Who am I?

I have a French ID card

My mum is from French descendance

My dad is from Yugoslavian descendance

My surname is Hungarian

My name is from Argentine

I school I learnt Italian and Russian.

I live in United Kingdom

My flatmates are from Argentina, Japan and Ireland

Today at lunch I ate Chinese food and while listening to Palestinian music. My workmate next to me who is from Spain is talking to another workmate from Latvia. We are working for a Japanese company. Our job is to organise holidays for Chinese tourists visiting Europe.

Who am I?

I am a World Citizen. Welcome to my country.

Moroccan skewers and the Loire

I has been difficult times after Mamie; stop crying everytime I think of her (even now, I have to stop myself...) and my parents decided to move from Touraine to the Languedoc, very quickly.

It is hard to think that I won't have as many occasion to go back to Touraine. I love this area, it is called the Garden of France (like I love Kent called the Garden of England...), there are lovely places but the most magnificient thing about it is the Loire.

I have been talking to a friend from Touraine and the thing that we miss the most is the Loire. It is not easy to explain why so I let you see for yourself. The pictures are from this great website: Images de Loire

I could have given you a recipe from my area but I don't have any at hand and to be honest, there is not a particular dish I can remember but most of the recipe are made with local ingredients such as: zander (I had to look up in the dictionary to find it because never seen anything like this in England), rillettes and then after other stuffs that are not translatable like rillons, fouaces, geline de Touraine... I'll do that another time, when I will have the ingredient.

This time I'll give you one of my easy and quick recipes: Morrocan skewers

Serves 4

1 kg lean lamb, cubed

2 tbsp of olive oil

1tsp ground cumin

1tsp cinnamon

1tsp sugar

2 garlic cloves, crushed

2 tbsp sesame seeds (optional)

1 tbsp nigella seeds

Coriander leaves (optional)

Add all the ingredients in a bowl, toss together and set aside for 15 minutes. Thread the lamb onto the skewers and grill under high heat for 5 to 8 minutes turning until browned but still a little pink in the centre. Best served with coriander on top and a tabouleh.

Hommage a Mamie

My grandma was the greatest person I know. She passed away on 31st March after a long desease. She is the most loving and caring person I have ever seen. She will give all that she has to make someone happy and think of her after, always. She has been my second mum and remain my model. I will miss her so much. I wish she is has found the peace and love she deserves. Au revoir Mamie.

Orange polenta cake

I love this cake for breakfast or to take it when I go walking in the countryside. Hope you'll enjoy it too :-)

125g of unsalted butter
115g polenta (ordinary or quick cook)
115g self raising flour
2 eggs
175g caster sugar
grated zest and juice of 1 orange
150ml of soured cream or natural yogurt

Preheat the oven to 180’C. Grease and line a cake tin or individual tins.

Add the butter, polenta and flour to the bowl of a processor and process until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs (it takes around 30 sec). Add the eggs one at a time with the processor still running.

Turn off the machine and add the sugar, lemon rind and juice and soured cream or yogurt. Pulse to mix in thoroughly. Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin, smooth the top and bake for 30 minutes until a metal skewer inserted into the middle come out clean.

Allow to cool on a rack before serving.

Salmon tartare, asian style

They said on the news, there has been a storm... we surely did not see or feel any of that on saturday as we went walking from Dormans to Lingfield. We have seen some really nice houses and the walk was very easy. Here are some pictures...

I bought 2 magazines last week and to see all this information all at once (a bit like when I check the blogs after holidays) it gave me too much inspiration... but I had too little time to do everything, so I did many small portions for sunday lunch, one of them was this Salmon tartare, asian style.

This is not really a difficult recipe but all is in the way it is presented and the lovely colors.

I just cut into small cubes very fresh salmon and cucumber. I made a asian style sauce using mainly soya sauce + sesame oil + mirin + salt pepper + dill. I put the cucumber at the bottom of the circle in the plate, salmon on top and let it set for 30 minutes in the fridge. I removed the circle just before serving and add lamb lettuce around with a bit of the marinade.

I still have plenty of ideas since that and I look forward for the next experimentation session.

Back from Italy

Everytime I am flying back from Italy I am asking myself why on earth have I chosen to live in the UK? Why not the lovely weather, the great food, the nicely dressed people, the foccacias...? And then I turn the page of my magazine and come across a photo of Hugh Grant,... only joking.

There are plenty of things that get on my nerves as well in Italy like queue jumping as a national sport or strikes without warning but in the end I know that I am in London for work and if I spend a bit of time looking around, I can find whatever I want in London; even fresh foccacia.

There is a corner of London I particulary find great it is Notting Hill 5and it has nothing to do with Hugh Grant). There are relly great shops there that I can't name them all.

The first one is Books for Cooks. "THE" bookstore for cooks. More than books, they also have a kitchen for demonstration at the back of the shop.

Not too far from it there is The Spice Shop. The Ali Baba cavern and very helpful staff.

And you can come across some over nice shops as well.


The recipe today is something that I tried to recreate without having the recipe. I tried this Mont Blanc with Poached Pears from Keiko's wonderful blog but because the recipe is in a book out of stock and I relly wanted to do it, I tried my own version.


1. Oven dry the pears with icing sugar for 2 hours on low temperature was fine to guess
2. The recipe for the cinamon tuiles was taken here
3. The Mont Blanc recipe was from Thuriez magazine
Whisk until very smooth 165g of chestnut paste, 35g of creme de marron and 65g of butter.
4. Make tuiles with cinamon is still fine
5. Espresso poached pears sounds simple
and I just added a bit of chantilly and icing sugar on top.
It looked extremelly nice but was far too heavy after 2 courses. Next time, I'll make the Mont Blanc lighter

After that, some pictures from Italy...

Spring is in the air

What a beautiful weekend it was! Early february and we had lunch on the balcony and picnic the next day. We could not stay in with such a nice weather like all the people we have met on the walk. One thing I have noticed sine I am in London is that as soon as there is the faintest ray of sunshine, everybody is making the most of it.


So off we go to the countryside on sunday morning with a good surprise for one: due to engineering works (yeah... once again...) our train is leaving from the newly refurbished St Pancras station. Pack a picnic, take the hiking boots and let's go

For lunch: sandwich with ham, mature cheddar, lamb's lettuce and mustard in a traditional baguette + banana bread and little other nibbles just in case

And nature was just incredible