As it’s half term, my mother and I took my daughter and a friend out shopping for the day on Tuesday to Bluewater, which for those who aren’t from these parts, is a mahoosive shopping centre. Well I say we took them shopping, we delivered them to the centre, let them do their thing for a few hours and then drove them home. We didn’t shop, we sat for a couple of hours in a fabulous Lebanese restaurant, Comptoir Libanais, picking at various mezze dishes, which has become our Bluewater ritual as we are both of the mindset that we’d rather have our eyes poked out with hot pokers and then have our toes fed to ravenous ferret-faced swamp monsters than wander around River Island, The Gap etc through throngs of teenagers, all moaning at their parents.
Whilst dining, I spied this cookery book on the shelves and thumbed through it. It’s my birthday in the not too distant future and Mum never knows what to get me so she decided to get me something she knows I want now. So I got a new cookery book. Because I have so few. I needed it.
I love North African cooking and this doesn’t disappoint – it’s worth buying just for the pomegranate and orange blossom water lemonade recipe alone. Does it say something about me that I have already pimped it by adding triple sec and vodka? I feel a cocktail section of this blog coming on! Think I shall dub this one the Comptoirpolitain!
Lots of fabulous salads and great mezze ideas. I imagine a dinner party in the not too distant future where we don’t get as far as pudding, maybe not much past an array of starters actually…..particularly if we have a few of my new cocktails with them!