Yotam tries his hand at making couscous while actually making a puzzled Berber woman laugh out loud at her very first sight of a MAN touching her semolina jewels. Or a Sudanese man, looking after the hammam fire, bursts out in traditional song after cooking the most delectable cumin and saffron scented meat stew, tangia, in his glowing embers.

These are a couple of scenes from the first part of Yotam Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean Feast, a four part weekly series for More4, starting Monday, 12 November, at 9pm.

Followed by a crew from Keo productions Yotam travels to Morocco, Turkey, Tunisia and Israel to unravel some of the Mediterranean’s lesser-known cuisines. Along the way he meets cooks, restaurant chefs, farmers and fishermen and cooks with local ingredients giving them the Ottolenghi “treatment”.

In the first episode expect to see Marrakech’s palace walls, firmly governed by local bossy storks, a group of stoic fishermen allowing Yotam on their rickety boat, some lamb, some couscous, some olives and lots and lots of cumin and preserved lemon.