‘MORO’ COOKBOOKS OPEN UP A WORLD OF MOORISH FLAVORS
By S. Irene Virbila
Los Angeles Times
August 19, 2009
Sam and Sam Clark’s cookbooks offer wonderful, straightforward recipes
from the Moorish Mediterranean.
Feta, endive and orange salad is one of the recipes in Sam and Sam
Clark’s most recent book, "Moro East." (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)
When the London restaurant Moro opened in 1997, I remember reading
that to research Muslim Mediterranean cuisine, the chef-couple —
Samuel and Samantha Clark — spent some months traveling around Spain
and Morocco in an old camper van. They simply drove around and went
to markets and cooked with people they met along the way.
I loved the idea of such a direct experience of the cuisine. So when
I happened to see "Moro: The Cookbook" at the Spanish Table store in
Seattle a few years ago, I grabbed a copy. Published in Britain in
2001 by Ebury Press, the book can be hard to find. The late great
Cook’s Library used to carry it, but now your best bet is probably
online. According to Amazon, the original hardback is now out of print,
but you can find it used there and on various other online booksellers
for $50 and up. Or you can buy a paperback version published in 2003
(which is what I have) for less than $20. And if all else fails,
try Amazon.co.uk, the British Amazon site, which will ship to the U.S.
The fact that two chefs were both called Sam and so became Sam and
Sam Clark makes their story all the more delicious. Like Jamie Oliver,
they’d both come out of River Cafe, Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers’ wildly
popular riverfront Italian in London.
Writing in the introduction, the Clarks explained that "the idea
was to learn about as many flavours and techniques as possible and
to try to discover details that really make food taste of where it
comes from and not seem cooked by an Anglo-Saxon." Hear, hear.
I cooked from "Moro" the book on the weekends, bought copies as
presents for friends and found this and their next two books had
become cult cookbooks among passionate home cooks in England and,
less often, in this country.
For me, the appeal is the sensuality and unpretentiousness of their
food. Everything is very direct and faithful to the cuisine — call
it Moorish or Muslim Mediterranean. I love, too, the way the back
photo in the book is not just the usual posed picture of the authors,
but a group shot of the entire restaurant crew, babies in laps. And
the acknowledgments thank the whole restaurant team past and present.
Their second book, "Casa Moro," came out in 2004, and I have that too
(a hardcover import, this book is easily available online). It is more
about home cooking, specifically the kinds of things the couple like
to cook at their country house in the Alpujarras, the foothills of the
Sierra Nevada in Andalusia, Spain. Some of it is outdoor cooking, but
we’re not talking firing up the Weber on the balcony. They’ll hike to
a river bank to cook a rabbit paella over wood and gather the rosemary
from the hillsides to season it. The photos of the paella cooking,
their two kids frolicking in the river or helping add ingredients
to the rice, are a dream. Or what about the recipe for revueltos
(soft scrambled eggs) with wild garlic and wild asparagus?
Shared recipes Their most recent book is "Moro East," which from the
title sounds as if it would be Middle Eastern or Turkish food. But
it’s not. This book is a tribute to the seven years the couple enjoyed
an allotment, or community garden, in London’s East End. It’s an
informal journal of the seasons in that garden with their own recipes
and those collected from their neighbors there. It is an import, too,
though again it is easily available online.
Leafing through the book, I come across a recipe for an ancient cold
soup of grated cucumbers, yogurt and mint called cacik, "perfect for
a hot summer’s day." They’re not precious about it: "Our cucumbers
were particularly ugly this year, due to drought and neglect. When
used in this soup however, they tasted divine and all their physical
imperfections were forgiven." That’s followed by a recipe from their
allotment neighbor Hassan for celery and white bean soup with tomato
and caraway. And on through feta, endive and orange salad to bulgur
with celery and pomegranates to a sardine tagine from Fatima, the
wife of their Moroccan-born chef.
At the allotment, people not only garden, they seem to cook right
there, or at least grill over charcoal. Once you come to know the
Cypriots, Kurds and Turks the couple befriended through stories and
recipes, it breaks your heart to learn that the century-old treasure in
this scruffy part of London has been swept away by the grand Olympics
2012 project and will be the site of a hockey stadium.
When I’m thinking about cooking Sunday dinner, I’ll leaf through
the books to come up with much of the menu. The recipes are almost
foolproof — very few complicated techniques, but shopping for the
best, and tastiest, ingredients is essential. For me, that means
a trip to any of the local farmers markets, and also, Super King,
a giant Armenian market in Los Angeles, where I can count on finding
great labne (yogurt cheese), feta, lahvosh and produce such as peppers,
cilantro and Persian cucumbers at a good price.
My husband always has a jar of preserved lemons going, so when I’ve got
a good chicken, roasting it rubbed with harissa and preserved lemons
is a natural (and is one way of infusing flavor into a chicken that
may not inherently have that much flavor). We’ve tried it with Cornish
hens too. The mingled aromas of harissa and lemon are sensational. And
any leftovers are beautiful the next day.
If I get a good buy on red bell peppers, I’ll roast them and serve
them drizzled with olive oil and scattered with garlic and capers. And
since I’m a big fan of feta and get tired of always making the same
Greek salad, I’ve zeroed in on the salad of feta with Belgian endive,
oranges (blood oranges when I can get them) and red onions. I’ve made
the lovely yogurt cake with pistachios and labne for my book group
and for a Mediterranean potluck.
Use a scale or a calculator to translate grams into ounces. And
since herbs and spices, or any ingredient for that matter, can vary
in intensity or effect, it’s always a good idea to taste as you go
along and make small adjustments.
I have by no means cooked my way through all three of the books. But
I do carry a list of recipes on my iPhone that I’d like to try, just
to jiggle my memory when I’m at the market. I’m saving the heartier
soups and braised dishes for fall and winter.
Restaurant visit When I had the chance to be in London recently, the
first time in years, the first reservation I made — weeks ahead of
time — was at Moro. With two friends and high anticipation, I set
off for dinner at Moro. I wasn’t disappointed.
It is a welcoming, unpretentious place, with big windows that open
out onto a pedestrian street. There’s a bar where you can sit and eat,
too, and at the back, a workaday semi-open kitchen with wood burning
oven and charcoal grill. It’s tiny, hot and steamy, but sending out
happy smells of garlic and hot pepper and onions.
We squeezed into a table in front of the window. The menu was a
one-page paper affair, and I didn’t get very far into it before I
wanted to order practically everything. We reveled in dark speckled
olives, slicked with oil, and incredible little peppers, the skins
slightly shriveled, sprinkled with salt. I remember eating these in
Galicia in Spain.
We dug into gorgeous deep crimson roasted peppers, fleshy and deeply
sweet, strewn with capers and accompanied by raw salt cod. Grilled
spring onions with bright orange romesco sauce draped across the
ends. Wood-roasted mackerel, crisp and browned at the edges, served
with a glistening warm beet, onion and potato salad in yogurt perfumed
with dill. Then fat strips of caramelized pork belly and some truly
great charcoal-grilled venison. ` We moved outside for dessert,
the fantastic yogurt cake like a bite of cloud strewn with roughly
chopped pistachios and served with a dollop of thick labne. Followed
by small cups of espresso. I could have eaten here the next night and
the next. And in a way I can, by rifling through their cookbooks and
making dishes collected there in the inimitable Sam and Sam spirit,
each with a touch of the wild and the authentic.
Moro, 34-36 Exmouth Market, London EC1R 4QE; 020-7833-8336;