Taliouine Saffron Cooking Class - Cook With the World's Costliest Spice

Saffron is the soul of the finest Moroccan cooking, and nowhere is better to learn it than Taliouine, the town whose high Souss fields produce the country's best. This cooking class puts the precious spice at its centre, teaching you how just a pinch of the crimson threads carries a dish - a lesson far more precise than a standard tagine class, in the very place the saffron is grown.

You learn to bloom saffron properly - toasting and steeping the threads to release their colour and honeyed aroma - and to use it in a classic saffron chicken or lamb tagine with preserved lemon and olives, alongside the Souss Berber dishes and argan-rich cooking the region favours. The host explains how saffron differs from the other pillars of Moroccan seasoning, why a little goes so far, and how to avoid the mistakes that waste it.

Because Taliouine is small and rural, the class is intimate, local and rooted in the surrounding fields and cooperatives - a world away from a busy tourist kitchen. You finish with a saffron tea, said locally to be good for body and spirit, and eat everything you cooked with bread and salads. You leave able to cook with saffron confidently, and with a real understanding of the crop that defines this corner of Morocco.