MARRAKECH MARCHE ‘

Olfactory memory

Attempted Murder in Marrakech

It all started one morning at breakfast; I was in Marrakech for a dermatology conference. The hospitality of these people is truly incredible. First stop, breakfast: scrambled eggs with cheese and vegetables, a kind of pizza cooked on the griddle to be stuffed with honey or cheese, then fruit, yogurt, croissants, mint tea, orange juice and coffee…in short, the right start to not go to the conference with an empty belly.

For lunch we went to downtown Marrakech to eat fish. I thought, we will finally eat a little light…. They served me a whole tray of fried fish, it must have been a kilo and a half of mixed fish including squid, cuttlefish, mullet, shrimp and sole.

To digest, around 3:30 p.m. we stopped at a café to talk business and for the occasion ordered a couple of slices of chocolate hazelnut cake with plenty of cream and chantilly cream, accompanied by mint tea.

After finishing the “simple” coffee, we finally went for a walk in Jamaa el Fna Square, one of the largest bazaars in the world. In the covered part of the market are countless spaces with small traders of all kinds of artifacts, teapots, lamps, carpets, decorated dishes, shoes and leather slippers. And then the spice stalls that come from all over the world, with their bright colors and pungent smells. Peppers of all shapes and colors, cumin, cardamom, paprika and turmeric: from these spices came the inspiration to create Marrakech Marché. There in the souk we enjoyed a typical dish: a griddle-baked flatbread stuffed with fried onions and a roll of filo pastry with chicken meat and soy noodles, all accompanied by plenty of mint tea. Finally it is time for dinner! We choose a quaint place where the specialty is steamed mutton head, followed by baked mutton leg and chicken tagine with raisins and prunes. Dinner over, thinking I would burst, I asked my co-workers to take a walk back to the hotel. “Good idea,” they replied, but first we had to make a stop. Three minutes later we stopped at a kiosk where I was offered a fresh, light smoothie–a mix of avocado and desert dates, a calorie bomb….. thanked them but had to refuse, I couldn’t take it, left them and reached the hotel alone for fear they would ask me later to go to some café to drink or eat something else…

In fact, the next day, they told me that before they went to bed they had stopped for a digestive ice cream!