Matbakh Maghribi · The Moroccan Table

Moroccan Cooking Without Vegetable Oil

Step into a riad kitchen where tagines murmur over low coals, saffron blooms in warm ghee, and round loaves come back from the neighborhood oven still breathing steam. Slow, spiced, patient cooking from the medinas of Morocco.

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Smen✦ Ghee✦ Zit Zitoun
A carefully plated Moroccan dish on a dark wooden table
✦ Lamb Tagine
From the recipe collection
Smen

Butter of the Medina

Moroccan cooking has always leaned on butter, ghee, and smen, the aged butter of the souk. Every tagine and cookie in this collection begins with one of them, never with a refined seed oil.

Zit Zitoun

Olive Oil of the Groves

Cold pressed olive oil from old groves dresses the salads, seals the bread, and carries the chermoula. It is the second pillar of the Moroccan larder, poured with a generous hand.

Abadan

Never Vegetable Oil

No seed oils, no shortcuts. Only the traditional fats that the home kitchens and food stalls of the medina have trusted for generations.

✦
From Our Kitchen

Moroccan Recipes

Six beloved dishes from the tables of the medina, each cooked with the honest fats that bring out the best in every spice.

Medina Lamb tagine with olives and preserved lemon in a rich amber sauce

Lamb Tagine

With olives and preserved lemon

2 hr 45 min·4 servings·Medium

The great centerpiece of the Moroccan table. Lamb shoulder simmered gently in ghee with saffron, ginger, and turmeric until it falls from the bone, finished with green olives and preserved lemon.

Ingredients

  • 1 kg lamb shoulder, cut into large pieces
  • 3 tbsp ghee
  • 2 onions, grated
  • 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
  • 1 tsp ground ginger
  • 1 tsp turmeric
  • A generous pinch of saffron threads, soaked in warm water
  • 2 preserved lemons, quartered, flesh scraped away
  • 150 g green olives, rinsed
  • A small bunch of cilantro, tied, plus salt and black pepper

Instructions

  1. Melt the ghee in a tagine or heavy pot over medium heat and brown the lamb in batches, seasoning with salt and pepper.
  2. Return all the meat, add the grated onions, garlic, ginger, and turmeric, and stir until fragrant, about 3 minutes.
  3. Pour in the saffron with its soaking water and enough warm water to come halfway up the meat, then tuck in the cilantro bundle.
  4. Cover and simmer very gently for 2 hours, turning the meat once or twice, until it is nearly falling apart.
  5. Add the olives and preserved lemon peel and simmer uncovered 15 minutes more, letting the sauce thicken to a glossy amber.
  6. Discard the cilantro bundle, taste for salt, and serve straight from the pot with warm bread.
Essaouira Chermoula grilled fish fillet with herbs and lemon on a warm plate

Chermoula Grilled Fish

Whole fish in herb chermoula

1 hr·4 servings·Easy

The way the port towns cook their catch. A whole white fish slashed to the bone, rubbed inside and out with a bright chermoula of cilantro, garlic, and cumin in olive oil, then grilled over coals.

Ingredients

  • 1 whole sea bass or bream, about 1.2 kg, cleaned, or 4 firm fillets
  • 1 large bunch cilantro, leaves and tender stems
  • Half a bunch of flat leaf parsley
  • 4 garlic cloves
  • 2 tsp ground cumin
  • 2 tsp sweet paprika
  • A pinch of cayenne
  • Juice of 1 large lemon, plus wedges to serve
  • 90 ml cold pressed olive oil
  • 1 tsp salt

Instructions

  1. Pound or blend the cilantro, parsley, garlic, cumin, paprika, cayenne, and salt with the lemon juice, then work in the olive oil to make a loose paste.
  2. Cut three slashes to the bone on each side of the fish and rub the chermoula deep into the cuts, the cavity, and the skin.
  3. Let the fish marinate 30 minutes at cool room temperature.
  4. Heat a grill or heavy pan until a drop of the marinade sizzles at once.
  5. Grill the fish 6 to 8 minutes per side (3 to 4 minutes for fillets) until the skin chars in places and the flesh flakes at the bone.
  6. Rest 5 minutes, spoon over any remaining chermoula, and serve with lemon wedges.
Souk Zaalouk, a rustic salad of eggplant and tomato glistening with olive oil

Zaalouk

Smoky eggplant and tomato salad

40 min·4 servings·Easy

The cooked salad no Moroccan spread is complete without. Eggplant and ripe tomatoes collapsed together with garlic, cumin, and paprika, mashed rough and glossed with olive oil.

Ingredients

  • 2 large eggplants, about 700 g
  • 4 ripe tomatoes, grated, skins discarded
  • 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
  • 90 ml cold pressed olive oil, plus more to finish
  • 1½ tsp ground cumin
  • 1½ tsp sweet paprika
  • A pinch of cayenne (optional)
  • Juice of half a lemon
  • A handful of cilantro and parsley, chopped
  • Salt, to taste

Instructions

  1. Char the whole eggplants over a flame or under a hot broiler, turning, until the skins blacken and the flesh is soft, about 15 minutes.
  2. Let them cool, peel away the burnt skin, and chop the flesh roughly.
  3. Warm the olive oil in a wide pan and soften the garlic for 1 minute without coloring.
  4. Add the grated tomatoes, cumin, paprika, cayenne, and salt and cook 8 minutes until thickened.
  5. Fold in the eggplant and cook 10 minutes more, mashing with the back of the spoon to a rough, jammy texture.
  6. Stir in the lemon juice and herbs, then serve warm or at room temperature under a final ribbon of olive oil.
Ramadan Harira, a thick tomato and lentil soup in a deep bowl

Harira

Tomato, lentil, and chickpea soup

1 hr 20 min·6 servings·Medium

The soup that breaks the fast in every Moroccan home. Tomatoes, lentils, and chickpeas simmered in ghee with ginger and cinnamon, thickened at the end until it coats the spoon like velvet.

Ingredients

  • 3 tbsp ghee
  • 250 g lamb, cut into small dice (optional)
  • 1 large onion, finely chopped, plus 2 celery stalks with leaves
  • 800 g ripe tomatoes, grated, or crushed tinned tomatoes
  • 150 g brown or green lentils, rinsed
  • 200 g cooked chickpeas
  • 1 tsp ground ginger, 1 tsp turmeric, and ½ tsp cinnamon
  • A large bunch of cilantro and parsley, chopped
  • 3 tbsp flour whisked into 250 ml cold water
  • Salt, black pepper, and lemon wedges to serve

Instructions

  1. Melt the ghee in a deep pot and brown the lamb, if using, with the onion and celery for 5 minutes.
  2. Stir in the ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, salt, and pepper, then add the tomatoes and cook 10 minutes until saucy.
  3. Add the lentils and 1.5 litres of water, bring to a simmer, and cook gently 40 minutes.
  4. Add the chickpeas and half the herbs and simmer 10 minutes more.
  5. Whisk the flour and water once more and pour it in slowly, stirring, until the soup turns silky and lightly thickened, about 5 minutes.
  6. Finish with the remaining herbs and serve steaming, with lemon wedges and dates on the side.
Ferran Khobz, round Moroccan bread loaves dusted with semolina

Khobz

Everyday Moroccan round bread

2 hr 30 min·4 loaves·Easy

The round loaf that does the work of fork and spoon at the Moroccan table. A simple semolina dough enriched with olive oil, pressed flat and baked until the crust crackles.

Ingredients

  • 400 g bread flour
  • 100 g fine semolina, plus more for dusting
  • 7 g instant yeast
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1½ tsp salt
  • 300 ml warm water
  • 3 tbsp cold pressed olive oil, plus more for the bowl
  • 1 tsp anise seeds (optional)
  • 1 tbsp sesame seeds (optional)
  • A little flour, for shaping

Instructions

  1. Whisk the flour, semolina, yeast, sugar, salt, and anise seeds in a large bowl.
  2. Add the warm water and olive oil and knead 10 minutes to a smooth, supple dough.
  3. Turn the dough in an oiled bowl, cover, and let it rise 1 hour until doubled.
  4. Divide into 4 balls, flatten each into a disc about 2 cm thick on a semolina dusted tray, and scatter with sesame seeds.
  5. Cover and rise again 40 minutes, then prick each loaf a few times with a fork.
  6. Bake at 220°C (430°F) for 18 to 20 minutes until golden and hollow sounding, and cool under a cloth so the crust stays tender.
Tea Hour Ghriba, cracked almond cookies dusted with icing sugar beside mint tea

Ghriba

Cracked almond cookies with ghee

50 min·24 cookies·Easy

The crackled cookie of the mint tea hour. Ground almonds bound with ghee and perfumed with orange blossom water, rolled in icing sugar so each one bakes into its own snowy web.

Ingredients

  • 300 g ground almonds
  • 150 g sugar
  • 80 g ghee, melted and cooled
  • 2 eggs, lightly beaten
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • Zest of 1 lemon
  • 2 tbsp orange blossom water
  • A pinch of salt
  • ½ tsp cinnamon (optional)
  • 100 g icing sugar, for rolling

Instructions

  1. Stir the ground almonds, sugar, baking powder, lemon zest, cinnamon, and salt together in a wide bowl.
  2. Add the melted ghee, eggs, and orange blossom water and mix to a soft, sticky dough.
  3. Rest the dough 15 minutes so the almonds drink in the moisture.
  4. Roll walnut sized balls, then roll each generously in icing sugar.
  5. Set them on a lined tray with room to spread and press each very lightly.
  6. Bake at 170°C (340°F) for 12 to 14 minutes until cracked and just set, still soft at the center.
  7. Cool completely on the tray, then serve with hot mint tea.
A cook working at a warm stove in a busy home kitchen
Our Kitchen

The Kitchen Behind Cofrix Matbakh

Cofrix Matbakh is a small home kitchen devoted to the cooking of Morocco, where a meal is measured in patience, the spices are toasted before they are ground, and the tagine is never hurried off the coals. We write these recipes down the way they are still cooked around family tables and in the lanes of the medina, slowly, generously, and with the lid kept on.

Our only house rule is an old one: butter and ghee from the dairy, smen aged the traditional way, and olive oil pressed from old groves, nothing else. Vegetable oil never comes through our door, because it never sat on the tables we learned from.

Bssaha, may it feed you well.