Nursing Assistant’s Moroccan Cuisine Wins Over Top Chefs and Social Media

Touria, a nursing assistant in a nursing home in the Hauts-de-Seine, is a passionate cook. She grew up with parents who passed on this passion to her. But the real trigger came from her participation in the M6 competition. One of her recipes - a dessert and a seafood and Paris mushroom pastilla - was tasted and validated by the Michelin-starred chefs Cyril Lignac and Stéphanie Le Quellec and the critic François-Régis Gaudry during the M 6 show "My recipe is the best in France". A great joy for the forty-year-old.
"There are my two cultures, French and Moroccan, in this dish," she confides to Le Parisien. "It’s also the story of my dad, who was a chef and never had the opportunity to meet great chefs. I honored his thirty-five years of career." She will add: "It’s a satisfaction. It gives me self-confidence."

Since then, this mother of a family has been offering more recipes to her subscribers on social networks. "I had good feedback on my simplicity and authenticity during the show," she says. "The subscribers found me natural. They felt my love of pastry and cooking. People in Sevran now recognize me. Some were following my account without knowing it was me." Her Instagram account titled "Touria’s Recipes" created in 2020 now has nearly 128,000 subscribers. "My first recipe was a yogurt cake," recalls this amateur of running and crossfit. "I saw that people liked it. I developed and shared more recipes and creations. I want to be known for what I do, not to make money. I want to be known for what I have in my hands."

Recently, Touria created the "Paris-Marrakech", a kind of revisited Paris-Brest with amlou, a Berber spread made of almonds, honey and argan oil, and the "gazelle cake", a pastry made of Maghreb almonds in the shape of a crescent, inspired by gazelle horns. She also created orange blossom, white chocolate and small rose petals for the decoration. Where does she find her inspiration? "I find my ideas at night, in my free moments at work," adds the nursing assistant with night shifts. Currently, her work is focused on pastries for the end-of-year holidays.