The cooking class is offered in the beautiful Haha-region 35 km south of Essaouira. This is the land of the Berbers, Morocco’s indigenous population. The Berbers of the Haha hills cultivate crops and keep animals, mainly goats and sheep.
We visit a local souk featuring freshly harvested fruit and vegetables, in addition to meat, eggs, honey – in short, all the staples for daily living, including the essential ingredients for our Berber cooking class.
The class takes place at an ecological farm, centred around an authentic Berber kitchen stocked with traditional items for food preparation.
Khadija and Khadija, two lovely local women, show you how they roast barley grains on the fire, and then grind them in a stone mill to produce the flour and semolina used as the basis for traditional flat bread and couscous. We bake flat bread in a clay oven and steam couscous in a traditional clay pot.
We learn to make a traditional tagine of vegetables and goat meat with Moroccan spices and olive oil – oil derived from the olive trees growing on the farm.
Depending on the weather, lunch is served outside if at all possible. Eating in beautiful, calm and natural surroundings is a special event. Following the meal, we enjoy tea infused with fresh herbs from the garden.
As we will be driving through the Argan zone, you have the option to visit an Argan oil cooperative and learn about the production of this beautiful oil - in all the world, a product unique to this area. They will offer us a taste of the lovely things they make with it, too.
Very likely you will see the famous goats in the trees on this tour to the south of Essaouira.
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