Seasonal recipes with Moroccan climate and calendar

Eating well and sus­tain­ably, or sim­ply eco­nom­i­cal­ly, is already eat­ing "in sea­son". Globalization has accus­tomed us to find every­thing in any sea­son, with a high price to pay for our envi­ron­ment and the qual­i­ty of our food:

  • fruits and veg­eta­bles are pro­duced in green­hous­es, forced, flood­ed with fer­til­iz­ers, pesticides…
  • vari­eties are select­ed for cri­te­ria oth­er than their taste: what is the point of eat­ing toma­toes in the mid­dle of win­ter if they are taste­less and full of water?
  • trans­port from one coun­try to anoth­er takes time, fruit and veg­eta­bles are picked well before they are ripe and arrive on our plates with­out hav­ing been able to "fill up" on vit­a­mins, flavours, etc.
  • The car­bon foot­print of a local rose in May or June [yes, we also use ros­es in the kitchen], or in January, when it comes from Kenya, is not the same!

Eating local and seasonal food

In Morocco, because of the price, import­ed fruit and veg­eta­bles are easy to spot: they will cost, depend­ing on the case, between 10 and 30 dirhams more per kilo than the local variety.

On the oth­er hand, as Morocco is an exporter of fruit and veg­eta­bles, par­tic­u­lar­ly toma­toes and oranges, it is easy to find "local" fruit and veg­eta­bles, grown in green­hous­es, which are not nec­es­sar­i­ly very good, in any season.

For what is not export­ed or less so, whether it is mal­low, small pick­les or pome­gran­ates, the sea­son is impor­tant again: I have redis­cov­ered my "pre­serv­ing" reflex­es and buy kilos of beans, peas, pome­gran­ates… in the right sea­son, which I pre­pare and freeze or store as pickles!

Seasons in Morocco

Calendar is dif­fer­ent "in the North, in France" and in Morocco, the sea­sons are not the same, the sum­mer fruits arrive ear­li­er, there is real­ly a sea­son — rather short — for pome­gran­ates, okra… the first years, I was fooled, today I learned the good peri­ods to buy such or such ingre­di­ent and I share them here, with the recipes that use them.