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The odd cuisine of Morocco

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The businessman's not-so-impressive cooking
Claudia Roden Writer
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He did ful medames which he crushed, and he put them in choux pastry. Little choux. It's a dough. And to put ful medames, which is broad beans that have been cooked, dried broad bean, in a much... in there. No. So, he brought that. And we laughed. And I said, 'It is good'. Actually, I didn't want to hurt him, but I knew that if I did tell him no, it didn't matter because he was very, very rich. He could do something else or stay the way he is and if he's got rich people who want to eat that, fine. But I wasn't going to say no to a poor guy who was opening and then I would harm his restaurant, and his earnings and his living. So, I just... it was a joke. But then I said, 'I hope you're not going to do a pyramid'. And yes, he did a pyramid. And the pyramid... he did this thing where you have many layers of different foods. And he had many layers. Chicken liver here, something else there. And you couldn't see it until you dug into it. And they didn't work, and I just said... we didn't even say no. We just laughed. And I said, 'It tastes good'. And we laughed. And I didn't really want to say no throughout the meal. But it was no. So, that was an experience.

Claudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including A Book of Middle Eastern Food, The New Book of Middle Eastern Food and The Book of Jewish Food.

Listeners: Nelly Wolman

Claudia Roden talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food.

Tags: ful medames, businessman, dinner, pyramid, joke

Duration: 1 minute, 49 seconds

Date story recorded: September 2022

Date story went live: 04 December 2023