A Book of Majoon Recipes

Majoon is a confection of fruit, nut, and cannabis from Morocco. Its preparation goes back many years, but it gained notoriety in the US when Alice B. Toklas published a recipe for it which she called “haschich fudge” and noted “This is the food of Paradise—of Baudelaire’s Artificial Paradise: it might provide an entertaining refreshment for a Ladies’ Bridge Club or a chapter meeting of the DAR.” Pesha Sloane’s intentions are perhaps less mischievous, though she does reprint Toklas’s recipe, along with one from Paula Wolfert’s Couscous in this small, staple-bound book of 48 pages. All told, there are slightly more than 20 recipes, most for making your own majoon but others for related concoctions, from brownies to a cookie. There is also an antidote for overindulgence, to whose powers we cannot attest. According to a lyrical essay by the late photographer and poet Ira Cohen which Sloane includes, “Eating majoon is like night diving. You descend into unknown depths surrounded by hundred