2009 wrap up

This is a “catch up” column with a promise that during 2010 I will try to be a better correspondent. But considering I left off with the inauguration of President Barack Obama, there’s a bit of ground to cover. The hard work of Rachid Cherkaoui, our new chef and former head barman, in molding a staff and initiating both a sense of discipline and teamwork in the kitchen had already paid off when Issam and I began planning our 5th Anniversary celebration. We decided to bring my friend Leah Caplan, a professional chef living in Madison, Wisc., to Casablanca to prepare the Anniversary menu and spend additional time training Rachid and his team in “New American Cuisine.” Leah arrived just two days before the March 1st event, but the menu had already been sent and conversions to metric were in the works. Other things were more challenging: baking powder turned out to be a boxed product translated from the French as dry yeast; cornstarch was a product called “Maizina” (which made sense since corn in French is “mais” but I’d never put it together), but the biggest surprise was that baking (bicarbonate) soda was only to be found at any pharmacy! The dinner was a great success and Leah was a big hit with our invited clients. To mark the momentous date Issam designed a beautiful 5th Anniversary medal that was presented in a burgundy leather case, personalized with the recipient’s name.

Leah stayed on after the anniversary party and had two weeks of intensive training sessions with the kitchen crew – really a bonding experience for both sides, given that she didn’t speak French and none of the cooks spoke English. Nevertheless she left them with new approaches to menu planning, presentation and a deeper appreciation for the bounty of fresh local produce that is available in Casablanca. Rounding out Leah’s visit we sent invitations to restaurant and hotel chefs for a cooking demonstration by Leah with the objective of starting a Slow Food convivium in Casablanca.

Another milestone (or should I say millstone) was passed a month later, when I bought out a capital risk firm who’d taken a participation in the capital at the very end of construction when I was out of money and in desparate straits with the bank. They had saved me with their money, but saddled me with a totally incompetant, if not crooked, accountant for two years whose negligence was buried deep enough for little surprises of fines to be sprung on us years later. This was accomplished thanks to a brilliant financial advisor who has literally put our house in order.

On the music scene we were bowled over one Sunday night when Gilbert Dall’Anese came to play during our weekly Jam Session. It turned out he’s a retired professional who’d played in all the famed clubs and halls in Paris. Now married to a Moroccan woman, they’d first settled in Fes…but there wasn’t exactly a rousing jazz scene there and they moved to Casablanca. Gilbert fit right in, and soon joined Issam on Thursday nights, the duo playing the songs of the epoch (smooth, smooth, smooth); on Sunday’s he’s a regular with the Jam Session quartet.

Leah’s training visit had made us all more aware of the fresh local products available in Casablanca, and the range of quality kept us on the lookout for the best. One bright spot was the opening of a shop, the Domaine boutique, selling fresh produce, dairy products, olive oil, honey, trout and milk-fed veal from the Royal farms. Many of the fresh vegetables were labeled organic – I bought peapods for the first time, and found cottage cheese there. A man showed up at our service door one morning and had some morel mushrooms to show Rachid. He grows them on his forest land outside of Rabat, and soon he was coming regularly with morels, cèpes and giroles. Our discovery of the richness of Morocco’s bounty was to reach another dimension entirely when we decided to hold a special dinner to participate in Slow Food International’s Terra Madre Day, December 10. Thanks to Slow Food in Italy, the convivium in Rabat, a helping hand from the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and an old architect-friend who’s opened a small shop, Antidote, in Casablanca’s Maarif district selling the products of rural cooperatives we found some very special producers and a range of products: Couscous from Ouazzane in the north, including a variety infused with vegetables and spices; dates from the desert towns of Errachidia and Zagora; natural salt and cumin/salt from Chefchaouen; cumin from Alnif, southeast of Marrakech; a selection of cheeses from Khemis Meskala near Essouira; mint, bread and olive oil from Settat; saffron from Talaouine and Ourika; argane, amlou and honey of a quality even my Moroccan staff had never seen from south of Agadir. We filled in with products from the Domaine, Antidote, goat cheese from our regular supplier near Fes and coquelet from Mme Soquet in Rabat.

Communicating with the cooperatives, receiving the merchandise and paying made for a lot of work and coordination. We were saved by the mobile phone and text messaging. Once I realized that even if many had email addresses they didn’t have computers at home, I began exchanging messages by text, and that solved the ordering problem. Most had access to the major bus network, CTM, which has a very reliable shipping service. At the beginning I accompanied Mohamed, our driver, where we got a run-around between the comparison of the name on my ID – Kathleen Anne Kriger – to what was written on the carton – Caty – but we finally got our package. The next day brought another item, no interrogation this time. For the rest of the deliveries Mohamed went by himself with a copy of my ID. The cumin came in at an outlying bus station, with Mohamed having to go at a precise time and pick the carton up directly from the bus driver. The cheese was fortunately delivered.

Thanks to the French Institute there was ample publicity, and we even had coverage by 2M, Morocco’s 2nd TV channel. Guests, including US Consul General Elisabeth Millard, were interviewed, and the crew even filmed in our kitchen (making me thankful yet again for the work of Chef Rachid). On the basis of the interest drummed up from the dinner a Casablanca Slow Food convivium is on its way to being formed. This brings us up to the preparations for New Year’s Eve which deserves an article all by itself…coming soon!