It's been deliciously cool and crisp for almost two weeks now. I couldn't be happier and relish the opportunity to not just eat but cook lots of soup - something that at other times of the year, would heat up the kitchen to sauna levels! Nothing beats a bowl of steaming hot, home-made chicken noodle soup when it's nippy outside. I get bored easily though, and wondered how the taste of jasmine green tea which I can't get enough of, would work in a chicken soup.

The broth is not green as you...

Let me first say that I have neither veered into cannibalism, nor turned my blog into a menagerie of meanies, what with evil landlords stepping on the tails of drill wielding demons. Read on till the end and you'll see that great people, who do lovely things, just because, still exist among the dastardly denizens.

I love a good urban legend; at best it unnerves and makes you think twice about flashing your headlights or taking the last train home, all by yourself, late at night. If nothing ...

I'd been harbouring this jar of tahini in my kitchen cupboard and had completely forgotten about it until yesterday when I opened a door and realised there was no way I was going to manage squeezing in the groceries I had just lugged home. Oh my God. It hit me anew how much of a pack rat I am. *sigh* After the cleaning "expedition" I ended up with almost one and a half grocery bags of expired goods and a sense of shame I haven't experienced in a while. All of them were promptly and sadly disc...

When was the last time you had a really good, sizzling plate of Sze Chuan chicken in a Chinese restaurant? If your experience was anything like mine, you probably enjoyed the first few mouthfuls, relishing the crisp exterior of the chicken and the yielding, tender flesh inside, all bathed in a rich, dark, unctuous gravy heavily inflected with garlic... and oozing with oil.

I'll bet though, that once the dish (and your ardour) cooled down and the gravy began to congeal, what was left on the pl...

I haven't felt like cooking as much as I usually do and we've been eating out more the last few days, as I go through my routine in auto-pilot mode; schoolwork with my boys, cleaning, washing, laundry, writing when I can, distracted and slightly off kilter, wondering about how hubby would reintegrate with us after eight years apart.

Yesterday, my boys finally put their collective foot down and demanded something home made, and how, oh how, does a mother refuse a plea as plaintive as "please m...

I don’t know about you, but every now and then, I hanker after a bit of eastern exotica, for dinner, and it has to be dinner so I get to dim or snuff the lights and play with candles, the warm glowing points of which bounce friskily off my painfully pretty, gilded tea glasses.   Madly appealing as the thought of sashaying in swishy silk pants, like Scheherazade might have, around wisps of sweetly scented smoke, might be, there is nothing remotely alluring about the thought of sweating for...

I should tell you right off the bat that that the aforesaid claim is not mere gastronomic hyperbole  and that  this  is a simplified version of Chicken Cordon Bleu that will not challenge the less dextrous. It cooks faster than the classic version which has the ham and cheese stuffed into a pocket cut into the boned chicken breast or rolled up tightly in the flattened breast.  This isn’t exactly for the weight conscious or virtuous eater but is worth every heart stopping, artery clogging an...

Even before any of this gets on to my plate, the smell of the garlic and oregano sizzling in the olive oil, almost makes me feel as if I’m on one of the gorgeous, sun drenched Greek islands. This is indeed based on the utterly delicious but wonderfully simple Greek classic, Kotopoulo Lemonato. Greeks will use, for this amount of chicken, up to 2 whole lemons but I am defeated by anything more than one.  Feel free to adjust the citrus sharpness of the dish to your personal level of  toleranc...