It’s official!

Mint Tea and Minarets: Chronicles from the Kasbah is a finalist in the 2012 San Diego Book Awards. Please send good vibes my way on June 9th, the day the winner is announced!

http://www.sdbookawards.com/2012/05/03/2012-finalists

My latest book, a memoir of “my” Morocco with 34 luscious family recipes, took ten years to write. It will soon see the light as an ebook, Inch Allah! Keep checking this site for details.

Here is a little taste of Mint Tea and Minarets:

             “Behold, a singular structure soars above the banks of the Oum er-Rbia, Mother of Spring River, within the ramparts of the 16^th century medina of Azemmour — Dar Zitoun, erstwhile “House of the Pasha.” Into her late father’s painstakingly restored riad, Moorish mansion, Kitty Morse, author of Mint Tea and Minarets, an expert on Moroccan cuisine, warmly coaxes you. Generations of cooks and centuries of celebration there sweeten the invitation. Dar Zitoun has many delicious stories to tell.

            An hour south of Kitty’s native Casablanca, scour the Azemmour souk for seasonal ingredients, then meet Dar Zitoun’s gifted cuisinier Bouchaib to concoct aromatic tagines. In the footfall of her father, she uncovers the provenance of her culinary passion: Dar Zitoun was an ancient cooking school.  Follow Kitty as she seeks out bibi beldi, free-range turkey, at a farm on the Doukkala plain and is instructed in falconry by Kwacem tribesmen, the only commoners authorized to capture and train the raptors. Frequent a Bedouin camel market, consult with a practitioner of native medicine, and hunt for the source of the Oum er-Rbia in the High Atlas Mountains.

             Having grown up in North Africa during the French Protectorate, a unique time in history, Kitty has a pied-noir’s rarified perspective. Fresh burdens as executor of her father’s estate help build an appetite, while each chapter divulges a recipe that matches the tale just told. Meanwhile, Morocco’s Byzantine legal system introduces an amusing cast of other-cultured characters in this window into the mosaic that characterizes the northwest corner of Africa, Al Mahgreb Al Aqsa, The Land Where the Sun Sets.”