Cooking classes near Marrakesh

 When visiting other countries, we always try to familiarise ourselves with local cuisine, at least as much as possible.

One way of doing this is visiting local restaurants, though it is even more exciting if there is a possibility to prepare food ourselves. It appeared that Morocco offers visitors to enjoy cocking classes; this is both an adventure and getting new useful skills in preparing Moroccan food.

Moroccan food

In Morocco, we booked a cooking class near Marrakesh – FAIM D’EPICES. The price was approx. EUR 50 per person and that included transportation, lessons in Moroccan food preparation, preparation of meals in practice, drinks and spice workshop (pick-up place usually would be arranged near the place you stay in Marrakesh, which is a norm in Morocco).

We learned how to make a complete meal, meaning bread, salad, a tajine and the special Moroccan patties. The main dish on the day we were there was the tajine of lamb with prunes. Be aware that they do not accept credit cards, so cash should be taken with you; we also paid a deposit in advance (half of the price).

Faim d’Epices operates for a while, the kitchen is large and well-equipped. We also got very useful tips on different topics, for example, how to find out if argan oil is pure or how to make sure that saffron is genuine (these ingredients are expensive and people may try to sell fake stuff).

Argan oil is an oil produced from the kernels of the argan tree and saffron is a spice derived from the flower of Crocus; saffron has long been the world’s most costly spice by weight.

Both, argan oil and saffron are specific to Morocco. In addition to this, every household prepares its own mix of different spices to be used for everyday cooking; those may include caraway, cumin, saffron, sumac, fennel, mustard and many other ingredients.

You may wish to watch on YouTube my video about the Moroccan town Tafraout (opens in a new window).