Moroccan food and architecture in Granada

I have to admit, it was a bit of relief to arrive in Granada and eat Moroccan food. Maybe it was Jaime’s stories about the less-than-innocent origins of the Spanish love of pork, but I was ready to eat something other than jamón, and Granada turned out to be one of the best places to do so. All over Spain, I’d seen signs of Muslim immigration, but in Granada, the Moroccan presence was strongest, from the Moroccan crafts sold to tourists to the teterias or tea shops all over the Albayzin, the old and now new Muslim quarter. And of course, Granada is the home of the Alhambra.

We had a good lunch at a random little shop, more of a café than a restaurant with low tables on which they served good hummus and kefta, translated for Spaniards as albondigas, and which we know as those Middle Eastern meatballs. And then we found dinner at Restaurante Arrayanes.



It was obviously a popular restaurant and it filled up quickly after we walked in. The owner treated the restaurant like his baby and came to every table, asking if we needed anything, if we were enjoying ourselves. As a true Muslim restaurant, it didn’t serve alcohol, but it did serve a delicious lemonade made with mint.



The food was good, if not the best Moroccan meal I’ve ever had, but one thing did truly stand out—the “Macedonian” dessert. It was the dessert of the day, not on the menu, and so I'm not quite sure if it's literally called a "Macedonian." It was a soft molded dessert, not quite a custard but not quite a cake. It was sweet without being cloying and so comforting, you could feed it to a baby. We argued for a bit about what was in it—Becca thought saffron and coconut, I argued that it was carrot. I was gleeful when it turned out I was right. It had reminded me very much of an Indian carrot pudding I had years ago in San Francisco.

And so we were fortified for our hike up and around the Alhambra the next morning, but the need to cleanse myself of ham didn’t last long. The next night, we were back to plates of jam, cheese and olives, washed down with a touristy pitcher of sangria. Ah!

Sunday chicken

Well, the chicken looks beautiful.

I love roasting chickens on Sunday afternoons. I love the lazy luxury of making something that takes time, nothing complicated or stressful, but something that needs to cook slowly while I nap or read or watch figure skating on Sunday afternoon TV. And even though it seems preposterous to roast an entire chicken for one person, it's actually very efficient. Roast chicken for lunch, shredded chicken for salad, a nice carcass to save for later stock-making. Almost makes me feel like a Native American buffalo hunter.

I normally make Marcella Hazan's "Roast Chicken with Two Lemons," combined with the Zuni Cafe pre-salting method, and it's the easiest, juiciest, loveliest chicken in the world. But tonight, I thought I would try Paula Wolfert's roast chicken with Moroccan flavors, what she calls "Expatriate Chicken." It's an odd recipe. You prep the chicken by stuffing the cavity with a mixture of chopped garlic, preserved lemon pulp, olive oil, ground ginger, and a pinch of cayenne early in the day. The odd part begins with the cooking. The chicken gets started in a cold oven that gets cranked up to 550 degrees while boiling water is poured into the roasting pan with grated onion, saffron, a cinnamon stick, and a little bit of sugar. After 45 minutes, the oven gets turned down to 275, and you're supposed to keep turning the bird to get it brown on all sides, 20 minutes one side, 20 minutes on the other, and 10 minutes on the back. At the end, you take the bird out and let it rest, add green olives and cilantro to the pan, and then let the pan juices reduce further in the oven.

I would give more exact instructions, but it wasn't very good. The inner seasoning didn't seem to have done much for the outer bird. The breast was a little too dry, and there just wasn't much flavor. The pan juices were deliciously fatty, but the olives and cilantro didn't really meld into a larger, more complex flavor. Not bad, just disappointing. And to top it all of, I realized that the Moroccan flavors wouldn't really make for a very stock-able carcass.

So it goes.