Morocco
Slow-cooked in a clay cone, dusted with spice — a table where sweet and savoury refuse to stay apart.
Follow your nose through the medina — past pyramids of cumin and paprika, braziers smoking with lamb, stalls where snails bubble in broth — and you'll end up at a doorway where a tagine has been muttering to itself since dawn. Lift the clay cone and the steam carries everything Morocco loves at once: lamb gone silky, apricots and prunes turned jammy, a warm dust of cinnamon and ginger over the top.
This is a kitchen that refuses to keep sweet and savoury apart. The pantry is ras el hanout and preserved lemon, argan oil pressed by hand, olives cured by the dozen, bread torn rather than cut. Friday means couscous, steamed three times until it's cloud-light and heaped with vegetables and broth. And always, poured from a great height into a small glass, the sweet mint tea that closes every meal — accept it, sit down, and let the afternoon go.
- lamb tagine (slow-cooked clay-pot stew)
- couscous
- pastilla (sweet-savoury pigeon pie)
- harira (spiced tomato & lentil soup)
- brochettes (grilled skewers)
- mint tea
