If you are in Morocco as a tourist and have a free afternoon then I would recommend attending a Moroccan cooking class which will teach you how to mix the local flavours to create an authentic Moroccan tagine.
My cooking class was in Marrakesh but pretty much any Moroccan town now offers cooking classes so just enquire in your hotel or at the tourist office.
For my cooking class I attended an evening session at La Maison Arabe in Marrakesh where I learned to make Moroccan tea and chicken tagine.
The class was very small with only two other people but La Maison Arabe operates several larger classrooms as well as one on one cooking sessions.
My Moroccan Cooking Class
Our tutor was Yousef, who explained the history of the spices and what we were about to do in detail, with a little personal flavour about certain specifics relating to Marrakesh cooking. First, watch this video below then read on to find out more.
Cooking With Moroccan Spices
He first showed us the spices, made us smell them and then he told us about the history of Moroccan cooking. Following this, a lady joined us who showed us how to make authentic Moroccan tea using mint and lots of sugar.
After the tea making exercise we proceeded upstairs to the cooking classroom. Like I mentioned already, La Maison Arabe has various classrooms, all specializing in cooking classes with high tech equipment.
Getting Down To Business
We were in classroom two which is for smaller groups up to 6 or 8 people. Here we began by learning to make bread followed by preparing the vegetables and slicing the onion.
Once that was out of the way we made the side dish and then put the chicken in the tagine dish.
We also learned how to decorate the dish with some lemon and tomato peel while Yousef explained how to make a creamy desert with orange water which was absolutely delicious!
About half an hour after the chicken started cooking everything was ready and we sat down to eat it all in the downstairs restaurant!