Tajine Tafraoute Project

The spellings are interchangeable, as far as I know. I’ve decided to stick with tajine, for the sole reason that it turned up three times more google hits than tagine.

I wonder why this is?

The Tajine Tafraoute Project is my quest to replicate the most sublime food experience of my life: a transcendental tajine in Tafraoute, Morocco. December, 2005.

The quest began in March 2008, when Tim (a fellow Wellspring House retreating writer) and I went to Northampton, a town in central Massachusetts, for dinner. As we passed by the Amanouz cafe, a Moroccan place, two words on the chalkboard menu in the window caught my eye: “Tagine Tafraoute.”

I had to have one.

We ordered. While we were nervously awaiting our tagines, Tim half-joked that I could embark on a quest to replicate the perfect tagine. I took him half-seriously.

But why not? I love tajines, and I can’t eat all of them by myself. Besides, quests are fun.

So, here’s the deal:
I’ll go out with a different person to try a new tajine each time around. This way, we could try two tagines. And the tagines at each restaurant would be less likely to blur because they’d become intertwined with your face, your body odor, or, hopefully, your witty repartee. In effect, you’d be lending your likeness to my mental tajine snapshot.

I’ll write about each tajine experience, and the friend will be encouraged — but not required — to write as well.

The RULES, entirely subject to modification:

1. Wexler does not pay for your meal.

2. No tajine is off limits. Unless it’s not really a tajine.

3. Home-cooked tajines are allowed. This does not mean I help you cook.

4. The further off the beaten the track, the better.

Thus — it begins!