Book: Moro or Why You Should Stop Buying Cook Books You Can't Actually Cook Out Of.

I'm not sure what it is but it seems like the British, the Japanese and hell, even the Canadians are better at putting out really awesome cookbooks than we Americans. I'm sure that there are plenty of junky foreign books out there but I haven't seen them.

Part of the problem I have with American cookbooks can but summed up by this experience: Every time I look at my Amazon suggestion list, there it is, looking at me like I want to buy it:Under Pressure: Sous Vide. Why? How many people have $4000 worth of food technology sitting around their apartment? Who cooks like that? Who has the room?

The answer is that obviously cookbooks have lapsed completely into the realm of lifestyle literature. They're not written to be cooked out of but simply read as a type of pornography.

That's not really a dig, literature is important in it's ability to inspire the reader, but literature (or pornography) also can't help you make dinner unless you're looking at the kidney recipe in the beginning of Joyce's Ulysses.

Anyway, real cookbooks with real recipes are where the British seem to be whipping our asses in the last few years and Moro is one of the books that has been doing it. Moro is a restaurant in London that mixes North African flavors with the food of southern Spain.

Great. That doesn't sound douchey at all.

But, then you open to the first few pages and here's a bunch of bread recipes. Simple recipes to make good bread from scratch. You have my attention. Now a tortilla recipe Next is how to make your own membrillo (quince paste) again simple, again from scratch. Then yogurt. Then yogurt cheese and Harissa and on and on.

I'll admit it, books that teach me how make things most people buy are a major turn on. Moro could have gone on to talk about how to poach horse turds for 24 hours in an immersion circulator and I would have still slept with this book under my pillow for a few months.

But it doesn't.
Instead it starts dropping the People's Elbow of flavor and simplicity. Poached eggs with yogurt, fried sage and chili flakes? Fried liver with cumin? Roasted pork belly with fennel seeds?

Even if they all tasted like throw-up I would still make myself a Moro t-shirt with a magic marker like it was 1992 and they were Fugazi. Why? because they are real recipes that I would enjoy making and moreover could make with nothing more complicated than a knife, an oven and some pots and pans. What's better is that the cooking directions could be given to you over the phone by someone playing Buck Hunter and guzzling Wild Turkey.


Anyway, I was going to talk a little about the recipe for mackerel a la plancha that is in the above photo but it's early in the morning, I'm hung over and I lack the words to describe how awesome butterflied mackerel, cooked in a skillet and dressed with minced garlic, paprika, shallots, olive oil and parsley is. Forget about how cheap and sustainable a fish it is and how few really great recipes for it exist in today's stupid, tenderloin-centric food culture.

Put your French Laundry cookbook on eBay. Buy this book before the warm weather hits. Cook like a real person instead of of a precious gaylord.