This past December - amid a sunset crowd of vendors selling pomegranates, spices and snacks of steamed snails; henna tattooists, snake "charmers” with all the charm of used-car salesmen, fez-twirling dancers, curious tourists and hungry locals; and likely pickpockets taking advantage of everyone’s distraction - I tasted one of the best nonalcoholic drinks I’ve had in a long time. My sister, Molly, and I took a long-planned trip through Morocco, going from Rabat to the Western Sahara, passing through the Atlas Mountains and ending in Marrakesh. With all the cultures, religions and histories that have intersected in the country over centuries, it is a destination I cannot recommend highly enough, especially as presented by our guide, Ibrahim Laarif, a native Moroccan who served rotating roles as cultural and religious interpreter, translator, historian, blocker of hawkers, and procurer of stamps, local snacks and stomach medicines to treat their effects.
In Morocco, mint tea is ubiquitous, a green gunpowder tea served hot, with fresh mint and often other herbs steeping into it. "If couscous or a tagine symbolizes Morocco on the plate, then mint tea does so in the glass,” Jeff Koehler wrote in the "North African Cookbook.” "Mint tea starts and ends a day, is sipped as a midmorning and afternoon break, precedes and finishes a meal.
” We drank it daily on our trip, and I could taste the variations in the herbs added from one place to the next. I had expected the mint te.
