Big Band Concert – pen and ink drawings

These were done in the audience at Palau de la Musica, Big Band Concert May 2017

 

Big Band Palau de la Musica, small stage, 16 x 11 cm,
Big Band Palau de la Musica, small stage, 16 x 11 cm
Palau de la Musica, Certamen May 17, 16 x 11 cm
Palau de la Musica, Certamen May 17, 16 x 11 cm
Palau de la Musica, Certamen May 17, 16 x 11 cm
Palau de la Musica, Certamen May 17, 16 x 11 cm

 

Palau de la Musica, Certamen May 17
Palau de la Musica, Certamen May 17, 16 x 11 cm

Moroccan cuisine

Tagine, couscous and ‘salads,’ as they call them in Morocco, are main features of the cuisine here, along with ‘pastilla,’ a pigeon pie. These dishes are often intriguingly spiced.   Spices-cumin, cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, cilantro, saffron, paprika, cardamom, nutmeg, mace, anise and more-  came from India in the old days, via camel, stopping in caravan serai, finding their way across North Africa and into the cooking utensils of millions of homes over the eons.

My first exposure to the cuisine came in a small hotel across the street from our pretty fancy digs, the Diwanes hotel. Zaalouk is made with eggplant (aubergines), tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, cilantro, paprika, cumin, cayenne, olive oil and lemon.  I was immediately won over.   It is served with the local bread, which you find just about everywhere.

Zaalouk, fabulous eggplant/aubergine dish

We used the following recipe and found it to be super:  https://www.thespruce.com/moroccan-zaalouk-eggplant-and-tomato-salad-2394866

We also had a tagine at this meal and like the bread it too is ubiquitous.  A tagine is a cooking vessel made from terracotta.  Meat is on the bottom and, when included,  vegetables are teepee’d above, then the vessel is placed in an oven and brought piping hot to your table. Some versions have no vegetables but cooked with prune or perhaps a dried apricot instead.  In restaurants the beef is cooked beforehand as it is everywhere super tender.  This can only be accomplished by slow cooking, but in a restaurant they bring tagines out in about 20 minutes.  I had one tagine in a very fancy place where the chicken was hard as a brick but otherwise they have all been very good but very much the same regardless of price.  Fancy places have better and more ‘salads’ and better surroundings.  With very few exceptions fancy restaurants serve no alcohol like the cheaper places.  It’s soft drinks, water, lemonade and everywhere there is mint tea made with fresh mint leaves stuff into the glass.

tagine
tagine
Tagine in foreground, couscous
Tagine in foreground, couscous

Aside from Zaalouk I ran across two other outstanding items, both in inexpensive places.  At Bab r’Cif there’s a place facing the gate.  They have a flat bread that is spiced and interlaced with some cheese.

onion flatbread
onion flatbread

The other version of this flatbread we tried at this same cafe at the Bab r’Cif is this onion version, also fabulous and very cheap, and even cheaper in the small stands, I bought two of the onion and a plain bread for $2.00, half of what they charge in this inexpensive place.  For a recipe try https://food52.com/recipes/16092-moroccan-onion-flatbread.  For olive flatbread try http://onionin.com/recipe/moroccan-olive-flatbread

We have seen a flat bread cooked on the grill.  Here’s the recipe:  https://www.thespruce.com/msemen-moroccan-pancakes-rghaif-2394812   In the fancier place we stayed in for breakfast you could have this bread grilled as you wait, along with white beans, grilled red, yellow and green peppers, cucumbers, olives, tomatoes fresh and grilled, fruit, juice – orange juice is everywhere and is excellent- as well as fried eggs.

Couscous is a Berber dish of steamed semolina.  Traditionally the couscous is made by hand by combining wheat flour and water, and rubbing the mixture between your hands until the small balls fall out.  The mixture has to be fairly dry.  It is usually served as a stew, which would include either beef, lamb, kefta (meatballs), or chicken as well as vegetables- carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini.  It is generally mild with a thin but flavorful sauce.  You can ask for harissa, a hot sauce.  The ones at restaurants vary in flavor from one to the next.   

The ‘salads,’ which in Spanish would be called ‘tapas’ and in the US might be called simply vegetable side dishes or something like that, are outstanding and complex offerings or, in less expensive restaurants, simple affairs over which you might pour a white yogurt dressing.  But when prepped more elaborately the spices can really bring you flavors that as a westerner you have never experienced and will most likely enjoy greatly.

After a week of tagines and couscous I am ready to move on-  they are much the same no matter where you go. 

These are referred to as ‘salads.’ But they are in many cases much more than just a salad- fabulously spiced!

In a place called Le Table Bio- the French influence on the language here is unmistakable – I had the most fabulous kepab ever.  It was a chicken version.  I have no idea how they spiced it but here’s to them.  And it was just $2.50.  Peg’s avocado/shrimp salad was beautifully presented.   139 Blvd. Mohamed Zerktouni, Marrakesh. 

There are definitely epicurean reasons to visit this ancient land.  And visitors need not spend a fortune.  The most we have paid for a meal is $40 for two.  Wine is expensive, but only by comparison with the rest of the offerings.  In our fancy hotel we paid $14 for a mediocre bottle, and twice that for a better offering. 

A decent Moroccan red from Meknes

If you tire of traditional Moroccan food – after a week we did –  then there are pizzas, pasta, panini, hamburgers, and more from the West.  I even saw an Indian restaurant. 

Come with me to the Casbah

Street scene Morocco, water color 13.5x 21 cm, 5 x 8"

“Come with me to the Casbah” is the famous pickup line that we all think came from a movue.  It was in fact never spoken in a movie– it was in the trailer of the 1937 movie Algiers (Heddie Lamar and Charles Boyer).  A casbah is a high walled fortification without windows, and it is here we began our explorations of Morocco.   The entire area behind the  walls is called the Medina, which is the oldest part of Marrakesh, while the market areas within are called souks.

The Almoravids,  a Berber tribe, built the city in the 11th century and ever since there’s been a whirlwind everywhere. Narrow alleys lead to more, not even those born here escape without at least the occasional bout of befuddlement.  Small motorcycles and scooters, not to mention the bikes and the principal delivery transport, donkeys pulling carts, wiggle through somehow yet no one is run down nor even has their toes smashed while we were there.   The only incident we encounter involves two boys wrestling, one having a choke hold on the other who apparently knocked his load of bread to the ground.  A kaftan wearing older male was breaking up the fight with remarkable patience.   What a kind soul he seemed.

Delightful aromas abound, coming mostly from the vast mounds of spices and if not from them then the vast quantity of fruit.  An exception is the area where they slaughter the chickens.  The foul fowl odor stuck to my nose for much too long.

Street scene Morocco, water color 13.5x 21 cm, 5 x 8"
Street scene Morocco, water color 13.5x 21 cm, 5 x 8″

Spice aromas fill the air 

Bright colors in the narrow alleys

 

Along the way we came to the university,  which claims to be the world’s first (so do universities in Fez and Timbuktu).   It had 900 students at one point but is no longer in use.   There is exquisite  decoration thanks to Unesco although the rising damp from underground waters continues to cause problems.  These extensive waters are what gave rise to the city- they giveth,  they taketh away. 

Peg shoots the University in Marrakeesh

Calligraphy from the Koran

The souks (market) of the Medina make any Walmart tiny by comparison, as its surrounding walls measure 12 kilometers in length.  There are shops by the thousands, most run by 1 or two people, and manufacturing zones as well, leather production among them, where workers still use plant dies and pigeon poop in the process.

Souk Semmarine sells everything from brightly colored bejewelled sandals, slippers and leather pouffes, to jewellery and kaftans.  Souk Ableuh has lemons, capers, pickles, chili peppers, and olives, as well as mint, which they use in cooking and the sweet tea you find everywhere.  Souk Kchacha specializes in dates and other dried fruit and nuts. Rahba Qedima has  perfumes, hand-woven baskets, scarves,  knitted hats, scarves, and the skins of alligators and iguana.  Famous for jewelry is Souk Siyyaghin, while Smata it’s belts and babouches, a slipper with no heel.  Cherratine has leather while Belaarif has modern consumer goods.  The Haddadine has ironware and lanterns.

The intense activity and I suppose all its newness tired me out and I was glad for the quiet of the lushly appointmented restaurant where we enjoyed the fabulous Moroccan “salads.”  More of this anon.

Marrakech- Contrasts, Conflicts

Modernity and tradition coexist in Marrakeesh albeit not without a least the occasional clash.   Modern cars and buses abound.   On the other hand deliveries in the Souk are sometimes done by mule,  sometimes trotting rather swiftly through the narrow streets as scooters weave through even the most narrow of alleys, brushing you at times with whatever hangs out from their carts.  Women covered from head to toe, a small percentage here, walk side by side chatting with those in jeans.

Contrasts in Culture in the zouk
Contrasts in Culture in the zouk

 

Past shops offering cheap Chinese imports you find traditional craft shops by the thousands, dwarfing any shopping zone I’ve ever seen by astronomical amounts (until we went to Fws).   Leather.   Who’s going to buy those thousands of leather purses?   You pass by large piles of skins, prepared in the nearby tanneries, men standing in the dyes as they turn the hides, so you know there are more purses jackets,  belts and shoes in the pipeline.

We passed a medical clinic on the way,  all shiny and modern like the solar panel monitor displaying the roof panel outputs.   Our guide -you need one or you’ll be forever lost in those nameless narrow alleys- took us to what he called a pharmacy.  These,  he claimed, they had clean pure products,  unlike the open air stands he pooh poohed.  A woman in a white coat offered a jillion natural products to us, an unsubstantiated health claim for each one.

Men kiss upon greeting but men and women don’t, although swear, I do m that I saw two couples doing just that on a park bench we passed on the way from the airport. In Rivat, the capital,  two girls kissed in public and one -why just one or better yet why anyone – was arrested.   Lesbian, let alone gay,  is just too far into modernity  I suppose. 

The majority of women are dressed as you see here. Many men where plain full length kaftans though most wear modern dress.

It’s a fascinating beginning to our time in this modern Muslim nation.

 

 

The Buck Starts Here- tRump!

The Buck Starts Here!

 

The US President Harry Truman is famous for saying, “The Buck Stops Here.”  “Passing the buck” means avoiding responsibility and blame others.  That’s Trump in a nutshell-  it’s never his fault.

The Buck Starts Here
The Buck Starts Here, 29.7 x 42 cm, 11.7 x 16.5″ acrylics on Canson 300 gram acid free paper

 

 

At the Cafe

At the Cafe, Cathedral of Mallorca
At the Cafe (Cathedral of Mallorca), acrylics 30 x 40, 115 x 16.5″

Palma is a major tourist destination for beach goers in the millions.  Germans, Russians, even the Spanish come here to luxuriate in the the beach resorts that line vast sections of the island’s coast.  But for a more serious tourist there is art, architecture and history, plus a neat one hour train to Sóller, a small, charming and tourist-overrun village in the mountains, in vintage wooden cars.  There are galleries for the upscale buyer and for Miró fans there’s his museum and studio on high with fine views of the coast.  (continued below the paintings)

After the the Iberians came the Phoenicians and Greeks.  The island was ruled from Rome no later than 123 BCE.   Then the Arabs arrived, whose fleet moored in the harbor and convinced the islanders to submit to Islamic rule while allowing residents to maintain their religious preferences.  Piracy was a significant source of wealth in the Islamic era, most likely largely due to the strategic location of the island.  The city was reconquered in 1229 by Jaume (James) I of Aragon.  His son built Bellver Castle and started the Cathedral.  In 1391 anti-Jewish killings were widespread.  Those who did not leave the island and survived were forced to convert.  Two gangs ruled the island in the 17th century,  when piracy was again widespread, while the Jews suffered tremendously thanks to that lovely chapter of Spanish history, the Inquisition.

The Cathedral, called La Seu, was started in the 13th but not finished until the early 17th century.   It is a Gothic structure and by no means is its exterior among the most attractive of that style.

The view of the Seu was from the roof of our hotel in the old center.

Couple Snuggling in Bed

Another in the Enamorado Con Amor/In Love with Love series.  Part of love is intimacy, but of course not all intimacy denotes love.  Here it does, and the couple sparkles in the play of light and shadow.  

 

Couple Snuggling in Bed, pastels, 65 x 50 cm/25.5 x 20"
Couple Snuggling in Bed, pastel painting, 65 x 50 cm/25.5 x 20″ 

 

Couple Snuggling in Bed detail
Couple Snuggling in Bed detail

Couple Snuggling in Bed detail
Couple Snuggling in Bed detail

Couple Snuggling in Bed detail
Couple Snuggling in Bed detail

 

The pigments used in pastels are the same as those used to produce all colored art media, including oil paints.  The binder has a neutral hue and low intensity.  

Pastel is challenging because it is mixed and blended on the paper or other surface.  Colors cannot be tested on a palette although with the new powder pastels you can.  This work was done with sticks.  Changes are not easy to make, as you can not just paint over things.

In use since the Renaissance, they were very popular in the 18th century.  My favorite pastel painter is Renoir.