I am a recipe hoarder. When traveling, I browse inflight magazines for restaurants to visit, chefs to know about, and recipes to tear out and take home.   This is one such recipe created by a chef I will watch. Meryam Cherkaoui was born in Rabat and began cooking alongside her mother and grandmother. She attended the Paul Bocuse cooking school in Lyon, France. After graduating as a chef cuisinier, she returned to Morocco where she began exploring how to blend French techniques with Moroccan tastes. I will never visit the restaurant Meryam Cherkaoui works at (Mes Lalla at the Mandarin Oriental in Marrakech is totally out of my price league), but I can try to emulate a recipe of hers.

This recipe is rooted in Moroccan traditions — fresh seafood, herbs and vegetables on a disk of traditional semolina bread. It exposes us to flavor combinations beyond the usual tagines and couscous.

 

For the harcha, a traditional semolina bread

• 1 3/4 c of fine semolina.
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 10 tbsp room temperature butter
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 tsp salt
• a few good turns of a pepper mill
• a pinch of sugar
• 1/4 tsp oregano

Mix all the ingredients. Roll the dough out thinly on a baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes in a 250 C oven. While still hot, cut into 10 cm disks.

For the shrimp in chermoula

• ¼ bunch chopped parsley
• ¼ bunch chopped cilantro
• 25 g chopped garlic
• 50 cl lemon juice
• cumin
• paprika
• niora (a spicy pepper – I used a dab of harissa)
• olive oil
• 50g diced preserved lemon
• small shrimp

Mix all the ingredients together.

Marinate the shrimp in the chermoula

Saute shrimp.

For the tomato zaalouk

• 300 g tomato
• 125 g onions
• 20 g garlic
• ¼ bunch thyme
• ¼ bunch cilantro
• ¼ bunch parsley
• 60 g preserved lemon
• 30 g Dijon mustard
• 30 g tomato paste
• 75 cl olive oil
• salt and pepper

Sautee chopped onions and garlic in olive oil until soft.

Add thyme

Add peeled, seeded and diced tomatoes.

Add tomato paste salt and pepper.

Let simmer for 15 minutes over a low heat

When nearly cooked, add lemon, mustard, cilantro and parsley

Vegetable garnish

• 60 g purple olives, cut into large pieces
• radishes, sliced
• arugula

Toss olives, radishes and arugula, dress lightly with lemon and olive oil.

Compose the plate

• Spread tomato zaalouk on to harcha
• Top with shrimp chermoula
• Garnish with salad

This dish was the appetizer for Scott’s birthday dinner.  We also had a variety of Moroccan salads and a tagine — all those recipes came from my Cafe Clock cookbook that I got from our cooking class there last summer.