Morocco report views culture as key to development

Much attention has been focused on the youth of Morocco recently, and a new report cast additional light on how culture can play a vital role in their development. Magahrebia offers the full story. 

In a first-of-its-kind study, Morocco’s Economic and Social Council (CES) explored how culture can serve as a powerful tool for youth integration.

Culture should be regarded as “strategic sector” and constitute a key component of development policy. Such was the conclusion of the “Inclusion of Young People through Culture” report, released on Friday (January 27th).

“We must address the new context,” said Ahmed Abbadi, the chairman of the committee that conducted the study. “Young people in the region have made their feelings known in various ways and their needs and points of view should have been listened to.”

The aim, ESC chief Chakib Benmoussa said, is to put culture at the heart of social reform and to make it a tool for development so that it can be incorporated into all relevant sectors, such as urban development, education and religious affairs.

Young people’s relationship with culture has changed tremendously, the study concluded, especially due to the influence of satellite TV and wider use of new information technologies. Youths nowadays have access to a broad range of culture outlets and no longer rely on the traditional methods of producing and disseminating culture.

Government youth policies, however, are marked by a lack of joined-up thinking, poor anticipation of the rapid changes currently under way and a widening gap between young people’s needs in terms of cultural infrastructure and content and what is actually available to the public, according to the report.

Over the past few years, the lack of an overall strategy on culture has made it impossible to make the most of the country’s diverse and rich cultural heritage or devise an overarching plan that can harness creative and artistic potential in various fields, Abbadi said.

Nevertheless, young people’s creative abilities have helped the Moroccan cultural scene to develop, be highly innovative, attain a certain degree of independence and interact positively with other world cultures. Abbadi cited L’Boulevard festival as an example.

The CES advocated reconsidering the place of culture in the nation’s collective consciousness in order to reform society. This would involve a number of measures, including the development of a national plan which would make use of culture as a strategic development tool.

Its other recommendations included new training courses based on Islamic principles.

To achieve the goals, the programme will need a cash infusion. The budget of the ministry of culture made up only 0.5% of the overall government budget last year. Additional funds must be found by involving business and cultural organisation working with youths, according to the CES.

Cultural infrastructures and facilities in urban planning regulations need support at the national, regional and local levels.

“This is because cultural infrastructures are seldom included in urban planning projects for new districts and cities,” sociologist Samira Kassimi told Magharebia. “From now on, this aspect should be incorporated into basic infrastructures.”

Abdelaziz Ioui, who reported back to the committee, commented that culture was a central concern for governments that devote large sums of money to it, whereas Morocco falls well short of expectations in this field.

Hopes, however, are high that the new government will make some adjustments.

Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane vowed in a government statement to promote the role of culture and treat it as a priority by making it a bigger part of development efforts.

“We will adopt an integrated approach so that culture and arts policy will become a way of strengthening national identity and opening up to other cultures and civilisations, based on the values of freedom, responsibility and innovation,” he said.

He also promised to develop community-level cultural facilities and provide them in all areas, to support young artists and to increase funding to boost national cultural output.

As any visitor to Morocco will have observed, olives play a very large role in both Moroccan culture and cuisine. Writing for the Morocco Board, Nora Fitzgerald details the joys that olive season brings.

Olive season has just come to and end…and by olive season I mean that the olives ripened, were harvested, and either pressed for oil or cured to turn them edible.  Did you know that both black olives and green olives come from the same tree?  Here is a very ripe olive from our family farm.

Did you also know that harvesting olives by hand is a labor intensive business?  In Morocco it’s all done this way: a large plastic is laid out under the tree, then you take a long bamboo stick and start to beat at the olives to knock them down.  Eventually you have to climb the tree to get to the higher branches.  Olives yield about 16 liters of olive oil per 100 kgs of olives, depending on how much the trees were watered.  The more they were watered, the juicier the olives.

I will never forget when I was 8 years old and I spent a whole day knocking all the olives off a particular tree.  At the end of the day, I had very sore hand and about 20 kgs of olives.  I was very excited to lug my harvest down the road to where they would buy them from you for about a dirham per kilo (like 6 cents per pound, for those of you who are allergic to the metric system).  I walked back with more than 20 dirhams in my pocket (2.5 dollars).  I’d never been prouder of my earnings (maybe even to this day  .  It didn’t occur to me that those olives actually belonged to my parents, and that technically, I owed them like 90% of the money.  They kindly didn’t point it out either.

Everywhere in the Moroccan countryside, you see olive trees, and under them there is wheat or barley growing.  Each farming family gets olive oil and flour for the entire year.  This way they have fresh bread and olive oil, which, along with sweet green tea, is a meal unto itself.  Talk about local, sustainable, organic and vegan….This is how it all once was.

If it were a book, it would be badly written but for a few sublime pages of surrealistic poetry. It would be a manuscript that an Arab aristocrat let fall into the hands of illiterate bandits. A manuscript from The Thousand and One Nights, updated by modern times.

The Essaouira Gnaoua and World Music Festival celebrates the music of the Gnaouas, the product of a mystic tradition with branches as widespread as Haitian Voodoo and Brazilian Candomblé. Performers include the best local and international musicians of the genre.

A picturesque port painted in blue and white, Essaouira is a travellers’ favourite and the perfect destination for a festival devoted to the feats of the Gnaouas, best known for their tasselled hats, which spin wildly as the musicians rock.

Originating through a cross-pollination of African magic and Islamic rituals, the Gnaoua brotherhoods form a structured unit around a master. He leads the music and dancing until the participants are in a trance induced by the mesmeric rhythms of the drums, the guenbri (a form of lute) and the hand-held garagab (metal castanets). During religious ceremonies, Gnaouas have been known to impale themselves on swords or beat their heads with iron balls without sustaining visible external injury.

Faint-hearted visitors have nothing to fear, the Essaouira Festival does not feature such extreme performances: the programme focuses on the purely musical elements of Gnaoua tradition and its influence on African-inspired musicians.

Related Information

Website: Essaouira Gnaoua and World Music Festival Website

The Floor

When you come to Café Clock, you have a variety of seating options. Depending on your mood, you can always find a place to match it. What’s your preference … cushions, a low stool? Maybe a small sofa — or perhaps a straight back chair? There’s even a throne or two! Take your pick.

Feeling a bit voyeuristic? Sit on The Floor and you can watch the world go by and in the early morning hours you can watch the kitchen set up for the day. Sooner or later Ismail will come in, toting large bags of fresh fruits and vegetables. Souad will survey the kitchen contents and place orders for chicken, lamb and camel. Cooking school participants arrive and get ready for a day of shopping, baking, cooking and eating. Suppliers and workers come and go as The Clock is always adding some new feature and making improvements. Tourists, locals, expats and students wind their way into the café and settle in to eat, chat, surf the net, inquire about cultural events or make new acquaintances.

The Balcony

Climb the stairs to The Balcony if you’re looking for a bright, airy space where you can peer down at the activities below or lose yourself in thought as the mobile of instruments suspended from the halqa slowly spins before your eyes. Peer into the sky above.

If you’re part of a large group, there’s alwaysThe Red Room with long tables to accommodate a party of twenty.

The redroom

There’s The Library for more intimate gatherings or quiet study — and off to one side is The Mansoura Room; another cozy corner for thosewho enjoy their privacy.

The Terrace

Looking for views and a bit of fresh air? There’s the incredible Garden Terrace with enclaves of seating and great vistas of the medina. The climb up the stairs is well worth the effort. Once you emerge onto the sun-filled terrace one of the most magnificent minarets in the medina stands right before you. And should Muslims wish to answer the call to prayer, there is the beautiful designated Prayer Room just below the terrace.

Climb to the topmost point onto The Eyrie and imgine you are atop a camel, traveling through space and time. The Garden Terrace is both intimate and expansive.

Mansoura Room

So whatever your mood, Café Clock has a spot waiting for you. Sit, lounge, work, sing, study, eat, drink, recoup, visit, do business and enjoy.

Your table awaits…

1. Tara, what first attracted you to Morocco?

It was total chance actually. I was at the Hay book festival in Granada and met an author there called Tahir Shah (The Caliphs House, In Arabian Nights). He told me about this guy who’d abandoned a successful career at the Wolseley in London to come an open a café selling camel burgers in Fez. I was fascinated and booked a ticket to go take a look about a week later. The whole place got under my skin pretty much immediately – going into the Fez medina for the first time is like stepping back 2000 years – and it becomes almost like an addiction. If you like it, it calls you. You have to keep going back.

2. Tell us about the cuisine there.

What I loved so much about discovering food in Morocco is that there is still so much that hasn’t been discovered. We all know about tagines and couscous, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much variety and diversity, but it’s little known outside of certain regions, or even towns and villages, and most of it you need to eat in somebody’s home. Some of it is reserved for special occasions like r’fisa – a chicken, lentil and fenugreek stew that is served to women after they’ve given birth, and sometimes as a special meal mid-way through Ramadan.

Then there’s the street food, again lots of obvious stuff such as you see in the night market in Jemma el Fna in Marrakech, but also lots of less obvious things like the hot, boiled snails or steamed chicken stuffed with coriander scented vermicelli that are both specialties of Fez. There’s a guy called Tami near the Café Clock who does the most amazing beans (lobia) and lentils, but they are not on his menu. You have to ask for them, but they are always bubbling away on his stovetop and I often stop there for lunch.

For me Moroccan cuisine is one that is on the brink of discovery, rather than something well established and that makes it incredibly exciting.

3. What are your favorite Moroccan ingredients and what are they used for?

That’s a difficult question. I love the spices and nowadays it’s the thing that everybody asks me to bring back for them, but there are certain ‘guidelines’ you need to consider. For example I never buy the spices that are heaped up in gloriously pretty cones on the street. After that much exposure to the air and sun they taste of sawdust. The best spices are freshly ground in the Herbalists found in all but the tiniest of towns. Generally I buy them whole and grind them at home though.

I find something new every time I go to Morocco. Last time I was in Fez I was at my regular herbalist . I was sold some extraordinary lemon cumin. The cumin is planted between lemon trees and picks up the scent and oils. The cinnamon is also fabulous, as is the Fenugreek, which is almost impossible to get in Spain.

There is virtually no dish in Morocco that doesn’t come with its own set of spices. It has a richness and almost regal appeal to it that we lack in Europe. Most commonly they’ll be cumin, paprika, dried ginger (never fresh), turmeric, coriander and fenugreek.

I also love the preserved lemons (I have three recipes for different types in my book), which add a distinct, unmistakably Moroccan flavour to dishes like the chicken tagine with preserved lemons and olives. There really is no substitute for preserved lemon and that makes it very special.

Similarly, smen is an aged, fermented butter that is used in lots of Moroccan dishes. It’s a little bit musky and cheesy and not to everyone’s taste (I’m not mad about it when used with a heavy hand), but in the hands of great cook it is sensational. At the Souk Kaat Smen (the honey and smen souk) the special breakfast is a hot baked khobz (bread) smeared with honey and smen. It’s eye-opening and something everyone should try if they go to Fez.

Finally, the Argan Oil from just south of Agadir is pretty special. Even in Morocco it’s very expensive, and it’s a bit like a walnut or almond oil in taste. Nutty, a little sweet almost like vanilla, and you can use it all on its own as a dressing. You don’t need to add anything else. I have a recipe in the book that combines oranges, fennel, capers and Argan oil, but at home I use it on all sorts of things. It’s also a wonderful dinner party trick: serve hot bread with Argan for dipping instead of olive oil. People are always wowed by it.

So it’s all these amazing discoveries that make Moroccan food what it is, and I’m discovering new things every single time I go there. Because for the most part you can’t get camel meat, or smen, in Western markets, it remains quite a secret cuisine too. I like that.

4. Is Moroccan cooking similar in any ways to Spanish cooking or Mediterranean cuisine in general?

Certainly in Spain there are lots of crossovers. The Moors occupied the Iberian peninsula for around 800 years so their culinary influences continue to be very prevalent. In Catalonia for example where I live, you get lots of dishes that combine meat and fruit like the classic goose and pears. That’s something that’s almost certainly grown out of Moroccan tagines, and Andalucia, particularly in terms of their cakes and pastries, uses lots of Moroccan flavours.

All round the Mediterranean rim you get variations on a theme – everyone has got some kind of bean dish for example, some sort of ‘hummus’ whether its made with chickpeas or fava beans, the Moroccan soup harira and the Italian minestrone aren’t worlds apart, but there’s always something that defines each country or region. That’s when it gets interesting.

5. Is quality wine made in Morocco?

Curiously enough it is. And more to the point it’s getting better all the time, though the truth is there’s an awful lot of rubbish too.

There are two key wine growing areas, the biggest being just outside of Meknes (about an hour from Fès) where you’ll find a number of Bordeaux winemakers who basically got sick of the stifling rules and regulations and came to Morocco largely so they could dance to the beat of their own drum. I like this maverick approach – it’s very Moroccan in many ways – there are no rules, so they plant what they want, make it how they please and they are having some really interesting results.

One winery that stands out in particular is Volubilia and a winemaker named Christophe at the Domaine de la Zouina. It’s a Hacienda style property with 155 hectares of vineyards in the middle Atlas, while Christophe is, as my friend Gail at Fez Food puts it: ‘a farmer with mud on his boots, soil in his blood and wisdom of one who lives daily with the challenges, rewards and setbacks Mother Nature offers.’

He makes a sensational gris (my wine of choice in hot Moroccan summers) and the kind of reds that would get Robert Parker salivating. Boozy fruit bombs that keep you warm on cold winter nights.

6. Your new book “Clock Book: Recipes from a Modern Moroccan Kitchen” is gorgeous, how did it come about?

When I went to meet Mike (the man making the camel burgers in Fez) I immediately decided to do a story on it. It was completely on spec, but I thought it was a no brainer. His chef, Tariq, took me deep into the medina to meet the camel butchers, they made their ‘secret, aphrodisiac’ kefta mix, we took them back to the Clock and cooked camel burger together. It was a real surprise. Lean meat, a great flavour vehicle rather than something strongly flavoured in and of itself, tender, and held its shape really well. In fact, I can’t think of a more perfect burger meat.

I did the story and sold it, amazingly, to Conde Nast Traveler. I thought maybe it was a bit off the wall for them, but they really liked it. After the article came out in February 2009, Mike called me and said, ‘we want to do a cookbook, and we’d like you to do it.’ So that was that really, I started going to Fez regularly to research recipes for the book.

7. What were your main inspirations (people, places, dishes) for the book?

Well, first and most importantly the team at Café Clock. Mike (owner), Max (manager), Tariq (chef) and Souad (chef) especially were supremely open in letting me come in for weeks at a time, observe, ask endless questions and throw in my own two cents worth from time to time. They also sourced recipes for me that are not served at the Clock – like the r’fisa – that I wanted to include, guided me through the markets, introduced me to stallholders and basically became my Moroccan family in many ways.

We created quite a lot of new recipes especially for the book and a lot of these came from street food that I saw on my travels. Many of the dishes I recreated back home, so they are inspired by rather than 100% authentic – the Moulay Idriss ginger lemon chicken is a good example. And the oven roasted tomatoes tossed in preserved lemon and served as a salad with mint and goats cheese was largely a result of seeing all of these things in the medina one summer morning and putting them together.

I love that Morocco is a still a culture of public ovens so you take your bread to the ferran, and you might take a terracotta urn – a tangia – filled with spiced meat to cook slowly in the embers of the hammam for several hours while you go about your business. I’ve tried to adapt this slow cooking method for western kitchens too.

Finally I took inspiration from other countries and cultures. My version of harira (the classic Moroccan soup) is served with big handfuls of herbs and lemon wedges as pho is in Vietnam.

It’s a fresh, contemporary take on traditional dishes and that really is what the book is all about. On the whole it’s quick, easy, light and bright. I realize that most people don’t have hours to spend in the kitchen so most of the recipes can be done in about 30 minutes, or at least can be prepared in 30 minutes and then forgotten about in the oven for a few hours.

8. One Moroccan dish you couldn’t live without?

I’m addicted to b’sarra – the local split pea or broad bean soup – that is traditionally eaten for breakfast. There’s a stall I go to in Fez near the Bab Boujloud that does a great one. It’s served in rough terracotta bowls with khobz and bowls of ground chilli, cumin and argan or olive oil, for sprinkling on top. Nothing sets you up for a busy day quite so well.

I’m a fan of street food anywhere in the world. There is a chickpea pie that comes out on wooden carts at completely random times through the medina (I’m still desperately searching for the recipe for it), I already mentioned the steamed chicken stuffed with vermicelli, which I like as a sandwich from a hole-in-the-wall drizzled with chilli sauce if I don’t have much time. If I do have some spare time the Café Amal, near where my little house is, does sensational spit roast chicken stuffed with coriander and chilli paste. They push it right in under the skin and serve it with chips and a yogurt dressing. I have it at least once a week when I’m in town (now the book is finished, I’m working on the renovation and planning my next book – or actually there’s three of them bubbling away in my mind).

Tara, we are planning our trip over to Fez!

See Tara´s Insider Tips on where to eat and sleep in Fez and Marrakech, Morocco here.

There’s our Cooking School for those interested in learning how to prepare some traditional Moroccan recipes which includes an unforgetable morning of shopping for ingredients in the medina souks. Clock Kitchen offers a full day of shopping, food preparation, baking (with a memorable visit to the local ‘farran’ or bakery) and, of course, enjoying the fruits of your labor as you tuck into your freshly cooked 3-course Moroccan meal in the ambient setting of Cafe Clock.

Fez Download is a 90-minute workshop on the mores and customs of Morocco. In this information-filled session you will learn some key Moroccan Arabic phrases to help you interface with the locals as well as some customs and insights into everyday life in Morocco.

We have Calligraphy workshops, Oud workshops and even Belly Dancing. And there’s always something new coming along on a periodic basis like the annual “Knit for Peace” workshops conducted by Jess Stephens of Culture Vultures www.culture-vultures.org or Argentinian Tango lessons with Tang’Aero.

Cafe Clock is your cross-cultural connection in Fes. So when you’re looking for something that takes you a little bit deeper into the swirl of color and motion that defines Fes, stop by, email or call us at The Clock to get more details about any of our fabulous workshops.

Directed by Mohamed Frites with Rafik Boubke, Majdouline Idrissi.

Rouiis is a young among others who live in the streets: homeless or “Chamkar. He falls in love with Malak, a young girl from a wealthy family. Rouiis is convinced that his marriage with this beautiful creature is senseless and impossible. But fate is such that Rouiiss realizes his dream.

This wonderful movie shot in Casablanca will be screened in the RedRoom tonight (17/06/10). All are welcome and its free!!

Derija with french subtitles

Ecstacy

Frolicking in the Batha Fountain