Moro joins the starry ranks of beautifully presented London restaurant cookbooks such as The River Café Cookbook and Momo that have excelled in delivering the tastes of the Mediterranean to our colder climes. Both the cookbook and the restaurant are the realisation of the dreams of Samuel and Samantha Clark, chef-owners and now writers. Their passion for the intense flavours of the cuisine of Spain, North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean follow the saffron-cinnamon connection; the robust style of Spanish cooking balancing the lighter, more exotic dishes of the Muslim Mediterranean.
Tapas favourites such as tortilla, pimientos del piquillo (sweet peppers), boquerones (anchovies), sardines and chorizo share the table with familiar mezzes like grilled chicken wings with tahini, baba ghanoush and tabbouleh. But the joy of Moro is that it balances such favourites with rarer fare and new inventive recipes with traditional ingredients, such as the colourful and deliciously rich carcuteria cecina with beetroot and almond sauce and grilled quail with rose petals. If you thought you knew what to expect from paella, try monkfish paella with saffron or pork, chorizo and spinach, or Chicken, artichokes and oloroso sherry. All of which might not leave much room for the bitter chocolate, coffee and cardamon coffee cake or the Malaga raisin ice-cream.
If some of the ingredients leave you a trifle bewildered, Moro ends with an appendix of suppliers from specialty ethnic shops to local supermarket fare and a terrifically handy almanac of vegetables and fruits in season. Like its other restaurant cook books, Moro also serves up a feast for your eyes and belongs on your coffee table as well as in the kitchen, splendidly extending and deepening our appreciation for these too often over-looked cuisines. --Fiona Buckland
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Fabulous, earthy, inspirational... This is a marvelous book, of a kind very rare amongst the glut of cookbooks. It is a book that has a feel all of its own, and that feel is earthy and flavoursome. You can almost smell the paprikan, garlic and cumin coming off the pages. The slightly loose style of the recipes is excellent - this is a book that is really meant to be cooked from, rather than simply to be looked at - and the range of dishes is great.
The vintage photos between sections are a nice touch too. Over all there is a... more info
souvenir chef-book This must be for people who have already eaten at Moro or in Andalusia - despite being a good cook I cannot make these recipes taste good. There are far better (but less trendy) Spanish/Moroccan books by any of the following food writers (as opposed to chefs-of-the-moment): Elizabeth Luard, Penelope Casas, Paula Wolfert; all keepers, unlike this one! In its favour, the reference section is reasonably helpful & the pics are intermittently charming. The paper stock stains & dissolves very easily - not... more info
Yes but I've eaten at the restaurant a couple of times, and loved it. I love Spanish food, and Moro's take on it is a real winner. And there are some recipes in here we come back to time and again (the carrot, cumin and coriander salad is just sensational and I never tire of it). So why three stars? Well, just because we only ever cook three or four things. We've tried a couple of recipes that just didn't really work - they didn't go wrong, they were just, well, fine. But a lot of trouble for just fine. And a... more info
Not authentic Moroccan dishes I was very disappointed when I received this book. The national dish of Morocco is tagine with couscous. This book only sport ONE tagine recipe and included a lot of recipes with ham and sherry which is not part of the main Moroccan diet as they are majority Muslim. I bought a tagine pot in the hope to use it but will have to put it off until I get a better book. With all the good reviews I was hoping that the dishes would be more authentic but I am afraid not. I have not tried any of the recipes. I am... more info
