Moroccan

Blanching the root vegetables shortens the stew's cooking time and keeps the flavors bright. Plus, the blanching water makes a great quick stock.

Lightly garlicky and herbed, Moroccan-inspired carrots are versatile enough to accompany almost any meal.

Common ingredients create a Moroccan meal.

B'stilla, a traditional Moroccan recipe, was the inspiration for this savory pie. The dish consists of a spiced chicken filling sandwiched between layers of crisp phyllo pastry.

A fragrant and exotic dish.

In Morocco, toasted cumin is served right beside salt and pepper as a standard seasoning at every meal. Judging by the way it amplifies the taste of the roasted eggplant in this dish, the Moroccans have got the right idea.

While traditional couscous with its exotic spices is the stuff of cold winter nights, I love that the same spices—ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, and cumin—can make a cool couscous salad that's perfect on even the sultriest days. My favorite go-along is grilled chicken, but the salad is also good with grilled fish. When I've got leftover couscous, I spoon it onto a bed of lightly dressed greens, surround it with slices of tomato (and sometimes hard-boiled eggs), and call it lunch.

Preserved lemons are perhaps most at home in Moroccan dishes, but we love their complex, bright flavor and aroma in all kinds of soups, stews, and salads. We've adapted Mediterranean-food authority Paula Wolfert's quick method and made it even faster by blanching the lemons first. If you manage to find Meyer lemons, this is a great way to capture their unforgettable taste and perfume.

This well-balanced stew is intense yet mellow. The prunes soak up the fragrant spices, and long, slow cooking turns the lamb fork-tender.

These savory pies are filled with fish instead of the traditional squab.

Not your typical chicken pot pie. Cumin, cinnamon, and paprika add an aromatic spiciness, which is balanced by briny green olives and sweet golden raisins.

Cumin, coriander, and cinnamon give this dish its exotic flavor.

Try this with the Moroccan-Style Roast Chicken .

The strong aromatics in this dish infuse the potatoes with a spirited Moroccan style.

Moroccan hospitality, always gracious, begins with mezes, the enticing little dishes set out to welcome guests before the meal. Cumin and mint are a classic combination, and they work particularly well with roasted beets — the cumin underlines their earthiness, and the mint freshens their undeniable sweetness.

You can barely take a step in the markets of Marrakech without tripping over fresh mint, or at least without being offered a glass of hot, sweet mint tea.

Ruggiero was served rose-scented candied peanuts and mint tea on the rooftop of the home of a Toubkal local. It turned out to be one of the best-tasting snacks she'd ever had.

Dried fruits and nuts are common in Moroccan pastries, but this tart is something special — the richness of the dough and the pop of the sesame seeds bring out that honeyed quality you normally associate with fresh figs. The cardamom cream is whisper-light, and the fresh orange segments are refreshingly cool.