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Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Pastilla

I'm back and ready to start a new year.

Unfortunately Mark has moved to Cape Town for the summer casting season. I really miss my kitchen buddy, but I wish him every success at finally making it to Hollywood.

Happy new year to all my readers, this year is gonna be great. To get it started properly, I cooked a dinner party for my friend Aidan and his girlfriend Kelly.

For starters I served a thin slice of salmon quiche. For mains I made Pastilla (pronounced "bastiyya"; Arabic: بسطي) a sweet and savoury Moroccan curry pie in phyllo pastry. It was made with chicken, dates, eggs, almonds, onion, and more spices than you can throw a stick at.
Many thanks to Kevin Lynch of Closet Cooking for the recipe (http://closetcooking.blogspot.com/2009/12/chicken-and-date-pastilla.html).
Normally you sprinkle cinnamon and icing sugar on the top, but this time I chose not to.





Aidan and Kelly


For desert I served lemon cheese cake, vanilla ice-cream, and chocolate phyllo parcels. A fantastic start to the Boogie calendar!