Jus d'Orange Frais

Choose the orange first. It should feel heavy for its size, with a skin that gives a little under your thumb and a smell that reaches you before the knife does. In Morocco, this glass belongs to street carts, café terraces, and market mornings, pressed when you ask for it and handed over cold, bright, with the pulp still alive in it.

The whole craft is restraint. Cut the orange across the middle, press it gently, and stop before you grind the white pith into the juice; the pith brings bitterness, and bitterness is what happens when you ask the fruit for more than it wants to give. If the oranges are good, you add nothing. If they're a little sharp, a spoon of sugar can make peace, but it must never hide tired fruit.

Serve it at once. This isn't a bottle for later, it's la cuisine du lien (the cooking of connection) in its quickest form, the country's refresher when the sun is high and someone arrives thirsty. Une table, c'est une porte qu'on laisse ouverte (a table is a door you leave open), even when what you offer is only oranges and a clean glass.