Power of four

An enigmatic blend of savoury and sweet, laced with heat to tease and tickle, the food of Morocco is both mysterious and misunderstood, finds Tom Parker Bowles

- Tom Parker Bowles

PAULA WOLFERT, the most learned of food writers, argues that the greatest national cuisines depend on four factors—‘an abundance of fine ingredients; a variety and confluence of cultural influences; a great civilisation; and a refined palace life’. France and China immediately spring to mind, Japan, Thailand and India, too. These words are written in perhaps her most magisterial tome, The Food of Morocco. And as she so rightly says, Morocco ‘has been blessed with all four’.

Yet for me, at least, Moroccan food is the most mysterious and most misunderstood of cuisines. Sure, we all know about tagines and harissa, preserved lemons, couscous and that enigmatic blending of the savoury and sweet. But it’s that last mélange that seems to polarise opinion. Take the great bastila of Fes, the sort of intricate, extravagant and magnificent dish devoured by the sultans and pashas of old, their fingers bejewelled, their appetites unsullied by restraint. This is courtly food at its finest: spiced, shredded pigeon, enveloped in a lemon-sharp custard and held in the crisp, paper-thin embrace of warqa, ‘the most prestigious pastry,’ according to Ms Wolfert. On top, flurries of icing sugar, cinnamon and daintily sweetened almonds. Made properly, it’s a multisensory revelation. Done badly, it’s plain wrong.