Warming Spices for Moroccan Winter

The core warming spices

A handful of spices do the heavy lifting in the Moroccan winter kitchen. Ground ginger gives a dry, penetrating warmth to tagines and soups; cinnamon lends sweet fragrance to both savoury and sweet dishes and is essential to the great sweet-savoury tagines; and black and white pepper add a gentle bite. Turmeric colours and deepens, sweet paprika rounds things out, and cumin grounds many dishes with its earthy warmth. Together they build the characteristic flavour of Moroccan cooking without ever tipping into fieriness.

These are the everyday spices of the harira pot and the winter tagine, reached for daily through the cold months.

Ras el hanout, the crown of the spice box

Above the individual spices sits ras el hanout, whose name means top of the shop — the merchant's finest blend.

• A complex blend: often a dozen to thirty spices, from cinnamon, ginger and pepper to nutmeg, mace and cardamom.
• Exotic additions: rosebuds, lavender and other aromatics in the more elaborate mixes.
• Every merchant differs: each spice seller guards their own recipe and proportions.
• Where it shines: mrouzia, rich lamb tagines, rfissa and festive dishes.
• Best bought fresh: ground in small amounts, its fragrance fading with time.

Warmth in the glass, too

The Moroccan instinct to warm the body in winter extends beyond the plate to the tea glass. The everyday mint of the tea is joined or replaced in the cold months by warming infusions: fresh ginger, wild thyme (zaitra), sage (salmiya), verbena (louiza) and absinthe wormwood (chiba), steeped into the tea for their comforting heat and their reputed benefits against winter chills and colds. A pot of ginger or sage tea after a spiced tagine completes the sense of warmth from the inside.

For the dishes these spices flavour see Moroccan comfort food for cold nights, and for the spice that tops them all, the saffron harvest at Taliouine.