Be lonely no more. Morocco’s “love potion” candy hides a secret high note in its heart.
To Westerners, Alice B. Toklas’s “Haschish Fudge” was a culinary aberration, a bizarre recipe gleefully revived by the Flower Children of the 1960s. Tongue well in cheek, Ms. Toklas wrote, “…it might well prove an entertaining refreshment for a ladies’ bridge club… In Morocco, it is thought to be effective for warding off the common cold in damp winter weather, and is indeed, more effective when taken with large quantities of hot mint tea.”
More effective than what, I’d like to know. Yet marijuana candy has honorable, even ancient antecedents in the Middle East. Known as “Love Potion,” traditional majoun candy is made in some Moroccan households in a matter-of-fact way, or can be bought fresh from local farmers. The first ingredient is smen, clarified butter, and you can find the simple way to make it here.
Cookbook author Paula Wolfert includes a recipe for majoun in her brilliant and otherwise conventional Couscous and Other Good Foods of Morocco. Concocted into an exquisite candy, majoun certainly has more class than chewing on ghat all day and getting green teeth.
Majoun, Moroccan “Love Potion” Candy recipe
Ingredients
500 grams – 2 cups smen – get the recipe for making smen here
3 cups stalks, seeds, and leaves of marijuana (kif, chopped coarsely)
500 grams – 1 lb. chopped, pitted dates
500 grams – 1 lb. chopped, dried figs
250 grams – 1/2 lb. raisins
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon anise seed
1/2 cup each ground almonds and walnuts
1/2 cup dark honey
For adding after the candy is cooked: orange flower or rose water to taste
Put the herb and smen in a medium pan with water to cover. Bring to a boil, cover, and allow it to simmer 2 hours.
Strain the buttery water out into a large, shallow pan like a roasting pan and discard the herb. Refrigerate the pan with herbal butter and water overnight. The cold butter will rise to the top.
Scoop the herbal butter out and place it in a large pan with the rest of the ingredients. Cook it till very thick and brown. Add orange flower or rose water to taste. Pack into clean, dry jars and refrigerate.
This is extremely potent. Do not consume more than 1 tablespoon at a time.
More on drugs in the Middle East:
- Mecca Becomes A Mecca For Drugs
- Cocaine, Codein, and Methadone Present in Treated Cypriot Wastewater
Author: Miriam Kresh
Miriam Kresh is an American ex-pat living in Israel. Her love of Middle Eastern food evolved from close friendships with enthusiastic Moroccan, Tunisian and Turkish home cooks. She owns too many cookbooks and is always planning the next meal. Miriam can be reached at miriam (at) greenprophet (dot) com.
Happy to find you….making majoun tonight, well starting the process. I look forward to more news from this group. I live in the USA but travel to Morocco yearly.
@Ronley – ya i think it’s the symbolism of the “whole”plant and encouraging ‘true’ love… 🙂 just my 2 cents
Frith: There are places where one or two plants on your balcony or windowsill aren’t that big a deal I suppose…
i thought there was a typo/lost-in-translation moment going on in the heading … is “pot” leagal here? if yes, where does one get it because as far as i can tell the plant itself is nearly impossible to get hold of… ? 🙂
Where is here? We are living in a global village….
It’s enviro to use the whole plant, no?
The stalks, seeds and leaves??????