Olives

Jars of identical olives neatly packed on supermarket shelves in Britain give no clue to the enormous variety to be found loose, piled in colourful mounds in the market stalls of every Moroccan city. Here you can make your choice daily from tiny crinkled black olives with a pungent salty taste for snacks, salads and hors d’oeuvres, glossy green olives in brine, stone-cracked green or wine red olives soaked in brine for cooking, cracked green olives flavoured with diced preserved lemon peel and dried herbs, cracked rosy-hued olives flavoured with diced bitter orange, raw carrot, fennel and hot red pepper, or cured black olives set like ebony beads in a hot red pepper sauce called harissa.