with the skills passed on through the generations. It is much more than a mere floor covering.

Mohammed patiently pulled out the ones that fit the criteria. Not too huge, not small. Nothing with sparkles or too much knotting. No silk. No pressure.

I loved this embroidered one.

But they were all amazing, one-of-a-kind works of art.

Some of them reminded me of Gee's Bend quilts.

Mohammed had the habit of unfurling the rug dramatically, while simultaneously hushing everyone in the room.

I kind of fell for this slightly shabby antique:

But the more intricate ones called to me as well.

This one he called the "Berber Picasso":

It was enormous, but I wanted it. He says it sells for $40,000 at ABC Carpet in New York. Having shopped for rugs there, I believe it.

The idea of buying a house and decorating completely with furnishings and rugs from this store started playing out in my mind.

But remember, no pressure. He said, "Think about it. Discuss it. Come back when you are ready." Which no one else in Morocco has ever said, ever.

And come back we did. After browsing more rugs around town, I could honestly said he had the best of the best, and he had handpicked the finest out there. And we brought friends with us as well. And the friends also had no intention to buy, yet they went home with three of them.

I showed Mohammed the pictures I had taken of the ones we liked best. He pulled them out of the piles, put them on the floor, and sent his brother to fetch some mint tea.

I found out I was terrible at haggling. It was just too much pressure. Plus, the price he was asking, I thought it was more than fair for the amount of work that went into it. So count me out when it comes to negotiating something handmade.

"Close your eyes, open your heart, and take this rug home with you" Mohammed commanded.

Several cups of tea and bathroom breaks later, I went home with the above carpet. It's amazing. Now that it's home, I'm even more in love with it. It's my colors, all wool- natural grays and browns and mauves that were dyed with poppies and then left out in the sun to age and fade.

This one was purchased as well. It's much larger than the mauve one, with a sturdier cotton warp and it's mind blowing to have this currently in my apartment:

The colors...the patterns...

Our friend went home with the "brother" of the colorful one. It's the same pattern, but more negative space.

Which, if I wasn't so afraid of spilling wine, I would have grabbed that one too.

Everyone went home happy. Mohammed rolled up the rugs snug as a bug in a rug, wrapped them up with plastic and tape, and we were even able to put this in our hiking backpack for the plane ride home. He does ship as well, but it was going to cost way too much and take weeks (and I am just in love with La Poste in so many ways right now) so we opted to carry it out.

If you are ever in Fes, do yourself a favor. Buy a rug from this man.

Coin Berbère 67 Talaa Kebira (in the Haddadine quarter of the Fez medina) (212) 35-63-69-46.