Food
Michele Roberts on the delights of Moroccan cuisine
Published 21 March 2005
Food - Camus knew how to clean chickpeas - one more reason to prefer him to Sartre
I didn't know that Albert Camus was interested in chickpeas, or indeed in cooking, until fairly recently. Aged 18, I read Camus for French A-level. La peste changed my life. I became an existentialist,
saved up my pocket money and got to Bunjie's
Coffee House, off London's Charing Cross Road, where men in black polo necks told suburban girls like me that, though not up to scratch intellectually, we were OK for bed. Luckily, I then encountered Simone de Beauvoir. For years Camus remained my model writer, even as I struggled to reconcile imagination, mind, body, gender. At the point where I discovered women writers could cheerfully be subversive, experimental and powerful, I read Camus's unfinished novel, Le premier homme, the manuscript of which was found with him in the crashed car where he died. This is his most touching work: he describes his poverty-stricken childhood in Algiers, its hard beauty that nourished him, his fierce grandmother who made him help with the cooking. Here was a man who learned how to pick over and clean chickpeas. Another reason to prefer Camus to Sartre.
I didn't know what pied-noir meant. Hazily, I imagined the white newcomers to Algeria scorching the soles of their feet on the hot sand. Burning their feet black. Aline Benayoun, author of Casablanca Cuisine: French North African Cooking, tells a different story. She says that pied-noir is "an expression apparently derived from the amazement of the sandal-wearing Arabs as they watched French soldiers landing on their shores wearing highly polished military boots". Her simple recipes point to a complex cultural heritage, deriving not only from immigration by French, Italians and Spaniards, but also from how North Africa was home to the Sephardim, descended from the Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal at the end of the 15th century. Benayoun grew up in Casablanca, in Morocco, and moved after independence to the south of France. She gives us recipes passed down from her mother and grandmother: "I have jealously guarded the aromatic combination of our multicultural roots - French, Spanish, Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian and Sephardic, with a sprinkling of Italian influence" as well as nods towards Jewish dietary laws.
This cuisine is mostly delicate and light, as befits a hot climate, and avoids the butter, cheese and wine beloved of French cooks in favour of olive oil, spices and herbs. It relies on fresh produce, on simplicity, on the learned discrimination that knows how not, as Benayoun puts it, to gild the lily. Her tagines rely on meat (mostly lamb or chicken) flavoured with lemon and olives, quinces, prunes and almonds, thyme and mint, or, most intriguingly, pears. Her pastries wrap nuts and marzipan in filo. A fried egg inside becomes brik a l'oeuf. Mouth-watering stuff.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
