Writer, Eater
For the most part, I'm not the kind to dally over, under or prior to breakfast. Once upon a time, I could barely manage the few minutes of showering before my stomach felt like it was devouring me. Breakfast easily becomes a torture of digestive impatience and longing for tasty treats, and after quite a few years of travelling, I can now manage almost 45 minutes without food before my stomach starts gnawing… luckily, 45 minutes is just right for making puffy pancakes (pikelets, etc).
I feel myself drawn inexorably to baking projects that have no end, just a rocky path of discoveries, flops, experiments, successes, flops… Not content with macarons and pasteis de nata to add girth and grey hairs to my existence, I started playing with canelés de Bordeaux about a year ago. Why? Why? The lure of something that absolutely required expensive copper moulds and beeswax must have clinched the deal.
A delicious pairing of whole roasted hazelnuts with sweet, buttery hazelnut shortbread and the lovely tingle of salt crystals. Even people who aren't enthusiastic about hazelnuts might find themselves longing for more. It's just a pity these sablés noisette are a bit tricky to make.
Nut pastries involving layers of thin pastry and ground nuts are eaten all the way from Greece through the Middle East to Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and beyond, typically known as baklava/baklawa. Rather than making one of the many recipes I have, I combined the essence of a number of traditions, using spices and scents typical of much of the cuisine of that very broad region.
All over Denmark you see signs for frisky creamy balls. At first it seems very odd and rather tasteless, until you realise you're mistranslating. Welcome to the world of fluffy chocolate coated delights… with recipe!
Think of Easter and food, and you probably get images of chocolate eggs and hot cross buns. How about a change from the mundane? Scrumptious little buns from Sweden! Cardamom, cream, marzipan. Each bun is about the size of a...
Read more Mon 02 Apr, 2007What do you do when you find dinner too enjoyable? How is an irritable, jinxed diner like me to cope with a meal which delivers no disappointments and offers barely a scrap to quibble about? I felt embarrassed at how effusive I was. I sat through the meal thinking of all the people I needed to tell. I was dining at one of Melbourne's most avant garde restaurants, Interlude.
Read more Sun 14 Oct, 2007
The train that thinks it's a plane seems to have a sense of humour. Putting to one side Eurostar's once unenviable reputation for tardiness and its legacy-airline pricing model, one can't help being impressed by this touch of humour on the company's website.
Read more Sat 24 Mar, 2007
It's pizza time in the Daring Bakers' Challenge. I love pizza. Too many think of it as a fundamentally unhealthy food to be banished from kitchen. Codswallop. Anyway, as I make pizza regularly, to do something novel required a little creativity... so I decided a 1980s...
Read more Thu 30 Oct, 2008
Many of my readers know of my macaronic obsessions. As the latest batch, made for the foodblogger get-together in March, was well received I thought I'd publish some pretty photos of them and tell you more about the flavours, add a tip or two, and alert you to a macaronic...
Read more Sat 21 Mar, 2009
In the newly revised and updated Memories of Philippine Kitchens, Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan, owners and chef at the Purple Yam and formerly of Cendrillon in Manhattan, present a fascinating—and very personal—look at Filipino cuisine and culture. 
April Bloomfield takes home cooks on an intimate tour of the food that has made her a star. Thoughtful, voice-driven recipes go behind the scenes of Bloomfield's lauded restaurants and into her own home kitchen, where her attention to detail and reverence for honest ingredients result in unforgettable dishes. 
Since its first publication in 1970, South East Asian Food has achieved a reputation as the authoritative book on the subject. This new edition features a completely updated and easy-to-follow design, with beautiful illustrations throughout. 
More than 200 simple, authentic recipes for fish and seafood, newly collected from the Silver Spoon kitchen. From traditional seafood soups to simple grilled fish with herbs, the Italian approach to cooking with fish is both delicious and resourceful.