During my recent brief visit to Los Angeles, I had made a point to see a friend or more a work associate who became a very good friend. I had enough time on the Saturday I was there when Anna and her husband Michel made time for me to go out for lunch followed by an unplanned shopping expedition and a visit to their lovely home.
Cooking from three different “homes”.
Lunching on edamame @ home on a lazy Saturday afternoon.
A Sunday luncheon with mother’s cooking. The best.
Another sunny Saturday lunch.
Practice-cooking for guests the following week.
Guests @ home for the first time in over a year due to slightly out-of-order home appliance which I finally had replaced the week before.
Jody’s salad.
Missing a couple of dishes from the event. The clams as above and a red bell pepper mousse.
Helped my best friend get ready for her move and went to see her new house which her architect husband designed. Her sister brought over lunch.
Finishing up my travel journey to Warsaw and Krakow, Poland and Berlin, Germany with this post. Just some photos from the last hours spent in Berlin with my friend Antje and taking off from Tegel to Tokyo via Paris.
Antje’s old apartment building
I was going to be out all day this past Sunday so moved my cooking day forward to the Saturday and went for the Turkish version of moussaka, a great summer dish.
First things first on this extremely hot Saturday.
I would have preferred to use lamb but not available where I went to shop.
I was risking to cook this oven-baked dish w/o having a proper oven. My so-called oven toaster/microwave will have to suffice.
And it did.
Perfect. And sweet from the onion.
Great chilled, too, eaten the next morning.
It was my mother’s 79th birthday yesterday which happened to be a national holiday. The plan was to take my parents out to a nice French dinner but she called in the morning to say Gen was sick so we rescheduled which led me to cook again last night.
First things first.
I am working on the Turkish cookbook again.
Here comes “etli biber dolmasi” literally “stuffed pepper with meat”. The recipe said use either beef or lamb. I preferred lamb but where I went to shop didn’t have the right kind so settled with beef.
I did not have a pan that was just right for cooking this dish so used something that was on the small side which forced me to 1) cook the sauce separately and 2) to cook over very low heat so while the recipe did not tell you to steam, that’s what I ended up doing. Worked OK.
I had trouble finding the right serving dish for them, too. At the end used a bowl I bought in Istanbul but still too wide and too low.
I was only cooking half of what the recipe called for (which I always do) but I was still one green pepper short so the filling became meatballs afterwards.
A blog by Ayako Mathies 