5/10/08 Huevos Rancheros a la Marrocaine

Tonight at dinner, I introduced huevos rancheros to Morocco. Lhumdullah. My sister-in-law had made her traditional “salad”, which is diced tomatoes, onions, cilantro, and sea salt. (And I’m disproportionately proud of the fact that I know all those words in Tamazight: matisha, azilem, m3dnus, d tisnt, respectively.) So there’s a big bowl of that in the middle of the table, a smaller dish of scrambled eggs, and the omnipresent bread (aghrom).

Little Bro was asleep, so Mma made him a sandwich, as she always does for an unconscious kid. (Sleeping through the meal is no reason not to eat, in the eyes of the woman who would spend a million dirhams on feeding her children. So she puts whatever-the-main-dish-is into a piece of bread, and sets it aside to feed the kid later.)

Her scrambled egg sandwich inspired me. I made myself an egg sandwich – which got funny looks, since sandwiches aren’t common except for creating leftovers – and then spooned the “salad” on top of it. By this time, my family was looking at me like I was utterly insane. They’d fully expected to eat both the eggs and the salad by grasping bite-sized pieces with small chunks of bread, like we eat everything. So when I piled the salsa-like salad on top of my eggs on top of a slice of bread, everyone laughed. But I told them that it was delicious food from Mexico (makla tatfot n Mexiq), and it worked! Or else my rockstar appeal hasn’t faded in the eyes of my awesome little brothers and sister. Because the kids all tried it, as did my sister-in-law. Mma stuck to what she knew… But it was universally accepted at tatfot (delicious), so lhumdullah!