Salt and fudge

Last night, Ellen and Sean came over for dinner. Ellen and I left the boys to the football for what was supposed to be a quick shopping trip. How time flies when you're having fun! We didn't get back until 8:30. Luckily, the recipe I had picked out, Chicken Tangine with Raisins and Pistachios, was a quick one. I snagged this recipe from my mother-in-law. It's a Moroccan dish and all of the flavors sounded delicious - cinnamon, cumin, paprika, tumeric. It even called for preserved lemons. Raley's didn't carry preserved lemons. I had to look it up on the internet to even figure out what the heck the stuff was. Neither Nugget nor Trader Joes carried it although the guy I talked to at Trader Joes said they carried oranges. As a last resort, Zeb and I went to Corti Brothers. What an amazing store! Zeb actually found several different types of preserved lemons. I was too caught up in looking around at all of the amazing stuff. The cheese case is incredible. The international foods aisle was actually an aisle. As a reward for finding the item we were searching for, Zeb snagged a beer that was rated a 95.

Anyway, back to the cooking. Super fast and easy recipe. It called for putting two preserved lemons, quartered, in the mix. The guy at Corti Brothers had mentioned that the brand we selected was very salty. So I left out the salt in the recipe. Whoa...not enough salt cut. It was good but too salty for my tastes. Next time this one comes up in the rotation, I'll either leave out the lemons or reduce the amount by a lot.

For dessert, Ellen and Sean brought over an insane chocolate cake from Nugget. Oh my god, it wasn't so much frosting as spreadable fudge. I took one bite and ran for the milk. Good things come from Nugget. Would it be wrong to have a slice for breakfast this morning?

On another note, we'll be repeating our first recipe since August week after next. We still have a ton of new recipes to try out but I decided that I wanted to mix in some other cookbooks that we've already gone through to balance out the rotation a bit. Plus, while I love trying out new recipes, I've missed the feeling of knowing that a certain recipe is great. I think my recent cooking disasters have made me want to reach back for sure things.