Mourad: New Moroccan
Working with Mourad Lahlou is like doing ecstatic dancing in Converse high tops to a mix of Jay-Z and Berber trance music. The ideas are whirling around faster than you can scribble and the food keeps hypnotizing you in surprising and mysterious ways.
We spent a year and a half turning Mourad’s recipes, stories, and self-invented, citizen-of-two-worlds perspective into a coherent, modern take on Moroccan cuisine. I suggested we write two books in one. The first hundred pages is seven hands-on cooking classes on the fundamental building blocks of Moroccan food. I wanted to create the feel of cooking alongside Mourad, with his signature mix of meticulous precision and hilarious, fuck-the-rules-it-just-needs-to-taste-awesome attitude. The rest of the book is the recipes, punctuated by stories, techniques, and surprising takes on tradition. It’s my kind of cooking, and I loved the whole process, especially our trip to Morocco, a dreamlike two weeks of nibbling, gorging, cooking, wandering through markets and palaces, and, yes, a night of ecstatic dancing to Berber trance music.
Role: Writer
Publisher: Artisan
Author: Mourad Lahlou
Design: Janet Mumford
Photography: Deborah Jones
Book of the Year Award for Food Writing, Northern California Independent Booksellers
Best Cookbooks of 2011, Epicurious
Top 5 Books of 2011, Food & Wine
Best Cookbooks of the Year, Good Morning America
Best Books, 2011, Publishers Weekly
Best Books, 2011, Barnes & Noble
Gift Books Roundup, 2011 Gift Books Roundup, Associated Press
“As beautifully designed as it is smartly written, it’s everything we look for in a cookbook.”
— Food & Wine
“…perfectly illustrates his mission: to use the tools of the modern chef to rethink Moroccan food from the ground up.”
— The New York Times
“Intoxicating.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
“The soul of Moroccan cooking, thoughtfully reimagined and generously shared.”
— Thomas Keller
“A superbly executed work on a style and subject we would all benefit from knowing more about.”
— Anthony Bourdain
“This book is a treasure. It captures Mourad’s intelligence and curiosity, and, more important, his warmth and generosity.”
— Daniel Patterson, Chef and author of Aroma
Writing Sample
Rite of Spring
It started like any other holiday morning. I woke up to early spring sunshine and the smell of my mom’s begrhir pancakes, and there was a huge dish of the sweet barley porridge called herbel and a spread of briwat and other treats laid out on the table. In honor of the occasion, I got the new pair of running shoes I’d been asking for, and put them on right away. Then, after a huge breakfast, it was time to slaughter the lamb.
I was thirteen, and I’d seen the ritual happen ever since I could remember. It was always the same, whether it was the weekly chicken or the lamb that marked five or six special days throughout the year. In Morocco, slaughtering has to be done by a man, and it has to be done expertly, so that the animal suffers as little as possible. My grandpa, being the head of the household, was the only person permitted to do it, and he’d made a point of having me by his side to witness the act from the time I could stand.
The whole family, easily thirty of us in all, gathered in a circle in the courtyard. The lamb, tethered to a tree, was munching on weeds. Three men from Grandpa’s farm approached it. One held its head, the others held its legs. I stood near them, Grandpa embracing me from behind. He was holding the special razor-sharp knife used only for this purpose.
As he said the prayer of thanks for this animal and the sacrifice it was about to make, I felt nervous. We all did. It’s not a sight you ever get used to. The air became strangely thick and still. The men brought the lamb closer. And then, before I knew what was happening, Grandpa put the knife in my right hand, closed his hand firmly around mine, and guided it toward the lamb’s neck. In a second, it was over. Grandpa grabbed me and squeezed me tighter than he ever had. He said another prayer of thanks and then leaned down and whispered in my ear, “Congratulations.” My mom rushed over in tears and held me, rocking back and forth.
There were many older boys and men in the family, all my uncles and cousins. But Grandpa had chosen me over his own sons. To be honest with you, I felt terrified, less by the experience itself and more by the responsibility I’d been given. But I trusted Grandpa and felt comforted by his strength. And from that day on, I was the only other person in the house allowed to slaughter chickens, rabbits, and even a few more lambs.
No doubt your reaction to this is that it seems barbaric. But I’m telling you that it’s the opposite, not simply because the slaughter is done in a humane way, but because the act of witnessing it is a reminder that we can never take a life for granted. When you’ve seen an animal give its life you, you don’t take it lightly. You cook it with care. You eat it with respect. Perhaps the greater barbarism is never coming face to face with that, and pretending that meat comes from a market, not an animal.
Grandpa understood that. “We cared for that lamb and gave it a good life,” he told me, “and now we thank it for sustaining our lives.” It’s a lesson I have never forgotten. When I prepare meat, or any food that once walked, swam, flew, or swayed in the breeze, I would never dare to waste or spoil it. I cook it with a grateful heart and the steady guidance of my grandpa’s hand.