Moro: The long overdue earnest summation

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I cooked from the Moro cookbook, and it was one of my favorite cookbooks ever. I know I just gushed about Pioneer Woman, but let me leave no room for doubt: MORO IS BETTER. 

Eccentric and personal, Moro is my favorite kind of cookbook, the antithesis to the sterile, test kitchen-generated Gourmet Today. Although the desserts all failed me and the skate wing counts among the most repulsive things I've ever cooked, this Mediterranean/North African/Middle Eastern cookbook by Sam & Sam Clark (above) challenged and fascinated and educated and fed us very, very well for several months. Even after all that time there were dozens of recipes I still wanted to try but never got around to: roasted pork belly with fennel seed, fried liver with chopped salad, crab brik. The I only reason I stopped cooking from Moro was because Isabel became fixated on Pioneer Woman and practically begged me to move on.

 

I cooked 57 recipes from Moro:

Worth the price of the book: 2*

Great: 14

Good: 25

So-so: 12

Flat-out bad: 4

 

*the bread, of course, which I have baked a dozen or more times, but also the phenomenal chickpeas and spinach.

Definitely a shelf essential. 

Also, I have a story today in Slate comparing Pioneer Woman and Thomas Keller. His fried chicken is way, way better, but I still prefer her book.

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