Customer Reviews

Tastes of North Africa: Recipes from Morocco to the Mediterranean

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Tastes of North Africa by Sarah Woodward is a wonderful cookbook which I think should be part of any serious cook's library. Ms. Woodward has wonderful , and slightly different Moroccan recipes, even thought I have many other Moroccan cookbooks which have very good recipes. I love the recipes in this book and I've made several wonderful dishes from the book, and I intend to try more recipes . I ordered another book by ms. Woodward that I'm waiting to arrive on Moorish and Moroccan food.

I do like this book, it has good recipes, photos of about 50% of the dishes and is easy to follow. It has many of the classic Moroccan dishes and herein is where the problem lies. In terms of North african recipes the main focus is on Morocco, with scant regard shown for Tunisia, Egypt or Algeria. I know it is fairly similar but there are some major differences, for example Tunisian food tends to be hotter. And Egyptian food is even more distinctive.

The 2nd thing that bugged me was the moorish recipes, bearing in mind most people would assume this is a book on North African Cuisine. Sure they may have been influenced by the Moors, but these recipes from Spain, Sicily and Portugal tend to be very different from their original roots. You do not find anything like wine for instance in true North African cooking. If this book was called Tastes of southern and western Meditteranean it would have been more fitting.

Overall it has the usual recipes found in an essentially Morrocan/Spanish/Sicilian cookbook, that being said you could easily get reputable any book on north african cooking and be satisfied. One of my faves is North African Cooking by Tess Mallos, which may have fewer recipes but is more specific. But this is a pretty good book, just expect some doubling up if you own moorish cookbooks.