Mardi Gras...the art of cooking while having fun

With my turkish neighbor in LA who is becoming a very good friend of mine we invented a concept on friday night based on our desire to have fun by cooking together. We randomly chose a day, tuesday it would be, on which we would test our cooking skills and enlight each other on how to be a better cook. Nida actually started cooking recently and to my mind is not bad at all. In fact we had a great dinner with her two weeks ago when she made chicken provencal and basil cream pasta. Delicious!

So since we decided to cook every tuesday - both to learn and to have fun - we named our recurring event: Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras is a french celebration that dates back from the Middle Age and that consists of a day of eating, drinking and having fun. The interesting part though is that translated in english, it literally means Fat Tuesday. Well fat tuesday it would be!

For our first Mardi Gras, we debated on the menu. Two girls, two boys would be attending the reception. Asia, Europe and America would be represented at our table so the menu had to please every attendee while still being original, delicious and stunning in appearance.

After a couple of hours reading Jamie Olivers's Chef cookbook, Cyril Lignac's - a contemporary cuisine chef- recipes and brainstorming, we came up with a quite pleasant menu:

Menu du Premier Mardi Gras

Entree

Petit toast with cheddar and turkey on a toasted garlic bread

Main course

Eggplant parmesan and pine nut crumble with its tomato, basil and pomegranate balsamic vinegar filling.

Desert

Chocolate and Zuchinni cake.

How did it turn out? Well first we had a great evening. While our guests were enjoying our petit toasts we struggled to grate the zucchini, peel the eggplant, dice the tomatoes but with a lot of laughter helping us forget how much effort fine cooking requires. It was then time to sit down and eat...finally. The dinner was great - though the eggplant crumble raised some eyebrows- and desert served with wipped cream was heavenly.

I can't wait for the next Mardi Gras though we haven't yet figured out the menu...

A table!