It's no secret that I got the better end of the deal by marrying a man that can cook. I mean, REALLY cook! Just take, for example, the fact that Zev just went and cooked up Julia Child's Beef Bourguignon after watching the movie "Julie and Julia."
If you look up Julia Child's recipe online, it says "Difficulty: Difficult" and "Cook Time: Over 2 hours."
Yes, you read that correctly- TWO HOURS.
It tasted soooooo good though. Tender and FULL of flavor in every bite.
I'm hoping he will make that dish again soon (hint hint ;-))
You would have lost me at the "difficult" part. Hence, I like Rachel Ray's recipes. No offense against Rachel Ray, but her recipes involve more assembling stuff together and making it taste yummy by adding olive oil (EVOO!), rather than carefully monitoring the evolution in the molecular structure of the ingredients through heat and time (one of Zev's favorite TV shows back in the States is Alton Brown's "Good Eats." Does that surprise you? It shouldn't. Alton and Zev could be brothers.....)
Needless to say, I haven't "Mastered the Art of French Cooking," so I won't be pulling out any Julia Child tricks in the near future. I can't even pronounce half the French recipes (sorry, Adele!) so maybe I need to work on that first.
So, not only does my man love to cook, he loves to come up with new recipes and host dinner parties just so he can share his love of good food with others. Yes, I married wisely ;-)
Zev likes to read magazines like "Gourmet" (he is sad that they are out of print); "Bon Appetit" (next best thing to "Gourmet"), "Guns and Ammo" and "Handloader"). Can you guess what some of my magazine choices are? Yes, Rachel Ray's magazine is one of them. And I only subscribed to Oprah because they had a special deal that you could get a whole year's supply of Oprah for $5!! I also read stuff like latest developments in Louisiana Law, but I digress...
We invited some of our dear friends here in Stuttgart over for dinner this past weekend. Our menu was an eclectic mix of Meditteranean, Middle Eastern and American. Zev was inspired by a recipe he read in this month's "Bon Appetit." Our menu consisted of Beef "Koefte" meatballs (not just your ordinary meatballs, TRUST me!), with a topping of Tahini-spiked Yoghurt Sauce and "muhammara", a Syrian red pepper sauce. I had to look up these names in the magazine. Basically, if a recipe has a name that is diffucult to pronouce; requires ingredients that are usually diffcult to find in a store; and has a level of "difficult," Zev will make it.
I contributed to the food preparation by making a recipe which has (surprising to me!) become one of Zev's favorites. It's called Stuffed Eggplants. Exotic, I know. (He also like my Stuffed Peppers" which shows some of my cooking repertoire ;-) It surprised me that he liked it because it is low in "points" and if you know what I am referring to by "points" then you will know where the recipe came from!!
I also made a simple salad, which Zev garnished with grated cheese.
I tell Zev that since we have been married he has taught me many things. Two of the main things he has taught me are: how to appreciate good food (as well as how to pair the best wine to a particular dish), and how to shoot guns (as well as how to pair the best gun with the task at hand, like shooting skeet or hunting.) Like I said, I am a lucky girl.
The best part (aside from the incredibly tasting food) was the fact that we were able to spend some great quality time with our local friends and their adorable kids.
As most military families will understand, our friends are like family here, so it is important to make time to catch up when we can.
We concluded the dinner party with a good ol American favorite, Bread Pudding. We paired it with a local favorite, Bourbon Vanilla Ice-Cream.
We buy this ice-cream from a store that we have to drive to, but Zev likes it better than the American ice-cream that we can buy on base. So German made ice-cream it is!
Hope you enjoyed our dinner party! Till next time, Fi xoxo
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