Whole Roasted Fish with Crushed Potatoes and Charmoula

This recipe has been in my favorites box on Epicurious for some time. We finally made it last week! It was excellent...my first foray into cooking whole fish (including eyeballs, which we did not eat). It was very satisfying, although rather tedious at times avoiding little bones.

The charmoula, the cilantro sauce, was terrific. I have to say I have learned something about fennel - I had never roasted fennel before, but it was one of the most unique flavors I have ever experienced. Now that we have tasted roasted fennel with olive oil, along with fennel seeds, in potatoes with some preserved lemon, I think we will cook it again and again as a side-dish.

The recipe can be found above, in five components - roasted fish, lime yogurt, chermoula, potatoes, and roasted fennel.

Here are some pictures of our dinner:

Moroccan Beef Tagine

For Christmas of last year, Pop gave John and me our first ever authentic Moroccan tagine. Our culinary gift collected dust for about 3 weeks until we broke it in with the following. (The original recipe called for lamb, but since we had purchased some wonderful beef stew meat, we used that instead.)


I found a great site for Moroccan food and went to work.

I will insert the recipe here in a few days. The site is taking forever to load.

One note on the recipe - the apricots added a great deal of sweetness to the dish. The flavors were very nice, but the dish was slightly sweet for John's and my taste. The orange juice, while a nice touch, seemed to add nothing to the dish in terms of flavor; maybe food science has something to do with its inclusion in the recipe.

Sautéing the onions in olive oil





























The tagine with all the ingredients prior to simmering













Simmering:)





Posted by Sara

A Russian New Year

This year, I wanted to start incorporating some Russian traditions into our New Year's celebration, motivated partly by nostalgia for my time spent living there, and by my love of Russian cuisine. I went with the zakuski tradition this year, making a spread of various salads and appetizers I remember from Russia. New Years is the primary winter holiday in Russia, having surpassed Christmas during the Communist era and incorporating many of its traditions. For example, our Christmas trees are New Year's trees in Russia.

This year, I made Salat pod shuboi (lit. "herring under a fur coat"), vinegret, mushroom zakuski, and eggplant caviar. I also served pickled tomatoes, mushrooms, seledka and olives, and caviar on bread and butter. Everything turned out fairly well, but next time I will definitely cook more hot dishes and maybe fewer salads.

The recipes are easy to find online if anyone is interested in trying them out. The Salat pod shuboi is my favorite, but it also requires the most time, since it involves creating several layers. The results are rewarding, though.

Here are a few pictures of our New Year's table:











Posted by Sara