Customer Reviews

Flavors of Morocco: Delicious Recipes from North Africa

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've searched for quite a while for a really great Moroccan cookbook, and this is the best one I've found yet. There is a good variety here of courses as well as meats/fish used, and a good number of tagines. The recipes are not overly complicated, and do not feature a lot of hard-to-find ingredients. The pictures are beautiful and browsing through the book is a pleasure as well as cooking from it. If you are looking for a Moroccan cookbook look no further.

This book is great. It is beautiful to look at and read, with some of the most alluring photography of food I've ever seen. But most important, the recipes are fool proof and utterly delicious. I'm working my way though both Flavors of Morocco and one of her other books, Tagines and CousCous, (which have some duplication) and have gotten nothing but raves from my husband, who is used to being fed well but has gone nuts for these dishes. I have had Paula Wolfert's seminal book on Moroccan cooking for many years, but I always found her recipes rather complicated and uninspiring. Flavors of Morocco is a much better introduction to the cuisine, and the photos of the finished dishes make your mouth water. The instructions are clear and simple, with no mysteries about them. Plus the recipes all rely of fresh and easily obtained ingredients for the American kitchen. As I noted in my review of Tagines and Couscous, you do not need to have an actual tagine to make these dishes. A 4-quart saute pan with lid works just fine and it the optimal size to accommodate her recipe amounts. Enjoy this book yourself or give it as a gift. It would be a welcome addition to anyone's cookbook library who loves the flavors of the Mediterranean and mid-east.

Excellent introduction to Moroccan Cooking including tidbits on the culture and customs. Photographs, easy instructions and enticing recipes make this cookbook a winner!

Want to take a virtual vacation with incredible photographic details along the delightful recipes? One for each recipe plus more? Check out Ghillie's latest book with Peter Cassidy's photos. I also use this one as a coffee table book. I will be looking for books using Peter's photos. This visually luxurious book even contains a satin ribbon installed in the book's spine to find the vacation moment/recipe where you were last interrupted.
It is her best yet! I will be waiting for her next book. More with Peter Cassidy's photos please?

Ghillie Basan does it again! As I have said before "you can't go wrong with her books". If you are a beginner, she is where you start. If you are an experenced cook she is where you end. She always encludes history and backround in her books. I'm a senior citizen who lives to cook and has over 50 cookbooks and will never buy another unless it is a Ghillie Basan book. Besides being a great cookbook it is a plain old "good read".

I own three Moroccan cookbooks. They're all good, but this is the one I find myself using the most often. The book is great, the food is wonderful.

Beautiful pictures, beautiful food, wonderful recipes. If you've been to Morocco It'll bring back culinary memories, If you're going it will prepare your palate. There are many Moroccan sites on line to purchase the ingredients and Tagines. A few are listed on page 157 at the end of the book. I love this book.

I have been the family cook -- though mostly dependent on recipes -- for 30 years. In honor of my son's return from a semester in Morocco, I bought a tagine, and this book. Many of the salads offered here are fine. But the first tagine I tried was watery; I wrote this off to my own inexperience with the clay tagine. Then yesterday I tried chicken k'dra, cooking in an iron dutch oven ... and though the directions in the recipe looked suspect to me, I followed them, thinking that maybe there was some Moroccan magic going on here. But there was not. The result was a pot of fragrant water, with stuff in it ... but TWO QUARTS of water, essentially unreduced. Something is very very wrong with that recipe as printed ... and now I wonder whether the first recipe was in error as well. Beware.

If you are looking for a source of fresh, healthy, flavorful and not overly taxing recipies, you couldn't do much better than Basan's newest book, Flavors of Morocco.

I learned Moroccan cooking initially from a Moroccan Fulbright Scholar who spent a year at our University. Abdelkabir consulted his memory and his mother to show us how to make classic tagines, couscous and salads in our South Dakota kitchen. Before returning to Morocco, he helped us choose a book that reflected the way Moroccans cook at home. It was Ghillie Basan's Modern Moroccan and it was a full cooking course between two covers. I have since had a chance to spend time in Morocco and know now that Ghillie Basan gets Moroccan cooking right and her conversion of traditional Moroccan cooking for the American kitchen is stil authentic. The tagines are a revelation of subtle meat, fruit and flavor, and incredibly simple to make. The little salads that are characteristic of Mahgrebi cooking are bright, fresh and interesting.

Basan's second book includes a few of the more complicated pastry recipes but they are worth the time to try on a long weekend. Most cooks will find that tagines have a place on their weekday menus because of the ease of preparation.

Great book - amazing pictures - great price. Recipes are easy to understand with easy to find ingredients. I bought it as a gift along with a Tagine - well worth it!