Street markets

No visit to an Arab city is complete without a visit to the outdoor street markets to see at first hand the beautiful arrays of fresh vegetables and fruits available to everyday shoppers: the best tomatoes I have ever seen, sweet, firm, thin skinned and slightly irregular in shape, richly flavoured and literally running with juice; purple, pink and white onions, and wild onions set out in Matisse-like swatches of primitive colour with glossy green and yellow and red peppers, pale white-green bulbs of fresh fennel, long perfectly shaped new carrots twinned with new turnips and baby courgettes (zucchini) all exactly the same size. There are fresh green lettuces, a choice of sucré, limestone, oak leaf, frisé and batavia; and wild herbs and baskets of Moroccan truffles, morels and ceps from the mountains. At one tiny stall of the market, you will find thin, crisply elegant stalks of wild asparagus; pungent piles of fresh coriander and flat-leafed (Italian) parsley nestle with stacks of dandelion leaves and the ragged, dark, almost black-green wild watercress that our ancestors must have known. Here, too, are baskets of live snails, and a farmer in for the day from the country, holding a brace of live rabbits by the ears or with a live turkey in his arms.