Tunisia

Tunisia starts hot. Before anything else, a dish of harissa arrives — a fiery paste of sun-dried chillies, garlic and caraway — with bread and olive oil to swipe through it, and that chilli undertow runs through the whole cuisine. This is the spiciest food in the Maghreb, and Tunisians are proud of it.

Friday means couscous, steamed fine and mounded under a fragrant marqa stew of lamb or fish and vegetables. But the snack to fall for is brik — a paper-thin pastry triangle folded around a whole egg with tuna, parsley and capers, deep-fried so the yolk bursts warm at the first bite (eating it without dripping is a local art). Chase it with a bowl of lablabi, a garlicky chickpea soup poured over torn bread, or eggs poached in spicy tomato ojja. Finish with sticky date makroudh and a glass of sweet mint tea. Bright, punchy, sun-soaked cooking.