ection>
‘A jewel and an inspiration’
Deborah Madison
‘A classic from which passion and enthusiasm come through on every page’
Claudia Roden
‘Delightful and authentic ... a knowledgeable, not to say scholarly, guide to the customs, kitchens and culture as it was in the Fifties, written by someone who had lived there for 30 years. I am thrilled to see that others have enjoyed this book enough to republish it.’
Frances Bissell, The Times
‘Wafts off the page in scented waves’
Daily Telegraph
‘If you want to savour authentic Arab flavours, Guinaudeau is your guide’
Glasgow Herald
‘Successfully evokes the magic flavours of Fez’
Nigel Slater
Madame Guinaudeau, a Frenchwoman married to an eye specialist practising in Fez, lived for more than three decades from the 1930s in the city where she researched and wrote this book.
Claudia Roden, who was born and raised in Cairo, was educated in Paris and London. As she writes in her Foreword to Traditional Moroccan Cooking, when researching her seminal A Book of Middle Eastern Food, she was constantly referred to Madame Guinaudeau’s classic book. The winner of no fewer than five Glenfiddich prizes, she is also the author of the highly acclaimed The Book of Jewish Food.
TRADITIONAL
MOROCCAN
COOKING
Recipes from Fez
Z. Guinaudeau
Foreword by Claudia Roden
Translated from the French by J. E. Harris
Decorations by J. E. Laurent
Serif
London
This e-book first published 2015 by
Serif
47 Strahan Road
London E3 5DA
Originally published in 1994.
First published in Rabat by J. E. Laurent as Fès vu par sa cuisine in 1958 and as Fez: Traditional Moroccan Cooking Book, translated by J. E. Harris, in 1964
Copyright © Z. Guinaudeau, 1958 and 1964
English translation copyright © J. E. Harris, 1964
Corrections and revisions to this translation copyright © Stephen Hayward, 1994, 2015
Decorations copyright © J. E. Laurent, 1958
Foreword copyright © Claudia Roden, 1994, 2015
This edition copyright © Serif, 1994, 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publishers
e-book produced by Will Dady
Cover design by Pentagram
To my Fassi friends who taught me
to understand and love their scented
and colourful cuisine.
To those whose inspiration created
these refined and striking dishes.
FOREWORD
When years ago I travelled to research Morocco’s cooking, Madame Guinaudeau was mentioned to me by everybody I met and I talked to several people who boasted that they had given her recipes. They all spoke of her with affection and respect. Today, although a number of books have appeared on the subject of their country’s cuisine, a younger generation of Moroccans has the greatest respect for Madame Guinaudeau’s Fès Vu par sa Cuisine, first published in 1958 and translated here as Traditional Moroccan Cooking: Recipes from Fez. That the most exclusive restaurant in Fez has been called Fés Vu par sa Cuisine is an indication of the high regard in which the book is held. Moroccans are immensely proud of their cuisine and rightly regard it as one of the best in the world, so for a foreign author to be so highly esteemed by them is no small accolade.
By all accounts the book was the first on Moroccan cooking since an anonymous compilation of Maghrebi and Andalusian recipes appeared in Arabic in Spain in the twelfth century. (As her book went off to press Madame Guinaudeau added a note that she had thought she was the first person to write about Moroccan food, but that after writing it she heard that a work by John, 4th Marquis of Bute, entitled Moorish Recipes was published in Edinburgh in 1955.) That is merit in itself, but the book is also remarkable in many other ways. There is in Madame Guinaudeau’s writing a truth and authenticity which is rarely found in cookery books. Every recipe, every description, every detail of people’s lives which she gives is the result of her own observation, which makes her book completely original and absolutely unique; there is passion and enthusiasm which comes through in every page.
Perhaps it is because she was an outsider that she had such a fascination with and respect for her subject, and also a concern to avoid the phoney. The wife of a French doctor – a much-loved eye specialist – she moved to Fez in 1929 and lived there for more than three decades. She made it her joy to pursue recipes and culinary information in the kitchens of Fez, which became her beloved city. It was also a way of getting to know the people. She was invited to eat and to watch the cooking operations in modest and grand homes in the casbah and the medina as well as in the palaces of the aristocratic families, in ethnic communities like the Jews in the mellah (the city’s old Jewish quarter) and primitive Berber villages outside the city.
The book took her twenty years to research. Ahmed Sefrioui wrote in the preface to the first edition that it was a contribution to the history of his country, a document of great human interest. Madame Guinaudeau described the way people lived and entertained, the protocol of their banquets, the activities of the kitchen and the public bakehouse, and brought a whole mysterious world to life. She said she wanted to make the sparkle of the copper pots sing for us and to let us feel the rustic textures of the clay and the wood, and she succeeded. We can feel what it is like to sit in an indoor courtyard with turquoise and cobalt tiles and water running from a fountain, the scent of jasmine mingling with the smells of a stew simmering in the burning midday sun, and what it is like to pass a spice shop in the souk and see the seeds and pods and contorted pieces of bark
