Last week, while on holiday in Spain, we took the children on a day trip to Morocco. It was brilliant fun, but we felt that we had only scraped the surface of this amazing place and so it seemed exactly the right adventure to go on from our home in Liverpool this weekend.
Breakfast
Research (google) told me that the Moroccans enjoy these lovely semolina based pancakes with a honey and butter sauce for a breakfast treat. They sounded completely delicious and so I made them and served them with grapes for our breakfast. They were absolutely brilliant and both children ate them all!
We watched and listened to
Aladdin. Although set in a mythical kingdom, the imagery of Aladdin works well for Morocco, and in my defence (if this seems culturally insensitive) Disney have put the characters of Jasmine and Aladdin in the Moroccan pavilion in Epcot in Florida and so I am in very good company. Penny had been to see Aladdin in the West End at Christmas and so it was nice to revisit it and talk about the production.
Lunch
We ate at the Kasbah Cafe in Liverpool http://www.kasbahcafebazaar.co.uk/ . The theme of the restaurant was amazing and not only was the food brilliant, but it also acts as a bazaar and so you can buy your glasses, forks, or even your chair if you want to!!
We didn’t buy any spoons, but we did love the food (and we pretended not to mind that it was a dry restaurant). I ate a Moroccan sweet and savoury chicken pie which was called a Pastillas Fassia and was dusted with icing sugar. It was seriously delicious and I shall obsess about it until I go again.
The kids had Moroccan bread, meatballs and chips and they really liked the food too, they especially enjoyed the Moroccan Pancake dessert (more pancakes!!). The decor was warm and welcoming on this cold and blustery day and the menu was terrific value for money. If I can persuade the Kiwi to cope with a Moroccan Lemonade rather than a beer we will certainly go back!
We made
I have always really loved the coloured glasses you can buy in Morocco and I probably would have bought some when I was there if it wasn’t for the fact that we were travelling with two kids and a small backpack.
So, I thought it would be fun to make these glasses, especially as Penny had really liked the mint tea when we were there which the glasses are used for. I had some plastic coloured glasses that I had bought from the garden section in Waitrose years ago – I think they still sell them, and at this time of year in Britain these types of glasses are readily available and not very expensive. So, because I was using glasses we already had, my only expense was a gold sharpie which I bought from eBay for a couple of pounds. Penny really enjoyed decorating her glass and I made one for Freddie too (who is too little for a Sharpie).
When we had finished we made some Moroccan mint tea using mint from our garden.
I made Penny and Freddie iced tea rather than hot tea and they both really liked it (probably because of the 9 spoons of sugar!). I wonder if the Sharpie will come off in the dishwasher…?
Dinner
When we were in Morocco the kids had really like the couscous and so I found a nice kid-friendly recipe on line and cooked it up with some chicken for our tea. The recipe was easy and delicious and I will be making this for other tea many times in the future as it was super healthy too.
I love these easy and fun days we do and I am always keen to explore new places. This one had the added advantage of taking us back to our recent holiday and reminding us of what we had enjoyed there. The big question now is – where should we pretend to visit next?