Residents of Precinct 11, one of the neighborhoods in Carolina Meadows, are having fun attending dinners consisting of the cuisines their friends enjoyed growing up and living outside the United States.

Mirtha Murray who was born in Chile designed a dinner menu based on recipes from her cookbook Three Generation of Chilean Cooking. Drawing on a few of her favorite dishes, Mirtha worked with our chef and his crew to serve empanadas, a salad of tomatoes and onions and flan for desert. Needless to say, the food was devoured with enthusiasm. The flan, especially, was a crowd pleaser; an Americanized version of the desert is now served, on very welcome occasions, in The Courtyard dining room. Chilean wines accompanied the dishes.

At the end of September, Precinct 11 neighbors will travel, virtually of course, to South Africa to taste Dutch and Malay cuisines. As Diane Petifor describes, “I was born in Johannesburg to parents who liked the bland tasteless English cooking of the post war times.” Diane, however, was drawn to more exotic dishes. At the dinner in September, the menu will consist of Boboties, a mild lamb and beef curry, and Dutch chicken pie with mushrooms and leeks. Desserts will be Malva pudding, a traditional South African cake-like baked pudding drenched in sauce/syrup and served warm with custard or cream, and a pineapple and rum ice cream. South African wines will be available.

As one of the residents in this neighborhood, I am delighted to have neighbors who share their history in recipes. And grateful, too, that our kitchen folk are most willing to do the preparation. I cannot wait to dip my spoon into the Malva pudding