INDEX travel
sumptuous selection of seven (cooked) salads followed by pastilla, a traditional ceremonial dish of fi lo pastry fi lled with pigeon, sweet almond paste and scrambled egg. For the birthday meal we had a fi ve course taster menu at Maison MK, of Jamie does Marrakesh fame. Book ahead as they take only ten dinner guests each evening, with priority to their own staying guests. We enjoyed perfect service, canapés and mojitos on the roof, dipping olive bread into caulifl ower, leek and saffron velouté. Downstairs for an amazing beetroot and quail egg salad and divine king prawn and scallop skewers, minted pineapple lassi and banana bavarois, by which
time we were quite merry from said mojitos and a very nice Moroccan wine, not to mention pre-dinner Duty Free champagne at the Riad. Expect to pay moderate London prices in these exquisite restaurants. The fi ve-course taster menu was £50 per head excluding alcohol. At La Maison Arabe we did
a Moroccan cuisine cooking workshop led by Mohammed, whose main job is English professor, and accompanied by a dada, a traditional Morrocan cook. In a kitchen equipped to Masterchef standards, we learned the art of making tagine, a casserole dish cooked in a cone-shaped clay pot of the same name. We were shown how to make Moroccan bread then taken out to see the community baker, an enormous sunken oven in a tiny room, the surprisingly happy baker standing in a hot pit shovelling in dough from local housewives and establishments. There followed a short walk to a spice shop, Planète des Epices, for an entertaining demonstration of spices and essential oils used in cooking, cosmetics and medicines. Samples were handed round to be sniffed, including a bag of eucalyptus crystals which was pressed into everyone’s stinging but very clear nostrils. We bought a black soap of olive and apricot oil good for exfoliation and
cellulite, and some green tea and saffron for my aching back. Back at the kitchen we cooked our tagine and tomato and pepper salads and sat to eat our dishes with the aforementioned bread, now cooked. A fantastic experience and beautiful food, if I may say so myself, for a very reasonable price of £45. It was fully booked even in low season, so best to book ahead.
Another highlight was a visit to Les Bains de Marrakech. A little piece of heaven, this spa is a warren of exquisite lounges and treatment chambers, sheer curtains, white chaise longues, soft music, whispering
staff and a thousand pinpricks of light cast from dozens of lanterns. We took a hammam, the Moroccan cleansing ritual, where we sat in a small clay room shaped like a human tagine, lathered in a silky ‘soup’, left to steam for 20 minutes, then scrubbed with a scouring pad within an inch of our lives. An hour-long facial and an hour’s body massage and we felt like smooth-skinned goddesses sipping mint tea. Three hours of indulgence in luxurious surroundings for £80, a bargain. Back to the Riad for Pimms by the pool – being forty ain’t so bad after all...
Riad Samarkand £184-£254 per suite per night depending on suite and season, including airport transfers (15min from airport) and breakfast. See
www.riadsamarkand.com for more details. We fl ew with Easyjet from Gatwick to Marrakesh. Return
Travel low-down
fl ights start from £76, add an optional £28 for 20kg hold luggage. See
www.easyjet.com for more details. The local currency, Moroccan Dirhams can’t be taken out of
the country and can be diffi cult to change back to other currency even in Morocco. You can also use Euros but it’s more cost effective to take out Dirhams at airport and town ATMs. Our guide cost around £35 for three hours. This can be
arranged through your hotel or riad. Being a Muslim country, alcohol isn’t served everywhere in the Medina. Our riad was happy to provide glasses and ice for our Duty Free alcohol. Taxi drivers often say they know a destination when they
don’t. Also, be prepared to haggle a price before you get in. With very hot summers, spring and autumn are the best
times to go. getting married? –
www.planningyourwedding.co.uk 13
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