O' Corner

Feggas

Asma Samy Chabbi grew up in Casablanca in a huge extended family. Overseen by her mother and aunts, she started baking for fun when quite young. In Morocco, all cooking is done by women and some families still have Dadas (family cooks). They are descended from women brought from the Sudan when it was still a part of the Moroccan empire. They are guardians of culinary traditions.

In 1988 Chabbi moved to the United States to study hospitality management. She began her career managing a Taco Bell in Miami, but eventually started her own catering company. A corporate client asked her to make holiday gift boxes and she filled them with baked goods, including the biscotti that evolved into the recipe below.

Her biscotti, based very loosely on a double-baked Moroccan cookie called Feggas, are filled with butter, olive oil, eggs, ground sesame seeds, almonds, walnuts and pecans sweetened with sugar and orange blossom honey, and spiced with anise, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg. Chabbi makes large batches of dough, forming plump batons that are baked for half an hour. They are allowed to set and then cut into thick slices that are baked at a low temperature for at least six hours, producing rich, crunchy, nutty cookies.

Almond MACAROONS*

· 4 cups ground almonds
· 3/4 cup sugar
· Grated zest of 1 lemon
· 2 to 3 drops almond essence
· 1 large egg white
· Confectioners' sugar

Grind the almonds in a food processor. Grease a baking sheet with butter. Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Put all of the ingredients, except the confectioners' sugar in the food processor and blend into a soft malleable paste. Put some confectioners' sugar on a small plate. Rub your hands with a little oil so that the almond paste does not stick to your hands. Take lumps of the paste, the size of a large walnut, and roll into balls. Press one side of each ball into the confectioners' sugar, flattening it a little, and place on baking sheet, sugared side up. Bake for 15 minutes. Let the macaroons cool before lifting them off the sheet. They will be lightly golden and cracked and soft inside. Serve with tea or coffee or enjoy as a snack.

Remember until next Wednesday, keep it simple, keep it fast.

*(Recipe by L. Blandholm)