Dates.Olives.Walnuts

A much loved fig and olive tepenade transformed itself into something new this year in Morocco.

Well..... because of the Eid holiday, markets were closed and we couldn't get our dried Moroccan figs for the Spanish/Moroccan cooking class that day. Never a shortage of dates here in the Palmeraie of Marrakech.

A new tepenade is born!

-Moroccan Date and Walnut Tepenade-


1 c Chopped dates, chopped
1/2 c pitted oil-cured black olives, chopped
2 T extra virgin olive oil
1 T balsamic vinegar
Juice of half a lemon
1 T drained and rinsed capers, chopped
1 1/2 t Fresh thyme, chopped
1 T fresh cilantro, chopped
1/2 c toasted walnuts, chopped


Mix all ingredients in a medium bowl. Season to taste with pepper. 
Note: The olives and capers should be enough for the salt. But add if you feel that is where the balance is found.

This is great with soft goat cheese, sheeps milk cheeses such as Manchego, or alongside braised chicken thighs, or your tagine of choice.

Bon Appetite! 

Magic

I say it over and over again, but it never losses it's essence to me. Morocco is magic.

Even in black and white, that magic of Morocco seaps it's way through every pore. I'm still very happy to be under your spell, Morocco.

Just finished another successful 10 day PMCA tour through Marrakech, Imlil and Essaouira. This group in particular was very special to work with. 7 attended yoga each day on various rooftops, to breathe in the prana and mediation while listening to herds of goats pass and calls to prayer in the distance. We read poetry at the table and made wishes in the walnut forest. All between working with our hearts and hands to dive head first into the cuisine of Morocco and it's people. A beautiful trip. Planting my footprint deeper and deeper there, and always hard to leave.

Till March, Morocco. Inshallah. 

A New View

-A Grand Entrance And A Green Market-

The fog parted at 8:00 am, and a familiar skyline appeared on the horizon. We had been traveling all night from Newport, RI. Breakfast was in the works, and I was bringing a cup of coffee up to the NY pilot aboard to help guide us in. There it was... a View I have seen a thousand times in movies and from an airplane or car, but this was different. An excitement rushed through all of us as we settled our gaze from the bridge of a boat to the Big Apple.

Arriving to New York by boat was really quite dreamy.  My beautiful grandmother (Nonie, as I call her) loves to tell me the story about her mother, a 29 year old from Giswil Switzerland. Who explained to her own parents that she was leaving for America to start a new life. She did, arriving by boat to start that life, and settling down on a dairy farm in Southern California. Nonie fondly reminds me often that I must have some of her mother in me... with all this crazy galavanting across the world in new territory and stuff. I do hope so.

Incredible fresh chilies, lemon verbena, potatoes of every shape and color, crisp apples along side apple cider doughnuts, and everything else the Union Square Market could tempt you with in autumn. I got to roam and cook an epic meal on the boat with a brilliant and much missed chef-friend-soulsister-inspiration, Carrie. We rolled across familiar streets and jotted menu ideas down on tiny pieces of paper in the back of yellow cabs, and over iced coffees or Brooklyn lager. A whirlwind of a time in the Big Apple, but a tasty one as always.

Final meal at the Breslin before flying on a 10:00 pm flight from JFK to Marrakech..... let the magic continue to unfold.

x- Ash

What You Desire

4:15 pm on Thursday.

The Osso Bucco had been braising for almost an hour now, and I was letting it go till 7:00 pm. Desirable anticipations of the sweet veal meat melting away from itself, in a pool of saffron risotto, set around an exquisite steeple of bone marrow. It will be beautiful. I mean, come on, what more could a party of 12 want tonight after a foggy Boston day!?

Lobster??
Wait, what do you mean you desire, lobster?

This is, in fact, exactly why I am here and offering up myself and my craft to do what I do best-- To cook what someone wants to eat. I honor that. So in that moment, standing in a large galley kitchen with swirling caramelized veal aroma around me, I did what any private chef would do. Traded kitchen clogs for running shoes, and apron for a purse, and down the dock I ran towards the main street of awaiting taxis.
I had been up making the perfect sofritto for my osso bucco since 9 am, and even my hair wreaked of simmering olive oil and sprigs of sage leaves. But I had just entered a whole new realm of chefing- the ultimate search and retrieve. Fresh local lobster is my mission, and I will succeed.

I quickly transformed into an aggressive machine that would do anything, and blow down anyone that stood in my way of getting my hands on a dozen Massachusetts lobsters. In mid-stride out of the yacht marina, my arm flew into the air and my gaze met that of a taxi driver. I was in.

"Boston Fish Pier, please" -I demand with an edge of girlish charm.

"Alright.... How you doin' today?' -my driver says to me as his eyes smile through the rearview mirror.

"I'm doing ok, my friend. But I am in an urgent and desperate need for 12 fresh lobsters, and I need your help. I need them fast, and I will pay you to keep the meter running while I get them"- I respond to my new partner in crime for Lobster mission 2011.

He picks up on my sense of urgency on the matter, and most likely smells the braised veal cologne I'm rockin'. He speeds up, and I fasten my seatbelt while digging out my phone from my back pocket.

Gone Gypsyn'

When she calls my phone, an image of her standing in front of a busy Florentine street appears. With hands over heart, eyes closed, and a blissful expression upon her face.

While waiting for a cab outside of Piazza del Santa Crocce, on our way up to hear the Gregorian chants in Santa Michelangelo, I asked her a question- "Kim, how does Florence make you feel?" When she turned around to answer me, I captured her on my camera. That was 4 years ago, and I still have that photo on my phone.

I left Santa Barbara just days ago. I procrastinated till the final moments of my last morning to pack up my bag. The grey duffle bag (which doubles as my home most of the time) looks more like a black hole of doom to me now. In fact, at that moment of packing, I loathed that bag and all of it's tiny little zipper pockets and cobblestone proof wheels! It was all just too soon to leave.

Kim, my mentor and friend for the past 7 years, threw me... yet another..., going away party just hours before my flight. We drank California chardonnay under my final California pink sunset. Fresh bread with whipped peppers, feta and allepo chilies. Her handmade goat cheese alongside fresh strawberries. Lamb meatballs roasted in the wood fire oven, on warm corn salsa with aioli. She knows me well. Poetry was shared till the wine bottles had finished, and 6 pm came too quickly.

Arriving in Boston and settling into the work groove yet again. (note: provisioning a kitchen in your own country [ie: Trader Joes and Whole Foods!] is far more inspiring than the super markets of Nuuk, Greenland.)  My first night spent with friends, dinner at The Butcher Shop, an apple cider rum martini (or two) at The Beehive, and hours spent shopping in South End Fromaggio (which sells Stumptown coffee!). The next day I received a poem from Kim-

IN A TREE HOUSE

Light Will someday split you wide open Even if your life is now a cage,

For a divine seed , the crown of destiny, Is hidden and sown on an ancient, fertile plain You hold the title to.

Love will surely bust you wide open Into an unfettered, blooming new galaxy

Even if your mind is now A spoiled mule.

A life-giving radiance will come, The Friend’s gratuity will come--

O look again within yourself, For I know you were once the elegant host To all the marvels in creation.

From a sacred crevice in your body A bow rises each night And shoots your soul into God.

Behold the Beautiful Drunk Singing One From the lunar vantage point of love.He is conducting the affairs Of the whole universe

While throwing wild parties In a tree house-- on a limb In your heart.

-Hafiz

Thank you Kim, for being my teacher of food and of love for the moment. Oh, and for throwing endless amounts of wild parties... from treehouse, to villa, to heart. I love you, and I will see you soon in Morocco! -Ash

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."  -Steve Jobs, 2005

Steve Jobs, a visionary of our lifetime, who's life was cut short at the age of 56 by cancer.

But his approach to life has been an inspiration. Thank you, Steve Jobs for taking us outside of the box, then shrinking the box down and putting a touch screen on it.

"If today was the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do?"

Living each day as if it was your last- This is why I embrace my life as a gypsy chef.

Choice & Eggs

My ticket is purchased, and I am already touching the surface of goodbyes with my friends and family. My father finds new ways to ask me eachday how sure I am of needing to leave so soon. My mother wont even talk about the actual date that I depart, and friends have tried to cease every spare moment to cook or hike just one last time.
Santa Barbara has a way of putting on a damn good show that keeps you wanting more and more, but I know that it is time to go.

I found this write up in my journal from when I was living in Florence this summer. Even with the perfect vegetables, pink sunsets, and favorite faces that California has on display to keep me wanting more, I know very well that it is time for me to leave.



And this explains why....
x - Ash




-Written on July 12, 2011 in Florence Italy-


What is it about traveling?


This question posed in an email to me this morning from an old friend in Seattle. Quitting his desirable job to answer an urge, a calling, a gut feeling to travel again. One which comes from a place deep inside, that after awhile we can't shut off, as it keeps on yelling to be acknowledged. Is it the people, the places, the food? (Yes, my appetite is most definitely a key deciding factor in why I do almost anything.) But it's more than that, and it got me thinking today about, what is it about traveling?

I sat at my table, high in the sky of my Florentine apartment and pondered this question. My perfectly cooked soft-boiled eggs, toast and coffee there to segway me into the day. This. This is why I travel, I thought for a moment. Eggs is why I travel? No. But this moment is why I travel. I have no concept of what time it is right now. I have nowhere to be. And I want eggs for breakfast.


Challenge, change, desire, freedom- all come to mind when I think about my choice in lifestyle. But I know that it is bigger than that. While on skype the other day, my cousin from New York asked me what I was speaking, "Is that Australian?... or is that British?", he said. (Dear God, neither, I hope) ... but yes, my speech patterns, cadence, and even the choice of words have changed a bit. And all because, well, because they can. When I am out here, alone in the world, I can be whomever I want to be. I don't have to sound American if I don't want to, and I think subconsciously I have changed my speech patterns to fall somewhere in the middle of it all. Leaving people to question is she ...South African? Spanish? Welsh? Well, maybe.


It's the undefined existence, and the freedom to be, go, say and eat whatever you want, whenever you want. All in a way that is not selfish really. In fact, it is the sense of knowing what and when to do things in life that will make you a better friend, acquaintance, lover, sister, daughter, etc. Knowing how much of your authentic self you can deliver is an answer found within the self.

I travel because I know that I am supposed to. That I will have a veil lifted, a clarity and a sensitivity on the world that I will acquire no other way. Even at the expense of being a neutral being, unidentifiable by geography or accent. Regardless of how people will view my lifestyle or selfish choices to live my way, when I look in the mirror, I know who I'm looking at. And when I look at perfectly cooked soft-boiled eggs from the farmer at Saint Ambrogia market, which lie upon the crimson blue plate found in a Moroccan souk, and smell fresh brewed coffee laced with burning Indian incense from the living room..... This is exactly "What It Is About Travel."