chicken marbella (aka delicious mediterranean guest chicken)

{now presenting: a guest post from my lovely and talented neighbor Rana}

soak it up

Becoming friends with Anny has meant becoming intimately familiar with her passion for cooking. During finals last semester, she spent days in my living room writing a research paper about the socio-politics of Arab-Israeli relations as manifest in cookbooks. At the end of each day, over cabernets and bitter chocolates, she shared new insights on the blends of nationalism in the recipes and the orientalism mixed in with other rich Mediterranean ingredients. Since then I’ve taken advantage of our proximity (it is my fortune to be her neighbor) and popped into her dinner parties, peeped through all her kitchen cabinets and shared many a meal.

tomato sauce a la gaga

I mentioned this in my previous post but figured it deserved its own explanation (along with a full recipe): Lady Gaga’s tomato sauce – as explained in a recent Vanity Fair piece by Lisa Robinson. The description in the article was rather brief, so think of this as an inspired reconstruction…

leeks & tomatoes & glamour

the world (writ large) as dinner party

Normally I stick to a ratio of one recipe per blog post, but looking through the photos of a recent dinner party I thought I might create a post about the series of recipes I put together for the occasion.

let us just say that none of my pots, pans or dishes felt lonely that night

This is in part because I think it was a nice sequence of dishes that came together and partially, I must admit, because I am not sure there was a single dish that I actually photographed from start to finish (my apartment was such a mess that I had to clean while cooking, so the camera was a bit of an afterthought this time round). So I’ll just have to present the meal as a whole and charge you to use your imagination.

For the details (including a few recipes) about a six-course trip around the world (yes I realize this makes me sound like a latter-day Betty Draper. No apologies) featuring tidbits like eggplant bruschetta, a hot & cold soup course, reimagined manicotti, couscous served in acorn squash and a dessert salad (among other things), read on…

lamb of god crepes in a sage sauce

If necessity is the mother of invention, then this recipe’s mother was a transportation strike in Morocco in 2009. My friend Kate and I hiked/hitchhiked many many miles on a very warm Easter Day and after barely making it through a church service without falling over (we were hoping to catch a glimpse of Jacques Chirac & wife, but no luck) we decided we needed to eat some serious protein. Preferably in conjunction with some complex carbs. And that it should probably be themed to match the holidy. Hence lamb, wrapped in crepes, swathed in a lovely sauce with rosemary & sage. The rest is history.

a meal fit for a king