It's a semolina granule, it's a dreamy stew, it's a Mahgreb celebration: couscous!

By Leslie Brenner

To lots of people, couscous is something you buy in a box, add to a pan of boiling water, stir, let sit 5 minutes then fluff with fork. Maybe they’ll zhuzzh it up a bit and call it a side dish.

But couscous can be so much more — as it is in its birthplace, the Maghreb subregion of North Africa.

In countries like Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, couscous is both “grains” of rolled semolina like the ones that come in that box, and a savory meat-and-vegetable stew that’s spooned on top of the grains.

More accurately, those grains are granules. Made from crushed durum wheat (semolina), they are related to pasta, but they’re not exactly pasta. Traditionally they’re made by mixing the durum with water, and rubbing the mixture between your palms into granules. The granules are put through a sieve, and anything small enough to go through has to be rubbed again. It’s very labor-intensive. The granules are then steamed, then dried in the sun.

That’s just the beginning: To serve couscous, it has to be cooked — which involves steaming it several times (traditionally in a dedicated couscous steamer, known as a couscoussier), and spreading it out and rubbing it to separate the granules in-between steamings. After the last steaming, it’s super light and fluffy: the couscous ideal. (Properly prepared couscous is never clumpy or gummy.)

To say couscous is culturally important in the Maghreb is an understatement. “Couscous is considered the most important traditional dish among the Maghreb people,” wrote Oumelkheir Soulimani in a 2020 article in the African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development.

The food historian Charles Perry (my former colleague at the Los Angeles Times), wrote about couscous for the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery in 1989. His paper, “Couscous and its Cousins,” points out that in Morocco and Algeria, “the local word for it is sometimes identical to the word for ‘food’ in general.” He concludes that it was the Berbers of northern Algeria and Morocco who first created couscous, sometime between the 11th and 13th centuries.

So the tradition is very old.

(Of course there’s also the pearl couscous that’s popular throughout the Levant — in Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Syria. Those much-larger granules are produced in a similar way, but the aesthetic is very different. That’s another story.)

How is what you buy in the box different than scratch-made semolina rolled between the palms? Soulimani explains that in detail — basically, it’s similar to the artisanal product up to the point where it’s dried.

When you follow the simple instructions on the box, you’re skipping the whole steaming routine that traditionally follows. The couscous tastes fine, but it’s much heavier than the ideal; a box of couscous steamed three times makes twice the volume of one made according to package instructions. And it sits heavy in your belly. That’s why until recently, if I wanted to do couscous right, I’d set up a steamer (I don’t own a couscoussier — pronounced coose-coose-ee-YAY) and spend a couple hours preparing the granules. No, you don’t have to do that to make a great couscous; more on that presently.

Either way, you’re using industrial couscous from the box (or bag, or whatever) — unless, of course, you happen to be in possession of some hand-rolled, sun-dried couscous.

The topper: a festive stew

The stews that go on top are wide-ranging: They can involve lamb, chicken, fish or vegetables, or a combination. Often there’s a sweet element — raisins or caramelized onions, pumpkin or sweet potato; sometimes chicken is brushed with honey. There’s usually cinnamon and saffron, and harissa — which may also be served on the side. Traditionally, fresh country butter (smen or oudi) may be included.

READ: How to make your own Tunisian-style harissa — and why you’ll be thrilled you did.

Since I was a wee twenty-something, I’ve been making a festive rendition inspired by a traditional Moroccan dish: couscous with seven vegetables, in the style of Fes. The seven vegetables are a Berber tradition; they include zucchini, turnips, carrots, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, cabbage and pumpkin. The Fes-style couscous also includes chickpeas, raisins and onions, along with chicken and lamb, cilantro, cinnamon, saffron, harissa. The grains get tossed in a lot of butter.

My couscous includes all of the above except for raisins, cabbage and sweet potato; instead of pumpkin, I use delicata squash because it’s easier and (to me) more delicious. I skip the butter on the couscous — I find it’s rich enough without it, as the broth is rich.

Why do I skip some of the vegetables? Only because I first learned to make the dish from a cookbook in the Time-Life “The Good Cook” series. A method more than a recipe (as was the habit in those excellent books), it gave a basic outline — which worked great. Over the years, I’ve evolved it a bit.

Putting it all together

The basic idea is make a broth with cut-up lamb and chicken; chickpeas are included from the start if you’re using dried ones, or toward the end of you’re using canned (either is fine). The broth is flavored with harissa, cinnamon, cilantro, tomato and diced carrots and onion; big chunks of carrot and turnip are added later, followed by zucchini and roasted red pepper strips. Once everything is tender and delicious (what a gorgeous aroma!) and your fluffy couscous is ready, you put the granules on a platter and lay the meats, chickpeas and veg on top, along with roasted delicata squash rounds. Moisten it all with a little broth, and bring it to the table, along with a sauceboat of broth and a dish of harissa.

Recently, a brilliant solution surfaced for the age-old couscous granule quandary of whether to spend hours steaming and rubbing, or take the 5-minute box-instructions shortcut. In her recent cookbook Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean, the renowned author devised a quick-and-easy method that’s a hundred times better than the box-instructions. (Basically, pour on boiling water, stir, wait five minutes, stir again, wait five minute, drizzle on a little olive oil, then rub the grains between your hands to separate the granules and coat with oil. Cover with foil and bake 10 or 15 minutes. Fantastic!)

One day (maybe soon!) I’ll make a proper couscous with seven vegetables in the manner of Fes. And I did get my hands on hand-rolled, sun-dried couscous from Tunisia; Zingerman’s sells it. I, however, have not yet been able to get satisfactory results cooking it according to package directions or using Roden’s method. I’m going to continue working with the product, and if I succeed, that’ll be another story, too.

For now, I invite you to enjoy a couscous that’s always been a favorite among my friends and family — using the familiar couscous in a box and incorporating Roden’s clever hack. Want to make it super-special? Take the time to make homemade harissa. But even if you use harissa from a tube, I think you’ll love this.

RECIPE: Chicken and Lamb Couscous

RECIPE: Harissa

---

Want free recipes delivered to your inbox? Sign up below!

<

This sheet pan chicken dinner, with spices that evoke Morocco, is easy and spectacular

We love the idea of sheet pan dinners — the notion that you can plop everything on a pan, shove it in the oven and pull out something fabulous.

Unfortunately, most sheet pan dinners suck. Either some components are overcooked and others undercooked, the cooking instructions are so involved it might as well not be a sheet pan dinner, or, well, it’s just kind of blah.

I think you know what I’m talking about.

But I kept thinking a glamorous one could be dreamt up. Something with deep, interesting, evocative flavors — a dish so transporting that by the time it floated to the table you’d forget it was a sheet pan dinner. And yet it needs to be easy. And to work as advertised.

I love the smell of Moroccan spices cooking with tomato and cinnamon (as it does in a chicken and lamb couscous, for instance), and I thought that would be lovely to inhale on a busy weeknight. I put that together with that thing canned diced tomatoes do when you roast them, getting nice and concentrated and deep, and imagined them — zhuzzhed up with cinnamon and harissa — on top of chicken thighs with Moroccan-ish root vegetables. And onions cut so the edges get a little charred. Like that couscous dish, the one I dreamt of would have turnips and carrots.

I didn’t realize the dish would make its own pan sauce. What a delightful bonus!

So, how to you put together this dreamy deal?

First make a spice mix — toasted and ground cumin and coriander seed. Stir a little into a glug of olive oil, and toss the root vegetables in that. Put the turnips on the sheet pan first, and give it a 15-minute head-start in the oven, while you coat chicken thighs in the same mix plus cinnamon and a little harissa.

When you pull out the sheet pan to add the chicken (skin-side down), the pan is hot enough to give a little sizzle — perfect. Scatter the spiced carrots and onions around and back in it goes. Fifteen minutes later, flip the thighs and spoon on top of the tomatoes, and slide it in the oven again. Your kitchen fills with those beautiful smells, you have 35 minutes to relax with a glass of wine while the chicken finishes cooking.

It’s so simple you’ll have had time to clean up everything even before that last 35-minutes of roasting.

In fact, you’ll even have time to make a green salad — or roast some broccolini — and still enjoy that glass of wine.

For the broccolini, you don’t even need a recipe (though we’ll supply one just for kicks). Here it is in talk-through form: Toss two bunches of broccolini on another sheet pan with a thin-sliced lemon, a tablespoon of olive oil, half a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of Aleppo pepper. Pop it in the oven during the last 20 minutes of your Moroccan-spiced sheet-pan chicken dinner, and everything comes out at once.

Easy peasy. And pretty damn good.

RECIPE: Sheet Pan Chicken Thighs with Turnips, Carrots and Harissa

RECIPE: Roasted Broccoli with Lemon and Garlic

Did you enjoy this story? Read about who we are and what we do.

Anissa Helou's 'Feast' delivers delicious inspiration from around the Islamic world

Life can get in the way, during normal times, of plumbing the depths of the cookbooks on our shelves or coffee tables.

The Great Confinement of 2020 has changed all that: So many of us are seeking deeply immersive cooking projects to delight us, distract us and give us strength. The most far-reaching of them can also transport us somewhere far away from the confines of our kitchens.

Coming up on its two-year publication anniversary, Annisa Helou’s Feast: Food of the Islamic World has been my nearly constant companion since about a month before quarantine locked us in. Within its 530 pages there are so many beguiling flavors to discover, so much culture to soak in and so much to learn that honestly, I don’t feel cooped up at all.

The book, which won the James Beard Foundation Award last year for best International Cookbook, takes us on a journey around the Muslim world in more than 300 recipes — from Helou’s native Lebanon to Senegal to the west, Turkey to the north, Tanzania to the south and Indonesia to the east, with stops in Morocco, Egypt, India, Iran, Xinjiang and much more along the way. The sweep and scope and depth of the project is just incredible; it’s an awesome achievement.

Author of many other acclaimed cookbooks, including Modern Mezze, Mediterranean Street Food, Savory Baking from the Mediterranean and Lebanese Cuisine, Helou is a gifted cultural guide who tells a great story. (I’ve been following her on Instagram for years; it’s always lovely to see what she’s cooking and eating as she travels around the world.)

Lebanese fatayer, spinach-filled pastries

The most unexpected story in Feast tells of her quest to taste a roasted camel hump, which begins when she’s invited to take part in a feast in the United Arab Emirates in which a roasted hump would be the centerpiece. It doesn’t work out for her as hoped: Separated from the main part of the feast with the other women, Helou is disappointed to be served some “positively nasty” camel meat rather than the hump, which is reserved for the men. The story ends a couple years later, with Helou purchasing her own baby camel in Dubai, having it slaughtered, massaging it with saffron, rose water and the Arabian spice mixture b’zar (cumin, coriander, cardamom, ginger, turmeric, etc.) and roasting it herself.

“The hump looked gorgeous as it came out of the oven,” she writes, “crisp and golden. Both the fat and meat were scrumptious — the baby camel must have been milk-fed. The meat was pale and tender and the fat very soft . . . . Apparently, people also eat the fat from the hump raw. I will have to try that next time around.” She then proceeds to offer advice for buying your own hump to roast, along with instructions to follow her recipe for Baby Goat Roast, subbing the camel hump for the baby goat.

Most of the stories and recipes are, fortunately for those of us who actually want to cook from the book, much more accessible than camel hump.

Among the dishes I’ve made (so far) and loved were a Chicken Tagine with Olives and Preserved Lemons; a classic Tabbouleh, Kafta (lamb skewers) that I served as Helou suggested with a beautiful Onion and Parsley Salad; savory, spinach-filled pastries called Fatayer; the Turkish salted yogurt drink Ayran, an Indian Mango Lassi and Syrian/Lebanese Rice Pudding. A year ago I bought a rakweh (Turkish coffee pot) and started making Turkish coffee according to the slapdash instructions on the coffee package. Helou’s primer on brewing qahwa (bringing water to a boil, stirring in coffee and sugar, reducing heat, simmering till it foams up, removing from heat and repeating once or twice till no more foam happens), takes it to another level. What a gift!

The Chicken Tagine recipe, which called for four poussin or Cornish hens rather than a generic chicken, required a bit of adjustment. I found Cornish hens, but they weighed nearly two pounds each, and eight pounds would have been far too much for the six to eight people the recipe was meant to serve. I punted and used a chicken instead, cutting it into four (two whole legs and two airline breasts, with wings attached).

Ayran (right), a Turkish salty yogurt drink, and Indian Mango Lassi

The dish was wonderful, and from it I learned so much about Moroccan tagines — the interesting thing about which, writes Helou, “is that instead of browning the meat at the beginning as with most other stews, the browning is done at the end after the meat has cooked and the cooking liquid has evaporated to leave only a silky sauce.”

That silky sauce happens thanks to a lot of finely grated onion and spices that melt over the course of the cooking time into a savory blanket.

I’d had no idea that there were four different types of Moroccan tagines depending on the seasonings used. Nor that many Moroccan home cooks cook the tagine in a regular pot, then transfer it to the beautiful ceramic tagine dish that gives the stew its name to serve at the table. “It is mostly street food vendors and rural folk who cook their tagines in earthenwear tagines,” she writes.

I found myself craving the dish again a few nights ago, when I stared into my (emptying) pantry and spotted a jar each of green Castelvetrano and black Kalamata olives — perfect for the dish. This time I cut the chicken into smaller pieces (leg, thigh, breasts cut in two with wing still attached to one half): even nicer.

Kudos for Helou’s pita bread recipe, which leads off the book. Not that I was able to test it word-for-word: in the time of corona scarcity, I didn’t have and couldn’t get the right kind of yeast. (The book calls for instant yeast everywhere yeast is called for, it seems; I only had active dry yeast.) But Helou’s method — more useful than others I found as I searched far and wide — did serve as seriously useful inspiration when I was developing my own recipe for half-whole-wheat, half-white pita bread.

It’s that kind of authoritativeness that has had me reaching for Helou’s book again and again as I develop any kind of recipe with roots or inspiration in the Muslim world.

Anissa Helou’s Onion and Parsley Salad needed no tweaks.

There’s a caveat, though. As often as not, the recipes need tweaks, at best, or a lot of guesswork at worst. For a Hyderabadi Dumpukht Biryani, Helou has you marinate a princely amount of boneless lamb shoulder in a lot of yogurt, along with tenderizing green papaya (smart!) and spices. Are we meant to discard the yogurt when the meat goes into the pot? Who knows? Lots more yogurt goes in, so maybe not? If that’s the case, what a waste. I split the difference, shaking the yogurt marinade off most of the lamb pieces, but wound up with an epic fail anyway: There was way too much liquid, resulting in a drab and sodden mush, rather than the elegant, discreet rice grains that distinguish a well made biryani. I wound up picking the expensive lamb bits out of the inedible dish and making them into a soup the next day.

I came to understand pretty early on that rather than a book to precisely follow recipes from, Feast is a book to be inspired by, to learn from and to be guided by. So that even after the biryani fiasco, when Wylie decided to take on a kafta research project — finding and developing the best possible iteration of the Lebanese ground lamb skewers — I handed him Helou’s book. In the headnote for her recipe, she recalls going to the butcher shop in Beirut with her mother, who would carefully watch the butcher chop the meat for her kafta in order to make certain he used the right cuts (shoulder or leg). That inspired Wylie, after a decent version he had made with packaged pre-ground lamb from someone else’s recipe, to use hers, grinding his own meat from a leg of lamb. It was spectacular.

And when we plated the kafta with fabulous hummus, handmade pita and Helou’s Onion and Parsley salad, it transported us a million miles away from home.

There are so many more recipes and techniques I plan to explore in the book: Turkish meat boreks; scallion pancakes from China; a Saudi eggplant fatteh that’s said to be the Prophet Muhammad’s favorite dish; the Lord of Stuffed Vegetables; Moroccan meatballs with rice, harira and couscous with seven vegetables; Persian tadigh; a crab curry from Indonesia. I’ll soon be making up batches of her harissa and garam masala for my pantry.

And I’m eager to try out many of her desserts, once I can get the right ingredients. For now, here’s her Syrian/Lebanese Rice Pudding:

Helou even has a couple of recipes involving fresh, green almonds, answering a question I asked in a story last fall when they were in season.

To be sure, Feast is probably more a book for seasoned, confident cooks and armchair culinary travelers than for beginners who need to faithfully follow instructions. As for me, I’d buy it again in a heartbeat. And for friends who are ambitious, intrepid culinary adventurers, I will offer it as a gift.

Feast: Food of the Islamic World, by Anissa Helou, Ecco, 530 pages, $60

RECIPE: Chicken Tagine with Olives and Preserved Lemon

RECIPE: Kafta (Lebanese Lamb Skewers)

RECIPE: Anissa Helou’s Onion and Parsley Salad

RECIPE: Syrian/Lebanese Rice Pudding

Summer's most glorious make-ahead dessert: Cardamom-scented milk custard with apricot gel and crushed pistachio

View fullsize

My friend Greg Stinson is one of the best cooks I know. Part of it is his impeccable taste. He also has a finely tuned instinct for what flavors will shimmer brightest right now, this second, this season. And he knows what flavors will sing together.

View fullsize

And so when he was shopping for a dinner whose dessert would be cool, soft cups of cardamom-scented milk custard (that much he knew) and he happened on some blushingly beautiful ripe apricots, Greg's instinct kicked in and he took the custard idea from good to great. He'd capture that wonderful fresh apricot flavor in a gel on top of the custard, one that would be soft enough to ooze saucily into the cool, lightly sweet, exotically perfumed pudding. He divined just the right garnish, too: crushed toasted pistachios. 

How lucky am I to have Greg as a friend? Lucky indeed! That dessert was the captivating finish to dinner at the home of Greg and his husband Tim Simmonds a couple weeks ago.  It began with flatbreads (handmade by Greg) topped with juicy slices of sun-warmed tomatoes from Tim's garden. Next came beautifully spiced chicken kebabs, saffron rice (with a nice bit of crunchy tadig on the bottom!) and a lovely salad of chick peas, okra, tomatoes, eggplant and onion. It was all wonderful. 

And then those custards: so cool, lightly sweet, creamy and rich (but not too), just amazing with the vibrant apricot saucy gel that tasted like a sun-drenched orchard. On top of it, they were gorgeous in their green glasses on Greg and Tim's table.

View fullsize

I know what you're thinking. Yes, if you're lucky you can still find apricots in the market. The dessert, which channels the flavors of Turkey or Tunisia with its cardamom scent, pistachio crunch and apricot exclamation point, is ideal for making head – perfect for a laid-back late summer dinner party. 

It took Greg a couple of tries to nail the dessert, and not surprisingly he didn't measure things or write down what he did. "But Greg!" I protested, "this could be a smashing Cooks Without Borders dessert!" He walked me through what he did and the approximate amounts he used. I took a couple stabs at home and the recipe is now ready for you:

The custard – and eggless one – is easy to make, and sets up quickly in the fridge. Pour it into pretty heat-proof cups or ramekins. Then quarter the apricots – no need to peel them – and cook them down with a little sugar and fizzy prosecco till they're soft and translucent. A spin in the food processor and a trip through a fine sieve and you've got your gel to pour over the custards. Let them chill till after dinner, then top them with toasted crushed pistachios and serve. 

What can we say but three cheers for Greg?! 

Flavors of Spain and Morocco on a most unusual New Year's Eve

It has been a difficult and even terrifying holiday season – thanks to several tornadoes that tore through North Texas the day after Christmas – for many of our neighbors and friends around Dallas, where we live. 

For my friend and colleague Seema Yasmin, her husband Emmanuel, and Seema's mom, Yasmin Halima, it was truly an ordeal, as their house was completely destroyed by a tornado. Emmanuel and Yasmin, unable to get to the safest part of the house, huddled in front of the refrigerator, clinging to Seema and Emmanuel's two-year-old pit bull, Lily, as their kitchen was hit. Seema, a medical doctor-turned-journalist who specializes in infectious diseases, was away in Liberia, reporting on survivors of the ebola epidemic there, when she had news of the disaster. She cut short her trip and arrived back in Dallas – but not home; that was gone – four days later. Emmanuel, Yasmin and Lily were staying in a hotel. 

My husband Thierry and I had planned to spend a quiet evening at home for New Year's Eve, so we invited them over New Year's Eve dinner. What to cook for friends who've been through (and are going through) such a traumatic experience? Seema and Yasmin don't eat meat unless it's halal; "consider us piscatarians," says Seema. When I mentioned the restriction to Thierry, he had one gleeful suggestion: paella! 

Perfect. We'd start with tapas and a bottle of Cava (for those who would partake). I whipped out my favorite Spanish cookbook – Anya von Bremzen's 2006 volume, The New Spanish Table – for tapas ideas. For a first course, maybe I'd whip up something involving piquillo peppers, tuna and allioli – lemony, super-garlicky Spanish mayonnaise, which is also great stirred into seafood paella. For a sweet, I turned south, reaching for a lovely dessert of poached pears and prunes scented with bay leaf and orange from Paula Wolfert's The Food of Morocco.

I found some beautiful organic red Bartletts at Whole Foods, with a couple days during which I could let them ripen in a paper bag. I poached them New Year's Eve morning. It's a great dessert for a dinner party, as it can be made completely in advance. Wolfert's recipe calls for 12 prunes, but I say the more the merrier and double them; they're so good with the pears – which I planned to serve with some thin almond crisps I picked up at the store.

For tapas, I settled on Sevillian marinated carrots – zanahorias aliñadas – that I'd set out with fleshy, green Castelvetrano olives and smoked almonds. Then we'd have a passed tapa inspired by one I saw in Anya's book: slow-scrambed eggs with wild mushrooms (I was hoping to find some chanterelles), to be served in brown egg shells. I took the eggs in a more French direction, using butter (lots!) rather than olive oil and shallots rather than garlic, as we had so much garlic going on in the paella, carrots and allioli. I couldn't find chanterelles, so instead I snapped up some beautiful cultivated beech mushrooms and small, fresh shiitakes.

Just as Seema and company rang the doorbell, blam!!! I dropped a glass bowl filled with eggs that I was pulling from the fridge. Eggs and broken glass went flying all over the kitchen and beyond – landing in the dining room, the living room, the breakfast nook. Brilliant! Thierry scrambled (hah!) to clean it all up (bless his heart!) as I welcomed our friends, apologizing for the chaos and putting up a fence of chairs to keep Lily from stepping on broken glass in the kitchen. 

Later, as we sat at dinner, Emmanuel and Yasmin – still pretty shellshocked – recounted their terrifying ordeal; they didn't have time to get to a safe room, which was probably a good thing, as the room they thought safest was bisected by a garage door torn from its hinges. Emmanuel was barefoot when the tornado hit, and there was broken glass everywhere; he stepped on a nail as they were walking the streets looking for help. He was carrying Lily at the time, all 65-pounds of her. Yasmin had shards of glass hit her face.

We knew it wouldn't exactly be an evening of revelry, considering all they been through and all they had lost, but I was hoping – with food cooked with love, and good cheer and the warmth of a fire in the fireplace – to make their holiday just a little bit less dreadful.

Lily, a sweet creature who is in training to be a therapy dog, was quite nervous, but they had brought her bed – which we set up in the dining room so she could be next to us. Once she settled in, we broke out the tapas. While everyone nibbled on the carrots – garlicky, lemony and fragrant with herbs – and the olives and nuts, I put the finishing touches on the eggs, scrambling them slowly with sautéed mushrooms in butter till they were custardy. (Fortunately I had eggs to spare!) I had just the thing for serving them: a fabulous ceramic egg carton my friend Michalene brought me as a gift from South Africa a few years ago.

Seema seemed to melt."Oooh," she said when I brought the egg carton to the table and offered her one. "I love anything with eggs." There were only five of us and half a dozen eggs, but it wasn't hard to find a taker for the last one.

Next came the peppers with tuna. I wasn't able to find piquillos – those slender, pointed Spanish red peppers with a lovely bite you can buy (if you're lucky) in a jar already roasted. Instead I found jars of whole roasted Spanish Morron peppers. Not as nice as the piquillos, whose shape is perfect for filling. I spooned some allioli onto of our salad plates, set a pepper on each and tucked in fillets of fancy tuna I'd bought in jars, packed in olive oil, into the peppers. The combo was actually pretty good – especially with some crusty baguette to sop up the extra allioli. 

Seafood paella was the main event, of course. Our recipe is based on the one from Anya's book, though I've tweaked it over the years. This time I found some beautiful baby octopuses to use in place of the squid Anya's recipe calls for. About 20 minutes before our friends arrived, I'd started cooking the paella, knowing I could prepare it up to a certain point, then leave it off-heat on the stove. I popped it into the hot oven, letting it bake while we had the tapas, and pulling it out to rest while we had the peppers and tuna. 

Some red wine – Garnacha from Spain (for a few of us) – those poached pears and prunes, and before midnight, the exhausted trio (um, woof! quartet) was ready to head back to their hotel. But not without an invitation to come back soon and cook: Yasmin, who was born in India, has lived in South Africa – where she worked for an international non-profit aid organization – and has roots in Burma, is already missing the kitchen.