Brioche

With a characteristic cavalier swagger, I announced to my girlfriends that I would be making Lebanese food tonight. How difficult can it be to make Kibbeh afterall? I've watched Jumby do it a thousand times, and I know all about squeezing the bulgur and the iced water. After poring over Claudia Roden's The New Book of Middle Eastern Food for a while last night (after the children forced me to watch the quite excellent "Chucky" on tv), I've realized that it's incredibly complicated, especially if you want to fashion those silly-putty shaped meatballs with it. I've been searching for the old family recipe but J has secreted it away in his olden wooden recipe box so I'm left to my own devices. He is in Boston and won't be home until later tonight so yes, I am completely alone with my incompetence and my Middle Eastern cookbook. I will never be able to match his hummus, which he makes with room temperature garbanzo beans, a tad more tahini than one usually tastes, and top with glorious green glossy olive oil. I'm certainly not going to grind my own lamb for the Kibbeh, but I'm sure Aunt Josephine would be appalled.

I made french toast with brioche for Minks this morning - fat slices of it, crispy on the edges, soft and eggy vanilla-y in the middle, with maple syrup. "This is such a treat" she says, "you should try it." But I'm having my own treat. Harrod's loose leaf tea - Knightsbridge blend - strong and just slightly bitter. I find it quite extraordinary that these things make me so happy, but there it is.

Coppola is now producing a Malbec with the most beautiful Yves Klein blue label that I want to only drink that wine and dot the bottles all around the house (as a chic interior design statement, not because I'm succumbing to latent alcoholism).

Off to see our movie now. Can't wait. ("A horror movie - what fun!" a rather snooty ex-client wrote to me the other day eliciting in me the rather childish desire to stick my tongue out at them).