Blue Door Cuisine – taking a cookery class in Tangier. Just a short walk from the bustle of the Medina in Tangier on the Northern Coast of Morocco on a small back street is an innocuous blue door. Which hides a wonderful culinary experience where you can really get a feel for the life of the city.
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About Blue Door Cookery School Tangier, Morocco
Blue Door is an immersive cookery school (complete with its own blue doors of course). It promises to help you learn not only about creating delicious dishes from the country, but also helps you get under the skin of the local culture.
We were pleased to discover that Blue Door could cater for families as well as individuals and groups. We had such a happy morning with the team learning how to put together our own traditional Royal Couscous.
Moroccan mint tea
We began with a lesson in making Moroccan Mint Tea. Our guide, the wonderful Maryam, walked us through the intricate ceremonial process for creating the most delicious tea.
With green gunpowder tea, fresh mint leaves, and a staggering eight tablespoons of Moroccan sugar for the pot.
It was wonderful to hear how important mint tea is to Moroccan culture. How families come together across generations over endless pots to chat the day away. And how it’s considered rude if the tea isn’t offered to guests arriving at your home.
Watching the ritual and ceremony of it was fascinating. My children not only loved the fresh and sweet tea, but adored the process and seeing exactly how the constituent parts came together to create this traditional drink.
Making traditional Moroccan bread
One of the real joys of the Blue Door Cuisine experience is the promise of the immersive experience which comes with the cookery school.
This really comes to the fore with the opportunity to make traditional Moroccan bread. You also take it for baking in the community oven – the Foran.
This was a real hands on experience for all of us, with cookery school staff on hand to help all of us create our own breads to a traditional Moroccan recipe and leaving them to rise.
The back street Foran bakery is a short five minute walk from the cookery school. It’s the destination for many local people to take their own homemade bread for baking.
It was really wonderful to take a walk through streets we would never have visited or discovered. This allowed us an insight in to the local community that we wouldn’t have otherwise had.
We were led along the road and took a turning across a yard filled with firewood and into a small but busy bakery with huge blackened industrial ovens. Here a handful of staff were preparing loaves for baking.
It was wonderful to hear about how these ovens are still central to the community. They’re used to prepare everything from loaves to huge fish baking away there.
We had a chance to chat to the bakers before handing over our dough and heading back to the cookery school for the next part of the lesson.
Royal Moroccan Cous Cous – Blue Door Cuisine – taking a cookery class in Tangier
The Blue Door Cuisine cookery school has a great set up with a number of cooking stations around a central teaching station.
They had lots of assistance on hand. We were all able to really get involved in creating a Royal Moroccan Cous Cous.
The team had put together a vegetarian version for us. This was absolutely packed with veggies including turnips, cabbage, pumpkins and chickpeas, along with a host of spices.
It was a real pleasure to be taught to cook by the team from Blue Door Cuisine. Particularly Maryam who clearly loves what she does and has such a skill for cooking and brining the culture alive for visitors.
All of the team were patient with us all as we put our dishes together and they helped us to chop, steam and cook.
We love cooking at home, and it was an eye-opener to try out other cooking methods such as using pressure cookers which we wouldn’t normally make use of.
It was also a great opportunity for us to learn more about Moroccan culture too. And spend time chatting to the staff who were able to share insights about Tangier with us.
Cooking with kids
I did wonder whether it would be an accessible session for my kids, but the team at Blue Door were so welcoming. We all enjoyed the cooking and the children were able to bake and cook alongside us at their own stations.
It was one of their highlights of our trip to Morocco.
Eating the food – Blue Door Cuisine – taking a cookery class in Tangier
The session ended with a great feast. With our loaves freshly baked from the Foran, and our delicious Royal Couscous, covered with traditional Tfaya, a tasty cinnamon raisins topping.
We all sat together eating and chatting. It was the perfect end to a wonderful and highly recommended session with the Blue Door Cuisine team.
You can find out more about Blue Door Cuisine at their website. Read all about our trip to Morocco for more amazing adventures we had.
