A tradition of Moroccan cookery 1

Food is joy, that is what my father always said to me. You cannot do anything well without eating well, and to eat well is one of the greatest pleasures in life. But to cook for other people and give them pleasure, that is the greatest pleasure of all.

My father was a cook all his life. In a country in which women jealously guard their kitchens, it was my father who taught me to cook: my mother was too busy raising ten children to have me getting underfoot in her kitchen! My father had a little restaurant in the Berber village where I grew up, in an oasis in the southwest of Morocco. Every day he would get up before the first call to prayer and start his preparations. He would toil away from dawn to after dusk in his kitchen, preparing soups and tajines and tea for all who came and went - visitors and traders, government officials, farmers in town to sell their wares in the local market, tourists come to marvel at our beautiful scenery. And on top of all that he catered till all hours for weddings, feasts, and funerals.

Our village is in the foothills of the Anti-Atlas Mountains, where the mighty rose-coloured Djebel Kest range meet the verdant Ammelne Valley before giving way to granite plateaux, and finally the rock-and-sand deserts of the Sahara. It has always been a meeting point, a crossroads for travellers and traders, and a place Moroccans love to visit, calling it ‘un petit paradis’ – a little paradise. It was then, and still is, a thriving place, and it kept my father very busy.