Rice noodles with lamb shanks and fava beans
I write this post with a heavy heart towards those of us in Japan enduring the tragic reality of this tsunami. Hope the largest number of people can and will be saved. This dish is a Near East meets Far East concoction; I made it over two days (preparing...
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St-Patrick’s day cookies
There is a St-Patrick’s Day parade every year in Dallas and my neighbor, Mary, who is of Irish ancestry, always takes part in it with her two daughters who come from afar to celebrate as well. Well, I am not Irish, but I love the Irish and that is...
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Agar-Agar diet
I had decided to learn about the cuisines of the Far East as a New Year resolution; after all, we share a continent! I had used agar-agar a bit as a vegan substitute to gelatin and made some jam and puddings with it. I thought that was all that I...
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Salad with goat cheese balls
This is my favorite bistrot fare, with a Middle-Eastern twist, of course. I used the last bit of dukkah I had made to coat the goat cheese balls before frying them and eating them warm and oozing. A standard breading technique applies here, except the final coat after the...
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Pasta with artichoke pesto
This recipe I owe to Citron, a wonderful blog edited by Mélanie Mercotte, from Ottawa (Canada); Mélanie’s cuisine is strictly vegetarian; thanks to her, I have bought a syrup made from brown rice and learned about seitan. Frozen artichoke bottoms are available at the Middle-Eastern grocer imported from Egypt...
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Chicken with apple chutney
I adore apples; and I am already mourning the end of their season. So, why not make a chutney? It is easy and goes with anything. (I would love to make it with duck). Here it is served with chicken thighs cooked in the skillet with some seven-spice seasoning...
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String cheese
Alice, my seventeen-year old daughter, loves to eat with her fingers. When this cheese is brought home, she loves to pull out each string one by one and eat it at her leisure. I was watching her do just that yesterday, and she said: ” Mom, why don’t you...
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Earl Grey cake
When I saw Chef Ornella Hubel present a recipe for Earl Grey cake, I felt this instant flood of regressive memories; my mother used to entertain her girlfriends with weekly tea parties (such was the life in Beirut in those days) and she always served Earl Grey tea and...
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Rice-coconut balls with shrimp
At first look, the cuisine of the Near East and the Far East have nothing in common; and yet, there are parallels. In Lebanese cuisine, rice flour is used for sweetmeats and puddings but never in savory dishes. As a result, I was very intrigued by Chef Bruno Viala’s...
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