Escargots de Bourgogne

It’s a bit of a weird tradition, but my mother used to serve either snails or frog’s legs in garlic butter for our New Year’s Eve starter. In hindsight, it’s probably a good idea to fill everyone up with lashings of butter before they start the serious drinking. It’s a tradition I am going to

A Christmas Jam

This year we decided to give some homemade jams and cookies to our friends for Christmas. If you haven’t received yours, you’re either not our friend, or we just haven’t made enough yet. It’s quite an undertaking and over the last two weeks I have made 6 types of cookies and 5 types of jam,

Minestrone Soup

I’ve bemoaned the lack of interest in soup before, but I’ll say it again: A good soup is deeply gratifying to make, heartwarming to eat, soul supporting to digest and furthermore it is an excellent indicator of a cook’s abilities . In a soup, especially a clear one, there is no hiding. All your flaws,

Peanut Butter Cookies

When I told Eddie I was going to make peanut butter cookies, he objected, saying he didn’t really like them. Well, he’s eaten half the batch, so never listen to what the children say! I haven’t made cookies in a while, so I had quite forgotten what quantity of dough I needed to fill the

Baked Chicken with Black Olives

This is one of those dishes you can very quickly throw together if you have only an hour to cook. Even if you don’t have readymade tomato sauce, you can cheat and I’ll show you how. Just please don’t go out and buy tomato sauce in a jar. There simply isn’t a good one. So

Not a Japanese Potato Salad

I thought I had to point this out. Possibly because the only potato salad one is likely to order in any restaurant here in KL is a Potato Salada, which really is more like mashed potatoes with Japanese Kewpie mayo thrown in for good measure. Don’t get me wrong; Japanese potato salad is a very

Mayonnaise

The very first thing you need to do is to throw that jar of mayonnaise away. Yeah, it’s not bad, but it doesn’t taste anything like a real mayonnaise. I have never understood why anyone would buy mayo in a jar, when it can be made in 5 minutes with a few ingredients most people

A Simple Tomato Sauce

There is no such thing as a “real” Italian tomato sauce. Unless you define it as any tomato sauce made in Italy or by Italians, which of course means that I don’t stand a chance in hell. I find all this emphasis on something being “real” mostly a waste of time and space. It is

Macaroni Cheese

You’ll be laughing and telling me that no one needs a recipe to make macaroni cheese. But this is a special one! Somewhere between a liquid Japanese style one and my good old sliceable Luxembourg one. Oh, and I’m actually lying, it’s not macaroni at all, but penne. Reason being that I had a lot

Flaxseed Loaf

It’s a Sunday morning and I see that there isn’t much bread left in the freezer, so I decide to make some nice plain white bread. But of course while rummaging through the cupboard, I find that we have bought far too much flaxseed (something to do with yoga. Don’t ask…), but there it is