Hi everyone for the last few days I have been in Morocco.
I was brought out here by Wanderlust Voyages on a food and history tour.
I'm actually here with my parents traveling and I hadn't planned on actually making a video
while I was here but I- we have a really, really exciting experience that we're going to be
enjoying today and I figured I would I would put it on camera and share it with you.
In about an hour I'm going to be leaving Kasbah Mohayut which is the riyadh that we've been staying
and it's right here on the edge of the dunes in the Sahara and we're
actually going to be taking camels deep into the dunes to make medfouna or tabadirt of the Berber people
who were the original inhabitants of Morocco so I'm really, really excited,
and I can't wait to bring you along with me.
Nomadic medfouna, Berber pizza, this time on Tasting History.
So the wind in the desert was really, really strong and ruined all of my audio so I am re-recording
all of the audio to this in Marrakech where I'm staying at La Sultana Hotel which is fantastic, absolutely lux.
I am staying in the Pelican room, fantastic.
Anyway, this dish tabadirt not only is it delicious
but the people who make it the Berbers of Northern Africa who call themselves Amazigh
are some of the kindest most welcoming people I think I have ever met,
plus our driver Hameed is a Berber so not only has he been able to get us to the desert and safely through
a snowstorm in the Atlas Mountains but he's also been able to teach us the history, the culture,
and something about the food of the Berber people.
He even invited us to his family's house so we got to watch his mother make couscous,
and try it with them. It was really, really delightful.
Now couscous is not only a Berber dish, it is a Moroccan dish in general,
and I will be making that in the future
but for today it is which is tabadirt, Berber word for what is often called now Berber pizza.
Though it's more of a calzone because it is stuffed.
It's also called medfouna which is the Arabic word,
and that's usually how you'll see it today around most of the country,
and it comes from the word that means to bury because
that is originally how it was made buried under coals in in a pit in the sand out in the Sahara.
Though today it's usually made in an oven because there aren't that many nomads left
going across the deserts but there are still some and they do make it in this traditional way,
and so I am really fortunate that Paradise du Sahara and Wanderlust Voyages who sponsored me coming to Morocco
and basically sponsored this video as well were able to find
people who could still make it in this manner so I could watch it done.
See Megan Lauer from Wanderlust Voyages knows the show she's a fan of Tasting History so she knows
that I love food and history so she crafted this entire trip around my passions.
Wanderlust does trips based on food and history but also outdoor adventures,
and golf, and yoga. They do big groups, they also do small groups like me and my parents who are with me on this trip.
The entire trip is based around your passions, your budget, and your schedule.
Also because they're based partly here in Morocco you get the expertise of a Moroccan tour company
but they're also based partly in the United States so you get the ease of working with an American company
and I love Morocco but I would not do this trip without some help.
It's just too hard to navigate and so Wanderlust really provided all of the help that we needed.
They were absolutely fantastic and so thank them- I thank them. Thank you Wanderlust for for bringing me and my parents to Morocco and
for setting us up with Moha who helped us get all of the ingredients to make our tabadirt.
Our first stop was the souk, or market, in Risani.
It's where many of the local people as well as nomads and people from bigger towns bring produce and other goods to sell.
You can buy olives, dates, pottery,
donkeys, livestock but it was the vegetables and salt that we were there for.
They also sell spices and they come in huge piles but our guide Moha said that
for the best quality spices we had to go to the small village of Hassalabied and visit Abdul.
This man not only sells every spice and every herb you could possibly imagine
but he knows everything about them and what they're used for medicinally.
He's like a pharmacist that was also able to sell me long pepper and spikenard.
Now neither of these are in the Berber pizza but we did get the cinnamon, black pepper, cumin, and ginger for that
as well as plenty of Morocco's most famous spice mixture ras el hanout
which it means the top or the head of the shop.
And it's a mixture of all the best spices that a spice shop has to offer.
Abdul's version has 44 different spices,
and I don't even know if I could name 44 spices but the scent and the flavor is just so typically Moroccan.
Now after we left Abdul's we headed not that far to a nearby oasis where we got to watch people
taking water from the well and we got to see how they channeled the water into the oasis to irrigate their crops.
Each family has several plots that they can grow different foods on as well as several that they can leave fallow.
And while we had already got all the vegetables that we needed
I did get to munch on the absolute sweetest carrot I have ever had in my entire life.
It has ruined all other carrots for me.
After that it was finally time to head into the dunes so my mother father and I mounted our camels
and began the trek and if I could afford the theme to 'Lawrence of Arabia it would be playing right now.
Of course we could have also just taken a four-wheel drive vehicle which is what Moha did but where is the fun in that.
I really wanted to ride a camel.
Now as soon as we did arrive it was time to start the tabadirt,
though actually Hoga and Zorha who were doing the cooking had already begun
because making the fire takes quite a while and the dough takes hours.
Traditionally the nomads would start this dough of durum wheat, salt, water, and yeast in the morning
and then they would let it rise as they traveled across the desert so that it would be ready when they stopped for their midday meal.
But as Hoga and Zorha are not nomads I'm pretty sure they just made it at the camp.
And it is clear it is not their first time making it as Zorha's dough rolling technique left me feeling like
she should be the one hosting a cooking show on YouTube.
It was absolutely hypnotic.
Hoga was in charge of the filling which can be made of many things but is typically vegetables and spices.
She used a mix of green onions, tomatoes, carrots, and herbs like coriander.
Then there's also hardened fat usually from a sheep or goat that melts when heated that binds everything together.
She also added a little olive oil and then came the spices:
black pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cumin, ras el hanout and some salt.
Now today when it's made in an oven meat is often added but
over hot coals in the sand it bakes so quickly that meat doesn't have time to cook
so it tends to just be the vegetables which is how they're making it.
Then once it's baked they remove it from the coals but not wanting to waste anything including the heat
they used what was left to heat the tea that we'd be drinking with the tabadirt.
Then they brushed off the bread and told me that it's not sand but just ash
because when the sand gets really hot it doesn't actually stick to the bread like it would if it was cool.
Once the top of the Earth was cleaned off it was ready to eat and we hoped to eat outside
but the wind had really picked up and it started to sprinkle, a blessing in the Sahara,
but not ideal for a picnic so we followed Hoga into a nearby tent and watched as she sliced into the tavadirt.
On the very first cut the entire tent was just filled with this aroma of spices and and the onions and
we have had a lot of wonderful food here in Morocco but honestly nothing compares to the tavadirt.
It's definitely my favorite dish and my mother agrees.
I ended up eating probably more than my fair share but I do not apologize and I would absolutely do it again.
Though it did make it so I wasn't really hungry when we got to the Paradise du Sahara camp where we were staying that evening
but that didn't stop me from eating a bit of tagine anyway.
I really want to thank everyone here in Morocco who who made this whole trip possible.
Wanderlust Voyages for setting it up and Paradis du Sahara and everyone for for just making this happen.
It was truly something I will never forget.
And again if you are traveling to Morocco, which you should, I cannot recommend Wanderlust Voyages enough.
They are the easiest, safest and frankly most educational way to travel here.
I'm going to put there details in the description,
and I will see you next time on Tasting history.