View from my room

I said it before and I will say it again: breakfast is my favourite meal especially when I am travelling. Those of you who follow me on twitter or are friends with me on facebook know that I am in America. First in Houston where I did a mezze demonstration for a group of high-powered women from the Women’s Initiative, then at my friend Rebecca‘s (one of the high-powered women who arranged for me to be invited) amazing house in Colorado which overlooks Pikes Peak. Rebecca knows me well and she knows how much I like American breakfasts. And because she had just acquired a waffle machine, she made me waffles this morning, which she served with crispy pepper bacon and lite butter and lite Auntie Jemima’s syrup for the calorie conscious! I am normally but not when it comes to maple syrup and real butter! Fortunately, I am here for another couple of days, so, I am about to get myself a bottle of maple syrup and real butter for us to have with tomorrow’s waffles!

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So, yesterday we had our offal dinner at the Dock Kitchen. As you know from my previous post, I had devised the menu and Stevie and his chefs cooked my recipes, very well I may add. The dinner was a great success and everyone seemed to be having a terrific time. We did too. I had put the lamb’s head interlude on the menu more for shock and fun value, not expecting everyone to want to eat or even touch the heads. But every single table not only ate the cheeks and brains but they also ate the eyes. Well, almost all did. I think one lady didn’t. I went from table to table to show how to get the eye out of its socket and to cut off the black part which is the iris before they could eat the fatty fleshy bit. Perhaps it was my irresistible charm and humour (!) that convinced them; or perhaps it was because the eye looked totally innocuous and rather appetising.

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Today is Iranian new year or Nowruz and I am posting the last of my Iranian adventures which was actually the first, a fabulous dinner party at my friend Nasrine‘s house in Tehran cooked by Mariam Khanum, her lovely helper and cook (there is a picture of her cooking with the late Minou Saberi in my Saveur article which is now online; Mariam is the one with a scarf on her head). I was foolish enough on that day to go to the grand bazar instead of spending the day with Mariam in the kitchen but fortunately I went back a few months later, not only to cook with Mariam and Minou but also with a few other wonderful cooks. Here are a few pictures from that first dinner.

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I am coming to the end of my stay in the Bay Area which has been quite wonderful. Lots of marvellous friends to see, delicious meals, fabulous scenery and the opportunity to give a talk at Omnivore Books about the new edition of Offal, the Fifth Quarter which I really enjoyed. Great shop, great owners and great audience!

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