Everywhere you go in the country – whether walking through the central square in Marrakech, down an alley in Salé, through a village in the mountains – you will smell the scents that have permeated our lives for centuries, maybe even millennia: the smell of meals cooking in clay pots, of hot oil, sizzling onion, garlic and ginger, and on top of that the spices that characterize our most famous dishes.
But it was the roots that lie at the root of all.
Onions were used by the Ancient Berbers and Egyptians, who venerated them, seeing their concentric circles as symbolic of eternal life. In our folk culture onion has many medicinal uses: it are believed to be good for high blood pressure, to cure headaches, to improve all bodily functions: even to be an aphrodisiac! Berber warriors going into battle would even rub their skin with onions to toughen it up and to give them courage.
As boy, playing in the mountains, where the bees are known to be particularly ferocious, we would always carry an onion with us, not only to cook as part of our lunch in our little tajine, but to rub on a bee sting if we were unlucky enough to draw the attention of the industrious creatures. Not that we deliberately tried to aggravate our bees, you understand, but a fresh honeycomb is a hard prospect for boys to resist, and sometimes we gave into temptation and were justly punished…
Garlic has been cultivated in the region for thousands of years, not just for the depth of flavour it gives to a dish, but also because of a belief that it thins the blood, gives energy (particularly sexual energy), discourages parasites and improves the digestive system. Likewise, ginger root is served in tea and tisanes to aid digestion and to treat nausea: and it's a great winter warmer!