Doing a Morroccan dinner tonight

[Jenise]

Having a committee/dinner meeting. Will open a magnum of '95 Viader, and what guests bring will fill out the rest.

Appetizers: charred carrots, olive-tuna spread on mini pita crisps
Salad: shaved fennel, slivered green beans, citrus fruit, oil cured black olives
Main: Vaudovan and coconut crusted rack of lamb, roasted cauliflower in lemon-rosemary bechamel, charmoula drizzle
Passed-platter dessert: cumin-black pepper cookies*, dried black fig and apricots, honey-sesame covered almonds

*The cookies are an old NYTimes recipe. Basically a shortbread chock full of cumin seed and cracked black pepper, really delicious!

Yum. I made up batches of harissa and ras el hanout last night, for use tonight in a Moroccan-style carrot, sweet potato, and red lentil soup.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Oh does that sound good. Everything was very well seasoned but I didn't use much heat spice because I had no idea if my guests were into that.

Hey the tuna-spread thing was good. Made it from a NYT recipe I saved long ago--essentially, tuna and butter whizzed with a bit of olive oil to set the emulsion and seasoned with lemon, oregano, black pepper and garlic. Of course, one could use anything one wanted to, but the mixture came across like a silky hummus. In fact, I changed my plan to serve it like a dip (in a bowl) and instead spread it on a plate for scooping with the pita chip. Perfect for opening sparklers.

I have found North African spicing to work exceptionally well against red wines!

[Jenise]

Cumin etc, heck yes! But not the heat.