Dear LPG, 

It seems that I have hardly finished last month’s international cooking attempt but I find myself making ready to begin another New Year and all challenges that it will bring.  

You will remember my promise to have a go at producing a plate of Moroccan Chicken Bastilla and I did try my best.   I have to say that there were a lot of elements to this dish and I really did not think about that when closing my eyes and landing my finger on this undertaking.  It was like making four different meals before putting them all together.   

After the experience, I have decided that getting the chicken off its bones with your fingers was fiddly and I have never made an omelette quite like that one before, while deep-frying almonds was a challenge too, but I did cheat and make do with ready rolled filo pastry.   

There was a lot of butter involved with the assembly of the dish and I was a bit dubious when it came to topping what I decided was a chicken omelette pie with icing sugar.  My taste testers and I were surprised that it did not taste greasy in spite of all the butter, and the sugar in the garnish made for an interesting mixture of flavours too.  There are some instructions that really need a video and I was glad for that help when it came to getting the look of the thing right at the end stages of this production. Mine was smaller and I had great difficulty tucking the filo in at the edges, but I went for my personal 4 segment decoration version of the ensemble.   I did check how to put the lines of cinnamon on top but the person demonstrating made it look a lot easier to get them straight than I think I will ever be able to.

All in all, that was a really different start to my 2025 cooking adventure, but February is coming, as is the celebration of the smallest country on our planet’s surface.  Since 1929 Vatican City has celebrated Lateran Treaty Day after the signing of a document with that name and on that day of that year.   The nearest thing to their national dish is called Fettuccine alla papalina and was originally dedicated to the Pope of the time.  As ever, it looks simple… we will see… 

CB, Lewisham 

CB offers some hints for her February plans…

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