Latifa Alaoui

‘With tagines, you need to find a vegetable that suits the type of meat and then the spices that suit both, even the way you cut an onion is important.’

Latifa Alaoui is a strong, intelligent and discreet women who has developed numerous facets having been a working mother from early on in her life. Cooking is high on her list of talents, and even more so now she has the leisure time to indulge in it, surrounded by her extended family. This includes Laila, a vivacious 33-year-old law graduate who recently married Anas, the youngest of Latifa’s three sons. Between the two of them, they can cook virtually anything from the Fassi (Fassi meaning ‘from Fez’) epicurean repertoire, although it is Latifa, with her long years of experience, who creates delicate little pastries, ultra-refined pastilla or a sumptuous couscous. In their combined cooking sessions there emerges such affection, complicity and humour that they are an exemplary duo of mother and daughter-in-law. All the clichés fly out the window.