Meshmash - which you also might see as mishmash - is the Arabic word for apricot. Although the fresh fruit isn't in season yet, dried apricots are popular year round as both a snack and culinary ingredient. The dried version is a bit tangy and chewy when eaten directly, but a long soak will both sweeten and soften them. Try dried apricots in the Orange and Dried Apricot Smoothie shown here, or serve them as part of your main meal in the sweet and spicy Lamb Tagine with Apricots.

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Although technically not Moroccan - it originated in Tunisia and Algeria - spicy red merguez sausage has indeed made a footprint in Moroccan cuisine. Chef Farid Zadi notes on his website that merguez's popularity in Morocco is only decades-old, but that's long enough for the sausage to be widely available in butcher shops, supermarkets and as a street food.

I appreciate merguez most when I need to put hot, tasty food on the table in a hurry, or when I want to sit down to simple family fare over a glass of mint tea. We buy our merguez sausage from neighborhood butchers, but you can try making your own with this Merguez Sausage Recipe. If you worry about not having a meat grinder or don't know how to feed sausage into casings, know that you can simply knead the seasoning into ground lamb or beef and shape as desired.

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Rghaif is a general term which describes a type of Moroccan dough and the fried, pastry-like flatbreads or "pancakes" made from it. Rghaif might be unadorned and eaten plain, served sticky sweet via a quick dip in hot syrup, or it might be stuffed with sweet or savory fillings. It is also called by other names, depending on how the dough was shaped. The popular breakfast and tea time treat shown in the photo, for example, is msemen.

Here are a few of the rghaif recipes up on the Moroccan Food site:

• Msemen
• Meloui
• Spicy Msemen
• Onion Stuffed Msemen

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The two flowering plants shown here, although different, are called by the same name in Moroccan Arabic - atarcha (or la'atarcha). The image to the right is a variety of scented geranium used to flavor tea and make essential oils, while the photo below is Robert Geranium, a medicinal plant used to treat a number of conditions. Both are indigenous to Morocco but not all Moroccans are familiar with either the plants themselves or the word atarcha.

It seems that some Moroccans (incorrectly, or perhaps colloquially) also refer to geranium leaves as merdeddouch, a word I had previously known only to mean "marjoram." I discovered this fact last week when a Moroccan woman presented me with a small bunch of geranium leaves and called them merdeddouch. I set about checking her usage via reference books and a Moroccan botanical forum; I also questioned my in-laws and Moroccan food writer Nisrine Merzouki. They all confirmed merdeddouch was marjoram and not geranium, but I did find one Moroccan recipe in French in which the word was indeed used to denote wild geranium.

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