I have been trying to learn how to cook Moroccan food since I arrived.
I have also been failing at it consistently, which my neighbor Nadia finds genuinely entertaining.
Nadia is in her sixties, has lived in this neighborhood her entire life, and has opinions about harira that she is not shy about sharing. Harira is the soup Morocco runs on — tomato, lentils, chickpeas, fresh herbs, a squeeze of lemon at the end — and according to Nadia, most people make it wrong.
Last Tuesday she knocked on my door at nine in the morning, handed me a cloth bag of ingredients, and told me we were cooking.
I did not argue.
We spent three hours in her kitchen. She does not measure anything. When I asked how much cumin, she looked at me the way someone looks at a person who has asked a question with an obvious answer, poured some into her palm, and tipped it into the pot. I have no idea how much that was. I wrote down "a palmful" in my notes and accepted that this was the best I was going to get.
The soup was extraordinary. Mine was fine.
She told me I would get better. I believe her, mostly because she said it the way someone says something they know to be true rather than something they are trying to make you feel good about.
I am going back next Tuesday.
