Meatless Moroccan

This month's dinner was a smash! We had 3 couples - all of whom are musical - professional musicians of one kind of another. A instrumentalist/artist couple with grown children who recently had another. A grammy nominee/producer couple and a jazz musician/singer pair of local fame. (I'm including details about the guests because I've gotten requests to do so - while also maintaining privacy obviously).

Being musical folks - they were late and hard to pin down to a date - I might add! But once everyone arrived we had shrimp purses - which are bundles of shrimp, parsley, cilantro, paprika, coriander and cumin baked inside filo and served with tomato chermoula sauce.

First course was the weakest. Because of my guests' avoidance of red meat of any kind (more common than not) I turned the lamb stew with cardamon and apricot into cod stew ... it was "delicate" let's say - "subtle" another ambiguous word. I served it with barley bread - little soft rounds characterized by their onion seeds - which can be bitter but when cooked infuse the bread to combine with the honey.

The rest of the meal was where the success was in my opinion. Roasted fennel salad with raisins, almonds, saffron and lots and lots and lots of garlic. And for the main course - marinated grouper (also with chermoula (think all those spices plus lemon juice and cilantro to make a pesto-like paste), over chickpea salad (roasted peppers, cucumbers, raisins, capers, and more of that chermoula tossed); served with pomegranate glazed carrots.

For dessert I made mini pastries filled with almonds, marzipan,and orange flower honey.
The conversation was lively and we all enjoyed ourselves until the couple with the infant was finally called home ...

Until last night Moroccan meals were couscous and stewed tomatoes ... the grouper was fabulous and I think that chermoula could go on anything.