Taste of Morocco

Ronnie and I decided to try a new restaurant tonight (read: it's been around for a while but we've never gone) called Taste of Morocco. It was pretty good and there was a belly dancer Ronnie seemed to enjoy watching. They served us "Moroccan Bread", which, given that Morocco is ostensibly part of the Middle East, you would have thought would be pita. But it wasn't. It was a bread about an inch high with a crust on the top and bottom and it was dry and a little sweet.

So of course we had to ask about this (read: Ronnie had to ask about this) and find out why there was no pita. And we heard an interesting story. Evidently, way back when, they did eat pita in Morocco. But legend has it that in the 1600's, a large pack of wolves who smelled the bread baking, began chasing women away from the pits over which they made their bread. In those days, (and today, in some places) they made pita - taking loaves of dough, pounding them flat, and cooking them quickly on the bottom of a big metal bowl inverted over hot coals.

The wolves were chasing away the women, but, in an ironic twist, they weren't able to eat the baking pita because to get close enough to pull it off the bowl meant their noses got burned on the hot metal. By the time the women were able to return to their breads, they had risen and gotten crustier than the pita they'd intended to make.

And thus was created Moroccan bread. And the story, Pita and the Wolves...