Everyone loves toast. But there is toast and… toast. In Moro Easy, a new cookbook by Sam and Sam Clark, there are no fewer than 10 recipes for things on toast. Some are straightforward, almost austere: I can’t imagine the person who wouldn’t be able to rustle up a few slices of their tomato and jamon toast (the secret lies with a grater and just the right amount of garlic). Others are luxuriant: imagine a crisp oval of sourdough topped with a thin tortilla and aioli – a breakfast treat they first ate in Barcelona’s Boqueria market – or with crab warmed in butter and Oloroso sherry and lightly seasoned with fresh chilli and thyme.
Moro Easy is the Clarks’ first book since 2014 and it is, at least in part, a result of the pandemic: their London restaurants – Moro in Clerkenwell and Morito in Hackney – suddenly shuttered, the pair found themselves unexpectedly at home with their three children (running a delivery service, they decided, was not for them). “It was extraordinary,” says the first Sam (to avoid confusion, I will hereafter refer to her husband as Samuel), “cooking three meals a day for five, rather than however many covers in the restaurant.” Some of the ideas that eventually went into Moro Easy were old ones, reworked for the home cook. But others were born of this period, when they were cooking off the cuff. “We felt a bit smug,” says Samuel. “At the supermarkets, there were long queues. But our local shops had no queues, and they sell everything you could want. I loved having the time to shop. We’ve lived here for 15 years, and I’d never really used the high street before.”
