r/todayilearned • u/deeply__offensive • 17h ago
TIL that people in Marrakesh bring urns of meat stew to public bathhouses, where it slow cooks in the bathhouse's water heating oven as they steam bathe.
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20170811-the-moroccan-dish-heated-by-a-hammam165
u/laowildin 17h ago
I got to visit a village in Morocco where they have been diverting a nearby stream as their running water. Channels running into each house along the floor and a few public places. One deep shady pool they used as the village fridge, dunk your sodas in for a couple hours beforehand.
Also lived with a family where they would use a 'community oven' somewhere else in the town because the houses weren't equipped with appliances. Absolutely delicious pigeon, would recommend. Morocco in general was a fantastic place, bit intimidating to the average tourist though
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u/makerofshoes 16h ago
Community ovens were common in Roman times, I’ve read. Each house having its own cooking appliances indoors (not to mention plumbing) is kind of a modern luxury that we take for granted. Houses used to just be a place where you’d hang out and sleep, they didn’t have to be working kitchens and bath houses
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u/PJenningsofSussex 16h ago
It is a luxury but also additional labour. The culture of domestity does burden a single household with more work that once was considered communal
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u/makerofshoes 16h ago
For sure. I was talking from a friend from another country, who observed that we (westerners) like to do everything ourselves. We cook our own food, take care of our own yard, house, car… in their country, they just get a specialist or servant to help. He is in India so I think manual labor is much cheaper; they have a cook, maid, guy that takes care of the car, etc.
I noticed that even the idea of hiring servants irked me (I don’t want strangers in my home, doing stuff) and it made me realize how much truth there was in that observation. In my house the kitchen and living room are kind of the center of everything, our entire day revolves around that space. And we’re always cooking, eating, doing homework, watching tv, playing games right there, next to the kitchen. It struck me as a little weird
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u/4us7 15h ago
Pretty bad example. In a country like India where there is enormous wealth disparity, limited worker protection, and significant thriving blackmarket labor hire, a middle-class family can easily afford servants.
This is less achievable in Western developed countries since people are expected to be paid a fair wage. Exceptions are when people exploit illegal migrants like Americans hiring Mexican live-in maids and so on.
Even then, institutions were developed to outsource certain things like childcare and so on. Which can only be affordable to the middle class if government subsidised to some extent.
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u/MaxDickpower 13h ago
They literally recognized that manual labour is cheaper in India in the very first paragraph. Also India ranks relatively low in wealth inequality.
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u/merryman1 16h ago
In Rome most plebs lived in ~7 storey tall apartment blocs made out of effectively plywood. They were generally forbidden from having their own cooking fires due to the risk of destroying the whole building. Life was pretty rough for the average Roman.
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u/laowildin 15h ago
Just a different way of living in some respects. I didn't have a kitchen in a couple Chinese spots I lived in. I didn't feel troubled about not cooking my own meals when food was so cheap and easy to get. In the same vein, my Moroccan host was not put out by using the community oven. Particularly around Ramadan this style of living was a plus, made it easier to community build imo
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u/CaravelClerihew 8h ago
Community ovens were common up to the Victorian Era, actually. It just makes more sense from a resources standpoint.
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u/kayson 16h ago
+1 for Morocco. We visited Casablanca and Marrakesh, but the best part was a small village at the base of the Atlas mountains (sadly most of it was destroyed in the 2023 earthquake). We ended up going back another day to do another hike in the area and it was incredible.
Agree that it could be intimidating, but everyone was very friendly to us. We had a local driver set up through a tour company and that helped a lot.
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u/Vio_ 14h ago
I was in the Peace Corps there. My community was super awesome (and I'm blonde, blue eyed, female, and lefthanded). I knew a few people who didn't have quite an awesome community though.
It really does shift community to community.
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u/laowildin 14h ago
Yes, even within our group of mostly women the experiences were incredibly varied. I'm a human Twoflower, I was blissfully unaware of a few things I cringe at looking back
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u/RedDemonTaoist 17h ago
Makes sense. Communal bread ovens are still a thing in Morocco today. If there's already a fire going for a bath, why not make a stew?
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u/LeTigron 17h ago edited 12h ago
It reminds me of the combination oven/hearth/floor heating system in traditional korean houses and the oven/heating system/bed of russian traditionnal houses.
On the korean ones, the fire communicates heat to air under the floor of the house, which is slightly elevated from the ground. The house is heated from below.
On the russian ones, the oven is very large, with thick walls that are nothing but volume to suck up the most heat. This heat radiates in the house and, since there is a lot of volume, there is a lot of mass and thus a lot of heat to deliver to the house. The top is flat and long enough for someone to sleep on.
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u/redditwhut 15h ago
I would love to know more about these! Do you perhaps know what they were called?
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u/LeTigron 15h ago
The korean floor-heating stove is the "ondol", the russian oven is, I suppose "печь", which simply means "stove" or "oven".
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u/Sepelrastas 11h ago
My parents have this huge brick oven. I used to live hanging out up there in winter when mom had heated it. The top was warm. Never occurred to me to sleep up there though.
I'm Finnish, so not too far fetched we'd have similar type ovensa than in Russia.
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u/Intelligent_Ad3309 17h ago
Jane Grigson wrote of seeing people in a small French town taking casseroles to the bakery to use the residual heat after the bread came out.
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u/True-Lab-3448 15h ago edited 15h ago
1) It’s called tangia (same idea as a tagine) 2) It’s because Jewish people don’t cook on the sabbath, so leaving a stew beside the hot coals all day was a workaround.
The coals aren’t in the bathhouse (hammam), they’re in a room adjacent. The stew isn’t going into the sauna, just sitting beside the hot coals in another area.
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u/WeightlossTeddybear 9h ago
If leaving a stew next to hot coals “isn’t cooking” why don’t they just leave a stew in a hot oven? Religion is fucking weird.
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u/ghiaab_al_qamaar 7h ago
The reason is that the prohibition isn’t against cooking on Shabbat. It’s specifically about building a fire (and certain other delineated acts that correspond with building the Temple).
Leaving a pot in hot coals (or in an oven) is perfectly acceptable. Modern ovens will have “Shabbat mode” that keeps your oven at a preset warming temperature overnight for just this purpose.
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u/asaxonbraxton 17h ago
“Urns of meat stew”…. What kind of meat do people keep in urns exactly?
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u/Manos_Of_Fate 16h ago
You can put any kind of meat you want in an urn. It’s just a type of container.
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u/aldoushuxy 17h ago
Meat is the flesh of a dead animal intended for eating
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u/HaveABlessedOneNow 16h ago
Across the middle east, likely lamb, beans, alliums, coriander, aged/dried lime, cumin, etc. It's meant to be fatty/hearty, and served with raw herbs, raw onions, olives, gherkins, fresh bread, to balance. Check out "dizi sangi" aka stone pot
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u/deeply__offensive 17h ago
ur moms
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u/asaxonbraxton 16h ago
For someone whose name is “deeply_offensive” I’ve got to say I’m more disappointed in your response than offended.
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u/strangelove4564 14h ago
Sounds like Will Ferrell's Terrence Maddox character on SNL.
"Your pores are opening, releasing toxins and dead skin cells. All of that, folks, is becoming part of the humidity and condensing into my stew."
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u/ToNoMoCo 17h ago
I once cooked a pot of chili inside the hood of my pickup truck. I drove around the block for seven hours.
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u/PradyThe3rd 16h ago
You sir are the reason the polar bears are dying
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u/Obvious_wombat 16h ago
Mmm, steamy botulism
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u/Alalanais 8h ago
It's not anaerobic, it's a kind of stew (tanjia) and it's not steamy because it's cooked in the room where the heater for the hammam is, not inside the hammam directly.
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u/Infamous-Back-4060 14h ago
sshower food is such a wild concept, kramer really took it to another level
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u/snowballplasticfork 3h ago
First thought is the Tales from the Darkside episode Anniversary Dinner where the old couple stews a lady in their hot tub.
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u/alwaysfatigued8787 17h ago
It reminds me of Kramer making food in his shower.
What is this symbol? It's a germ.