Some Atay With Your Rinderschmorbraten?

A couple months ago The Dulcinea and I had dinner at King of Falafel. A few days later my co-worker Sid headed back home to Morocco to visit family and friends. With him was an order for some Moroccan tea cups to give to The D for Xmas. A week or so ago Sid returned bearing these:



OK, so the spoons are from Ikea but don't they look nice? They are kissane d'atay or teacups. "Kass" is a cup and is "kassane" in the plural. "Atay" is tea. He also brought back a couple tajines:





These are the equivalent of salt & pepper shakers. You lift off the lids and find stashes of spices waiting for you. From what Sid says, they generally hold salt and cumin. One of my weekend projects is to find a Moroccan dish to cook so we can run the tajines through their paces.

While I'm on a culinary jag, I'll mention that last weekend I made Rinderschmorbraten and chai. Rinderschmorbraten is German pot roast. I thought it turned out pretty well and was especially pleased with the gravy. Here you can see it cooking as well as the beefy plate I used to hold the roast which conveniently informed me from where my roast was cut.





Straining my chai could have gone smoother.



Luckily my chinois and cheesecloth were up to the task.



It turned out OK. I need to use more cardamom seeds next time and get some cinnamon sticks that are less than a century old. However, I was pleased with how the use of cubebs instead of peppercorns turned out. They gave the tea a pleasant citrus-like sharpness.

To round out my blatherings about food, I found some pictures of a venture to the Eplegaarden in the autumn which prompted apple crisp.