Pomegranate

 Welcome to 2009. I hope you all had a wonderful break over the holiday season. I certainly did. With  a month off chemo treatment I was able to enjoy eating again. One evening a friend invited us over to celebrate the New Year and served some wonderful duck rillettes he had brought back from his recent visit to France ......which he served with Cristal champagne....of which I enjoyed several glasses.

 But it's back to chemo tomorrow so I thought I'd get a post in before then.

Many of you will know my friend Maryam with the delightful blog My Marrakesh. It's where I get my daily dose of the country I most want to visit.

Recently I've been working with Maryam on developing some recipes for her upcoming book on her life in Morocco. These ruby red jewels of the pomegranate fruit were part of yesterday's recipe testing.

Patience Gray, in her book Honey From Weed, suggests the best way to eat them is outdoors while walking, one sucks the seeds and spits the kernels on the wayside. Probably not acceptable in a city street.  With the remaining seeds I crushed them and drank the juice.  Delightful.

Maryam is a finalist in the Best Middle East or Africa 2008 Blog Awards. Voting is open now for the week.  If you enjoy My Marrakesh I'd love if you could vote for Maryam here.