Page 32 - Dispatches - June 2022

Fed by the Embers
Moveable Feast

By Laura Chavanne

Laura regularly makes Marrakesh’s tangia tradition
Moroccan food at
home as a reminder of
her food-filled visit in
2015.

Right: The
experience of
collecting tangia
ingredients and
bringing them to
the hammam to be
slowly cooked in
embers is as unique
as the dish itself.

O.A.T. Moroccan
Adventure

Chances are, you’ve heard of tagine, which calling it “cooking” might be a stretch, men
refers to both Morocco’s most ubiquitous are still responsible for preparing tangia—a
Idish and the vessel used to prepare it. notable distinction in traditional households,
While the term tangia shares the same dual where only women cook at home. Because
meaning, it is anything but ubiquitous, found the craftsmen who popularized tangia were
Created by Mike almost exclusively in the city of Marrakesh. often unmarried, the dish is also known as
Sanders, 2-time The method of preparation also has a highly “bachelor’s stew.”
traveler from specific sense of place.
Corvallis, OR Regardless of which meat you choose for
The tangia tradition began with craftsmen tangia—most commonly lamb or beef, but
Watch Video working long days in the Marrakesh souks. sometimes chicken, goat, or even camel—it
Rather than cook at home, the men visited the cooks slowly in its own fat, similar to a French
local butcher to fill an urn-shaped clay pot confit. Traditionally, the only other ingre-
with meat, spices, smen (fermented butter), dients are garlic, spices, fermented butter,
and a very small amount of water. They then and sometimes preserved lemon. The most
brought their filled tangia, covered with difficult part of recreating this dish at home is
parchment paper, to the local bath known waiting 5 to 6 hours for a low oven to perform
as a hammam. The attendant responsible culinary alchemy, transforming these simple
for stoking the hammam’s furnace used components into a melt-in-your-mouth
the embers to cook multiple tangia at once, delight.
keeping track of which pot belonged to which
worker, who would return hours later to To enjoy as Moroccans do, forgo utensils
retrieve the lusciously tender, slow-cooked and use flatbread to scoop up the meat—and
stew. sop up all those decadent juices. And while a
young bachelor might be content to make a
Covered with Today, the process remains largely the same, meal of meat alone, we recommend serving a
parchment paper, the though residents of Marrakesh now serve salad alongside it, like the eggplant za’alook
tangia locks in every the dish outside the souks at celebrations and recipe that follows.
drop of moisture. gatherings of family and friends. And while

DISPATCHES • JUNE

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