What food should I try in Morocco?

If you only eat one thing, make it a proper tagine — but understand that 'tagine' is really a hundred dishes. My desert-island order is lamb with prunes and toasted almonds: the meat falls off the bone after hours under that conical lid, the prunes go jammy and dark, and there's a whisper of cinnamon and a scatter of sesame on top. Order it in a family-run riad, not a tourist terrace, and ask them to make it the way they'd cook it for themselves.

Then there's pastilla, the dish that makes first-timers gasp. Wafer-thin warqa pastry, traditionally wrapped around shredded pigeon (chicken now, more often), eggs cooked into the sauce, almonds, and a snowfall of icing sugar and cinnamon on top. Sweet and savoury in the same bite — it sounds wrong and tastes extraordinary. I always order it for the table so everyone gets converted at once.

For everyday joy: harira, the tomato-lentil-chickpea soup Moroccans break their fast with in Ramadan, served any time with a date and a sticky chebakia pastry; msemen, the flaky square pancakes folded and griddled for breakfast, eaten with honey and butter; and brochettes — skewers of lamb, kefta or liver grilled over charcoal at a street stall, the smoke hitting you before you even see the grill.

And don't leave without trying a tanjia in Marrakech — beef or lamb slow-cooked for hours in a clay urn buried in the embers of the hammam furnace. It's the city's bachelor dish, smoky and unctuous, and you'll only find it done properly in the old medina. I can point you to the right hole-in-the-wall.