Quartet of refreshing Moroccan juices: We love vegetables!

It's juicing season. It's already too hot even in London. So I thought it's a good time to share some old Moroccan juices we tend to make during orange harvesting season which is in....fall/early winter..How odd! Well the reason is that oranges are good for cold aren't they?

Morocco used to be one of the main exporter of oranges (good sweet juicy one) until other countries got in by modernizing their prossesses. Now we see Californian, Spanish, South African and Egyptian oranges pretty much everywhere.


It's worth mentioning that Moroccan oranges are sweet and really smell oranges...Like Paula Wolfert mentioned in her book "Couscous and other good food from Morocco", even Californians are amazed at the quality of Moroccan oranges which are intense in flavour and well balanced (sweetness versus acidity).


So you get it, we love our oranges and we have many recipes to make a good use of them, wether be it in salads or sweets or..juices..


Juicing vegetables was a common thing in Fes and some old Moroccan cities..In this post, I'll try to refer to 4 combinations of orange juice and vegetables that makes everyone happy...

These juices are consummed chilled and within 8 hours.

Use a blender to make all these juices. Regarding the orange juice, I like to put the pulp back in the juice to act as natural sweetener.




I- Orange and carrot juice - Assir dial khizzou 

This recipe doubles as a salad or as a dessert if left coarse, see here.

• Good fresh orange juice 
• Finelly grated carrots
• Sugar to taste
• Ground cinnamon (1/2 to 1 tsp for each 200 ml of juice)
• Orange blossom water (1 tsp for each 200 ml of juice)

Carrot and orange salad

Carrot and orange juice, the finer the carrots are the better.

Make sure you grate the carrots finely or give them more time in the blender.


II- Orange and Armenian cucumber juice - Assir bel Fakkous (or faggous) 

• Fresh orange juice
• Furry Armenian cucumber (alternatively, use Lebanese cucumber with a soft skin)
• Dried oregano or/and thyme (1 tbsp for each 200 ml)
• Orange blossom water (1 tsp for each 200 ml of juice)
• Sugar or any sweetener to taste

As a salad: grate the cucumber without peeling it, mix with other ingredients. Chill
As a juice: you can either make it runny and blend it very well or just pulse it a few time to keep some body.



III- Orange and red radish juice - Assir bel fjel

• Fresh orange juice
• Round red radish
• Orange blossom water (1 tsp of each 200 ml)
• Sugar or any favourite sweetener to taste

IV- Orange and beetroot juice - Assir bel barba

• Orange juice (I like to put the pulp back in the juice to act as natural sweetener)
• Steamed or boiled beetroot, skined off and cooled 
• Sugar or any favourite sweetener to taste

I prefer to steam the beetroot to preserve their flavour and radiant colour.



With this post, I'm participating at Serena and Arianna's fabulous june event about Moroccan food. The event is called " Via del sapori".




So, make sure you make at least one of these in this scroching heat. Isn't that a good way to make children eat their vegetables?