Home is Morocco's Fried Dough

On my first trip to my parents’ homeland, I discover that although fried dough might sound basic, in Morocco, it is so much more than the sum of its parts. It’s a revelation.

By Claire Sibonney

“Do you want to try it?”

It’s an early fall morning inside the leafy courtyard of La Sqala, one of Casablanca’s most storied and sophisticated restaurants. The air is infused with sweet mint, saltwater from the nearby Atlantic Ocean and the savory scent of deep-frying. One of the line cooks in the open-air kitchen notices my eyes light up, as if I’ve never seen a person make a doughnut before. I have, certainly, but never like this. He’s wielding a compact lump of wet, sticky dough and squeezing off apricot-sized balls between his thumb and forefinger to shape into free-form rings. Slack and squishy, they plop into the bubbling oil of an oversize, handmade copper pan. He hands me a long hooked skewer that looks a lot more like a medieval weapon than a cooking utensil meant for swishing the doughnuts around and removing them from the oil. “Really? Can I?”

A selection of authentic Moroccan food at La Sqalarestaurant

I ask, thrilled by the invitation and serendipity of stumbling upon one of my favorite childhood foods within my very first 24 hours in the so-called white city.

Then, a belated flush of embarrassment that I’ve fallen for this corny photo op. Aside from the clunky Nikon camera hanging around my neck, I’m trying not to look like a tourist. I’m wearing my mother’s gray cotton caftan and accompanied only by my private guide, Ahmed, who’s helping me trace my family’s footsteps on my first trip to my parents’ homeland.

In the half century since they left Morocco before eventually settling in Canada, my parents have embraced some of the culture of their new country, but they brought up me and my twin sister, Annie, to appreciate the foods they left behind. Among those foods were the modest yet plentiful fried breads and desserts for which the Maghreb is famous, such as these rustic doughnuts known as sfenj.

The author(left) snacking on honey-dipped sfenj with her cousin during Hanukkah

And while I grew up mostly eating the lavish and nuanced cooked salads, tagines and couscous dishes Moroccan cuisine is known for, many of my most vivid food memories revolve around these simple and comforting treats.

Made with a few inexpensive staples—flour, water and fat—fried dough is much more than the sum of its parts. Take sfenj (also called sfinz or sfinge), derived from the Arabic word for sponge. What starts as a wet, loose and unsweetened leavened dough is deep-fried until golden and crispy, with a chewy, fluffy interior. You can dust it with sugar, drizzle it with honey or simply enjoy its crude and greasy perfection as is—as long as it’s served crackling hot from the pan.

A brief history of fried dough

Fried dough is a universal food that culturally and historically links generations and people around the world. Although I would argue (with shameless bias) that Morocco does fried dough better than most, you could probably find the same passion for the Italian version of sfenj, known as sfingi or zeppole. The same goes for endless other iterations, such as Chinese youtiao, Newfoundland touton, Indigenous fry bread and Indian medu vada.

Long before the cakey Krispy Kreme–style North American version of doughnuts we know (and love) today, doughnuts were invented—and reinvented—in many different ways. According to the Smithsonian, they’ve been around so long that archaeologists keep turning up fossilized bits of what look like doughnuts in the middens of prehistoric Native American settlements.

In fact, centuries before the Dutch brought their olykoeks, or oily cakes, to Manhattan in the 1600s, the Japanese were developing the art of deep-frying after the invention of pottery made it possible for oil to be heated in pots. And it is the Portuguese who can claim responsibility for spreading the gospel of fried dough under the shadow of colonization.

Awakening a childhood memory

My first taste of sfenj in Casablanca brings me back to the 1980s woodpaneled basement of the Toronto synagogue I attended growing up, where the women of our tight-knit Sephardic community would cook regular feasts. During Hanukkah, fried foods symbolized the oil that fueled the miracle of light that the holiday celebrates. After services, the party room would be decked out in mustard-yellow banquet chairs and red tablecloths, and the kids would gorge themselves on honeydipped sfenj—a reward for making it through the long prayers.

You can certainly make sfenj at home (or in temple basements). But in Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia, where they’re known as yoyos, sfenj are often made and sold in little shops or open-air food stalls. A popular breakfast staple, the fried delights are usually the main product that vendors sell, cooking orders on the spot and often tying a few together with a palm frond. During my trip to Morocco, sfenj also becomes a gateway to a flood of other childhood food memories, some of which I forgot even existed.

At the Pâtisserie Bennis Habous in Casablanca, I encounter heaping piles of every Moroccan pastry I had ever tasted at a family holiday, wedding or shiva, including rose-shaped chebakia, deep-fried until golden, and coated with honey, orange blossom water and sesame seeds. Also known as griwech or griouech, they are just like my aunt Fiby’s, which she makes as part of an elaborate spread to celebrate Mimouna, a traditional Maghrebi Jewish feast that takes place at the end of Passover to mark the return of eating hametz (otherwise known as all things bready, leavened and delicious). Her cookies and fried Moroccan crepes (mofletta) are always served with mint tea in intricately patterned glasses rimmed in gold.

Chebakia, a Maghrebi pastry sprinkled with sesame seeds

Ahmed and I buy mint tea and a box of assorted cookies and enjoy them next door to the patisserie, at Café Imperial. It is the quintessential Moroccan experience. I look forward to telling Fiby—she will be delighted for me.

A mosque door in Medina of Fez

Later in my trip, after I join a small group tour that brings us to the Medina of Fez, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, I am stopped in my tracks by a street vendor making m’semen, a popular fried flatbread. It’s made by layering dough with butter and folding it into a square before stretching it thin over a griddle—often a portable grill heated from a gas tank and foot pump—yielding perfectly flaky and chewy layers. My grandmother Rosa often recreated these, dousing them in cinnamon and sugar. That fragrance would waft through her tiny apartment in Haifa, Israel, where she moved with my mother, Nicole, and her siblings from Casablanca, and where my sister and I spent many lazy summers growing up.

Mint tea is central to social life in the Maghreb and is usually prepared in front of guests

Searching for these childhood flavors has become my unofficial assignment, so much so that on my last day in Marrakech before leaving for Toronto, our group guide, Abdellah, generously arranges for a pit stop on the taxi drive to the airport at the crack of dawn for an impromptu roadside breakfast of steaming bissara, or fava bean soup, and sfenj, double-fried for extra crispiness.

There’s a magic that happens when you encounter a food halfway around the world that evokes an essence of home. For me that spark is a perfectly cooked piece of fried dough that makes me feel like a child surrounded by everyone who matters to me, in a joyful synagogue basement—safe, happy and loved. Since rediscovering sfenj, I’ve tried to replicate it for my kids, seven and nine, to pretty authentic results. Only time will tell which of their personal food memories will stick, but I wouldn’t be surprised if fried dough is one of them.