On tap for Meatless Monday...

are the Fennel al Forno recipe from last Wednesday's NYT Dining section, and Ful Medames, my favorite middle eastern bean dish other than Lubieh bel Zeit. Ful is a marvelous slow-cooked fava bean dish flavored with lemon, garlic, cumin and olive oil. I could eat it every day but believe this most recent hankering came after the braised cranberry beans I made a few days back; those are now gone, happily devoured by moi. Anyway, I'm soaking the dried favas now. Everything about favas is pleasing to me, fresh or dried, pureed or whole, so I'm really looking forward to tonight's ful. If you enjoy middle eastern cooking and are in the market for an exceptional cookbook, investigate Claudia Roden's, The New Book of Middle Eastern Cooking. It is one great recipe after another, buttressed by the culinary history, traditions, and inter-country variations throughout the region. The fennel dish looks marvelous even though I don't tend to like gratin-like recipes. This, however, seems like it'll be an exception: fennel, fennel seed, garlic, rosemary, mozzarella, bread crumbs and parm. Yo!

Tomorrow is Mardi Gras- we might make a King Cake this afternoon but then again, do any of us need the sugar? Hmm...