The pot has been going since noon. Lentils, chickpeas, tomatoes, celery leaves — the leaves, not the stalks. Cumin, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon at the very end. The steam fills the courtyard by four.

The bread is at the communal oven. The table is set: harira, dates, chebakia, eggs. Same every night for a month.

The flour-water goes in at the end — that's what makes the texture right. Thick enough to coat a spoon, still pourable.

January. The dough is made from scratch — flour, water, a pinch of salt, rolled thin and cut into circles. The skins dry slightly on the counter while the filling comes together. Lamb and coriander today. Earthy and green.

The pleats are the same fold used for pastilla. Same technique, different filling.

The kitchen smells like cumin and sesame oil at the same time.

Quiet morning after the fireworks. The first pot of the year is on the stove.

Beans on January 1st. They look like coins, they swell when they cook — prosperity, abundance. White beans today, with cumin and olive oil and lemon.

The courtyard smells like bay leaf.

The courtyard is still cool. Fountain on. Light through the mashrabiya making patterns on the tablecloth.

Msemen — flaky, layered, made this morning. Baghrir with all the little holes that soak up honey. Bread from the communal oven. Olive oil from the Haouz. Amlou — roasted almonds ground with argan oil and honey. Butter. Jams. Orange juice squeezed ten minutes ago. Mint tea.

Everything on the blue ceramic plates from Fes, the ones with the chipped edges.

The sardines at the souk this morning — small, silver, eyes still clear. A kilo for almost nothing.

Chermoula: coriander, garlic, cumin, paprika, lemon juice, olive oil, pounded together. The sardines sit in it for an hour. Then the charcoal grill — a clay kanoun on the terrace. Three minutes a side. The skin blisters, the fat drips, the smoke carries.

Eaten with bread and more lemon.

The sardines get filleted and chopped fine with a knife — not a blender, too smooth. Mixed with chermoula spices, shaped into patties, fried in olive oil until crispy outside and soft in the middle.

The kitchen smells like the sea and cumin. Eaten in bread with sliced tomato and raw onion.

After everything is cleaned up and the house is quiet. Bread, olive oil, a handful of olives, maybe some cheese.

The olive oil is from a farm in the Haouz — green, peppery, strong enough that bread and oil is a complete meal. The olives are the cracked ones with preserved lemon and herbs. The bread is whatever is left from the day.

The meal that gets eaten the most and the one nobody sees.

The stalls at Jemaa el Fna — identical carts, identical pyramids of oranges, identical calls. The competition is fierce and mostly friendly.

Squeezed to order. The glass is cold. Sweet and sharp and costs almost nothing.

There's a rhythm to which stall is busiest at which hour.

A big steaming vat at the square. The broth is dark and herbal — thyme, liquorice root, gum arabic, a dozen other things. The snails are small, pulled out with a toothpick.

At ten at night the steam rises into the cold air and the queue is mostly locals, standing around with small bowls. The broth is the point. The snails are almost secondary.

Tastes like medicine in the best way.

The one that gets made the most. Chicken, preserved lemons, olives. The tagine pot does the work — low heat, patience, steam trapped under the cone.

The preserved lemons are from the jar on the counter. Three months in salt, soft and intense. The olives are the purple ones, slightly bitter.

The sauce at the bottom is the best part. Bread goes in.

When the weather turns or when something needs to be simple. Rice and water and ginger, cooked until the grains break down into silk.

The ginger is sliced thin, not grated. It sits in the pot the whole time. Spring onion and white pepper on top. Sesame oil.

Comfort food that belongs to no place in particular.

Gunpowder green, a big fistful of fresh mint, sugar. The pot is metal. The glasses are small. The pour is from a height so a foam forms on top.

The first glass gets poured back into the pot. The second pour is the real one.

In summer the mint is enormous, almost aggressive. In winter it's tighter and more subtle. The tea changes with it.

The communal oven at the end of the derb. The baker knows every family's bread by shape. The bread goes on a wooden board, carried through the alley. Comes back an hour later, hot, the bottom slightly charred from the wood fire.

The smell fills the whole derb on the way home.

A small fee. The same it's been for years.

Friday. The whole medina smells like couscous by noon. The grains are rolled by hand, steamed three times over the vegetables and meat. The process takes hours.

The vegetables change with the season — turnips and pumpkin in winter, courgettes and peppers in summer. Seven is traditional. The tfaya — caramelised onions with raisins and cinnamon — goes on last.

Aged, salted butter. Funkier than ghee — closer to a strong blue cheese in smell. The jar on the counter has been going a while. A small spoonful goes into couscous, into lentils, into anything that needs depth.

Pungent, salty, almost fermented. A little transforms simple food into something ancient.

Saturday morning. The dough has been resting. Stretched thin on an oiled surface, folded over itself again and again into a square, cooked on a flat griddle until golden and flaky.

The stretching is the technique — the dough pulls so thin it's almost transparent. Oil between each layer. The folding makes the flakiness.

With honey and butter. Or with soft cheese. Or plain, torn off in strips, still warm.

Pyramids of turmeric, cumin, paprika, ras el hanout in shades of gold and red and brown. The smell is a wall.

The cumin test: rub it between the fingers. Strong and immediate means fresh. Faint means old. The saffron — real saffron has bright red threads with no yellow.

Ras el hanout means head of the shop. The best blend the merchant makes. Every shop's recipe is different.

The butcher works with a cleaver and a block of wood. The lamb is local. The chops are cut thick.

Cumin, salt, olive oil. On the charcoal until the fat renders and the outside chars. The cumin caramelises and goes nutty.

Bread and a raw tomato-onion salad alongside.

Yellow lentils, curry leaves, cumin seeds popping in hot oil. The smell is completely different from anything else that comes out of this kitchen — coconut oil and turmeric and something sharp from the curry leaves.

The lentils cook down thick and golden. A tempering of fried garlic and cumin goes on top at the end. Works with rice or with bread.

When the pomegranates arrive, the souk changes colour. Red and pink and deep garnet everywhere. The sellers split one open to show the seeds — that's how you tell sweet from sour.

The juice stalls start pressing it fresh. The seeds go over salads, over yoghurt, into tagines at the end for acid.

A few weeks and they're gone.

Salt and lemons and time. The jar sits on the counter for three months. The lemons soften, the rind goes translucent, the salt pulls out the liquid.

After three months — salty, sour, floral, nothing like fresh lemon. A quarter of one transforms a tagine. The pulp gets discarded; it's the rind.

There's always a jar going. One finishes, the next starts.

Before the crowds. Vegetable sellers stacking tomatoes into pyramids, arranging coriander and parsley and mint in bunches. The meat section already working — carcasses hanging, knives being sharpened.

The fish arrives from the coast overnight. Sardines in silver rows. Prawns on ice.

By nine it's busy. By ten it's chaos. At seven it's just the regulars.

The juice stalls make a version with avocado, almonds, milk, argan oil on top. Thick, cold, slightly sweet. More dessert than drink.

The avocados here are enormous. The almond milk is made fresh. The argan oil makes it nutty and rich.

Sometimes this is lunch.

Khlii — dried preserved meat, cooked in fat and spices, stored in jars. Keeps for months. A handful goes into a tagine with tomatoes and eggs cracked on top.

The eggs cook in the sauce, whites setting, yolks soft. The khlii gives the whole thing a deep, almost smoky flavour.

Morning food.

Onions cooking slowly in olive oil. A tagine on low heat, lid on, steam coming out in a thin line under the cone. The window is open. The courtyard is warm today.

A cat on the kitchen step. The radio is on — Moroccan station, mostly music, occasionally news that nobody listens to.

Whatever is in the tagine won't be ready for another hour. That's fine. Nothing else is happening.

The Ramadan cookie. Flower-shaped, fried, dipped in hot honey and sprinkled with sesame seeds. The dough has orange blossom water, anise, cinnamon, saffron — it smells like a perfume shop.

Making them at home is an all-day project. Most people buy them. The best ones come from the stalls that only appear during Ramadan — they set up, sell for a month, and disappear.

They go with harira. The sweetness against the savoury soup is the whole point.