Ras el Hanout (Page 933)

RECIPE #1039
Date: Friday, October 23, 2009 -- 9pmLocation: Bloomington, INKitchen: My ApartmentDining Companion: MattyRecipe Rating: A-


This was a component for a chicken dish I made last weekend. I started by removing the seeds from some cardamom pods and grinding them in the spice grinder with fennel seeds, anise seeds, allspice, cloves, black peppercorns, cinnamon stick, sesame seeds, corainder seeds, cumin seeds, and red pepper flakes. Then I stirred in ground mace, ground ginger, and grated nutmeg. This recipe made me glad I have a well-stocked pantry. The only things I had to buy were the cardamom pods! This Moroccan spice blend was very well balanced. I used it to season some Morrocan chicken pies, and this blend gave them a lovely flavor. This recipe was super quick to make, and it tasted very authentic.

This is the ras el hanout component of this recipe.

My mom is in town visiting and this weekend we went up to Michigan. My mom helped with various home improvement projects, including painting our seminar room. We have more bedrooms than we need in our new house, so my special gentleman and I decided to turn one of them into a second study, with a big chalkboard and some cushy chairs -- a.k.a. a seminar room. The only problem was that the room we chose for the seminar room was painted bright turquoise when we moved in. My special gentleman found this not offensive at all, even with our rust colored wingback chairs, but I thought turquoise wasn't really the best color for a study. And the clashing furniture gave me some extra motivation to paint. You can be the judge. Here's the before-we-painted picture:


Unfortunately, I forgot to take an after picture. But we painted the walls a lovely light brown color and it looks great! The wall that the chairs are facing has a big chalkboard mounted on it. The room is now very cozy, and perfect for our in-home math seminar needs!

The weekend was also full of furniture shopping, estate sale rummaging, craigslist furniture hunting, cleaning, raking, etc... It was busy, but the house is looking better and better!

Now my mom and I are back in Indiana, and I am getting ready for a busy week. Besides the usual teaching and reasearching things, I am running my first marathon on Saturday. Ah!!! Marathon day is finally almost here! Crazy!