art party

saturday night we had an art party at our house, our guests were two beautiful women from city of angels, heidi and ilene, staying at "the inn of the five graces" and, our chef was the great johnny vee with his helper katie. johny vee looks like a big blond viking and has the personality of an impressario. vee has a fantastic new cook book out called "cooking with johnny vee," resplendent with his smiling face on the cover. the theme of the evening was cooking dinner with two new mexcio artists, that's me and julie. i wore my black high top converse and ilene showed up in white ones so our feet were getting along famously. hieidi and ilene love to eat and explore restuarants both here and in LA, ironically they live in the farmers markets area of LA where juile and i just stayed for our infamous downtown art show. here's our menu, homemade corn tortillas, chile con queso, chunky guacamole, grilled salsa roja, pico de gallo, mexican lime chicken scallopine, calabacitas, and chocolate peanut tacos for the finale. we started off with wine from new mexico and johnny regaled us with stories of our local chiles and then we all set to cooking dinner together. i was on the hand made tortillas, corn masas mixed with mexican oregano, water and mixed up like a thick mud, rolled into a large ball and then put in a press and flattened into a thick tortilla and then roasted over a hot plate on the flame. i also sauteed the chicken in a pan with oil, first dipped in flour and then egg batter, and then put back in the pan in a lime juice and vermouth sauce. the girls made the rest and and then we had dinner and more wine and told stories of La and new mexico until the desert taxi came and got the guests. the food was great, the new friends had fun,the art sparkeled on the walls and the evening was altogether wonderful fun. just another santa fe tale.