A Moroccan dish

Sweet with meat, cinnamon in a main course — a simple way to test how rigid your taste actually is.

Pick one of the three and don't try to cover them all: tagine is meat or vegetables stewed for hours; harira is a thick lentil-and-tomato soup that breaks the fast in Ramadan; pastilla is a sweet-savoury pie with cinnamon and icing sugar over meat. If you're cooking, tagine is the easiest and comes out fine in an ordinary pot with a heavy lid: onion, meat, spices, a little water, an hour and a half on low heat, dried apricots or lemon at the end. Buy whole spices — ras el hanout, saffron, ginger, cinnamon — and use more than feels decent. If you're going to a restaurant or a shop, ask who cooks there and ask for what they eat themselves. Bread instead of cutlery: tear a piece and scoop with it. And don't rush — Moroccan food is built for a long table, not fifteen minutes.

What felt 'wrong' to you — and who decided it wasn't allowed?