I know that I left you all hanging with that last post and that it has taken me nearly a week to get on with things but at this point I am running on Moroccan time and just trust that everything will happen when it is meant too, Allah y3rf (only God knows). And, the truth I have been quite busy getting back to school with homework and bus commutes and my return to aerobics class (alhamdu lillah).
And for everyone who was wondering…there is no longer a ram in the bathroom.
Eid Morning
I woke up early, my goal was to help Rizlan in the kitchen because Eid, though it is suppose to be a holiday to relax, visit family (much like Christmas) it in fact involves a lot of work and stress (much like Christmas). Women especially bare a lot of the burden, as they are in charge of all the cooking and cleaning, and in my house the place was scrubbed spotless for the holidays. So, I decided that it was my duty to pitch in and awoke at six am to help Rizlan.
First things first however, I had to pee. This will remain my fondest Eid memory as at six in the morning Rizlan and I decided that is was just too much effort and there was just too much to be done to bother to take the ram out of the bathroom. This meant that I got to share our apartment’s small squat toilet with a big stinky animal that I had to grip by the horns while I did my business. What a lovely wake up call.
Afterward…I did help out with the cooking and made salad and Zalouq (a roasted eggplant and pepper salad that is one of my favorites) while Rizlan prepared bread and Malawi bi Agreesh (thin, fried crepes stuffed with dried and salted meat) for breakfast. I managed to catch a little nap again before breakfast and by then the men had joined us: Si Mohammad returned from work and Rizlan’s little brother (Ala) arrived from Ouijda.
After breakfast, it was time. We were ordered up stairs to clean and organize the roof. We brought up buckets, towels, a mop, broom, an impressive array of freshly sharpened knives and of course a nice tray of coffee and a platter of cookies (to set the tone). Then we took the ram by his horns and hauled him reluctantly up the stairs. Did he know that he was being lead to his death, was his reluctance out of fear? I commented: “oh miskeen…oh poor thing, he knows what’s about to happen”. Rizlan looked at me and said no, he doesn’t know but besides, every ram in Morocco on the day he is born asks God grant him the honor of being slaughtered either for the Eid or for a hafla al-seb3 (a child’s naming party). So this is God’s and the ram’s will…he is just fussy cause he is a ram and that’s his nature.
Once on the roof everything went fast and clean. Si Mohammad, Ala, and a friend, positioned and grasped the ram and flipped him to the ground. Si Mohammad found the right spot on the neck (just above the adam’s apple) and with a sharpe knife and with just two strokes cut through the ram’s windpipe and carotid arteries. There was a lot of blood. I was surprised, but I wasn’t traumatized or even grossed out. It all seemed very normal. We treated the ram with respect and he died quickly and for a purpose…a week on we are still eating him for lunch…every part of him (more on this later).
Afterward the head was removed and set aside and our ram was skinned and hung up on the roof. We gutted him and separated out all of the organs from the fat and set about cleaning and preparing the organ meat. I helped Rizlan clean and prepare the dowara- the stomach(s) and intestines. This was a totally new experience for me as I have never eaten or even come into contact with tripe of any kind. It was smelly and kinda gross…we had to remove the stomach contents. But once their cleaned they have to be blanched (dunked in boiling water), I think this is so they don’t go bad right away, and then the stomach has the be scraped clean of this dark grey lining that coats the inside.
I am not going to go into details about any more of the slaughtering process but if you have questions please ask because it was a fascinating experience. I want to devote the rest of this blog to the food that we ate, that day and in the days following. But I will include some pictures…disclaimer…they are kind of vivid.
The Food of Eid
Once everything had been cleaned and prepared and hung to dry/rest Rizlan and I cleaned up the roof and brought everything back downstairs to get ready for lunch. We didn’t finished, or eat, until about four o’clock in the afternoon because it turns out that slaughtering and processing an animal takes some work.
For lunch we ate brochettes that were grilled inside the house over a little indoor BBQ called a nafikh, along with salad, olives, bread and of course tea. We ate brochettes of the heart, which were wonderful and so fresh that they didn’t even need seasoning just a little salt. We also liver brochettes called bulfaf (I don’t love liver but liver this fresh was unbelievable!). Bulfaf are brochettes of fresh liver wrapped in thin strips of fat and grilled…it turns our wrapping something in fat makes it delicious (but I was secretly wishing it was bacon). After the brochettes we ate the pancreas, tehan, stuffed with a mixture of liver, tripe, onions, garlic, parsley, salt, pepper, thyme and paprika. That was then also grilled over the BBQ until firm and crispy. It had amazing flavor but I couldn’t quite handle the texture of the pancreas, it was firm and spongy and squishy all at the same time. We also had fresh whole wheat bread, the zalouq and the salad (fennel, cucumber, lettuce, tomato and onion with olive oil and lemon juice) that I had prepared earlier along with tasty marinated olives.
We didn’t finish eating until about six o’clock in the evening and afterward we lounged around as a family and drank tea and watched movies while we dozed.
Later that night we decided that the meat (which was at this point hanging from the kitchen doorframe…blocking the door) had dried enough to butcher. We spread out a plastic tarp on the ground and as a family sat around and butchered the ram. We didn’t finish until just before midnight and by this time I was too tired to eat dinner and went straight to bed. The best meals however, were still to come.
Traditionally, the head is eaten for breakfast the day after Eid. Luckily, my family had it for lunch (I am not sure I could have stomached head for breakfast). I wasn’t able to help prepare the head but asked after how it was done. The night before, Si Mohammad had removed the horns and split the head in two (with a hand saw). The brain was removed (don’t worry, we would eat that later too) and the next day the two halves were steamed, unseasoned and still covered with hair before being brought the table. At the table, Si Mohammad removed the hair easily with a knife, and we dug in with our hands removing strips of meat from the cheeks and tongue and dipping them in little bowls of salt and cumin. I ate part of the ear (very, very strange texture…slimy cartilage), but stayed away from the eye. It looked too gross, just like a big chunk of fat.
Along with the head we had kindeys (kilawi) cooked in a savory dark sauce and testicles (fullat). The testicles were wonderful, sliced, lightly seasoned and sauted in butter and olive oil. They were firm but not meaty and a very light cream color. After these first courses of head, kindeys and testicles, I thought we were done and would move on to fruit and tea. But there was more. As the head was removed Rizlan re-emerged from the kitchen with a steaming bowl of dowara, the very stomach and intestines (this time including the lungs) that we had cleaned and scraped the day before.
The tripe had been cooking for hours. In fact she had started it the night before, cooking it with onions and garlic, ginger, saffron, olive oil and salt and pepper, later cilantro, paprika and a little vinegar are added. The flavor is amazing, and I didn’t really have any objections to the texture either except that I had just eaten head, and kidneys and testicles and wasn’t quite up for eating a ton of tripe! However, I am sure that I will have the opportunity again to eat tripe while I am in Morocco.
After this meal most of the organ meat had been eaten, it’s what’s eaten first because it’s what spoils the quickest. Since then we have been eating a lot of lamb, steamed, in tagine but so far my favorite has to be what we had for lunch today: Moroccan BBQ lamb, called muhammar. Muhammar like most BBQ is made from the tougher parts of meat and is cooked over low heat for a long time. First the meat is marinated in garlic, salt, ginger, saffron, smen (salty butter), and paprika. While the meat drinks up the marinade, chopped pieces of kidney fat (the fat that surrounds the kidneys) is chopped finely and rendered in a pot. Then lots of chopped onion is cooked until caramelized in the rendered fat. Then the lamb is added to the onions along with more of the same spices (ginger, saffron and paprika). The meat is cooked like this until done then transferred to the oven with the sauce until the meat is brown and crispy and easily pulls away from the bone. Sooooo Gooooood. But once again after a heavy meal like this, tea is a must. So, though the day of the Eid has passed in many ways the holiday continues, at least until all that meat is gone. I think it’s going to take a while but I can’t wait to taste more!
