Savory Fruit

I’m not usually a fan of fruit in my entree. Raisins and apples can go in salads and citrus gets a pass. At least I thought I didn’t like fruit in things. During my French cookbook obsession I found a recipe for a chicken-sweet potato tagine with prunes. It sounded weird enough that I might like it. I’ve done raisins in tagine before and thought it was ok and I happened to have two pounds of prunes that really needed to be used it. Don’t worry the recipe didn’t call for two pounds, more like eight prunes. The only change I made to the recipe was to swap chickpeas for the chicken. It does call for a lot of saffron which I miraculously had. This was the first time I made something that had a very strong and distinct saffron flavor and I can’t say I loved it. Possibly the mix of saffron and prunes, each very distinctive, might have been overwhelming. It was good that night for dinner but I couldn’t bring myself to eat the leftovers the next afternoon.

I served it with couscous and some sauteed chard and mushrooms. The tagine recipe is from Around My French Table.

Little Africa pt. 1

After dealing with so many small children last night I wanted some comfort food. No traditional comfort food though. So I cooked up some collards and a potato. With smoked paprika, garlic, onion, rosemary, and thyme I created a Spanish version of colcannon. And it really hit the spot. 

This morning I embarked on the great cookie extravaganza. But first I had to try the persimmon I got at the coop a few days ago. 

But onto the adventure. Here we have maybe 1/2 the cookies I made this morning. 

Aren’t the Africas cute! I’m really excited to decorate them. I want to make a few that are physical representations of the continent. I thought a political map would be really cool, but there are far too many small countries. Poor Togo and Burkina Faso would never translate into frosting. So I think I’ll do a few that highlight South Africa since thats where my friends do their work. The small cookies will be decorated with single color bases them designs on them resembling the cloths and artwork of some of the many unique and amazing African tribes. 

 

Alas, VeganMoFo is over today. I’m proud of the number of posts I made. And I will try my best to keep up with the bloggin’ and writin’. Have a happy halloween everyone!