It all started with a craving

I made grape leaves stuffed with rice and spinach with a lemon and olive oil dressing.  You can find excellent vine leaves on the Russian aisle at Food 4 Less on Powell.

 It began with a craving for knafe, which I went out for at 8:00pm in a rain storm, on evening, but it wasn't was good as I wanted it to be, so naturally I couldn't stop thinking of making my own perfect knafe, which got Rolf all worked up, as he loves nothing more than a good cake challenge.  Then I had the wedding reception for a friend coming up, with Lebanese food on the menu, so I thought I should test drive some Moroccan cooking just to get into the mood, the end result being a Moroccan dinner for nine friends with eight dishes!  

I wound up going to three different store to get all the little things I needed, including rice flour, apricots, pistachios, blanched almonds, rose and orange waters.

We had vegan, vegetarian, and gluten free guests, so I made the tagine, with seven vegetables and the couscous separate.  This is beets, yam, turnip, tomato, eggplant, artichoke hearts, and parsley, in a lemon and olive oil dressing with Moroccan dried black olives.

Kathryn checking out the menu. I always feel like there should be more people in my photos, so there you go, my effort to add people.

orange and red onion salad, Morrocan carrot salad, shanklish over arugula, labne with cucumbers, eggplant salad, chicken with green olives and preserved lemon, couscous.

the seven vegetables with chick peas

couscous with apricots, almonds and peas

Freyja jumping into rockstar mode, as I try to photograph some of the guests.

Rolf presenting the knafe

Knafe came out PERFECTLY!!!

We were given thsi magnum of wine for Christmas, and Rolf was very amused by the size of the bottle.

cooking always makes me red in the face and tired looking. 

"Take a picture of ME, mommy!"