Moroccan Cuisine - Morocco - page 903

may often be harira and lunch leftovers, with the notable exception of Ramadan and other
celebrations.
Top chefs consult Paula Wolfert's Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco, which includes 20 tan-
talising recipes for the titular dish; it won the 2008 James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame
Award.
Diffa
With enough hard currency and room in your stomach, you might prefer restaurants to
snak fare for dinner. Most upscale Moroccan restaurants cater to tourists, serving an elab-
orate prix fixe Moroccan diffa (feast) in a palatial setting. This is not a dine-and-dash
meal, but an evening's entertainment that often includes live music or belly dancing and
wine or beer.
Fair warning about palace restaurants: your meal may come with a side order of kitsch.
Many palace restaurants appear to have been decorated by a genie, complete with winking
brass lamps, mirrors, swagged tent fabric and tasselled cushions as far as the eye can see.
Often it's the ambience you're paying for rather than the food, which can vary from ex-
quisitely prepared regional specialities to mass-produced glop. Here's a rule of thumb: if
the place is so cavernous that your voice echoes and there's a stage set up for a laser show,
don't expect personalised service or authentic Moroccan fare.
Whether you're in for a diffa at a Moroccan home (lucky you) or a restaurant, your lav-
ish dinner will include some combination of the following:
Mezze Up to five different small salads (though the most extravagant palace restaurants in Marrakesh and
Fez boast seven to nine).
Briouat Buttery cigar-shaped or triangular pastry stuffed with herbs and goat's cheese, savoury meats or
egg, then fried or baked.
Pastilla The justly famed savoury-sweet pie made of warqa (sheets of pastry even thinner than filo),
painstakingly layered with pigeon or chicken cooked with caramelised onions, lemon, eggs and toasted
sugared almonds, then dusted with cinnamon and powdered sugar.
Couscous Made according to local custom; couscous variations may be made of barley, wheat or corn.
Tajine Often your choice of one of a couple of varieties.
Mechoui Slow-roaste lamb; or some regional speciality.
Dessert This may be orange á canelle, a dessert bastilla (with fresh cream and toasted nuts), briouat bil luz
( briouat filled with almond paste), sfaa (sweet cinnamon couscous with dried fruit and nuts, served with
cream) or kaab el-ghazal .