What is Morocco's national dish?

Ask ten Moroccans for the national dish and you'll get two answers — couscous and tagine — and honestly, both are right. They're the twin pillars of Moroccan cooking, and which one a family names often comes down to region and tradition. Between them they tell you almost everything about how Moroccans eat: communally, slowly, and with extraordinary care for spice and balance.

Couscous holds a special place. Those tiny steamed semolina grains, traditionally rolled by hand and steamed three times over a bubbling pot of vegetables and meat, are the classic Friday meal — the dish that brings extended families together after midday prayers. Eating a proper couscous, mounded high with seven vegetables and tender lamb or chicken, shared from a single platter, is one of the warmest experiences a visitor can have. If you're invited to a Moroccan home on a Friday, accept.

Tagine is the everyday workhorse and the dish most travellers meet first. The name refers both to the food and to the conical earthenware pot it's cooked in — that distinctive lid traps steam and slow-cooks meat, vegetables, fruit and spices into something tender and deeply aromatic. There are countless versions: chicken with preserved lemon and olives, lamb with prunes and almonds, kefta with eggs, vegetable tagines for the meat-free. Each region, each cook, has their own.

My advice as someone who has eaten my way around the country: don't just order tagine in tourist restaurants — seek out the real versions. A home-cooked or guesthouse tagine, simmered for hours over charcoal, is a different food entirely from the rushed café version. Better still, take a cooking class in Marrakech or Fes, go to the market for the spices, and learn to build the layers yourself. Understanding couscous and tagine is understanding Moroccan hospitality.