My friend Christine hosted our monthly dinner (over 10 years and going strong, one of the best things that ever happened to me was hooking up with these women) and did the whole thing from her 2 new Ottolenghi cookbooks. I only heard about him recently. He is an Israeli living in London, has 4 take away shops, one with seating. HOLY CRAP WAS THAT FOOD GOOD. Christine is a great cook but this really blew me out of the water.
Here is the appetizer portion of the meal:
This included: a lentil salad on puff pastry, mushrooms with cream and anise in parchment, roasted pumpkin with a tahini sauce, roasted eggplant with saffron yogurt, hummus in Belgian endive and cucumber salad with poppy seeds. The main dish was duck breast with orange and fennel seeds and a pumpkin and sweet potato puree. The cocktail (required, one of the reasons we have been together so long)was Absolut Oriental Vodka with Cranberry juice. Dessert was an olive oil apple cake filled with a cream cheese mixture. Great mix of spices, lots of extra kicks of flavor like pomegranate, fresh herbs, toasted nuts and seeds. The books are gorgeous (Plenty and Ottolenghi). Check out some recipes here:
http://www.ottolenghi.co.uk/blog/category/recipes/ Mary
