Let’s go Moroccan today. I might have very little experience with Moroccan cuisine restaurant-wise, but whenever I come across a recipe I tend to get very excited. Perhaps it’s the unique ingredient and flavour combinations – having dried fruit in savoury dishes, the heady but well-balanced mix of spices. It has a lot in common with Chinese cuisine in the way they both strive to balance all elements of taste – salty, sweet, sour, hot. The most successful Moroccan-style dish I’ve cooked so far is chicken tagine. I don’t have an actual tagine dish, so I cooked it in a casserole pot. This version uses prunes, almonds and honey as the sweetener. I like to serve it with curried apple couscous. Awesome!

After my visit to Kazbah, I had a craving for more Moroccan food, so last weekend I tried out two recipes: chicken and date tagine, served with curried apple couscous.

The tagine was wonderful, with the subtle flavour of cinnamon, honey and almonds. I couldn’t find any dates so I used prunes instead. And the curried apple couscous is a dream, good enough to have on its own.