Tunisia.

Harissa is the spine of the cuisine, and understanding it explains most Tunisian cooking. Ripe chillies — traditionally the local baklouti variety — are split, dried in the sun until leathery, then rehydrated and pounded with garlic, salt, caraway and coriander seed and sealed under oil. Caraway is the giveaway: it is what makes Tunisian chilli paste taste Tunisian rather than simply hot. A spoonful is fried into the oil at the start of a stew, whisked into a vinaigrette, spread inside a sandwich, or set out neat in a saucer so each person can adjust their own bowl. Alongside it sits tabil, a ground blend of coriander seed, caraway, garlic and dried chilli that seasons meat and vegetable dishes across the country.

The second pillar is olive oil, used with a generosity that surprises visitors. It is the frying fat, the salad dressing, the preservative poured over harissa and cheese, and the finishing drizzle. Tunisia's olive groves stretch across the Sahel around Sfax and Sousse in plantations so vast they are visible from the air, and the oil goes into everything from breakfast to dessert dough.

Seafood defines the coast. Tuna is the national protein, canned in oil and folded into salads, sandwiches, pastry and even pizza; grouper, sea bream, sardines and octopus fill the markets of Bizerte, Mahdia and Sfax. Inland, lamb and merguez — the thin, chilli-red sausage shared with Algeria and Morocco — dominate, along with chickpeas, broad beans, freekeh and the durum wheat that becomes couscous, semolina bread and pasta shapes found nowhere else in North Africa.

A proper meal begins with kemia, a spread of small plates: mechouia salad, olives, tuna, chopped salad, brik. The main course is usually one substantial dish shared from a central platter, with bread torn to scoop. Couscous is Friday food and celebration food, steamed over the broth it will later be soaked with rather than boiled in water. Dessert is often just fruit, with sweets like makroudh and zlabia belonging to Ramadan, weddings and the pastry shop rather than the daily table.

Regional differences are real. The north around Tunis and Cap Bon is greenest and most French-influenced, home of the fricassé roll and the ubiquitous chilli fields. The Sahel is olive and fish country. Kairouan, the inland holy city, is famous for date sweets. The south around Gabès and Djerba cooks with more dried spice, dates and camel meat, and Djerba's long-established Jewish community developed a parallel kitchen — its own briks, its own tajines, its own way with fish — that still shapes what Tunisians eat.