Kelaat M'Gouna Rosewater Cooking Workshop - Cook With the Valley of Roses

Rosewater is a quiet signature of Moroccan cooking, and in Kelaat M'Gouna, the heart of the Valley of Roses, it is made from the Damask roses that scent the whole valley. This workshop teaches you to cook with it as local families do, using the region's own rosewater - a fragrant, distinctive class rooted in the crop that defines this stretch of the Dades.

You first see or learn how the petals are distilled into rosewater, then cook with it: scenting a tagine or a sweet-savoury dish, folding rosewater and orange-blossom into pastries and desserts, and finishing tea and milk drinks with a few drops. The host explains the delicate balance rosewater needs - too much overwhelms, a little perfumes - and how it sits alongside cinnamon, almonds and honey in the Moroccan sweet kitchen.

Around the rosewater you cook the hearty valley and southern Berber dishes the region eats, so the class is a full meal as well as a fragrant lesson. Set among the pink-earth kasbahs with the High Atlas behind, and best of all in spring when the roses bloom, it is an unusual and sensory cooking experience far from the tourist cities. You finish by eating everything you made, scented with the roses of the valley, and leave able to use rosewater with confidence at home.