What food do you eat in the Sahara / desert?

Eating in the Sahara is one of the great surprises of a Morocco trip — people imagine deprivation, then find themselves at a candlelit camp table working through a feast under the Milky Way. Desert cooking is nomadic by necessity: few ingredients, no waste, and clever techniques born from cooking without an oven. The flavours are smoky, slow and deeply satisfying.

The dish to seek out is madfouna — literally 'buried' — the famous 'Berber pizza' of the Rissani and Erfoud region. A disc of dough is stuffed with minced meat, onions, almonds, parsley and spices, sealed like a calzone, then baked directly in hot sand and embers. When it's split open it steams aromatically, the crust scorched and crisp, the filling rich. I always route our desert journeys through Rissani's souk so guests can watch it made and eat it fresh.

At the camps, dinner is usually a generous tagine — chicken with preserved lemon, or lamb with prunes — simmered slowly while the sun drops, served with bread that's been baked in the coals (khobz, or sometimes the flatbread harcha). For groups or celebrations, a whole méchoui lamb might be roasted. And there's always mint tea: brewed strong, poured high, refilled endlessly. It's hydration, ritual and welcome all at once.

Around it all are the desert's quiet staples: dates (the Tafilalt oases produce some of the world's finest), almonds, and, if you're lucky, fresh camel milk — light, faintly sweet, served at a nomad tent. Breakfast at camp brings msemen (flaky square pancakes), amlou, honey, olive oil and that tea again. Dining in the dunes, with no light pollution and a fire crackling, is the meal guests tell me they remember longest.