The ferry pulled into the dock in Tangier.
Breaking my rule to never be a houseguest, and with Gail my great friend from N.Y.C., we took a taxi to the house of a long-banished third son of an English peer.
He had settled in Tangier in the midst of famous gardens with an equally-notorious garden pavilion inside them.
Our host for lunch the next day, Jonathan, who lived in the pavilion, warned us that his pet chicken would visit us there for a handout so would we save some snacks from lunch for her. But that was in the days to come. Now there was a costume party.
“Come meet some Tangerines,” cooed Jonathan.
The huge satin strawberry, topped with ostrich-feather faux-crème Chantilly, had tiny slippered feet. His companion, a Peche Melba, leaned over and whispered into my masked ear, “Je suis an artiste.” The fruity voice was more Sarah Bernhardt playing the last moments of the consumptive Camille than a sigh from a perambulating papier-mâché dish of ice cream and poached peaches.
But that’s Tangier and we had arrived at the height of the season.
All the costumed queens of the night were there, accompanied by Jacks, some Kings, and quite a few Knaves. Fruit cups were a source of inspiration not only for the ex-pat males of this fabulous city, as one Parisian female beauty looked her best as a stewed prune. Another did her best as figs. No Americans, but there was “the grand duchess of Russia” who, quite astonishingly, turned out to be a woman. There were many second sons of English aristocracy in the tradition of David Herbert who had been sent off to Tangier from England by his father, the earl of Pembroke, after David insisted on dressing up like the elderly and eccentric Edith Sitwell who, by then, looked like a giant African vulture.
But it was not fruit that was my strongest memory of Tangier up to that evening.
That was of my first visit 35 years before, while escaping the dreariness of Harvard design school. My best memory of it then, emerging each morning from a cloud of hashish, was the fish market.
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Stepping across an entrance fetid with the blood and guts of the day’s disemboweled catch to find the most astonishing array of sea creatures I had ever seen, all still fresh with the rigors of mortis. The stupefying smells coming out of the drains of the entrance said a lot about the summer heat.
Inside there were the usual John Dory, merlan, monkfish, and the heaps of tiny cuttlefish and miniature squid. As well as still-thrashing rascasses, those little fish that are the essential foundation for all the flavors of a real bouillabaisse. Piles of enormous Dover soles, bouquets of western-Mediterranean loups de mer, heaps of gigantic blood-red “royal” prawns, a field of swaying spiny-lobster feelers, a hillock here and there of aquamarine and lapis-colored americanus lobsters. Let alone plastic trays full of the roe of monkfish, whiting, and striped bass
Let alone the five-foot long black, rose, yellow, and beige-striped eel looking like a Sumatran python with deep-sea teeth.
We bought the roes, the prawns, and squid, and took them back to our host’s palatial house across from Yves St. Laurent’s, handing them over to the Tangerine cook.
I had just come from a villa in Tuscany where I shopped daily in the hypermarket COOP where I could buy anything already prepared and love it. The best was their chicken liver mousse. I bought so much of it that the cooks there finally told me the secret of its perfection. At our hosts I made it and taught that cook how to make it.
We served it before lunch on the roof top overlooking the sea.
As we sipped our superb Moroccan rose wine and watched the kestrels dive bombing the King’s white pigeons next door as they successfully found refuge in amongst the unripe bunches of dates hanging from the crowns of the palms.
And dug into platters of the hugest prawns grilled over rosemary branches.
Served with preserved lemon and fresh mint relish.
We heard the calls to prayer, breathed in the perfect air swept up from the beach rocks below, and had platters piled high with cumin, mint, and garlic-scented fish and shellfish put in front of us by beaming, courtly, Moroccans.
I wondered where in this axis of the civilization that surrounded us was the evil that so obsesses Washington?
The bitch wit of the assembled court on the roof terrace brought me back from my reverie.
“Osama is the true long-lost Grand Duchess of Russia, and that bulldoggish soi-disant Romanov one sees pushing her Birkenstocks around the cobbled avenues and polished entrances of the Tangerine medina is an imposter.”
Immediately the sirens of this louchely mysterious world made New York seem witless.
“Bin Laden has nothing to do with the Arab civilization of hospitality and of and gracious manners.” said his hennaed companion.
“Alex is Anglo-Irish-Egyptian, but sometimes mostly Russian, but nevertheless …” a mannered Jonathan headed off the most vicious. “What do you think Alex?”
“I think that your sandaled central-European Anastasia has none of the icy grace of the frozenly-reserved Yousupov coterie with whom my father indulged several dinners when he was young. And I think that this whole setting is now more Magic Christian than very le grand Christian.”
At this Yves St. Laurent breathed out to me that his house across the street had been Christian Dior’s. “Christian’s last love was a Moroccan,” he told me before we went on to reminisce on Dior’s exemplary taste, especially his mill outside Paris, its décor as tailored as a Balenciaga ball-gown. “Christian was always magical,” he said lost in nostalgia.
At that, Pierre Berge quickly unhitched the two of us.
We took leave of Jonathan the next morning with an excuse that we were too innocent for the company. Keeping one eye out for the Russian grand duchess and anyone with a pinky raised to the heavens, I made a last visit to the famous café nestled into a chic residential neighborhood that was devoted to tea and marijuana.
In preparation for my trip the next day to Marrakesh, I found a hotel outside the center, away from the tourist center of Djmna el Fna.
But returned there the next morning, sipping mint tea and watching cobras dance.
I decided to have lunch on the way back to the hotel, but it was one of those days when no restaurant you pass seems just right enough to stop. By three very hungry, and still no lunch, I saw the garden of the hotel. The whole town was asleep except for the dogs doing their afternoon bark before their long snooze. There was no one around in the hotel, so I rang a little gong by the desk. The owner came out a bit bleary.
“Just show me to the kitchen if the cook is not awake.”
“Non, non, non,” he told us “c’est de rien” meaning it wasn’t nothing to take such a late lunch order.
He seated me in the garden by the fountain. In minutes he was back with a bucket of ice with beer bottles stuck in it, a bottle of olive oil made from his own olives, some of that morning's bread, and a platter of tomatoes that were still hot from the afternoon sun. He had taken basil from around the tomato plants and shredded the leaves, throwing the pieces on top of the tomatoes. On top of that was a throw of coarse sea salt.
“S'il vous plait, je suis au lit,” he said.
And off to bed he trotted.
The only sounds were the cascading of the fountain, the feeble attempts to stay awake by increasingly drowsy dogs we had awakened, and the whirl of a few dozen dragon flies trying to take a drink from our beers before it was so hot that they would drop dead. The whole world, it seemed, had stopped still. The only sound coming from me were sighs of total gratification and gratitude after the first swallows of iced beer.
“Nothing can top this moment” I said to myself, “except Cairo’s onions, and those were not for another week.
Ripe Tomatoes and Basil
What is the secret of a great tomato salad? To have the variety of tomato that has flavor and perfume, to slice and dress them while still hot from the garden sun, and to wait 30 minutes for the salt, pepper, basil leaves and flowers, and olive oil to soak in but not make the tomatoes soggy.
Take the leaves off three or four large sprigs of fresh basil. Chop the leaves and soak in the olive oil for one hour. If you have basil flowers add them to the oil as well. Slice the tomatoes and put on a platter. Pour the oil and basil over, salt and pepper them and leave 30 minutes before serving them very slightly chilled.
In Tangier I had orange flowers from the garden, and added them also to the olive oil If no flowers, add a drop or two of orange blossom water to the oil.
Moroccan Salt-Preserved Lemon Relish
Restaurant cooks religiously cut out and discard the pulp of the lemons, but to me that is a waste, if finely chopped, of a good ingredient. Just get rid of the seeds.
Photo Sam Hanna
Remove the seeds, and dice the lemons. For one cup (50 gr) of lemons, finely chopped the leaves of 3 large mint sprigs. Put in a bowl and mix in ½ cup (120 ml) of extra virgin olive oil, 1 teaspoon of ground cumin, and 1 tablespoon (15ml) of Pernod or other anise liquor (Ouzo, Raki etc.).
Chicken Liver and Caramelized Onion Mousse
4 large White onions, peeled, thinly sliced
1 cup (240 ml) Extra virgin olive oil
½ cup (120 ml) Water
2 sprigs Fresh thyme
1 cup (240 ml) Red wine, Chianti style
2 pounds (900 gr) Chicken livers, cleaned of sinews
Sea Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Put the onions in a sauté pan with ¼ cup (60 ml) of the olive oil the water, and thyme. Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer until soft, stirring often. When the onions are completely soft, uncover and cook over medium heat, stirring all the time, until they are a rich brown color, or caramelized. Remove the onion and add to a food processor.
Heat ¼ cup (60 ml) of the oil in the same sauté pan, add the livers, and a large pinch of salt. Cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes, stirring or tossing them. The livers should be still barely pink at the center.
When cooked, transfer the livers and any juices to the food processor.
Deglaze the pan with the red wine until all the cooking residue is dissolved in the wine. Reduce the wine by half and add the wine to the processor.
Process the livers and onions until almost smooth but not like baby food.
When cool, add the remaining olive oil and process for 2 minutes until mixed. Taste for salt and pepper.
Transfer to whatever serving dish, cover and refrigerate for 2 hours before serving.
Thank you my friend!
Thank you for your beautiful stories of Tangier; and thank you for the recipes as always.
Do tell us about Cairo's onions...I was in Cairo in the late '80s and absolutely loved it, but have not been back because I'm told by certain governments that it is not safe.
Anyway, keep telling your brilliant tales!