Casablanca: My Moroccan Food

A warm, accessible introduction to Moroccan cooking from a chef who grew up in Morocco and trained at London’s Leiths School of Food and Wine. Nargisse Benkabbou bridges traditional Moroccan home cooking and modern kitchen life with 100 recipes that feel authentic without being intimidating. Nigella Lawson called it “as accessible as it is inspiring.”

Why Start Here

If Wolfert’s 528-page reference feels like too much for a first step, this is your alternative entry point. Benkabbou starts with the essentials: how to make ras el hanout, preserved lemons, harissa paste, and chermoula from scratch. From there she moves into recipes organized by type, covering tagines, couscous, salads, soups, kebabs, and pastries.

The recipes are genuinely approachable. Most use readily available ingredients, and the instructions are written for home cooks who may have never worked with Moroccan flavors before. Benkabbou also includes modern twists on traditional dishes, like orange blossom and goat’s cheese galettes and Moroccan mint tea chocolate pots, which show how the cuisine’s flavors can work in contemporary cooking.

What to Expect

A beautifully photographed book at 224 pages. Recipes are shorter and more streamlined than Wolfert’s, making this a good weeknight cooking companion. The pantry section at the front covers the key building blocks you will use again and again. This is not as deep or comprehensive as The Food of Morocco, but it will get you cooking Moroccan food confidently and quickly.