As you all know I love food and cooking, so if I did nothing else in Marrakech (yeah right), I wouldn't have dreamt of missing out on learning how to make a traditional tagine. I attended a cooking class at La Maison Arabe - a beautiful old Riad, which has a history linked to food as far back as the 1930's. The cooking workshop, which lasted 3 hours, was so fun, especially the loud 'la-la-la-la-las!' from our head chef!
We started off with a relaxing beverage and brief history about Marrakech and it's link with the Riad (to which Winston Churchill was a regular whenever he visited Marrakech back in the day). We then had a visit to a local communal bread oven where we watched bread being made the traditional way, were given a short course on spices and their medicinal benefits and finally a lesson on how to make traditional mint tea.
Back at the Riad we where guided step-by-step in a professional teaching kitchen in how to cook a chicken tagine, make roses from tomatoes, prepare an aubergine and green pepper salad and at the end of it all we got to eat what we had made along with a tasty dessert. After the class we were each given a tagine pot as a thank you gift, which was great as it saved me having to hunt one down. To top it all off I was given a special tour of the hotel.
The tour was great as it gave me a great sense of how grand the hotel was and I loved all the tear drop shaped lanterns, which were specifically designed for the hotel by Yahya Rouach along with the decorative features in the many rooms…