Algeria

Algerian cooking is the largest of the Maghreb, built on couscous, slow-simmered tagine-style stews, and Mediterranean produce. French, Berber, and Ottoman influences layer over a table generous with lamb, chickpeas, and semolina.

Couscous belongs to four countries at once. UNESCO inscribed the knowledge, know-how and practices around it in 2020 as a joint element of Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia, a rare four-nation nomination that exists precisely because no one of them can claim it. Chorba frik, thickened with green cracked wheat, is the soup that opens the meal through Ramadan.

Almost the whole country is Sahara, roughly four fifths of it, and barely three per cent of the land is arable. That arable sliver is the Tell, the coastal band of hills and plains north of the Atlas ranges, where the cities, the wheat, the olives, the citrus and the vineyards all are, which is why an enormous country cooks like a Mediterranean one.

Flaky square semolina flatbreads folded in layers and griddled, served with honey or jam.