Eid Al Adha Lamb Recipes Inspired by Morocco

Eid Al Adha is the Muslim Festival of Sacrifice. It marks when Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) was asked by God to sacrifice his son Prophet Ismail (Ishmaeel) as an act of obedience—but right before the sacrifice, God spared the Prophet and replaced his son with a lamb. Muslims around the world celebrate the occasion by observing special Eid prayers and sacrificing a lamb which then features in the traditional Eid feast. In Dubai and its neighbouring Emirates in the UAE, Eid is typically marked by a 3-day public holiday for the private sector (the public sector usually has a longer holiday.)

This Eid Al Adha, we decided to virtually travel to Morocco to experience their 3-day feasting traditions of Eid Al Adha. We invited Amanda Mouttaki from Marrakech Food Tours on our weekly podcast Deep Fried to discover how Moroccans have continued to uphold the tradition of nose-to-tail eating across 3 days of Eid Al Adha feasts. Tune in using the player below for the delicious details or continue reading for a quick recap of what she shared as well as a detailed transcript of the show. Amanda has also generously shared her recipe for a luscious prunes and fried almond lamb tagine that’s made on the third day of Eid.

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About Amanda Mouttaki:

Amanda founded Marrakech Food Tours along with her husband in 2015. She’s a prolific food and travel writer who moved from the U.S. to Morocco with her husband many years ago. She’s documented her experiences living in Morocco as well as recipes and more on her website MarocMama. You can find her on Instagram at @marocmama.

Lamb Dishes Cooked Across 3 Days of Eid Al Adha in Morocco:

• DAY 1:
  • Boulfaf: skewered and grilled lamb liver and heart wrapped in caul fat
  • Tkelia: slow-cooked stomach and meat stew with garlic and tomatoes
  • Gueddid: air-dried lamb jerky seasoned with salt, cumin, paprika and oil
• DAY 2:
  • Brains in spiced tomato sauce (breakfast dish)
  • Patties made out of fried kidneys and testicles & seasoned with salt, cumin (breakfast dish)
  • Roasted sheep’s head and ribs seasoned with salt, cumin (lunch)
  • Grilled skewers of leg and shoulder meat that are marinated in chermoula, which is a spice mix of cumin, onions, paprika, salt, pepper (dinner)
• DAY 3:
  • Mrouzia: Lamb tagine with prunes and fried almonds (Amanda’s recipe)

Amanda’s Prune & Fried Almond Lamb Tagine Recipe (Mrouzia)

Reprinted with permission from MarocMama.

Ingredients

• 1-2 lb. lamb (or beef) bone in – cut into 3-4’” chunks
• 1/2 lb. onions finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 2 teaspoon ginger
• 5-10 saffron threads
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 cup vegetable or olive oil (if the meat you are using has more fat then decrease the amount of oil
• palmful of chopped cilantro
• 1/2 lb. prunes
• 1-2 tablespoon honey
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup blanched, fried almonds

Instructions

In a large pot or pressure cooker, add oil to bottom of pan and add onions and garlic, saute until translucent. Mix in the meat and brown, then add spices (salt, pepper, ginger, cinnamon, turmeric, saffron).

If using a pot on the stove, add enough water to cover the meat. Cover and simmer on medium heat for 2 1/2 – 3 hours, until meat is very tender and falls away from the bone. You may need to add more water if it cooks off too quickly.

Add the cilantro.

Bring the meat and liquids to boil. When the meat is cooked removed, and allow the remaining water to reduce to a thick sauce.

If using a pressure cooker

Cover the pressure cooker after adding water and cilantro. Cook on medium heat for between 45-50 minutes.

Release pressure and open cover. Remove the meat and reduce the sauce uncovered.

For the prunes: (this can be done while meat is cooking) Add prunes to a small pot with honey and some water, simmer on medium heat, checking to make sure there is enough liquid and they are not burning.

Continue simmering until prunes are very tender. The length of time for this step depends on the oven as well as the prunes. Fresher dry prunes will soften much faster than a more dehydrated prune.

Towards the end add some cinnamon (more if you like it). Cook until they are sitting in a thick syrup.

This is often topped with fried almonds.

To fry almonds

Using blanched almonds add some oil to a saute pan and put the whole almonds in. This will only take a few minutes once hot. Be sure to watch as they will burn quickly.

Once complete turn out meat and sauce into a large serving dish. Top with the prunes and sauce, and then the almonds.

This is eaten with pieces of crusty bread.

Not a fan of audio? Here’s the show transcript for you to read!

Arva Ahmed [Host]: Hey guys, just a heads up. This particular episode contains a lot of references to the age-old traditions of Eid Al Adha, including slaughtering of sheep and cooking offal. We’d recommend not listening if you’re not comfortable with this kind of food or if you’re around young children. And with that, this show is brought to you by Dubai’s most gluttonous food tour company, Frying Pan Adventures and you’re listening to Deep Fried.

Hey there, I’m your host Arva Ahmed and thanks for joining me on the show that’s inspired by flavors of the East. This podcast celebrates the flavors that we as storytellers, content creators and food tour guides with Frying Pan Adventures have discovered in Dubai.

And one of those flavors is the flavor of Morocco, which is technically not in the East. It’s in the Western hemisphere, but it’s rooted in the Old World. And those are the stories that we’re most interested in for the show.

And because it’s Eid Al Adha, the Muslim Festival of Sacrifice…so Eid is just around the corner…we’re going to make this episode specific to what you’d find at a Moroccan Eid feast.

Now, while we do have a few, like really few worthy Moroccan spots in town, we’re actually going to leave Dubai and travel, virtually travel over to Morocco for the real deal, with someone who not only lives there but she does what we do here in Dubai.

Amanda Mouttaki has been running food tours for the past five years in Marrakech with her husband under Marrakeh food tours. She is someone who is seriously passionate about traveling and food. She’s also a prolific food and travel writer, and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting her in person when she first signed up for a food tour with us here in Dubai back in 2017. Hey, Amanda, how’s it going?

Amanda Mouttaki: Hi Arva. Great! How are you?

Arva: Great, thank you so much for joining. It is so good to see your face, even though you’re so far away. Thank God for Zoom.

Amanda: I know exactly and I, I miss you all so much. I can’t wait till we can travel again.

Arva: Likewise. So not everyone has had the pleasure of meeting you. So for the folks who are listening in, maybe you can start us off with a little bit of introduction.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and what made you start Marrakech food tours.

Amanda: Sure. So I am not Moroccan. I need to preface that right away for full transparency. I’m American. I grew up in the United States and I didn’t grow up Muslim either. I converted, many years ago now. But I came to Morocco 15 years ago because I met a man who is my husband now. And we lived in the States for a while and then we decided we wanted to raise our kids in Morocco.

So we came here, eight years ago. To Marrakech. And I had written a website called Marocmama for many years. And when we moved here, people asked me often, where could they go to eat like real Moroccan food? Because unfortunately in Marrakech, a lot of the restaurants really cater for tourists. And so they’re not always the best quality.

And we realized there was no good way for us to tell them where to go. Marrakech is, if you’ve ever been here, it’s very complicated, especially in the old Medina. There’s not always addresses. There’s not always names on businesses. It’s a maze. It’s meant to be a maze. And so it’s really difficult to navigate.

And the places where we would take people, if you spoke, if you only speak English especially, you’re not going to be able to communicate very easily. There’s either no menus or it’s very limited. You kind of have to know what you’re doing to get what you’re looking for. And so we thought, well, I thought, what if we did a food tour? What if we took people to these places? Because we also didn’t have a lot of money to start a business. So we said, what if we took people to these places? My husband said it will never work because people are not crazy like you that only like to eat when they travel. And, and I was like, you’re wrong.

There’s a lot of us. And so he humored me and we came up with an idea and we built a route and, and that was really how it was born. And we thought we’d do a one or two tours a week and it would be fun, get us out of the house. And then, and then we started doing a lot more tours a week.

Arva: It just exploded.

Amanda: Right.

Arva: So with that, let’s switch gears and let’s focus on Eid Al Adha. Walk us through the big picture first and then we can start diving into all the little delicious details.

Give us the 10,000 foot view of someone looking down at Marrakech during Eid Al Adha.

Amanda: So it’s gonna be really bloody. Like, let’s just, I’m just going to put it out there and make it really honest right from the get go. So Marrakech is a city of over a million people but there’s still a lot of the very organic traditions that exist around the sacrifice. So for example, we live in like a three story apartment building, and we’ll get our sheep a couple of days before Eid maybe because we don’t have anywhere to keep them otherwise. And they’ll live on our roof. And they’ll be fed there. They’re fed and they’re taken care of and everything. And then on the day of Eid there’s, the butchers kind of like go house to house in their neighborhood and they do the slaughter for people on their roof.

And most people have the rooftop set up in a way where the animal can be cleaned and everything. It’s kind of part of the urban planning process, which is very strange for me as, as somebody not from this culture. But yeah, so, and then it’s a whole day of, of just like taking care of your sheep and, and cooking.

And there’s a whole like actual three-day process of cleaning and eating and distributing and doing the rituals that go along with the sheep. But yeah, it’s still very I think organic. It’s still a very organic process versus a commercialized like, I bought my sheep and it’s being processed somewhere else.

Arva: And so talking about that very organic process, I’m guessing then family traditions are front and center. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Who is doing the cooking? And where do people typically congregate for their feasts?

Amanda: Yeah. So, so usually the cleaning and the like taking care of the animal in the beginning stages is handled by the men of the family. And then it’s the women of the family who go through the whole cooking and preparing and kind of processing of the animal afterwards. So the actual, like slaughtering and kind of cleaning and all of that, the icky parts, that’s done by the men of the family.

And then it’s usually the women of the family—so the, the mother of the house, the daughter-in-laws, the sisters and what have you—they’re the ones that kind of do all of the post cleanup cooking, I guess, the like actually preparing of dishes. And I mean, it varies from house to house, but I think it’s pretty common to like get together, smaller family units.

So like at our house, it would be us and our sheep and then my sister-in-law and her sheep and maybe my mother-in-law’s sheep, and you know. So it’s, it’s normal to kind of get them all together. I guess one mess is better than five! And then everybody kind of brings home, you know, their, their portion and then the other portion is distributed and then all the work is shared.

So that’s, that’s fairly typical. And they also prepare like breakfast before the sheep is slaughtered. I don’t know if you have this in Dubai, but here, so here we have a King and nobody will slaughter their sheep, like the holiday doesn’t start until the King is on TV and does his sheep.

So everybody turns on the TV and there’s a whole, like, there’s a whole pomp and circumstance of like the big ram comes and it’s all of the people holding it. And the King comes out in his pretty clothes and he does his sacrifice and then everybody else in the country can go ahead and do theirs.

Arva: Wow, that’s fascinating. No, we definitely don’t have anything similar in Dubai.

Amanda: There you go. So if you come, you have to wait until the King has his sheep ready, then you can do yours.

Arva: All right. And you mentioned, you alluded to breakfast before the slaughter.

Is there anything traditional that happens at breakfast?

Or is it just sort of routine, get it over with and let’s get to the festivities?

Amanda: Yeah no it is. It’s special. So there’s a couple things that, I mean, you have your normal like cakes and cookies and things like that. And Moroccan breakfast and Moroccan food in general, but especially breakfast is very bread heavy. Very carb heavy. So there’s all kinds of cakes and cookies and things like that.

And then there’s also a dish called herbil, which is like a cracked wheat that is cooked in a pressure cooker usually for time. And it, so it gets really like plump and like fatter than a barley, but like these plump little delicious gooey balls. And you do add some milk and then butter and honey kind of gets added to the top of it.

So it’s kind of like a porridge, oatmeal type of dish, and I love it. It’s like my, one of my most favorite foods. And then also these, they’re called msemen and it’s a type of bread. It’s like a layered bread here. But for Eid and other special occasions, they fry them and then they soak them in honey and they put sesame seeds on top of them.

Arva: Ooh, like deep fry?

Amanda: Yeah. So they’re very tasty. Yeah…

Arva: Msemen already on its own, I’ve tried it here in Dubai. It’s sort of like an Indian paratha if people haven’t had it. It’s very flaky. It’s delicious. So I can’t imagine how much better it gets with the deep frying.

Amanda: Yeah, they’re my favorite, but I have to really limit myself on like quantity because it’s easy to get carried away.

Arva: That sounds fantastic. All right. We are going to take a quick break and then after the break, we’re going to get back into a day by day blow of what gets cooked up with the lamb that was sacrificed across Eid Al Adha in Morocco.

<break>

We are back to this Eid Al Adha episode centered in Morocco with Amanda Mouttaki, who runs Marrakech Food Tours in Morocco with her husband and Amanda, you’re going to tell us now about the day by day situation. How does Eid Al Adha unfold?

You mentioned three days of feasting and we’d love to hear about some of the traditional specialities that get cooked across that three day period.

Amanda: Sure. So I will also say this. I use, I base this on what our family does. Every family might be like slightly different, but I think there’s a general, a lot of it’s pretty much a general thing. And the order of things that are cooked is based on the tradition of what’s going to spoil first. Right? So how things are used depends on, on that. And because we live in a, like Dubai, very hot, desert climate, that doesn’t take so long to happen. So.

Day one.

The first day is a dish called boulfaf, which is liver. So it’s the liver that is sliced and seasoned with cumin and then it’s wrapped in caul fat from the sheep and then skewered and grilled.

Arva: Sorry, did you say caul fat.

Amanda: Caul fat. Yeah. Like the, the lining, the lining fat, the like kind of honeycomb fat of the animal. Yeah.

Arva: Got it.

Amanda: Yeah, so first they grill the liver, then they dice it up, add the spices, then they wrap it in the fat, grill it again so that it gets kind of like juicy and what have you. And they also do the heart that way.

So they have the liver and the heart kind of on kebab type of things. and you can sometimes they’ll add like regular meat. Like I don’t eat any organs, so they’ll maybe cook other meat for me, but that’s pretty traditional as like the first meal.

Arva: Can I just throw in there? So I love liver and interestingly, so I’m from Hyderabad in India and that’s, that’s the first thing that we start off with as well. Actually, we have that for breakfast. So it’s the same principle, the things that get spoiled first and actually liver tastes best when it’s fresh. So that actually sounds really rich and really delicious.

Amanda: Yeah. I think that everybody, at least all of our family really look forward to that. And there’s some times, you know, a little bit of fights over who gets what, who gets an extra skew or what have you. And I, and I, and I happily give mine away. But, so then, so that night then, so there’s all the cleaning that happens all day right.

And that night they will boil the stomach. So the stomach will get boiled to clean it and this is, they’re making a dish that’s called tkelia. And it’s then cooked in a pressure cooker with like garlic and tomatoes. and some other kind of spices. It’s similar to tanjiah, which is, I don’t know if you’ve had that if you’ve had Moroccan food, but it’s kind of like a slow cooked process, kind of like break it down make it, like a thick kind of stew type of thing.

And then they’ll also maybe do some of the meat with that. They might add in some pieces of the meat.

Arva: Is there any special kind of vessel or I’m sure now everyone’s moved to pressure cookers and things. But traditionally, so I know from what I know of tanjiah, it was cooked in this beautiful earthen pot, slow-cooked over dying embers in bath houses. Is that similar with this dish?

Amanda: Yeah, you could, you would definitely be able to cook it that way. And probably traditionally that would be how it was done. Now it’s just, I don’t know. I’m sure some people still do, but yeah. You know, time changes things unfortunately,

Arva: Bring out the pressure cooker!

Amanda: Yeah. Also on the first day, so the first day they do a lot of preparations for like further days to come, right?

So there is a thing that they make here called gueddid and it is like beef jerky, like sheep jerky I guess you would call it. So they take the strips of meat. They cut strips of meat. And they marinate it with like salt, paprika, powdered coriander, cumin and a little bit of oil. So they’ll marinate it in that for like two days right.

And then on the third day they actually like, hang it on the laundry line in the sun to dry.

Arva: That’s the traditional way!

Amanda: So then they hang it to dry and then it’s preserved and saved for, you know, they hang it until it’s dry, whatever they deem to be dry enough. And then it’s saved and used later on in dishes, sometimes with couscous, sometimes in tagines, sometimes just as like a flavor addition to like beans or lentils. Yeah, so that happens.

Arva: Is there a certain kind of, I mean, is it from certain part of the sheep or any part fair game?

Amanda: I, I believe it can be any part really. And I, and I believe like traditionally they would do a lot of the meat that way, whatever they wouldn’t be able to eat before it went bad. That’s what they would do to like, kind of carry it over. But yeah, the spices like salt, paprika, coriander, cumin. Cumin is in a lot of Moroccan food.

So if you don’t like cumin, you’re on a rough go here. There’s a lot of cumin. yeah. So that’s all, all on that day. Then they’ll also like clean the intestines. Like literally every part of the sheep gets used. They save the, like the, not the actual hooves, but like the shin part of the sheep is used in a different dish.

So like literally everything is used.

Arva: That’s amazing that there is no wastage. I mean, if you are going to slaughter the animal, then you really should be consuming every single part. And it’s great to see that that tradition continues even till today.

Amanda: Yeah. Even like the skins, like there are guys that will come around in the neighborhoods on the first day of Eid collect the skin. Some people decide that they want to keep it, but some, a lot of people don’t want the hassle. So they come and they’re actually like the leather tanners. So they come and they take the, they take the skins and they take them and work them and use them.

And then they’re put back into the artisan industry here, and used to make leather.

Arva: That’s a whole other level.

Amanda: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, even though Morocco is a very, I mean it’s not quite as modern as Dubai, but like, as it’s, it’s a very…more modern country, a lot of these like very long ingrained traditions still exist and are still a part of holidays like this.

Arva: That’s a great tradition to keep.

Amanda: Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to know about day two?

Arva: I’m dying to know about day two.

Amanda: Okay.

Day two.

This is, this is where things get real. This is where you either like fight or flight. This is where it comes in.

Arva: Wait so all the cleaning of the intestines, the boiling of the stomach, That was, okay, that was just your starters. Okay, go for it.

Amanda: That was how we did day one. Yeah. So day two, we’re starting the day off with the breakfast of champions, which is brains. Sheep brains in tomato sauce with eggs

because

Arva: Wait so tell us how these brains are cooked.

Amanda: Yeah

so basically like scrambled eggs. They like boil and clean it and then it’s cooked down and it looks like, like if you’re looking at the dish, you would probably not be able to tell it was brains. You’d be like, oh, that’s a dish of scrambled eggs in tomato, tomato sauce, spiced tomato sauce.

But it has a different texture of course. Cause brains have a different texture.

Arva: It’s actually creamier than eggs, which I’m sure people who don’t eat these parts of the animal, don’t want to hear me describing it as, but that’s really what it is. It’s the creamiest part of the animal.

Amanda: Yeah, yeah. So they, that for breakfast. Also fried kidneys. So then they take the kidneys and the testicles.

Arva: Okay.

Amanda: And it’s all boiled and kind of, and cleaned. Right. And then it’s sliced into rounds, like, like sausage rounds, right? Like sausage patties. And it’s fried and then seasoned with salt and cumin and, and enjoyed for breakfast.

Arva: By the way for folks who are listening in, you are still listening to a food podcast. This is not a special edition of Hannibal. And I promise I’m going to ask Amanda for some traditional sweets at the end. So please stick around.

Amanda: This is not for vegetarians. I’m so sorry to all of you, but this is a very, very real…

Arva: But this is the reality on the ground. And if you enjoy offal then this is right up your alley. Okay. So you slice it up into rounds and then what happens?

Amanda: Fried and then seasoned with salt and cumin and eaten with bread. Everything’s eaten with bread.

Arva: Okay.

Amanda: Also you’ll send out the head of the sheep that day. Like you will, if you were driving through the streets, there’s (A), like, nothing is open. (B) you’ll find these guys who have like little things fires that they’ve started in, in like on street corners sometimes.

And you send the heads to them and they like burn off all of the hair from the head. And then the head is sent, either you do it at home or you send it to like the special oven, where the head is then roasted because that’s what you’re having for lunch. Is the head with the ribs. So the ribs are like kind of spiced with cumin, salt, what have you cooked in the oven and spiced cause that’s for lunch.

Arva: Okay. So the head is just served plain roasted. It’s not sort of, for instance, like a soup or something of sorts, because I’ve seen a lot of places do a soup with the head. So that’s interesting.

Amanda: No, we just go all in. You just take it apart. Yeah. And salt and cumin.

Arva: And what’s the best part of the head..

Amanda: The cheeks, obviously. The cheeks.

Arva: Oh, that’s interesting. Because in, in the Arab world, people would usually say the eyes.

Amanda: Oh, they all fight here for the eyes too. I try to forget that part though cause that’s…but actually, so if you, if you are interested in the sheep’s head, they do serve it all year round and we do have it on our tour. So if you come on our tour, you can try the sheep’s head and you can have the eyeball.

And if you eat the eyeball, we have special stickers for anybody that eats the eyeball.

Arva: And you know that I’m going to get that sticker.

Amanda: Uh yeah, I’m just waiting for you to come on. I’m gonna do special surprises for you

Arva: Fantastic.

Amanda: Yeah, so that’s that, and then dinner is when you really want to show up because that’s the day they make regular skewers.

So they cut up the legs and the shoulder meat, and they just make like meat skewers that are in a, we call it chermoula, which is like a spice mixture of cumin, onions, paprika, salt, pepper, all the delicious things that it’s kind of sat in and gotten good and tasty and then just done on the fire.

Arva: That sounds delicious.

Amanda: Yeah.

Day Three.

By day three, our sheep is running out.

Arva: You’ve got the meat sweats by day three.

Amanda: Yeah.

Arva: That’s like a lot of rich, high cholesterol, like that’s intense stuff. I’d wake up on day three and I would be out. I’d be like, ah, I’m going to see you on day six.

Amanda: Yeah. Right?! I do, I bring vegetable kebabs to the table. I try to break things up a little bit here cause I can’t do all this meat. But the third day is another like more normal, not offal dish, no pun intended. And it’s called mrouzia and it’s a tagine. So tagine is a very typical Moroccan like stew and it’s made with the sheep meat and it’s slow cooked with like spices and like ras el hanout spice and cinnamon and you know, just a bunch of different flavors.

With stewed prunes. So that have been rehydrated in like honey, and they’re, they become quite sweet and fried almonds. So that’s all on a dish. Yeah. So that’s really delicious. And you could also have any other, any of the other smorgasbord left that you have not eaten all of, could also make its appearance on day three.

And then on day four, you fast. Not really, but you want to fast!

Arva: And what is the traditional kind of bread that you’re using as you’re dipping bread for the tagine, or even you had mentioned you’re using bread on the side of some of these offal dishes.

What kind of bread are we looking at?

Amanda: Yeah, so it could be any type of Moroccan bread, but so for the like kind of kebab type of things, they make a bread cook batboot, which is like a…it’s thinner, like a thicker than a pita bread. I don’t know how much is that? Like four centimeters, three centimeters, bread that’s cooked on a stove top.

It’s just basic, like a very basic flour, water, yeast, salt bread. But similar to a pita bread, slightly different texture, little less dry. And then the other dishes would just be a regular Moroccan round bread that’s made. We make bread every day in Morocco so the round loaves that are, you know, maybe this big, they could be a little bit bigger, but like a plate dinner plate size, and a couple 10 inches, 10 centimeters, 10 centimeters.

And they’re kind of like crunchy on the outside and like a little bit more dense inside, but that’s our standard like bread. But you’ll find Morocco’s really interesting in bread because depending on where in the country you are, there’s, I dunno, at least 10 different types of bread.

Arva: I was just going to say that we have to do a whole other episode with you on just Moroccan breads.

Amanda: Oh yeah. We could talk for hours. It’s one of my passions actually.

Arva: All right. So before we close out on this meaty episode, I promised folks that we’re going to switch and talk about something sweet. So for those who actually stuck around to this point, I know Amanda you have a bit of a sweet tooth.

So what one sweet treat can you never get enough off during Eid?

Amanda: Oh…that’s a good one.

So my answer personally is fruit. But that’s only because the meat is so heavy and we have such amazing fruit here, especially in the summertime. But if you’re looking for something that’s actually on the table, they make briouets. They’re called briouets and they look like samosas.

But they’re tinier. And they are stuffed with like ground almonds and sometimes orange blossom water and icing sugar and, yeah, that’s what’s inside of them. So it makes kind of like a paste, tastes a little bit like a marzipan and then wrapped in like our version of filo dough called warka, which is a little thicker than normal filo dough and fried.

And soaked in honey and has sesame seeds on top of it. So I love that.

Arva: That sounds fantastic.

Amanda: And mint tea, of course, all of this you have to know is eaten with like pot after pot after pot after pot of mint tea. Yeah.

Arva: Which obviously takes all the calories away. That mint..it’s a green mint tea, right? Is it, what

Amanda: Yeah. Yeah. It’s Chinese gunpowder tea is the base of it. Yeah. With mint leaves and lots of sugar.

Arva: I feel like I would need to be on a drip of that tea throughout those three days. Cause that is the only thing that’s going to get you through that much of eating meat.

Amanda: It could be arranged.

Arva: All right. Finally, before we run away, one tip Amanda for when we start traveling again and we visit Morocco. And I know that Morocco has been on my top list of places. And I do not know why I haven’t been able to make it happen, but rest assured I will. So give us a tip on how to experience real Moroccan cuisine and not the tourist trash.

And of course the first one on that is, the first answer is going to be sign up for a tour with you guys. And they do other stuff, like a lot more other stuff other than the offal dishes that Amanda was talking about. So don’t get scared away. I think you guys even do…do you guys serve vegetarians?

Amanda: Yeah, and gluten free.

Arva: There we go. All right. So there’s the whole gamut of dishes that happens, that exists in Morocco beyond offal.

What’s a tip you have for folks who want to experience real Moroccan cuisine?

Amanda: So the best, best, best Moroccan food you’re going to have is in someone’s house. And this is part of why it’s hard because Moroccans don’t go out to eat Moroccan food. They eat it at home. That’s why you can’t eat good Moroccan food in restaurants, overall. And if you can’t do that, if you stay in a riyad, which is like a guest house type of thing, stay in a riyad. And at least have one meal there because the ladies that work in the kitchen, they cook food like the cooking for their home.

Right. Because it’s a small scale. It’s not cooking for a hundred seat restaurant or something like that so really like take that. Or if you have the opportunity to do some type of a home stay, home visit, any chance you get to actually like go to or be in a Moroccan home. It’s just gonna really give you a totally different experience.

Arva: Love that. And do you guys arrange that at Marrakech food tours? Oh, wonderful.

Amanda: We do, we absolutely do.

Arva: All right. So then you are our go to person for whenever we visit Morocco after the travel restrictions have eased. Amanda, this was super eye-opening and so mouthwatering, I know the offal might not be for everyone but you have definitely piqued my curiosity.

And I’m going to make this trip happen to Morocco

Amanda: I’ll be waiting!

Arva: …as soon as I can. All right. Thank you for joining us. How do people find you and your company?

Amanda: Yeah. So we’re at Marrakechfoodtours.com and @Marrakechfoodtours on Instagram. And that’s where we are.

Arva: Amazing. And for folks who are listening in, if you want to find Amanda’s recipe for slow cooked lamb tagine with prunes and fried almonds, what was the name of that dish again, Amanda?

Amanda: Mrouzia.

Arva: Mrouzia. So if you wanna find that recipe for slow cooked mrouzia,

head on over to our blog at fryingpanadventures.com/blog or just check out our show notes. And you can connect with us @fryingpanadventures on Instagram and Facebook and @fryingpantours on Twitter. I really hope you enjoyed listening to the show and it would mean the world to us if you could spread the word by rating, reviewing and sharing it with your friends. But before we head off as always, I want to leave you with some wise words, this time by the famous 14th century Moroccan scholar and explorer, Ibn Battuta. And he said:

Traveling–it leaves you speechless and then turns you into a storyteller.