How To Cook Well In Morocco with Rory O'Connell Season 1 Episode 5
#PrimeUSTV
🎞 Please join
https://t.me/CinemaSeriesUSFilm
#PrimeUSTV
🎞 Please join
https://t.me/CinemaSeriesUSFilm
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00May your table always be full.
00:04Kerrygold. Proud sponsor of How to Cook Well in Morocco.
00:30Marrakesh is often called the Red City because of the colour of the earth used in construction, but it's also a very green city.
00:51The wide, tree-lined avenues and fountains are made possible by the plentiful supply of water from the mountains nearby.
00:58Like other cities in Morocco, Marrakesh is divided into two parts.
01:03The Medina, which literally means Old City, and the Ville Nouvelle, the French term for the new town.
01:10Morocco gained independence from France in 1956, but French is widely spoken, and the influence of the French occupiers is plain to see.
01:19Bonjour, Monsieur. Bienvenue.
01:21Bonjour, madame.
01:22Merci.
01:23Pouvez-vous prendre un petit-déjeuner? Qu'est-ce que vous souhaitez, Monsieur?
01:26Oui, je veux un jus d'orange passé. Je prends le petit-déjeuner continental.
01:29Continental. Avec quoi qu'on boit sans chaud?
01:31Caffe au lait. Merci.
01:33Merci beaucoup.
01:34Merci madame.
01:35I could have been, I suppose, on a boulevard in Paris making that order, but I'm not. I'm street-side in Marrakesh at the Grand Café de la Poste, which was built in 1917.
01:49The first building to be built during the French protectorate in what was called La Nouvelle Ville, or the new town.
01:56And the building served as a post office, a café, a brasserie, a general area of gathering, and it's really quite magical.
02:06And then you go into the building itself, which was closed for about 20 years, and it was reopened then, I think I'm correct in saying it, 2005, after having a beautiful makeover.
02:17It's this wonderful rubbing of shoulders, of cultures, that you get in Morocco and Marrakesh, but here, undoubtedly, a strong French vibe.
02:26I mean, the breakfast I ordered at Croissant, and you see this all over this part of town.
02:32It's really wonderful, and for a traveller, it's a joy, different from what happens inside the medina and the souk, but part of the evolution of this extraordinary city.
02:43Good morning, sir.
02:44Bonjour, good morning.
02:45Oh, how lovely, thank you.
02:46That's really wonderful.
02:48Thank you so much.
02:49Could I have picked a nicer spot to have my breakfast and to write my postcards?
02:56I couldn't really be happier here, enjoying every moment of what must have been an astonishing sight coming up out of the desert in the new part of the town back in the day.
03:06This place is full of history.
03:07Leaving the new town, I'm entering the old city through one of the many impressive gates on my way to Lotel Marrakesh.
03:19The heavy wooden door opens into a beautiful courtyard, part of a 19th century Riyadh, which was itself once the central part of a much older palace.
03:32The Riyadh has been converted into a small hotel by the designer Jasper Conran, and I think it's very beautiful.
03:38It is filled with Moroccan craftsmanship, antique furniture, textiles, and art from Jasper's collection.
03:48I feel very privileged to be on this beautiful terrace in the middle of Marrakesh with Bhushara, who's a wonderful cook and cooks all the delicious food in this wonderful hotel.
03:59And we are going to make Bastilla this morning, or Bastilla, correctly speaking, you'll pronounce the L's, with pigeon.
04:06So, we're going to start by marinating the pigeons.
04:09We've got lovely little local pigeons here.
04:11And Bhushara has made the point strongly that all of the ingredients we are using are local.
04:15So she's popping in some ginger, and some pepper, and some turmeric into this beautiful bowl, which came from Fez, by the way.
04:23And then this is the Ras Al Hanout, nice pinch of salt, and then olive oil, local of course.
04:29And then some water, and then beautiful saffron water.
04:33Saffron from the Eureka Valley, I suspect, which has been soaked in a little bit of water, giving it that lovely saffron colour.
04:40So she's just massaging that nicely into the pigeons.
04:44So that's looking lovely.
04:46Now, normally you'd marinate those for two hours, but today we're going to go straight ahead with them.
04:50So she's got a pot on the heat here.
04:52Lots and lots of olive oil this time.
04:54Lovely sizzle, we love the sizzle.
04:56And some fairly finely chopped onions.
05:00And then this is a little bit of parsley and coriander going in.
05:06Now, adding in some cinnamon bark.
05:09Now our pigeons are going in.
05:11Lovely.
05:12Now, lots of sliced onions.
05:15Loads and loads of sliced onions going in.
05:17And red onions.
05:19And now, some of the liver, and the gizzard, and the heart of some of the pigeons.
05:24So the depth of flavour that will give.
05:26That's where the authenticity comes from.
05:28And now some snen.
05:29They add lovely, and matured, and clarified butter.
05:33And a good stir.
05:34Now lots of water.
05:36So we're sort of stewing, really, I think, because the liquid is coming up quite high.
05:41Lid on.
05:43Wonderful.
05:44And that goes to cook until the pigeons are cooked through.
05:48So Boucher has cooked the pigeons for between an hour and a half to two hours.
05:52Until the meat is sort of very tender and almost falls off the bone.
05:56And then she's picking it off in sort of like, sort of choice sized pieces.
06:01Both the breast and the leg meat.
06:02The whole thing goes in.
06:04So now, here we have some roasted and pounded almonds.
06:10And then she's got some, interestingly, granulated sugar.
06:14And in this pot here are the onions that were left over at the bottom of the pot.
06:19And also the liver, and the heart, and the gizzard we saw are in there as well.
06:25Now, cinnamon.
06:26More cinnamon.
06:27Such an important spice.
06:29Okay, a little bit of nutmeg.
06:31So nutmeg grated, just freshly grated.
06:33Now this is just melted butter rather than the smen that we used earlier on.
06:38A little bit of water.
06:40Fleur d'orange.
06:42Ah, orange blossom water.
06:44There you go.
06:45How fabulous.
06:46So again, perfume.
06:47And balance.
06:48You can imagine how important the balance is now.
06:50Fascinating ingredient coming up.
06:52This is mastic, or gum mastic as it's sometimes referred to.
06:56It comes in these little sort of grains like that.
06:59And she's adding some granulated sugar.
07:02Grinding that to a fine powder like salt.
07:04Lovely, yeah.
07:07And we have our fillings ready.
07:08And now we're about to start to work with the waka.
07:11So these little thin layers of waka, which are sometimes referred to as being onion skin thin.
07:17This super refined pastry for sweet or savory situations.
07:23And that's how you do it.
07:25Now, it looks like we are ready to assemble.
07:28So she's got a great sort of overhang there.
07:32Um, out the sides.
07:34Now, okay, concentrate, Rory.
07:37So that's some of our almondy mixture, which also she put some eggs into.
07:41Now, our oniony mixture with the little bits of liver and heart and gizzard.
07:49Now, our choice morsels of pigeon.
07:52And more of our almond and egg mixture.
07:55Now, okay, some roasted almonds, which have been roasted, I'd say, in a little bit of olive oil.
08:00More of the larger sheets, which she's just draped over the top.
08:03And she's folding it in around the bottom to just enclose and to seal everything in.
08:08Well, we have a little, what looks, beaten egg.
08:11She's dribbling on.
08:12Boucher was saying she's going to prick little, um, holes in it.
08:15Just using a cocktail stick, quite simply.
08:17Use a skewer, I suppose.
08:19And this is to allow the steam to escape.
08:21And that is now ready for the oven.
08:24Where apparently it will go into the oven for about an hour.
08:27Um, until it's beautiful golden colour.
08:29And then we'll be able to do the final decoration.
08:32And most importantly, taste it.
08:38Now, the cooked pastilla has arrived and it looks beautiful.
08:41And now, we're going to put some final little decorations.
08:46So, icing sugar.
08:48And some cinnamon.
08:50And now the almonds.
08:51And this is to indicate that there are almonds inside.
08:54And she's put a little pinch of dried rose petals on top
08:57to make something which is just so beautiful.
09:00Boucher, thank you so much.
09:02I'm so looking forward.
09:04Do I get to taste a little?
09:06Mmh.
09:14It's like heaven.
09:15Absolutely delicious.
09:17Now, I truly know what this great dish of the Moroccan kitchen
09:21is supposed to taste like.
09:23And it's completely fantastic.
09:25Thank you so much.
09:26No problem.
09:27Morocco is full of gardens, nowhere more so than Marrakesh, some of those gardens behind
09:45the high walls of the Riyadhs which are not discovered until you go through the door and
09:50there you are in a little green oasis.
09:53I'm at the Anima Gardens on the south side of Marrakesh and getting here we've passed lots
09:58of garden centres on the way.
10:00This fabulous garden was the creation of André Heller who first visited Morocco in 1972
10:07and immediately was entranced by the people, the culture, the place and the atmosphere.
10:14Then somewhat later in 2010 to mark his 60th birthday he found this 8 hectare site and
10:22begun the creation of this really extraordinary place which is full of mystery, discoveries
10:29around every corner, there are cacti, there are bamboo gardens, there's a rose garden, there
10:35are wonderful sculptures, some of them abstract, some of them figurative, some of them immediately
10:40understandable but the real joy of this garden is it was the vision and the generosity of
10:47one man a response to the generosity of the experience he had had as a guest and a visitor to this
10:55extraordinary country.
10:56I found my way to the rose garden to begin my tour of Anima Gardens and under this beautiful
11:09what I'm going to call Moroccan red pergola is a beautiful fountain with little sort of burbling,
11:15bubbling water fountain coming up.
11:17Every morning they fill this fountain with blossoms from the garden.
11:21There's bougainvillea, rose petals as you might expect in a rose garden and plumbago.
11:26Under my feet are these beautiful tiles from Fez, as they're called, black and white and the whole
11:33the atmosphere, the feeling, the level of colour is really really beautiful.
11:37All of this I can recognise.
11:39What I'm about to discover though around every corner because this is mainly a garden of mystery.
11:45What I'm about to see and discover, well who knows, it's very exciting.
12:00I've walked into this lovely bamboo grove with great big fat bamboos towering up to the sky
12:07and shading some of the sunlight, making a lovely sort of dappled effect.
12:11And there's this plinth here with, of all things, some Picasso plates on it.
12:15Extraordinary to come across them.
12:18From my point of view, certainly I can relate to the fish and the hands here.
12:23This place is full of the most bizarre, wonderful things.
12:33The
12:34The
12:39Keith Heron, the artist, said that art should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the
12:44imagination and encourages one to go further and sort of like a voyage of exploration.
12:49Apparently this reflects the journey from life to death and the cruciform shape being at the base
12:54of the piece and also at the very sort of pinnacle up there. And I think when Mr. Heller decided to
13:00create this really wonderful place here, his imagination was definitely provoked and he definitely
13:06went with his instinct to create what is a veritable garden of treasures almost in Eden.
13:13Keri Gold. Proud sponsor of how to cook well in Morocco.
13:27Keri Gold. Proud sponsor of how to cook well in Morocco.
13:35Keri Gold. Proud sponsor of how to cook well in Morocco.
13:44Oh, that's fabulous. Thanks so much. Thank you.
13:48Sometimes another cup of mint tea just isn't going to cut it. You might need a little bit
13:53of extra buzz for Marrakesh because there's so much going on and there's so much to see.
13:58And so much of what you see as traditional in terms of the riyads, the souk, the medina, the mosques,
14:04the minarets, et cetera, et cetera. But also there's a huge movement full of contemporary possibilities.
14:12And here in this lovely, very minimalist little cafe where they have a very good coffee,
14:18they've taken traditional Moroccan finishes, crafts, styles to style and craft something
14:25that is unbelievably easy on the eye, totally calming. Modernity, a contemporary feel,
14:34place where the young come in. I've discovered that if you want to order a flat white in a cafe
14:39in Morocco, you simply come in and just order a flat. So I come in and say, a flat sous-vue play.
14:44I felt really down with the locals.
14:55I'm sitting here in a beautiful garden just outside the center of Marrakesh, surrounded by a wonderful
15:04Moroccan feast. I'm at Alfassia Agdel, which is a sister restaurant of Alfassia Gwilez,
15:12which is in the center of town, which was started off that restaurant about 30 years ago. The original
15:17concept was that all of the food would be prepared by women and all of the service would be by women.
15:23And this was a unique concept at the time. And it's now a concept and a practice that you find
15:30all over Morocco when you travel. And I got into the kitchen a little bit earlier to see some of
15:35this being prepared. And the generosity I have received here is similar to the generosity I've
15:40received all over this country. And the food at Alfassia is some of the best I've ever tasted in Morocco.
15:46The kitchen and dining room are overseen by a truly remarkable woman called Fatiha Baba,
15:57for whom the term a force of nature could have been invented.
16:00So a chicken, a tagine with caramelized onions. So the chicken is being cooked very, very gently
16:09again until the meat is falling off the bone. And madam, qu'est-ce qu'il est dans la sauce?
16:14Ça c'est la sauce avec les oignons.
16:16Yes.
16:17Les oignons, oranges.
16:18Onions and oranges, yeah.
16:19Orange, un peu de sucre, cannelle.
16:21Sugar, cinnamon.
16:22La gomme arabique.
16:24Le quoi?
16:25La gomme arabique.
16:27So gomme arabique, that's got that mysterious little piney flavour.
16:30Et les épices, gingembre, poivre.
16:33Ginger, pepper, spices.
16:35Saffron, saffron naturel, c'est pas artificiel.
16:37Yeah, okay.
16:38Saffron naturel.
16:39Madame is insisting it's, of course, proper, good, natural saffron.
16:42Nothing, nothing artificial here.
16:45And now a little garnish of some orange.
16:48Oh, ils sont...
16:48Ça, les tranches d'orange dans le four.
16:51Okay.
16:51So the oranges have been roasted, I think, in a little bit of sugar.
16:53So they, too, are slightly caramelized and a little...
16:58And a little zest of orange.
16:59Yeah, fantastic.
17:00Because we don't often think about putting orange with chicken at home, really.
17:04But you can imagine that this sort of sauce, which is so full of flavour, and the spices sort of...
17:10And again, this business of balancing the sweetness and the sourness.
17:14Fantastic.
17:15Merci, madame.
17:15Ça, c'est très belle.
17:17Really, really.
17:18So lovely.
17:19Beautiful.
17:23She's saying she's not a cook, but she loves cooking.
17:25I'd say she's able to do anything, this one, to be perfectly honest.
17:29Definitely my new best friend.
17:34So we're now having couscous.
17:40So this fabulous, fluffy couscous.
17:42I mean, honest to God, if I could do that.
17:44Tell me, ça, c'est le couscous.
17:45C'est très légère, madame.
17:47Oui.
17:47Oui, c'est très, très légère.
17:49And she's...
17:50Ça, c'est le beurre rince.
17:51Le beurre, oh oui.
17:52Le beurre rince.
17:53Okay, so that's some semaine again.
17:54Semaine.
17:55The slightly rancid, or shall we call mature butter, maybe, is a nicer word.
18:00And she's making a little depression.
18:05Oh, what a clever idea.
18:07In the top of the couscous, I presume the vegetables, of course, will go in there.
18:11Lovely.
18:11And madame, qu'est-ce que c'est le bouillon dans le casserole?
18:15C'est le bouillon des légumes.
18:16Le bouillon, yes.
18:17Oui.
18:17So it's vegetable cooking water.
18:19Oui, oui.
18:19And qu'est-ce que ça, ça c'est quoi?
18:21Ça c'est le navet.
18:21Navet, so some turnip.
18:23Oui, le navet.
18:25And, yeah, lovely.
18:27So with just the vegetables, normally you'd have you put your chicken or your lamb in there,
18:31underneath, in there.
18:32But because this is a vegetable one, and some carrots, and some large courgettes.
18:37Courgettes vertes, yeah.
18:39This is like a squash or a pumpkin, exactly, yes.
18:42Which in this part of the world, right now, are just coming into season now.
18:45On top, qu'est-ce que c'est maintenant, madame?
18:49Ça c'est quoi?
18:50Ça c'est qu'on appelle les choux.
18:52Oh, le choux.
18:53So cabbage, so cabbage has gone on top.
18:55C'est la même couleur que le tricolour irlandais.
18:59Oui, c'est vrai.
19:00Oui, l'orange, le vert, et l'autre.
19:02Alors vive Londres.
19:03Vive, vive Irlande, absolu.
19:04Ça c'est pois chiche.
19:05Oh, yeah, so some chickpeas.
19:07Poix chiche et raisins.
19:08Yeah, and chickpeas and raisins.
19:10How absolutely lovely.
19:11Oui, je vais le faire, c'est bon.
19:12So the final little touch is going on here.
19:16So the hot harissa has arrived.
19:19Harissa, bouillon.
19:20Bouillon, the vegetable cooking juices, delicious.
19:22Les raisins caramelisées, les onions.
19:25Onions caramelise with some raisins.
19:26Ça c'est sucré.
19:27Exactly, a little bit of sugar in there as well,
19:29apart from the natural sugar and the onions.
19:31So the balance and the complexity, the sweet, the hot,
19:35the relatively neutral, and then the juice to go with it.
19:37Wonderful.
19:38Madame, fantastic.
19:41Bon appétit.
19:42Merci beaucoup, ça c'est absolument fantastic.
19:45I love being in kitchens, that's what I do.
19:57I love cooking.
19:59But to get the opportunity to be in a kitchen like this,
20:02in a foreign land with such generosity of spirit, such kindness,
20:06so much laughter, it doesn't really get much better.
20:09Morocco is famous for its oranges.
20:21You see them everywhere.
20:22And the expression Moroccan orange is just, generally speaking, stands for quality and
20:28something that's going to be sweet and delicious.
20:30And I'm making a Moroccan orange cake, sometimes referred to as a boiled orange cake,
20:36because you start off here by boiling either an orange or, in my case, a couple of beautiful tangerines.
20:44You boil them until they're completely soft and squishy.
20:47In Morocco, they'd probably use a pressure cooker to do this,
20:50but I just put them into a saucepan, cover them with water and boil them away.
20:54But what is important,
20:56is that the oranges or the tangerines that you use are boiled until they are completely mushy like this,
21:02and you just pull them apart with the greatest ease.
21:06What you're watching out for is any little pips.
21:09And as good fortune would have it, these appear to be pretty much pipless.
21:19So a little quick whizz like that, or a quick chop with your chopping knife.
21:25And render them to a slightly coarse puree.
21:29So it's looking something like that, like a sort of an orange puree.
21:33That's the most difficult part of the recipe, if that's possible to imagine.
21:37In here, I've got some beaten eggs, to which I'm going to add the rest of my ingredients.
21:41Some castor sugar, just going in like that.
21:46And then I've got some lovely ground almonds.
21:48And I've got a little baking powder.
21:50So I like to just mix my baking powder, which I sieved, just to be on the safe side,
21:55in there like that.
21:56So to all intents and purposes, this is a flourless cake.
21:59So if you want to make this gluten-free, just use gluten-free baking powder.
22:03And it's a dream, an absolute dream.
22:06That goes in there.
22:07And then our orange mixture.
22:12Like that.
22:14Then all I need to do is mix those together.
22:18And it's like a sort of a thick batter.
22:21Then into our prepared tin, like that.
22:24A little leveling off, but honestly, it's not even necessary to do that,
22:28because, you know, of the consistency of the actual cake.
22:32Into our preheated oven.
22:33And this cooks for about an hour.
22:35So this is our little cake, which we've cooked, and that we've just allowed to cool on a cooling rack.
22:47Popping it onto my serving dish, like that.
22:50And then I'm going to give it a little decorative treatment, an old-fashioned paper doily.
22:55And I'm going to dust the top like this, with a little bit of icing sugar.
23:00I mean, this is completely optional, by the way.
23:04Okay.
23:04Then carefully lift that off.
23:08There we go.
23:09You can't really breathe very much when you do that.
23:12What's wonderful with orange, and what you see all over the place as well, everywhere,
23:18in Morocco, is pomegranates.
23:20So you could do pomegranate seeds.
23:22But I'm actually just going to cut the top of my pomegranate here.
23:26And then I'm just cutting down along the side like that, to get little sections.
23:33Okay.
23:33So you see, I just cut through and then just break it.
23:37A very, very pleasing sound, I have to tell you.
23:40And then break into little jewelled sections, which we're going to place around the cake.
23:48And this is almost like being back in Marrakesh, with these colours.
23:54Like that.
23:57Find a little bit of mint, like that.
24:01The pomegranate, the mint, the oranges in the cake, or in my case,
24:05the clementines, tangerines, a real expression of Marrakesh.
24:10But not just Marrakesh.
24:11Of what has grown and grows so beautifully in the entire country of Morocco.
24:16This reminds me of that magical place.
24:18The pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate, the pomegranate
24:48May your table always be full.
24:57Kerrygold, proud sponsor of How to Cook Well in Morocco.