Cold Silken Tofu with Crisp Shallots, Garlic & Spring Onion

I’m not sure this is even a recipe. It feels a bit like cheating, as there is hardly any cooking. You could even not bother with the garlic and still end up with a great meal. One word of warning; do NOT use ready bought fried shallots! They are mostly really nasty tasting stuff and

Bratwurst

Why on earth would you make your own sausages? Teutonic souls will known; there simply isn’t a decent sausage to be had in this city. Some are okay, but none are the real thing we remember from our pre-covid travelling days. What we are making today is a fried sausage. It has no preservatives in

Kimchi Jjigae – Kimchi Stew

If you are Korean, please stop reading right now and save me the embarrassment. Here’s what happened: The fully Korean mother of a semi-Korean friend of ours gave us a tub of wonderful, homemade kimchi, so we’ve been munching on it for a while and there was some left over in the chiller. There were

Stracciatella – Italian Egg Drop Soup

Here’s a soup that makes me smile. It’s a Sunday morning, I walk into the kitchen of my Italian friend’s mother and the whole place is filled with the smell of simmering stock. It’s not just chicken stock, that much is obvious. The Parmesan rinds that were saved up for this soup are floating in

Coq au Vin Façon du Chef

There is an easy way to make coq au vin and then there is my way. It’s a little more involved, but it will give you a beautifully clean looking sauce with perfectly cooked vegetables and an incomparable depth of flavour. Most recipes will as you to marinate the chicken in wine overnight and I

More Tales of the Super Potato

“He who does not love potatoes does not love life!” Cicero Or maybe not. As dear Cicero died in 43BC (assassinated, I’m sorry to say), he could not have ever tried a potato. Though they were cultivated some 10,000 years ago in modern day Peru and Bolivia, they did not make their way to Europe

Eddie’s Lap Mei Fan

There are a lot of places in town that claim to make the best Lap Mei Fan, but my vote goes to the one that Eddie makes. I don’t know whether it’s the most authentic, but it hits all the right spots, as far as I’m concerned. Now before I get started on Eddie’s recipe,

Maccheroni with Ham & Peas

This is as splendid a dish as it is easy to make. As there are just a few ingredients, you should try and use the best available. If you made your own chicken stock, use cooked ham freshly cut off a whole ham (ask your butcher for a thick slice, about 1cm), use French cream