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I spent last week visiting friends and generally poking around Los Angeles. Some highlights of the trip included:

-a delicious rajas con papa burrito at Loteria Grill in the LA Farmers Market.

-a sunset stroll over bridges and up and down pathways on the remaining Venice Canals.

-a taste of freshly made green apple and caramel gelato at Massimo's Delectables in Venice.

-watching a pod of dolphins swim just off the beach at sunrise - from our campsite in Malibu.

-the best club sandwich I've ever tasted at Real Food Daily in Santa Monica (I added the opt. avocado).

I also sought out The Cook's Library. I was able to show a little restraint, and picked up just two books from the nice guys holding down the fort inside the store packed from wall to wall with cookbooks of every flavor. I bought the beautiful paperback version of the Moro Cookbook, recipes from the famous Moro restaurant in London. I also picked up Melons for the Passionate Grower, a book with some of the most beautiful food photography I've seen - all about heirloom melons, their different characteristics, and how to grow them (if, unlike me, you've got the room and the climate). You can take a look at some of the inside pages here.

As soon as we got home I ambitiously embarked on a four plate Moro inspired meal created from the following recipes:

-Leek and Yoghurt Soup with Dried Mint, Page 70
-Setas al Jerez (Mushrooms w/ Sherry), page 144
-Garbanzos con Espinacas (Chickpeas and Spinach), page 138
-Bitter chocolate, Coffee and Cardamom Truffle Cake, page 278

Part of what excited me about the Moro cookbook is that the cuisine is heavily rooted in a vein of Mediterranean cuisine that I haven't explored much yet. The authors (founders of Moro), anchor themselves in what they call the saffron-cinnamon link, meaning Spain and the Muslim Mediterranean. Before opening Moro they hopped in a camper-van and drove through Spain and Morocco to the Sahara learning about as many flavors and techniques as possible. Spanish paprika, parsley, home-made yoghurt, cardamom, saffron, almonds, cumin, sumac, sherry, lemon, pine nuts, and nutmeg occur in various recipes throughout the book. I couldn't wait...

I'll start off talking about the beautiful Leek and Yoghurt Soup. It was easy to make, had a creamy, silky texture speckled with colorful confetti flecks of dried mint, carmellized leeks, and dabs of carmellized butter. The taste isn't for everyone, and if you aren't using a salty stock base, get ready to load up on the salt in the end or the soup is really flat. As far as other flavors go, it is also a bit tart (from the yoghurt), with smoky-ish overtones from the paprika (I couldn't find turkish chili flakes which Im sure would impart a different flavor). I've never tasted anything quite like it. We ate it with little garlic/olive oil toasts topped with the Sherry Mushrooms, which were pretty straight forward, quick to make, and tasty.

On the savory side, I quit while I was ahead and it was still a reasonable hour to eat. I'll probably try the Garbanzos for lunch today or tomorrow.

I outright botched the truffle cake. Because the book is British, I had to convert all the recipes from grams and milligrams to American ounces and cups, and maybe that is where I screwed up. So, instead of a cake the consistency of a truffle, I ended up with one the consistency of a unstructured mousse. I'm not sure if the recipe is off -- or if I just blew it (sometimes I get distracted and forget how much milk or flour I've already added to a recipe). The cardamom infused milk base was delicious though, and my mishap didn't stop us from eating some of the mousse for dessert. If anyone else out there has tried this recipe, let me know if you had any more success than I did.

In some of the early entries on this site I didn't request permission to run the recipe I was writing about from the publisher so it won't appear here. The majority of entries on 101 Cookbooks will have the recipes attached, this just happens to be one of the ones that doesn't. You can find the recipe here:

From: The Moro Cookbook Page: 70

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