Tangier Mediterranean Flavors Class

Tangier has always been a city of crossings -- where Africa meets Europe, the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean, and Moroccan, Spanish, French, and Andalusian culinary traditions have mingled for centuries to create a cuisine found nowhere else on earth. This three-hour cooking class celebrates that magnificent cultural collision in a beautifully restored 1920s villa perched on the hillside of the old kasbah, with sweeping views across the Strait of Gibraltar to the misty outline of Spain. Your chef instructor is a Tangéroise polyglot who draws inspiration from the city's cosmopolitan heritage, and her menu reflects the dual personality of Tangier's table. You begin with a Tangerois fish briouate -- delicate filo parcels filled with seasoned white fish and herbs, a dish that reveals the Andalusian influence on northern Moroccan cooking. Next, you prepare a djaj m'chermel -- chicken marinated in a pungent chermoula of saffron, ginger, and fresh herbs -- a dish that is distinctly Moroccan yet bears traces of the Spanish escabeche tradition. For your third course, you make a Mediterranean-inspired zaalouk with roasted peppers, anchovy, and capers alongside classic Tangier-style sardine kefta. The class concludes with a lesson in making proper Moroccan mint tea with the ritualistic pouring technique that aerates the brew. Your feast is served in the villa's garden courtyard where bougainvillea cascades over whitewashed walls and the salt breeze carries the sounds of ships passing through the strait below.