17 Mar
The truffle season is nearly over and apart from the half truffle I have in my freezer, I won’t be eating any until next year. Still, I had the most delightful truffle lunch at Quo Vadis cooked by the wonderful and supremely witty Jeremy Lee. He brought in the truffles specially for us and I bought one on a whim, to photograph rather than eat although I did use some of it, shaved over the most delicious scrambled eggs that Jeremy had given me. And when I finished shaving the truffle, I photographed the cut very close with my new 60 mm macro lens to produce an edible landscape. I am having fun with this lens mainly photographing flowers which I post on twitter for Allan Jenkins who started me on snapping flowers. The flower pictures are for him but I may end up showing the close-up photographs of food. Need to do a lot more though, and I need to get better at the technical aspect of my photography!
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5 Mar
I had a very pleasant surprise yesterday when I found out that I was listed by Arabian Business as one of their 100 most powerful Arab women. Admittedly I wasn’t very high up the list — my friend Zaha is at no 4 while I am at no 46. Still, it is top 50! They didn’t have a picture of me so I thought I would post one from way back when I was important enough to grace the cover of a magazine in Kuwait (probably because of my young face; it was when I worked for Sotheby’s and was touring the region trying to promote them…). Now, I don’t really believe in lists, nor awards for that matter — Stephen Frears once explained to me that being short-listed was more important than receiving an award which was often a political decision while being short-listed is based on merit. Anyhow, there is no denying the fact that I was thrilled to be included. Not sure who I have to thank for this but whoever it is, thank you. I am honoured!
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1 Mar
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKXNaHx5a5M[/youtube]
My new belly dancer is a real departure from those I have featured until now. I found her thanks to my new twitter friend who has great taste in music although not such great taste in belly dancers except for this one and for my cousin (but then I told him about the latter!). Anyhow, what is interesting about Rebecca‘s dance in this clip is that she is doing it to a piece of classical music, Beethoven’s violin concerto. I don’t remember ever seeing a belly dancer gyrate to anything but rhythmic mostly belly dance music — well, Shakira does to pop music although not as continuous dances; only the occasional movement/s. In any case, orthodox or not, Vasile’s choreography works and the whole dance is quite mesmerising. She has a beautiful body and she moves it to great effect. Hope you enjoy her as much as I did and thank you Ameen for the virtual introduction.
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12 Feb
I may have inadvertently started a trend. I was doing a radio interview the other day about Modern Mezze ahead of my participation in the Emirates Literary Festival and as I was flicking through my book, I remembered that I had included roasting chickpeas as a way to supplement a home-prepared mezze and I wondered if the roasted chickpeas that I have been seeing on menus in the last couple of years or more did not have their inspiration in the photo and quick recipe below. It sounds presumptuous I know and I am sure there are people who wrote about roasting chickpeas before I did — must check in Rayess’ book, also Ibrahim Mouzannar‘s. Also it may well be that the trend for roasted chickpeas came from somewhere else because they are a heatlhy snack and chefs are more and more concerned about offering healthier choices.
