Our history with Moroccan food started quite a few years ago, when Shawn’s work was celebrating “diversity day”. His team picked Moroccan as their theme and we in turn learned a bit about the culture and flavours. It is a great summer food and this night we invited some of our Pax Christi friends, Diane, Dan and Deborah. We started of in the yard under the pergola, with a standard of ours, Moroccan cigars.
Phyllo pastry and butter wrapped around a goat cheese filling, containing paprika, parsley and garlic, what could be better? Crisping them of course. We opened some wine, while Deborah made us ankle bracelets and talked about the pending choir tour to England. All very exciting.
We then moved to the outside table, to enjoy Almond and garlic soup, with green grapes and red chili.
This was a lovely light soup, with very subtle flavours. It was hard to get it down the stairs to the table, without the grapes sliding around the bowl though. Luckily the pictures were taken before they were moved too much. I think this looks amazing in the new bowls as well.
For the main, we got out our tagine and made a tagine of chicken supremes with dates and orange flower water, summer vegetable kebabs, and couscous with dried fruit and nuts.
This was such a flavourful dish, but very hard to photograph, LOL. Trust me it looking better in person than we could capture in the fading light. Even though there are dried fruits used, it still has a very fresh taste. Light fare, but large servings.
Our dessert was a Saffron and cardamom crème caramel with almond butter cookies.
The subtle spices went very well with the creamy custard and a light caramel. The cookies added a crunch and bit of a sandy texture to the plate. I already have an idea on how to improve it….
After dinner conversation turned to kayaking, music and travelling. It was decided that we needed to sing some excerpts from Elijah, which will be our fall concert. It also gave Dan a chance to pick a solo piece for the talent night on the choir tour. I just want to know why I ended up with the small print score…. even with my glasses, that was tough going, but fun. Then we remembered that it was a school night, so as much fun as we were having, it was time to depart and head home.
We were lucky indeed to partake in the breaking of bread… no – make that cigars – with everyone 😊 . You are true culinary artists with boundless imagination and talent…. It was wonderful getting to know everyone, it’s all about sharing, isn’t it? I’m so happy for the gentle encouragement at our dinner – Dan sang beautifully while we were away! Thank you again for such a memorable evening.
Always a joy to spend time with you. Finally we had some quality time to get to know each other better.
Enjoying reading the MND blog from London. I’m really enjoying it here, getting caught up with old friends and exploring Greenwich, standing through Shakespeare plays and hearing concerts at Albert Hall. Great fun but also look forward to our next MND!
It’s great to see you were keeping up, while overseas, but better to have you back in the fold.