Food writer Nargisse Benkabbou's modern Moroccan dishes

“When I came to England and people were eating their couscous completely differently, I was like, ‘This is really weird’,” says the food writer wryly.

“In Morocco, the stuff in the packet, we call it semolina,” she explains. “We have a dish we normally eat on Friday and it’s steamed grains of semolina topped with vegetable broth and meat - and that is couscous. If you order couscous in Morocco - unless you’re somewhere really touristy in Marrakesh - they’ll always bring you the whole dish.”

This is just one of many snippets of information about Moroccan food Benkabbou is hoping to illuminate with her debut cookbook, Casablanca - because chances are, unless you’re actually Moroccan, you won’t really know all that much about it.

“People think it’s something exotic, or they think hummus is Moroccan. They’re excited about it, but they don’t cook it at home because they think it’s very complicated, and it’s not,” says Benkabbou, who was raised in Brussels before moving to the UK, and shared her recipes and food writing through her blog, MyMoroccanFood.com, before penning her book. “My mission is to bring Moroccan flavours into peoples’ homes.”

The Leiths trained cook, who was prestigiously crowned Observer Rising Star In Food 2018, really started her own cookery education as a child.

“My oldest memory of my mum is coming home from school and her writing down recipes in front of the TV, because back then we didn’t have internet,” she remembers. It was Benkabbou’s job to play assistant in the kitchen, peeling and chopping, and to be a fellow flavour interrogator when they ate out. “I would taste with her and she would ask me, ‘What do you think? Is it rosemary? Is it thyme?’ Then we’d go home and try to reproduce it.”

The trouble was, her mum always took the lead, “so when I started cooking on my own, I was like, ‘Oh my god, I don’t know this, I don’t know that’, there were gaps in my knowledge. I started calling my mum...”

Luckily, she had a very good palate, “and that’s how I started reproducing my mum’s recipes over the phone,” she continues. “I could tell if it was a success or not because I knew exactly how it should taste in my memory.” Even now, following a stint training in political science, which gave way to the insistent hunger to pursue cooking professionally, Benkabbou admits with a smile: “I still call her.”

Although her food is informed by the dishes her mother and aunts fed and taught the London-based chef, Casablanca is not a tome dedicated to traditional Moroccan cooking. Although the pages may be scattered liberally with traditional Moroccan ingredients and dishes - from ras el hanout and harissa, to tagines and (proper) couscous, and woven through with what gives Moroccan food its essence (vibrance, aromatics, spiciness, sourness and the “influences of so many civilisations - Persian, Arab, French, Ottoman, Turkish”) - Benkabbou takes her food heritage and gives it a twist.

“What I aim to do is share traditional dishes and make them more accessible,” explains Benkabbou, who is also a supper club host. “I’ve been eating this food all of my life, and I know how far I can go when I want to tweak a recipe to make it accessible for someone who doesn’t know about Moroccan food, so that’s what I do.”

She also loves to invent fusion dishes - a recent success was Moroccan almond cookies (ghriba), made with Chinese matcha. Do traditional Moroccan cooks mind her playing with classics?

“[Questions] come more from the older generations, but my uncles and cousins will also tell me what I’m doing for our food is really great,” Benkabbou muses. “It’s very emotional and also makes me very proud that I’m able to share my heritage.

“Every time I share a traditional recipe, there’s part of my mum in the recipes and my grandfather - for me it’s a wonderful way to give an homage - it makes me really happy.”

An easy dish you just whack in the oven.

“We all need recipes like this sometimes, when just thinking about what to cook and how to cook it feels like a gigantic effort; it happens to the best of us. On those occasions, a one-bowl/one-pan approach is the answer - the kind where you just throw ingredients together and voila, there’s a delicious meal that you can proudly take credit for,” says Moroccan food writer, Nargisse Benkabbou.

“So if you are on the lookout for that type of recipe, you’re on the right page, but even if not, you’re still on the right page. Harissa and lemon are like bread and butter: They work so well together, we should marry them.”

Harissa and Lemon Chicken Tray Bake with Sweet Potatoes

“We all need recipes like this sometimes, when just thinking about what to cook and how to cook it feels like a gigantic effort; it happens to the best of us. On those occasions, a one-bowl/one-pan approach is the answer - the kind where you just throw ingredients together and voila, there’s a delicious meal that you can proudly take credit for,” says Nargisse.

“So if you are on the lookout for that type of recipe, you’re on the right page, but even if not, you’re still on the right page. Harissa and lemon are like bread and butter: They work so well together, we should marry them.”

(Serves 4)

2 onions, sliced

8 garlic cloves, peeled but left whole

4 large chicken legs

1 large sweet potato, cut into large chunks

300g cauliflower florets

2 lemons, sliced

For the marinade:

200ml vegetable stock

Finely grated zest of 3 lemons

3tbsp lemon juice

3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

3tbsp harissa, plus extra to serve

2tbsp olive oil

2tbsp finely chopped fresh coriander

1/4tsp salt, or more to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C (180°C fan), Gas Mark 6.

2. Mix all the marinade ingredients together in a bowl.

3. Spread the onions out in a deep roasting tin and scatter the garlic cloves all over. Place the chicken legs, skin-side up, on top with the sweet potato chunks and cauliflower florets. Pour over the marinade and turn the chicken legs several times to ensure that they are fully coated with the marinade. Top the whole dish with the lemon slices.

4. Bake for about one hour or until the chicken is golden and cooked through. Serve the chicken and vegetables immediately with extra harissa.

SMOKY ZAALOUK

This tasty dip is the kind you can slather on almost anything...

(Serves 4)

4tbsp olive oil

2 large aubergines, peeled and chopped into 3cm chunks

4 tomatoes, deseeded and chopped into 3cm chunks

3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

2tbsp chopped fresh coriander, plus extra leaves to garnish

1tbsp lemon juice

1/2tbsp clear honey

1tsp smoked paprika

3/4tsp salt, or more to taste

1/2tsp ground cumin

1/2tsp paprika

1/8tsp cayenne pepper, or more to taste (optional)

1. Heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan and add all the ingredients. Cover the pan and cook over a medium-low heat for about 30 minutes until the vegetables are soft, stirring occasionally to make sure they don’t stick to the base of the pan.

2. Uncover the pan and crush the vegetables with a potato masher, then leave to cook for about five minutes over a medium heat, stirring occasionally, until all the liquid has evaporated. Taste and adjust the seasoning, adding salt if necessary.

3. Serve warm or cold, with a sprinkling of coriander.