Taste of Morocco or Everyone Is NOT Doing It

Taste of Morocco: From Harira Soup to Chicken Kdra

Author: Clare Ferguson

Exotic, vividly colorful, and intricate, the cooking of Morocco is considered some of the world's finest and its most intriguing. This 30-recipe cookbook outlines the essential tools, techniques, and processes needed for successful Moroccan cooking, and discusses its underlying flavors of spices and fresh herbs. Dishes range from salads, appetizers, and soups to essential grain dishes, main courses, and desserts. Featuring gorgeous color photos, the recipes include Carrots with Cinnamon and Honey, Beef Tagine with Sweet Potatoes and Beans, Pumpkin and Raisin Couscous, Marrakech Pizzas, and Mint Tea.

Publishers Weekly

Moroccan food, with its kaleidoscopic colors, flavors and textures, can be a revelatory experience. But the chances of reproducing most of the dishes featured in Ferguson's ill-conceived collection of recipes are as slim as the book itself. A key flaw is a lack of technique explanation or instruction; many of her recipe introductions are frustratingly brief, and often devoted more to personal anecdote than the dish itself. For instance, Hut Makalli with Chermoula, a classic dish of fried fish served with a spicy paste, is accompanied by the description of a market. Meanwhile, pastry and baking-related dishes involving multiple steps and techniques (Gazelle's Horns, Snake Pastry and the ornate B'Stilla, a multilayered meat pie) scream for illustrations to aid in their construction. Those well-versed in the cuisine will likely find the book a useful resource, but novices just back from a trip to Morocco should look elsewhere.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

New interesting book: Building Houses out of Chicken Legs or Verdura

Everyone Is NOT Doing It: Abstinence and Personal Identity

Author: Jamie L Mullaney

Labels like vegan, virgin, or nonsmoker get thrown around to identify forms of abstinence, but for many abstainers such labels are also proud declarations of who they are. Setting aside the moral debates and psychological assessments surrounding abstinence, Jamie L. Mullaney here asks why it is that the act of not doing something plays such a crucial role in the formation of our personal identities. 

Based on interviews with individuals who abstain from habits as diverse as sex, cigarettes, sugar, and technology, Everyone Is NOT Doing It identifies four different types of abstainers: quitters; those who have never done something and never will; those who haven't done something yet, but might in the future; and those who are not doing something temporarily. Mullaney assesses the commonalities that bind abstainers, as well as how perceptions of abstinence change according to social context, age, and historical era. In contrast to such earlier forms of abstinence as social protest, entertainment, or an instrument of social stratification, not doing something now gives people a more secure sense of self by offering a more affordable and manageable identity in a world of ever-expanding options.