Derb 37

After everything is cleaned up and the house is quiet. Bread, olive oil, a handful of olives, maybe some cheese.

The olive oil is from a farm in the Haouz — green, peppery, strong enough that bread and oil is a complete meal. The olives are the cracked ones with preserved lemon and herbs. The bread is whatever is left from the day.

The meal that gets eaten the most and the one nobody sees.

The stalls at Jemaa el Fna — identical carts, identical pyramids of oranges, identical calls. The competition is fierce and mostly friendly.

Squeezed to order. The glass is cold. Sweet and sharp and costs almost nothing.

There's a rhythm to which stall is busiest at which hour.

A big steaming vat at the square. The broth is dark and herbal — thyme, liquorice root, gum arabic, a dozen other things. The snails are small, pulled out with a toothpick.

At ten at night the steam rises into the cold air and the queue is mostly locals, standing around with small bowls. The broth is the point. The snails are almost secondary.

Tastes like medicine in the best way.

The one that gets made the most. Chicken, preserved lemons, olives. The tagine pot does the work — low heat, patience, steam trapped under the cone.

The preserved lemons are from the jar on the counter. Three months in salt, soft and intense. The olives are the purple ones, slightly bitter.

The sauce at the bottom is the best part. Bread goes in.

When the weather turns or when something needs to be simple. Rice and water and ginger, cooked until the grains break down into silk.

The ginger is sliced thin, not grated. It sits in the pot the whole time. Spring onion and white pepper on top. Sesame oil.

Comfort food that belongs to no place in particular.

Gunpowder green, a big fistful of fresh mint, sugar. The pot is metal. The glasses are small. The pour is from a height so a foam forms on top.

The first glass gets poured back into the pot. The second pour is the real one.

In summer the mint is enormous, almost aggressive. In winter it's tighter and more subtle. The tea changes with it.

The communal oven at the end of the derb. The baker knows every family's bread by shape. The bread goes on a wooden board, carried through the alley. Comes back an hour later, hot, the bottom slightly charred from the wood fire.

The smell fills the whole derb on the way home.

A small fee. The same it's been for years.

Saturday morning. The dough has been resting. Stretched thin on an oiled surface, folded over itself again and again into a square, cooked on a flat griddle until golden and flaky.

The stretching is the technique — the dough pulls so thin it's almost transparent. Oil between each layer. The folding makes the flakiness.

With honey and butter. Or with soft cheese. Or plain, torn off in strips, still warm.