Robert Carrier , Taste of Morocco (Arrow, UK; o/p). Robert Carrier lived in Marrakesh for several months of each year and this beautifully illustrated cookbook reflects his love of Morocco and its distinctive cuisine - particularly the grand dishes of the south. Carrier considered Morocco to have (with France and China) one of the three greatest cuisines in the world. His focus is on wealthy kitchen dishes rather than anything very rustic.

 

Zette Guinaudeau , Traditional Moroccan Cooking: Recipes from Fez (Interlink, US). Madame Guinaudeau lived in Fes for over thirty years and first published her recipes in French in 1964. Now translated into English, they redress the imbalance of Robert Carrier's focus on Marrakesh cuisine. Some of her recipes echo Mrs Beeton's catering, for at least eight people and sometimes as many as twenty, but they can be adapted.

Anissa Helou , Café Morocco (Conran Octopus, UK/US). This sumptuous book is the best of the many recent Moroccan cookery guides. It combines good recipe writing with colourful background - and stunning photography - on the food (from street snacks to haute cuisine) and its origins.

Claudia Roden , The Book of Jewish Food (Penguin, UK/Knopf, US). An interesting and useful book that makes clear the distinctive dishes of the Sephardic Jews (of the Middle East and North Africa), showing that such specialities as couscous, tajine, harira, kefta and mechoui were to be found in both the medina and the mellah before the exodus to Israel.

Paula Wolfert , Couscous and Other Good Foods from Morocco (HarperCollins, US). This is a new edition of a book originally published in the 1960s, which at the time was groundbreaking in its emphasis on ordinary, rural cooking. Its recipes work and there's a nice line in anthropological background.