Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #391785 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

casa moro: beyond claudia roden
For those who are familiar with the books of claudia roden and penelope casas on middle eastern food and spanish food, this book has definitely a few new things to offer. The recipees are basic, with few ingredients, emphasis on good taste and relatively simple to prepare. Do not expect elaborate "Michelin restaurant" style type dishes. The authors like spiced (not hot)food, so if you like that too, then stock up on your cumin, coriander and paprika, and start pickling your own lemons.
The book starts with a curious chapter on dishes prepared with wild ingredients (herbs) from the area in spain where the authors live (Andalucia). The four seasons are each presented with 2-3 dishes. While it is apparently meant to set the scene, I found this chapter a bit out of place and too much "Jamie Oliver" with pictures of happy family and tales of friendly neighbours; the dishes are sometimes less easy to prepare with the ingredients listed. What follows is a short chapter on bread which i did not find particularly intersting. Despite the encouriging remarks of the authors, (it only takes 10 minutes!) making bread by hand the classic way takes time, is messy, and the results is always a bit disappointing.
The next chapters on soups and on mezze and starters however is very good with many good recipees. Other chapters are on slads, fish, meat and vegetables (!). The meat chapter has 6 nice lamb, 2 pork, 2 beef and 4 chicken recipees. They are rather classic (roast lamb, sirloin steak) but again of good taste. However, you will find a much wider selection in both Roden or Casas. The authors admit that they only recently started to get interested in desserts, and the book therefore is relatively short on this item, with a few good cakes, ice and fruit desserts. In conclusion: its not a real restaurant book with complete menu suggestions, and it has frequent accounts of personal life and travels (it is a bit romantic, organic and jamie oliver style), but the few recipies i have tried so far where easy to prepare and tasted very much oke: 4 stars..
One last remark to the publisher: the list of suppliers and reference to particular brands of flower is usefull for UK readers but of no use to readers outside the UK. Would it be a better idea to include websites of suppliers in europe and USA where foodstuff can be ordered?

Great Book
This is an excellent book, however many of the ingredients are very hard if not impossible to find. If you don't have access to a Spanish cooking supply shop, I would pass on this book. In addition, some of the recipes need a bit of work. I've tried several soup recipes and all of them were lacking in flavor and needed additional work to repair.

Moro Magic
This book is SO inspiring. We use this book more than any other. Moro really inspires us to challenge our taste-buds and when we have people over for dinner they always want to know where we got the ideas.