Sunday, Dec 21 - Moroccan Christmas

9.22am - sampling the tea we're going to serve tonight after our Moroccan Christmas Dinner with the family : Mariage Freres' Casablanca, which is a mix of green and mint teas flavored w/ bergamot. Picked this up in Paris this summer and am very excited to finally have an occasion to try it!9.23am - and here's the tea, in our new Moroccan tea glasses. It's nice, but not nearly minty enough. Will have to add a LOT of fresh mint tonight to get the flavor right.

3.28pm - we've been cooking non-stop all day - this is the veggie layering for the Bisteya, a Moroccan sweet&savory pie made with phyllo dough that is normally filled w/ chicken or pigeon. We're using soy based fake meat, which works just as well. The next layer is egg scrambled and curdled w/ spices and lemon juice, topped w/ sugary and cinnamony almonds, and then baked.

5.08pm - we're celebrating Christmas early this year as Suzanne is going home to Wisconsin tomorrow for a wedding. In spite of all the wedding prep and assorted packing she had to do, she still managed to find the time to chocolate dip some pretzel sticks (see below) AND to pick out some lovely Christmas decorations for us, the seasonally challenged - see the very cute red (!) Christmas tree below - Thanks, Suzie!

The drink is a hot holiday punch made from a recipe we got in our little goodie bag at the Vintage Tea Leaf last week: it consists of their English Christmas pudding tea (which is very light and citrussy), made not with water but with equal parts of heated apple and cranberry juice, and then spiked with some red wine. Good stuff!

5.20pm - the finished Bisteya - turned out great!

5.47pm - finally getting to use my tagine dishes that I schlepped all the way through the Sahara way back when...

here's the spicy lentil pumpkin tagine

and here's the Royal Couscous (minus the Royal, as we're not actually serving merguez sausage with it). Very happy with the way it all turned out, plus we made a bunch extra for Nady and David, who've got their hands full with a little one and a newborn, so the all day cooking extravaganza was totally worth it.

5.48pm - fabulous salad that Prashant and Suzanne brought, with a great tahini dressing. Perfect complement to the other food - I wish there were some leftovers of that, too :) We did get to keep the leftover dressing, though - thanks, guys!

This is what happens when you say "Let's not do gifts this year, guys" - you get a bunch of gifts anyway! These are lots of goodies from Suzanne & Prashant, including some real Hawaiian vanilla bean that I can't wait to use. Thanks again, guys!

I was so flummoxed over all the gifts, I totally forgot about foodie pictures for the rest of the night. We had another great salad, an orange-date-mint salad that we'll have to make again, plus the Moroccan almond-rose cookies I made last night, with the long-awaited Moroccan mint tea.

I did take one more picture before going to bed, of today's attempt at the tarte tatin (French upside down caramelized apple cake) from the Bouchon cookbook. It took forever to prepare, but in the end it got burned in the oven. I'm not going to point any fingers because I most definitely should not have listened to whoever it was who told me to keep the cake in the oven because the crust wasn't brown enough. Suffice it to say I was disappointed, and ready to just toss it, but Ritesh and Prashant were very good sports and pretended to like the chewy gooey burnt-caramel flavored mess. Ahrgh.