In the Fall of 2006 my friends Danielle and Eyal came up with a brilliant idea.
They wanted to make sure that we made time for each other in our busy NYC lives. And we wanted that time to be spent in a relaxed, comfortable and inexpensive setting. Too often 'getting together with friends' means spending plenty of money exploring all of the gastronomic jewels that this city has to offer--a delicious, but impersonal and pricey, venture.
The solution? Almost-weekly mini-dinner parties. Spiced up with a unifying theme.
Soon after Danielle and Eyal started on their challenge of cooking weekly meals with creative or unusual grains as the main ingredient, they invited me to join in. I was hooked.
Following about a year of spelt, quinoa, barley and the like, we decided to mix things up a bit. September of 2007 marked the start of our ambitious Global Cuisine Project. Inspired by our collective love of travel and interesting ingredients, we set out to cook a meal that represented a different country or region each week.
Check out the map of where we 'traveled' and what we ate while we were there.
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Our international cooking club garnered a lot of interest from friends and family--my mom is still begging me to make my General Tsao's chicken for her. It opened our own eyes to how easy certain favorite take-out dishes were to replicate and improve upon at home. And most of all, it was fun. Lots of fun.
We each developed our own specialty: Eyal could seemingly change his menu and adapt his pantry staples at the drop of a hat all the while executing his theme perfectly; Danielle wow-ed us with build/customize-your-own dishes that were interactive and delicious; I tried to be a stickler for authenticity. No one ever went home hungry :-)
As Autumn rolled around again, we knew it was time to shake things up again. As much as we were enjoying traveling the globe via our tiny Brooklyn and East Village kitchens, we were ready for a new challenge.
