Day # 10: Fez Cooking Class with Ouliya

Day # 10:  Fez Cooking Class with Ouliya (Friday 12th)

In Fez we arrive at 2 am at a stunningly beautiful small hotel in the medina with intricate and colorful Moorish tile work and carvings. Perhaps we are in heaven! However, I am aware we are back in a big city and I feel I miss the tranquility of the rural mountains and our gentle and thoughtful driver, Hassan. 

Friday is a day of community prayer at the mosques, a religious obligation held just after noon so we are told the market is mostly closed. We follow a young man sent to pick us up through a maze of winding streets to Ouliya’s home for our cooking lesson. I can't imagine how we will find our way back to the hotel. 

Ouliya is 31 years old with three children aged 10 and 7 years and a 2-month old baby. At her home we also meet her 62-year-old mother who comes to help with the cooking and her 87-year-old grandmother who watches the baby while they cook ~ four generations together passing down traditions and sharing these
with tourists. 

Ouliya's mother 

Ouliya's 2 month old baby

She welcomes us with mint tea showing me how to pour from a height into the small glasses.  She starts our cooking class with asking us to cut up carrots, zucchini, and tomatoes, similar to our last cooking experience. If nothing else, I will learn how to cut with dull knives. 

Ouliya models how to kneed the dough

Ouliya helps John learn to cook

Malawai ready to be fried 

What is different this time from our last cooking class outside of Marrakesh aside from the amazing views of the Atlas Mountains surrounding us, the mud house and the caged chickens in the kitchen is that this time we are in a small lovely tiled and clean kitchen with refrigerator, gas stove, running water, pressure cooker to speed up the cooking time and have special utensils for peeling carrots and cutting garlic.  A sharp contrast to our last cooking experience using bellows to keep the wood and charcoal stove burning and having only a small dull knife for cutting.  We learn to make 4 different dishes ~ zaalouk (eggplant), taktouka (tomato and onions), malawai (crust of semolina and flour, cut up vegetables and zucchini) and both a lamb and vegetable tagine. 

Vegetarian tagine

Lamb tagine with prunes

Key spices seem to be cumin, cinnamon and turmeric. I have trouble remembering which spice goes in which dish and am not sure I will be able to replicate this at home. What I love about both of our cooking classes is how the female cooks focus on John and Steve making sure they are learning these cooking tips. I wonder whether Moroccan men do much cooking? 

 Ouliya tells me she can send us the recipes via WhatsApp and asks if we will put an evaluation on Trip Advisor! 

Sharing Recipes on WhatsApp

 Olive and vegetable oil seem to be thrown into every dish liberally. We ask about argan oil and Ouliya replies it is too expensive.  It is fun to work together chatting about various spices, Ouliya’s family, and how her children are now being taught 4 languages in school--  Berber, French, English and of course Arabic. We also talk briefly about politics asking about King Mohammed VI who she likes and tells us that he currently is visiting Fez on this day. The King is 54 with 2 children and was trained in law at the University Mohammed V of Judicial, Economic and Social Sciences in Rabat.   Naturally conversation turns to King Trump. Ouliya’s comment is priceless as she says, “he is not a normal man.”  We agree. 

Tagine is ready

Our meal together with Ouliya is outside in the courtyard of the riad and this time three of use forks and knives, although Steve sticks with his hands in memory of his India days. The food is some of the very best we had in Morocco;  while eating the call to prayer is heard. This seems to be a magical moment for me…being with friends in this amazing culture and having a Moroccan family share with us their food and traditions.  Ouliya says they have tagine every day. After the call to prayer ends we hear an Imam speaking on TV in the room off the kitchen where the grandmother and baby are. I am concerned because during the whole 3 hours we have been here the grandmother and baby (placed in a seat beside her) have been watching TV. I have not seen the grandmother talking to or holding the beautiful baby, nor has the mother taken time out to breast feed, nor has the baby cried! The baby looks content and well fed. But still I wish I could intervene talking about the side effects of screen time and the importance of verbal interactions with the baby.

After lunch we go next door where Ouliya’s husband runs a sort of bed and breakfast in a beautifully restored riad as a place to stay and a high end (for Fez) restaurant.  The Riad Ouliya has recently opened after 3 years of remodeling. Ouliya is one of the cooks here. 

Riad Ouliya

 We meet the contractor/architect who is Ouliya’s brother and he explains to us the process of doing the Moroccan tiling (called zellij) and wood carving  in an authentic way. He has designed all the tiling and supervised the wood and alabaster carving, saying he has had over 70 people working with him on this riad over the years. He is a master tile craftsman  and is worried because this artistic knowledge is becoming a lost art.  Twenty years ago he said there would have been 30-50,000 artisans and now there may be only 5-6,000 in Fez. Young people he explains do not learn to do this because it pays so low ~ $20 per day and the government does not support this restoration work. I ask how he financially can do this and he explains that you can’t take wealth with you when you die but you can leave this beauty for others to enjoy. He explains his philosophy and love for this work to me in French with passion and authenticity. I am sorry that I cannot accurately phrase his message but this artist clearly seems to me to be working towards leaving something for future generations and not for the immediate material benefits for himself. 

Ouliya and her brother, the artist 

Second floor of hotel

We have tea here learning more about the art process and admiring the carvings everywhere. This man shows us on his phone some descriptions of Moroccan art on a video done at a museum in US. Afterwards he helps us find our way home in the maze of the 9,600 narrow streets that are the medina in Fez.  He stops to explain how the tiled fountains which used to be part of every street are now in disrepair because plumbing has been brought into the house.  You can see he is disturbed by the effect of this modernization on traditional lifestyles where people met in the streets to get water from beautifully tiled fountains and chatted.

Back late afternoon after this amazing experience John and I go up to the bar on the roof top where there is a breathtaking view of the city. The call to prayer occurs again and I think it is the 3^rdone of the day with two more to go. I have a glass of wine which is permitted in this hotel and soak in the atmosphere.  We head out to a guitar concert a short block away we'd seen on a poster.  We enter another beautifully tiled riad that used to be the home of the Italian ambassador but is now dedicated to teaching about cultures. On the card it says, Rencontres des Cultures… Kassr Annoujoums.

We listen to two men play Andalusian guitar songs and feel like we are in Spain. There are only 12 people in the audience for this beautiful music in a spectacular string which is hard for me to believe. Afterwards John finds a small restaurant for some soup and I am surprised to find we are entertained by two more guitar players who sound excellent but I can’t tell exactly what language they are singing but it was not French. This has been a truly magical day.