African

These sweet tomates confites have a deliciously intense flavor. Serve them hot or cold as an appetizer or with grilled meat or fish. Considering their versatility and their great use in Moroccan cuisine, it is extraordinary that tomatoes were adopted by Morocco as late as 1910. It is best to use plum tomatoes. Although they take a long time to cook, you can cook them in advance, even days in advance, as they keep well in the refrigerator.

A mild and soft fresh goat cheese, jban, is one of the rare cheeses produced in Morocco. If you are not keen on raw garlic, you can leave it out.

Peppers and tomatoes are often partnered around the Mediterranean, but the surprise of finding sweet apples and chili peppers makes this a very special first course to serve with bread. The peppers can also be fried with the onion, but I like to roast them.

Carrot salads are very common in Morocco. This one is sold by street vendors and is particularly delicious. Use older carrots, which have a better taste than young ones.

Bitter oranges—Seville oranges—are commonly used in Morocco, but this salad is also good with sweet ones. Argan oil (see page 31) gives it a nutty flavor.

These minty carrots are tasty and aromatic. Serve them hot or warm as an appetizer or to accompany grilled or roast meat or chicken.

Use pears that are ripe but still firm (Comice is a good variety) and salad leaves such as curly endive, chicory, cress, arugula, and lamb’s lettuce (mâche). You can stick to one type only or use a mix.

This is a wonderfully refreshing salad. The tiny bit of orange blossom water gives it a mysterious flavor. Try to get small cucumbers from Middle Eastern or Asian stores. They have a better taste and texture than the large ones found in our supermarkets.

Moroccan olives are among the best in the Mediterranean and find their way into many salads. Look for good ones for this salad, which is best made in advance so that the dressing and flavors are absorbed. The potatoes will attract the dressing and flavors better if they are peeled.

I love this popular Moroccan salad. It is best made several hours in advance so that the flavors have time to penetrate.

This bright red, creamy purée has an alluring mix of flavors. Serve it as a dip or to accompany fish.

The honey sweetness of this specialty from Marrakesh is surprising and enchanting. Serve it cold as an appetizer with bread, or hot to pour over meat or chicken, and sprinkle, if you like, with chopped, toasted almonds or sesame seeds.

This is a quick throw-together with intense Moroccan flavor. Cooking the chicken on a rack allows the oven’s heat to circulate around the bird and cook it faster. Serve the chicken with Baked Eggplant with Sesame Yogurt and Mint (page 262).

I’ve baked these spicy chicken breasts for crowds, and always receive lots of compliments. The original recipe was for grill-cooking, but this version works year-round.

Our fresh take on the classic Moroccan salad pairs shaved fennel and red onion with assorted beets and oranges for color contrast.

This is my version of harira, the national soup of Morocco, which shows up in unending variations from city to city, street stall to street stall, and family to family. It can be vegan, vegetarian, or made with meat—usually lamb. Some cooks add chickpeas, chicken gizzards, or broken-up bits of angel hair pasta. But the result is always unmistakably harira, and that's what makes it so comforting and satisfying. Harira has the inexplicable quality of being both light and filling at the same time, making you feel perfectly content. That's why, besides being the national soup, it's also a religious institution: it's what every family in Morocco eats to break their daily fast all through the monthlong observance of Ramadan. All over the country, for an entire month of sunsets, the first thing the entire population tastes is harira, and breaking the fast with anything else would be like serving Thanksgiving dinner without turkey. During Ramadan here in the States, I fast all day, even though I keep up my normal schedule, shopping in the farmers' market and working in the kitchen. As soon as the sun goes down, I step away from my expediting station and have a quick bowlful of harira to get me through the evening. And on days off, I take home a quart of it to break the fast at my house. The first time you make this, try making a light meal of it, with just some bread and maybe a simple salad. You'll understand what I'm talking about. It's weirdly, wonderfully satisfying—in a way that fills your soul more than your stomach. I make harira with water, not stock, because I think this vegetarian (actually, vegan) version is lighter and cleaner tasting, but you can make it with chicken or lamb stock or half stock and half water. While its flavor is very true to the original, I've played with its preparation. For example, I cook the lentils separately, to keep them from breaking down too much. (My mom called that crazy, but she smiled when she tasted the result.) And if you cook them in the soup, they darken the cooking liquid and give the soup a muddy appearance. The yeast-and-flour mixture is my version of the traditional starter made from fermented flour and water, used exclusively for harira, that you'll find in every Moroccan kitchen. It's easier to manage but has the same effect as that sourdough original, thickening and lightening the soup, and keeping it from separating, while adding a rich, tangy flavor. I wanted to give people a little crunch without adding an extra element, so I took the celery out of its usual place in the sautéed soup base and reintroduced it at the end as a raw garnish. In Morocco, harira is classically served with dates, which add sweetness to balance the soup's acidity. Taste it without the dates, and then try it with them. You'll find it's an entirely different experience. When I first started serving this soup at the restaurant, I'd accompany it with a few beautiful (and expensive) California Medjools on the side. The dates kept coming back uneaten. People just didn't get the idea of savory soup and sweet dates, which drove me nuts. So I thought of a way to work the dates into the soup, rolling them into little balls and adding them as a garnish. People get it now. The date balls are never left uneaten. They're a part of the bigger idea, as they should be. This makes a big batch. That's how I always do it, even at home, because we love to eat it over several nights, and it keeps for up to a week.

This Moroccan-style braise is deeply aromatic, meltingly tender, and exactly what you want on a chilly winter weekend.

The name of this Moroccan spice blend—an exotic mix of sweet, savory, and spicy—means 'head of the shop," implying that it's the store's best blend. Use it to season the Lamb Tagine with Chickpeas and Apricots (see recipe), as well as your favorite chicken or vegetable dishes.

Serve half of this fresh bread with the Tunisian Vegetable Salsa as a starter and the rest with the lamb .

This Tunisian mixture elevates everything from flatbreads to <epi:recipelink id="365691">grilled lambepi:recipelink. Make extra so you'll have some on hand all summer long.</epi:recipelink></epi:recipelink>