Despite her youth as a free-spirited bohemian living abroad in Morocco, cookbook author Paula Wolfert can be a stickler for details.
Don’t call her a chef. She is a cook. And Moroccan food is not spicy. It is spiced.
Wolfert is also emphatic that her latest cookbook — “The Food of Morocco,” released this month — is not just an updated version of her first cookbook, “Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco,” released in 1973 and still in print.
During the past four years, “The Food of Morocco” has morphed into an entirely new book with a raft of fresh, previously uncollected recipes, a chapter on cooking essentials and a guide to sources.
“I understand so much more than I did then,” said the 73-year-old Wolfert from her home in Sonoma. “I wrote seven more books, so I learned a lot.”
The new cookbook, published by HarperCollins’ Ecco Press, is an ambitious tome that was four decades in the making and could become the definitive guide to Morocco’s cuisine, culture and people.
Because Wolfert lived outside Tangier from 1959 to 1976 for a total of seven, intermittent years — she has been welcomed into home kitchens with open arms. Since she left, she’s returned to Morocco seven times to visit far-flung corners of the country.
“I bring presents, and I always kiss the chefs,” she said. “The women, for some reason, like me. I move right in.”
Over the years, Wolfert has been able to document all kinds of authentic regional specialties, from the fava bean dishes of the Rif Mountains in the north to the rabbit tagines of Marrakesh in the south. (A tagine is a dish from the indigenous Berber people of North Africa, named after the uniquely shaped clay pot in which it is cooked.)
During dinner, Moroccan families always gather around a central tagine and eat by dipping their bread into one communal plate.
“It’s called baraka — good fortune,” Wolfert said. “It doesn’t matter if more people show up, there’s always enough food in a tagine.”
In a similar way, Wolfert’s new cookbook has been a collaborative effort made possible by a close-knit team of friends and colleagues. An old friend of Wolfert’s — food importer Mustapha Haddouch of Mustapha’s Fine Foods of Morocco in Seattle — offered to drive photographer Quentin Bacon all over the country.
“He took the photographer from one end of the country to the other,” she said. “And he showed him what needed to be seen.”
Bacon took sumptuous photos of spice and produce markets, saffron producers and vegetable farmers, bread bakers and cheesemakers, giving the book the look and feel of a National Geographic travelogue.
While it was Wolfert’s husband, William Bayer, who urged her to write her first Moroccan cookbook, it was an old friend, Ecco Press’s Editor-in-Chief Dan Halpern, who convinced her an update was in order. After all, Morocco has undergone enormous changes in the past 40 years.
“In the ’80s, there was a mass migration from the country to the city,” Wolfert said. “Today, 80 percent of the population lives in big cities and goes to the supermarkets.”
Wolfert was struck by how much modern Moroccans had lost touch with their own cuisine.
“They started putting their tagines into pressure cookers and didn’t make their bread anymore,” she said. “They were just like us in the 1960s, eating frozen TV dinners.”
Just as Julia Child helped lead Americans out of the wilderness of processed foods, Wolfert was pleased to find another young woman leading young Moroccans back to their traditions.
“Around 2000, along came a young girl, Choumicha Chafay, who starts a television show,” she said. “Now, they’re back cooking in tagines.”
In “The Food of Morocco,” Wolfert puts an emphasis on the “whys and wherefores” of Moroccan cooking techniques, sharing shortcuts for cooks who don’t want to spend all day in the kitchen.
As part of her top 10 tips, she suggests chopping cilantro in a food processor rather than in the traditional mortar, then freezing it in bags so you have it on hand.
You can also prepare grated onions in advance, throwing them in a food processor, then rinsing and drying them before storing them in freezer bags.
If you can only afford one spice, she suggests buying fresh Moroccan Cumin, then grinding it yourself.
“It’s extremely heady cumin,” she said. “It makes the food taste Moroccan.”
Many Moroccan dishes are steamed, requiring nothing more than a simple colander. But thanks to Wolfert, the Moroccan tagine — a conical clay pot that dates back more than 1,000 years — can now be found in many American homes.
The earthenware pot goes on top of the stove and cooks gently from the bottom up, magically blending the flavors of the spices while preserving the shape of each vegetable.
“The meat is first steamed, then the steam is reabsorbed by the food,” she said. “By that time, the walls of the tagine have gotten hot, it turns into a portable oven, and it bakes it at the end.”
“Although Morocco is one of the leading suppliers of Mediterranean capers .
.. this is the only Moroccan salad I know in which they’re featured,” Wolfert writes. “Make this on the day you intend to serve it and serve it cold but not iced.”
Fresh Tomato and Caper Salad
Makes 6 small servings
2 pounds red-ripe tomatoes, peeled, halved, seeded, and cut into small dice (about 3 cups)
1 small red onion, cut into small diced (12 cup)
2 tender celery ribs, cutinto small dice (14 cup)
1 small, green bell pepper, peeled, cored, seeded, and diced
34 preserved lemon, pulp removed, rind rinsed and diced
2 tablespoons medium to large capers, rinsed adn drained
134 teaspoons fine sea salt
12 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
3 to 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil or argan oil
Juice of 12 lemon, or to taste
Combine the tomatoes, onion, celery, bell pepper, lemon rind and capers in a bowl. Mix the salt, pepper, oil and lemon juice and pour over the salad. Carefully toss. Refrigerate for about 30 minutes before serving.
“Here is a family favorite inspired by the winter soups prepared in the Rif Mountains,” Wolfert writes. “Soups that keep both body and soul warm, as Fatima, our housekeeper, liked to say.”
Butternut Squash and Tomato Soup
Makes 4 servings
1 yellow onion, coarsely chopped (134 cup)
Coarse salt
112 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 pounds butternut, kabocha or calabaza squash, halved, peeled, seeded, and cut into 112-inch chunks (about 6 cups)
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon La Kama Spice Mixture (see recipe below)
12 cup heavy cream or creme fraiche
14 pound shredded or crumbled aged goat cheese or goat gouda, such as Cypress Grove Midnight Moon or aged goat cheese Boucon
1 teaspoon or more to taste harissa paste
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Toss the onion with 1 teaspoon coarse salt and the oil in a medium casserole, preferably earthenware or enameled cast iron, cover, and steam over medium-low heat until the onion is soft, about 10 minutes.
Add the squash, cover with a sheet of parchment paper and a lid, and steam for 20 minutes.
Add the tomato paste, spices and 4 cups hot water and bring to a boil, then cook at a simmer until the squash is tender, about 20 minutes. Remove from heat.
Transfer the soup in batches to a blender, and puree until smooth; add the cream, three-quarters of the cheese, and the harissa to the last batch of soup and puree until velvety.
Return the soup to the pot and season with salt and pepper to taste. Ladle the soup into warm bowls and top each portion with a light sprinkling of the remaining cheese.
“This is used to flavor fish, lamb and chicken tagines,” Wolfert writes. “It’s good with winter vegetables such as turnips, rutabagas, butternut squash and carrots.”
Ypu can order small quantities of whole spices from wholepice.com of Petaluma.
La Kama Spice Mixture
1 teaspoon each ground ginger and ground turmeric
1 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
12 teaspoon ground cinnamon
12 teaspoon cubeb pepper (optional)
A good pinch of grated nutmeg
Mix the ground spices. Sift through a fine sieve and store in a closed jar in a cool, dark place.
You can reach Staff Writer Diane Peterson at 521-5287 or diane.
peterson
