Hooray! Bittman strikes again!

My favorite NYT food feature has a new edition -- this time Mark Bittman provides us with capsule recipes for 101 seasonal salads. He's become an increasingly passionate advocate for a plant-dominated diet, so I look forward to these mostly-vegan and vegetarian recipes with health and good taste in mind.

Endangered Tomatoes!

This does not bode well for the tomato crop this summer. I have been fussing over my tomato plants for weeks now, and some seem to be doing well, but all it takes, apparently, is for one to go down with the blight, and then the rest may follow rapidly. Farmers are plowing crops under. This may be the time to go buy a case or two of whole peeled canned tomatoes given how prices may jump later. Maybe I will start a tomato hedge fund.

Question of the Day

Why is it that I am constitutionally unable to stop eating Good 'N' Plenty once I start?

Where the elite meet to eat

Because I am a terrible blogger, I failed to pull the photos together and post this anything like timely. However, I'm cleaning house, so here is the report on our very first "Gourmet Club" dinner from June 28. A little touch of summer on a winter-like October day.

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So we did it, we kicked off the so-called "Gourmet Club" last night with a foray into the cuisine of Morocco, and everything went brilliantly.

First, the weather was kind enough to stop pissing down rain long enough for us to have a beautiful evening. I was too nervous to haul a table out onto the back deck Just In Case, but we were able to serve drinks/appetizers and later dessert/tea on the deck, but had the main meal in the dining room.

We started with Fanatic Foodie's pomegranate-rose-basil mojitos, which were such a big hit that a second pitcher needed to be thrown together. We also discovered that the lime-basil-pom-rose combination is excellent, topped up with soda, as a non-alcoholic alternative. For starters, we had tomato jam with pita, finger sandwiches filled with goat cheese, marinated carrots, and green olive tapenade, plus assorted marinated olives.

When we thought we might be able to tolerate more food, we moved inside and served the main course -- grated carrot salad, chicken and chickpea stew, couscous with vegetables, chicken with olives and preserved lemon, and lamb stew with chestnuts and cinnamon. With this was harissa, wine, and more wine.

We rolled ourselves away from the heaps of food still on the table (note to self: in future, a recipe that says it serves 6 is just fine, as it will certainly be part of a giant repast and does not need to be doubled) and went back outside, where we had sweet mint tea, haroset balls with dates, cinnamon cookies, and the piece de resistance, rose petal cake.

Our next meal is planned for September, when we will take on Italian. Not sure yet which region we'll focus on, but I hear cannoli and gelato are already being planned.

We also came up with a name for our group. Because we're interested in food of many nations, fine dining, and refined conversation, of course we picked a name that might as well be a middle school soccer team.

Confidential to the group: click here.

Cocktail report

Googling around for a rosewater-including cocktail, preferably with something pomegranate in it, I came across this excellent recipe on the fabulous Diary of a Fanatic Foodie blog. Not only does she have excellent, creative ideas and great photography, she is also a cooking and food loving attorney.

This has moved up to the top of my list for the house cocktail to offer at Saturday's Moroccan dinner. Unless I get lazy and do a rosewater-soaked sugarcube with rose champagne cocktail instead. But will report back in full, and meanwhile will keep reading about the Fanatic Foodie's exploits.

Remembering Mary

My mother reminded me that it's 2 years today that my grandmother died. Here is what I posted about her and her brilliant mandelbrot back then. Will have to make a batch in her honor.

Le Gourmet Club

I know I'm verging into pathetic suburban key party territory here, but a few other couples we are friends with in the neighborhood also enjoy cooking and eating, and so we've decided to emulate our parents and form a so-called Gourmet Club, through which we will take turns hosting dinner parties that all of us will contribute to. Whoever hosts gets to pick the theme and assign courses. We expect that most of these will be grown-up affairs, but figure that a few could be made kid-friendly, since we all have kids ranging from age 3 to age 13, who get along.

Figuring that since my dining room and kitchen are tight to host 8 people (though doable), we volunteered to host the first party at the end of June, so that we can use the back deck and yard. I chose a Moroccan/North African theme, partly because there are a number of recipes I want to try, and partly because I think the summer outdoor setting will be just right. I'm hoping for a very casual, sensual kind of thing, lots of finger food, paper lanterns, wine in stemless glasses, etc.

I'm considering main courses of a slow-roasted, shredded lamb with mint and pomegranate that Nigella does, served with a couscous, maybe with olives and preserved lemon, and a vegetable tagine. We'll need a selection of salads and hors d'oeuvres, and I'd like to do a rose-flavored ice cream as part of the dessert (at my birthday dinner last year, we were served a rose ice cream with raspberry sorbet and lychees that was ambrosial). I'd love to hear ideas if anyone has any.

Other themes we kicked around, besides the obvious national cuisines: upscale barbecue/picnic, ancient Rome/Greece, retro dinner party using no cookbooks from after 1960 (Beef Wellington? rumaki?), tapas, smoking, all desserts.... Would also love ideas.

And of course we have all agreed that an annual field trip to NYC to a restaurant we all want to try is a necessity.

Wish us luck!