It is an import, too, though again it is easily available online. It’s an informal journal of the seasons in that garden with their own recipes and those collected from their neighbors there. This book is a tribute to the seven years the couple enjoyed an allotment, or community garden, in London’s East End. Their most recent book is “Moro East,” which from the title sounds as if it would be Middle Eastern or Turkish food. Or what about the recipe for revueltos (soft scrambled eggs) with wild garlic and wild asparagus? The photos of the paella cooking, their two kids frolicking in the river or helping add ingredients to the rice, are a dream. They’ll hike to a river bank to cook a rabbit paella over wood and gather the rosemary from the hillsides to season it. Some of it is outdoor cooking, but we’re not talking firing up the Weber on the balcony. 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. Their second book, “Casa Moro,” came out in 2004, and I have that too (a hardcover import, this book is easily available online). And the acknowledgments thank the whole restaurant team past and present. 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. Everything is very direct and faithful to the cuisine - call it Moorish or Muslim Mediterranean. 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.įor me, the appeal is the sensuality and unpretentiousness of their food.
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. Like Jamie Oliver, they’d both come out of River Cafe, Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers’ wildly popular riverfront Italian in London.
The fact that two chefs were both called Sam and so became Sam and Sam Clark makes their story all the more delicious.
And if all else fails, try .uk, the British Amazon site, which will ship to the U.S. Or you can buy a paperback version published in 2003 (which is what I have) for less than $20. 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. The late great Cook’s Library used to carry it, but now your best bet is probably online. Published in Britain in 2001 by Ebury Press, the book can be hard to find. So when I happened to see “Moro: The Cookbook” at the Spanish Table store in Seattle a few years ago, I grabbed a copy. I loved the idea of such a direct experience of the cuisine. They simply drove around and went to markets and cooked with people they met along the way. 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.
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