Month: September 2011

Cooking in Marrakech with Souk Cuisine

Cooking in Marrakech with Souk Cuisine

The Boston Globe recently published our abbreviated tale of taking a cooking class with the wonderful Dutch and Moroccan folks of Souk Cuisine in Marrakech. You can find the piece on our Sample Articles page. It was some of the best cooking instruction we have experienced because it enabled us to get intimately involved in the life and rhythm of the city and its inhabitants. Even if your goal is to bargain your way through the souks (Pat was told she bargained like a Berber), it is hard not to work up an appetite when you keep encountering vendors like the back-street fruit man (above) or the citrus juice truck that stands on the main square, Jemaa El Fna. Everywhere you look, there is food....Read More

Mountain View Grand’s tomato-cilantro cooler

Every cook has a different way to cope with the end of tomato season. In June, Brian Aspell was lured away from the Equinox in Vermont to bring his brand of culinary passion to the Mountain View Grand in Whitefield, N.H. He was still getting his feet under him when we visited in August, but on very short notice he managed to whip together a chef's tasting menu that swept us away. It was a harbinger of great things to come at this grande dame of the White Mountains. (The fall menus will be pure Aspell.) The opening salvo of the dinner was an amuse-bouche of a New England gazpacho. Aspell served our portions in tall shot glasses, but on a warm day we could...Read More