Certain meals around the planet aren’t just meals, they’re experiences. Epic food experiences.

To be involved in one is to get a deeper insight into the culture, to gain an understanding and — more often than not — to stuff yourself silly. Is there anything better than a day on a villa terrace or the deck of a beach house doing your best Keith Floyd impression?

Throwing a lobster into a New England fire pit. Preparing the white truffles you bargained for in Alba. Mixing the fresh spices you bought in the Moroccan souk. Or chinking glasses of rosé as your Provençale aïoli is served.

Here, our writers give you the essential components — the venue, the recipe and where to buy the ingredients — to create four of the world’s greatest feasts.

THE TAGINE
MARRAKESH

“Sour face - bad taste,” warns the Moroccan chef Rachid Rettali. Or so the Arabic culinary proverb goes: cook a meal with good humour and it’ll taste divine; cook it in a bad mood and you’ll be dishing it to the dog.

Fortunately, you can’t really get the tagine too wrong — there are hundreds of variations and it’s an informal dish. Tagine is the name for both the meal and the dome-shaped dish you cook it in.

It’s a casserole of sorts — traditionally cooked by nomads — that metamorphoses over the year according to the fruits of the season: olives, quinces, apples, pears, raisins, prunes and dates.

Rettali offers culinary tours of Marrakesh if you need guidance when buying ingredients (from translation to bartering; see below), or you can brave the souk alone. Try fish tagine with red peppers and carrots, lamb tagine with broad beans and peas, or Rettali’s favourite: chicken tagine with preserved lemons and green olives.

The venue: in Marrakesh, you can stay in the heart of the medina, minutes from the souk, or retreat to the Palmeraie — an oasis on the city fringes. Villas of Morocco (020 7823 2282, www.villasofmorocco.com) has Dar Zahia in the medina, which sleeps six and costs from £1,714 per week for the whole property.

Or there’s Dar Selma in the Palmeraie, which also sleeps six and has a swimming pool and its own private hammam, from £2,381 per week.

Airlines flying to Marrakesh include EasyJet (www.easyjet.com), Atlas Blue (www.atlas-blue.com) and British Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com). Rachid and Dee Rettali run culinary tours in Morocco, including trips to the souk, local butcher and spice market. Seven nights, all-inclusive, on a farm just outside Marrakesh, costs £900pp, excluding flights. Alternatively, you can contact Rachid about hiring his services for shorter periods (00 353 85 7493 204).

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