Moroccan cooking holidays
| country: | Morocco |
| location: | Marrakech |
| price: | From €160 - €2350 (1 day - 13 days) excluding flights. Price depends on length of trip. All classes and trips can be tailor made to suite your interests budget and requirments. See below for details |
| vouchers: | Gift vouchers can be used with this holiday |
description
Our cooking trips are designed so that they can be taken individually or combined. They can be day trips into a mountain village to cook, a few days in the mountains and valleys with a little desert, days somewhere together celebrating a birthday, in the family village, in a Kasbah or by the sea. They can be a week or so including the North and the Imperial Cities.
Always the road will be the most scenic and not the most direct, always there will be time to detour or to stay somewhere a little longer. We travel off the tourist trail to stay where there aren’t other travellers, to dine along the way as locals do, to sometimes picnic beside a river. For this wonderful reason we have decided that a maximum of six travellers maintains the intimacy of friends together, having the time of their lives.
Trips can be tailor made throughout the year to suit your interests, budget and requirements, excluding July and August.
€160 per person per day, €180 per person on Wednesdays
Classes take place in the foothills of The Atlas including all transport and lunch. The village is far off the tourist trail. The day begins at 8.30am when we will begin our journey from the riad, travelling by local big taxi to the foothills of The Atlas to an earth built village where we will shop for our produce from the little stalls. On Wednesday, market day, we can shop in the souk where you will see lots of trading rather than selling. Your mule will be waiting with his saddle bags. You will cross the river and continue into a more remote earth built village where you will cook with the wife of the muleteer who led you there. There will be time to walk and ride further into other mountain villages, to waterfalls and the choice of having lunch by the river before returning back to Marrakech at around 7pm. With respect to the gentle Berbers whose home this beautiful place is, we limit the classes to 4.
Morning tea of wonderful bread, local oil from the village press, honey from the family hives and butter churned from the cow lolling in the kitchen courtyard you will prepare couscous, tajines and breads. If you would love to take something for the children, pens, pencils, crayons, chalks, little notebooks and especially picturebooks are very, very gratefully received.
Cooking with the Aunts:
€700 - €2350 per couple (4-13 days) for the trip depending on length
These classes are combined with a trip over the Tizn Test Pass and then on to the family village, where you can stay for a couple of days or longer. There are quite wonderful walks in all directions and gorgeous carpets waiting for you to loll upon when you return. Here you will cook in an earth built kitchen, untouched by time, over ovens holding coals made early for the morning bread and then for the couscous, the brochettes and the afternoon's wonders.
Below are some examples of trips that can be tailored to your interests.
From €700 (4 days) per couple (minimum 2 guests, maximum 6)
Setting off from the riad at 7.30am to journey over the Tizn Test Pass, stopping to visit the beautiful Tin Mal Mosque. On through Taliouine where the saffron grows to Tazenakht where the beautiful carpets drop off the looms in all the houses where the ladies sit together making wonderful things.
You will make the morning bread in the kitchen bread ovens over open fires. You will breakfast either in the little kitchen orchard or indoors. You will be served morning harira, jams, honeys from the kasbah hives nearby, fruit, tea and coffee and the bread you have just baked. Lunch will be prepared with the aunts either sitting on little stools outside the kitchen door or indoors in the kitchen. Produce will be collected from the kitchen garden and the larder. Couscous, tajines, brochettes, salads, pastries are things that you will be cooking for the two days. All fresh produce will be determined by the pluckings from the family gardens. You will cook by observation. The language of the household is Berber, Abdellatif will be translating!
You will visit the community vegetable gardens and the old kasbah, take tea with other households as you wander, visit the little school and if you have some pencils etc to give to the children, they would be very gratefully received. The house is very old but comfortable, the welcome, divine! The toilets are traditional and there are hot showers.
From €1375 (9-13 days) per person or from €1875 per couple (minimum 2 guests, maximum 6)
This trip will be planned just as you would love it to be. As a starting point, we are suggesting 8 nights, a good length for a relaxed pace. You might like to add a night or two in Taroudant or to travel along the Draa Valley, then into the Dades Gorge and the Valley of the Roses, staying in a kasbah. For example:
This is another trip planned to your interests and requirements. It could be extended to include the Imperial Cities, the North and a little further South. For example:
Always the road will be the most scenic and not the most direct, always there will be time to detour or to stay somewhere a little longer. We travel off the tourist trail to stay where there aren’t other travellers, to dine along the way as locals do, to sometimes picnic beside a river. For this wonderful reason we have decided that a maximum of six travellers maintains the intimacy of friends together, having the time of their lives.
Trips can be tailor made throughout the year to suit your interests, budget and requirements, excluding July and August.
our trips
Cooking in a village kitchen: €160 per person per day, €180 per person on Wednesdays
Classes take place in the foothills of The Atlas including all transport and lunch. The village is far off the tourist trail. The day begins at 8.30am when we will begin our journey from the riad, travelling by local big taxi to the foothills of The Atlas to an earth built village where we will shop for our produce from the little stalls. On Wednesday, market day, we can shop in the souk where you will see lots of trading rather than selling. Your mule will be waiting with his saddle bags. You will cross the river and continue into a more remote earth built village where you will cook with the wife of the muleteer who led you there. There will be time to walk and ride further into other mountain villages, to waterfalls and the choice of having lunch by the river before returning back to Marrakech at around 7pm. With respect to the gentle Berbers whose home this beautiful place is, we limit the classes to 4. Morning tea of wonderful bread, local oil from the village press, honey from the family hives and butter churned from the cow lolling in the kitchen courtyard you will prepare couscous, tajines and breads. If you would love to take something for the children, pens, pencils, crayons, chalks, little notebooks and especially picturebooks are very, very gratefully received.
Cooking with the Aunts: €700 - €2350 per couple (4-13 days) for the trip depending on length
These classes are combined with a trip over the Tizn Test Pass and then on to the family village, where you can stay for a couple of days or longer. There are quite wonderful walks in all directions and gorgeous carpets waiting for you to loll upon when you return. Here you will cook in an earth built kitchen, untouched by time, over ovens holding coals made early for the morning bread and then for the couscous, the brochettes and the afternoon's wonders.
Below are some examples of trips that can be tailored to your interests.
From €700 (4 days) per couple (minimum 2 guests, maximum 6)
Setting off from the riad at 7.30am to journey over the Tizn Test Pass, stopping to visit the beautiful Tin Mal Mosque. On through Taliouine where the saffron grows to Tazenakht where the beautiful carpets drop off the looms in all the houses where the ladies sit together making wonderful things.
You will make the morning bread in the kitchen bread ovens over open fires. You will breakfast either in the little kitchen orchard or indoors. You will be served morning harira, jams, honeys from the kasbah hives nearby, fruit, tea and coffee and the bread you have just baked. Lunch will be prepared with the aunts either sitting on little stools outside the kitchen door or indoors in the kitchen. Produce will be collected from the kitchen garden and the larder. Couscous, tajines, brochettes, salads, pastries are things that you will be cooking for the two days. All fresh produce will be determined by the pluckings from the family gardens. You will cook by observation. The language of the household is Berber, Abdellatif will be translating!
You will visit the community vegetable gardens and the old kasbah, take tea with other households as you wander, visit the little school and if you have some pencils etc to give to the children, they would be very gratefully received. The house is very old but comfortable, the welcome, divine! The toilets are traditional and there are hot showers.
From €1375 (9-13 days) per person or from €1875 per couple (minimum 2 guests, maximum 6)
This trip will be planned just as you would love it to be. As a starting point, we are suggesting 8 nights, a good length for a relaxed pace. You might like to add a night or two in Taroudant or to travel along the Draa Valley, then into the Dades Gorge and the Valley of the Roses, staying in a kasbah. For example: - 5 nights at the Riad with 2 cooking classes including lunch and dinner
- 1 day in Essaouira, an old Portuguese settled fishing port having lunch (included) and roaming the charming medina in an accompanied shopping extravaganza to hidden places holding hearts' desires
- 3 nights in the family village in the middle Atlas - fully inclusive and accompanied by us! Cooking, walking, relaxing and eating!
This is another trip planned to your interests and requirements. It could be extended to include the Imperial Cities, the North and a little further South. For example:
- 5 nights at the Riad with 2 cooking classes including lunch and the evening feast
- 1 day in Essaouira having lunch and roaming the charming medina of this old Portuguese settled fishing port with an accompanied shopping extravaganza finding hearts' desires in hidden places.
- 2 nights in the family village in the middle Atlas - fully inclusive cooking, walking, relaxing, eating!
- 1 night in the desert in a tent - fully inclusive with cooking class
- 2 nights in a kasbah
how this holiday makes a difference
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The journeys we make together are, where possible, staying with families or locally owned Kasbahs or little houses inside seaside medinas. Our cooking classes are in village kitchens giving the ladies of the house a sense of value from a world outside of theirs. We take with us things for the children along the way; pencils, pens, chalks and notebooks. We are sensitive to the societies we move amongst by keeping our visitors to a small number and our transport other than 4x4s. Abdellatif speaks the Berber of the Atlas Mountain people and tells the stories as we sit, dine, relax or work the loom all together.
We use the mule men from the village, purchase tajines for the cooking class from the family kiln and of course there are four ladies involved in the teaching of the class.We are about to engage in a “Gap Year” project with Melbourne Girls’ Grammar School in Australia, the alma mater of Edwina. For three months girls from this school will volunteer their services in the rural and city school of Morocco. From October 2008, 5% of the cooking class fees will be donated to the village school. This will be an annual donation. During our guests holiday, Abdellatif talks about life in Morocco and we have lots of books in the salons about Islam helping to promote understanding or Moroccan culture and life. All staff are involved in our cooking classes and are encouraged to bring new recipes and ideas to the classes and are educated in the correct procedure for cooking over gas. We shop always locally, visiting the supermarket only for alcohol. We shop with baskets instead of plastic bags. We remind guests that we are on the edge of the desert and to think about this when showering. I have educated staff to not leave taps running and to resist the temptation of filling the sponge with detergent and to not use fresh water for washing the street. We also use long life bulbs even if the light is a bit ‘white’! I am encouraging the use of vinegar and baking soda as cleaning agents. We re-cycle paper for writing notes and try to educate the children in the street to not drop lolly papers, the adults are another issue! Re-cycling is something not understood within the medina by the rubbish collectors, although bread is disposed of in accordance with Islam. We recycle as much as possible including egg cartons back to the egg man, glass bottles back to the supermarket. On cooking days, I save the vegetable waste, to give to the donkey men. Coffee grinds and tea leaves go into a bag of soil for the pots. Everyone coming from Australia brings me baking soda for cleaning...I thought I'd found it here but it was yeast! We employ 4 full time cleaning Moroccan staff who are all educated in service in accordance with the riad's modus operandi including considered use of water and electricity, doors and windows opened and fresh flowers as (opposed to air fresheners and rooms closed up), clothes washed in a low energy machine using cold water and hung in the sunshine, energy efficient dishwasher instead of taps running over sponges laden with detergent. We also have a Moroccan accountant and the website was also designed by a Moroccan. We do not own a car preferring to walk or take cabs. We support a young Moroccan who has just set himself up with a car rental company. I take guests on shopping extravaganzas to places such as Ayas where local ladies are employed to embroider beautiful clothes, to make necklaces etc with the money going into their own bank accounts. Also to Reda a young spice trader deep inside the Malah, to Mohammed who makes divine tassles with his young deaf son, to places off the tourist trail where the money spent stays with the artisans. |
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