Tagine of fish, spinach and pine nuts, chocolate and almond cake - recipes from the new Moro cookbook

Everyone loves toast. But there are toasts and… toasts. In Moro Easy, a new cookbook by Sam and Sam Clark, there are no less than 10 toast recipes. Some are simple, almost austere: I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't be able to concoct a few slices of tomato and ham toast (the secret lies in a grater and just the right amount of garlic). Others are lush: imagine a crispy sourdough oval topped with a thin tortilla and aioli - a breakfast they first ate at the Boqueria market in Barcelona - 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 partly the result of the pandemic: their London restaurants - Moro in Clerkenwell and Morito in Hackney - suddenly closed, the couple unexpectedly found themselves 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 Samuel), "cooking three meals a day for five, rather than the number of covers in the restaurant." Some of the ideas that eventually made it into Moro Easy were old, reworked for the home cook. But others were born from this period, when they were cooking on the spur of the moment. “We felt a little smug,” says Samuel. “At the supermarkets, there were long queues. But our local stores had no queues and they sell everything you could want. I loved having time to shop. We have lived here for 15 years and I had never really used the main street before. geraniums, we turn the pages of Moro Easy. Samuel stumbles upon a recipe for spicy labneh with sun-dried tomatoes, cilantro, and fennel seeds, which, it turns out, they both have something to say about. First, they tell me, making your own labneh - a strained yogurt with the consistency of soft cheese, used in Middle Eastern cuisine - is both easy and a "revelation" (use Greek yogurt and cream cheese saves straining). Second, sun-dried tomatoes are set to make a comeback. "The backlash was unnecessarily harsh," Samuel said with a smile. What follows – another page turning – is some discussion of rice (the Clarks are self-proclaimed rice snobs), pistachios (the best are from Turkey), chicken livers (why do they make people nervous?) and ice cream (Moro Easyincludes a coffee and cardamom flavored recipe that, without churning, takes only seconds to prepare).