Recipe Ideas - Ian Made Dinner Tonight

No recipes from tonight since I didn’t cook. We went out to dinner with our Egyptian friend Walid. Since we live in the same neighborhood we had Ian (at least his kitchen) make dinner tonight. Walid is such a pleasure to go out to dinner with. He is a great friend and very chatting so the conversation is always as wonderful as the meal. If only his lovely wife had been home tonight to go with us, dinner would have been perfect. We missed you tonight Jackie!

We started dinner tonight chatting over a pot of white tea. Sorry, I forgot to pull out the camera. But we have all seen tea so I don’t think that is a big deal that I didn’t get the shot.



As we frequently do we got the Middle Eastern Plate for an appetizer. Well, what did you expect we would order for an appetizer since we are having dinner with someone from Cairo? The Middle Eastern Plate contains whole-wheat pita, hummus, house made sweet pickles, caponata, olives and pickled peppers. Yummy! It has been one of my favorites for years. We order it so often they had put the order into the kitchen before we even asked for it. Doesn’t that tell you have often we are there and order it.



Next we ordered Szechuan Tofu with Green Beans, Carrots and Mushrooms in a slight sticky, sweet and spicy sauce. I know it is fried so it isn’t the healthiest thing, but it is so darn good. Both Dan and I find it very difficult to resist it when Ian has it on the specials menu. For a classically trained chef he makes some of the best Asian food I have ever had. His sushi is pretty fantastic too. Maybe I need to request that for next week since we are going back next Friday with our friend Deirdre.



There was also a Vegetable Pizza with Yellow Squash, Roasted Red Peppers, Mushrooms and Sun Dried Tomato Pesto (no cheese) that was quite good. Ian doesn’t understand the “no cheese rule”, but he goes with it for us. I think he thinks we are a little nuts, but respects that our food consumption habits have changed dramatically. I suppose since not that long ago we would order the gin infused escargot with gorgonzola cream sauce on crostini our return to veganism has really thrown him off.

How we manage to spend 3 hours over dinner I don’t know. But even without the vino we were at the restaurant for a little over 3 hours. Sorry about the lack of table turnover tonight guys. We will see you next week and I will bring the jackfruit for you Corey. I am also going to work on the recipe for curried wheat berry salad you mentioned to me tonight.