Chicken Pie

When I saw this recipe for Moroccan Chicken Pie, I thought I was in heaven. But it seems that Moroccan food might be best left up to the Moraccans. While the pie turned out beautifully, its seems that either recipe or implementation was flawed because it was like being hit in the snoot with salt and spices. At best I would call it over-wraught. At worst, near inedible.

I am the sort of person who can read a list of ingredients and 80% of the time will know if a recipe is going to work for me. The two instances where my instinct routinely fails are Casseroles and ethinic foods whose spices I am not familiar with.

I LOVE Moroccan food. When Chef Beef and I started dating, one of our first vacations was to Calgary, Alberta. We took a beautiful drive up for Labor Day and wended our way about the city. One night, we decided to take advantage of the local casino, located in the Olympic Village. While he opted for the craps tables, I took out a few dollars and played the slots. I happen to be pretty damned lucky at slots and ended up winning about $200. So we decided to go to dinner. How we selected the Sultan's Tent is still a bit fuzzy, but to this day it is still one of the best meals of my life. Since dinner had become essentially free, thanks to my winnings, we opted for a 7 course "Sultan's Feast" featuring everything from Tagines to Briouts (pastries filled with savory filling). It might be time to head back to Canada...

Things I didn't know about Eggs

I took this picture while making deviled eggs for a party back in January (are we a little backed up on blog posts? nah...).There are things I didn't know about deviled eggs then that I do now. Let me share those.

• Use old eggs. New eggs are harder to peel. In this picture, the white egg is old and the brown eggs are new. The white egg was the only one that was easy to peel.
• Anne Burrell's technique of letting the eggs boil for 1 minute, then sit for 13 minutes exactly, then shocking them in cold water DID result in perfectly cooked eggs; BUT
• Deviled egg recipes do not scale up 1 to 1. Say if you are supposed to use a half a cup of mayo for 6 eggs, that doesn't mean you should use an entire cup for 12. Yours truly didn't know that and for her party had runny icky mayo eggs. And I LIKE mayo. Deviled eggs are just one of those things you have to taste the whole way through adding and adjusting because otherwise, they just aren't worth the work.
  

I don't have a picture of the finished eggs because they were that bad. The beginning picture is much better to remember them by.