In My Kitchen : November 2026

We went on a great big adventure in October ! In a diversion from my usual breads and pastries, let's take a look at all the things we ate on the trip...

Istanbul

We started our trip with a weekend stopover in Istanbul, where promptly G got sick with Hand Foot Mouth disease and he refused to eat because of his terrible mouth ulcers. It was rainy and cold, we did not have a great time in Istanbul! Although we did get to catch up with a dear high school friend from back home who happened to be there on the same day. 

This was one of the most delicious things we ate on the entire trip, a lahmacun with walnuts and pomegranate molasses, such a complex rich flavour profile, crispy thin hot bread... I would go back to Istanbul just to eat this 

We found Istanbul on the hole very touristy and expensive, even more than Paris ! This was a lovely stop in a small coffee shop for a coffee and a "moon cake" - a bready roll stuffed with walnut, date and sesame paste. 

Samarkand 

We flew in the middle of the night from Istanbul to Samarkand, G feverish and getting worse by the minute. Finally when the taxi reversed in a lurchy way he said mama I don't feel well and vomited all over me and the taxi. Luckily he hadn't eaten anything for 2 days and it was just water and juice, but the poor thing, at 5am after a long trip too ..  

Luckily we stayed in the nicest guesthouse ever and in travel to over 40 countries I don't recall ever being received so warmly. The owner had lived in Japan and speaks 7 languages, and he was just so friendly. His youngest was just 6 months older than G so he even lent us some toys including a ball that G fell in love with... look at this breakfast spread ! 

Plov is the national dish of Uzbekistan - a rice dish kind of like a biryani, rice cooked with meat (usually beef or lamb) for a long time till it's meltingly soft, often with carrots, capsicums, chickpeas and raisins. Lots of regional variations  

Plov is cooked in huge cauldrons and when plov is finished, it's finished for the day. We had to fight for this last one because the man just told us to go away because plov was finished ! Normally the amount that is served depends on the number of people you are ordering it for, and it's counted as 0.7 serving for a woman, 1.0 for a man! and children are not counted because they just eat from the parents' plates. 

I was keen to try the traditional samsas, they are a very popular type of pastry either with a puff pastry crust or a shortcrust kind of crust, variety of meat or rarely veg fillings (usually pumpkin)

 

Bukhara 

G gets better towards the end of our time in Samarkand but we cancel the desert yurt overnight stay anyway, thinking that it's a bit much driving 4 hours to get there. So we spend an extra day in Samarkand and leisurely take the high speed train from Samarkand to Bukhara. 

We continue our daily lunch plov tradition. This place was so fancy that it came with a "sides" trolley that you could select your own salads and dips from. We were really impressed with this "fancy plov" upmarket place that was only open 3 hours a day for one thing on the menu - plov! but in 3 varieties.. 

G fell in love with chicken noodle soup at this Jewish restaurant in Bukhara 

Are you sick of plov yet? This is literally all we ate for lunch in Uzbekistan 

We found delicious breads called "non" in Uzbekistan, baked fresh everyday and sold from bread shops not unlike boulangeries in France. Here I wondered what the A meant.. also plov is traditionally eaten with non, you have the non in your left hand, and spoon for eating plov in your right hand. 

So much wonderful architecture in Uzbekistan, and we also enjoyed visits to local markets. Here are different types of breads on sale at the Bukhara central market 

I couldn't help taking a picture of this, an icecream vending machine which doesn't work in the middle of a random residential street! 

We craved coffee everyday because the coffee was generally like black water. Here we ventured to a tourist hotspot and ate this amazing honey cake with very good coffee! 

Khiva 

After 4 lovely days in Bukhara, where we managed to catch up with my Australian friend again for lunch. They were on a group tour through the stans - the irony of the fact that she and her husband were on a tour and we were winging it with a 3yo was beyond me, but I think we got some amazing culinary experiences "doing it on our own" too... 

S found this eggplant salad for our train picnic. Fried eggplant with capsicum, cucumber and tomato topped with coriander and dill, so fresh and so good! We really missed vegetables in Uzbekistan... In fact we realised quickly that it was hard to get a tired cranky toddler to eat out for dinner in a foreign country, so we stuck to mostly lunch plov and got takeout for dinner or self improvised supermarket picnic.  

In Khiva, our plov was served with a bottle of home made pink vinegar (super strong, makes your eyes water!) in an old vodka bottle

We tried some traditional egg dumplings from the Khiva region

And the local Khiva specialty - dill noodles. These were so curious, bright green with a strong dill flavour, served with a beef and potato stew and dotted with sour cream. blend of flavours that I have never tasted! 

I could make a separate post about my love of the supermarket shopping experience, but I'll limit myself to two. Look at these sunflower seed dispensing machines !

Shashlik flavoured chips 

Tashkent 

G gets sick again with some kind of viral infection in Khiva and he is under the weather for a couple of days. We had planned on taking the night train because he loves trains, but finally we changed it to the day train which is high speed and got us to Tashkent in a neat 8 hours. 

The plov centre has got to be seen to be believed. They serve 5 types of plov, all made under your nose and you can see literally the people stirring and serving the plov ! 

They also had a samsa section where you can see the samsa being cooked in the tandoor over the woodfire. how they get them off without dropping them is a real art! 

We made a last visit to the local market to buy souvenirs, but I couldn't resist these melons.. 

And our last meal in Tashkent - take out of manty, giant dumplings, here they were lamb, wild greens and potatoes, and pumpkin

Curveballs...

I leave you with the incredulous sunset over the ancient town of Khiva 

And my little monster, frequently mistaken for Uzbek (it makes sense, the whole nation looks Eurasian!) in his faux Uzbek vest which was a hand-me-down from my friend, it's from Cotton On, can you believe it? He fell in love with cats this trip and we spent our days chasing random cats. Who can believe that we managed a trip to Uzbekistan with a almost 3yo who got sick twice? Stuff of legends I say.. 

Sending this to Sherry who hosts the monthly IMK series, have a great month everyone!

In My Kitchen : October 2026

Trying out the diary method this month with intermittent photos!

1

G's first day at school.  His menu for his first school lunch: 

Entrée : tomatoes with mozzarella 

Main : fish filet (colin d'Alaska) with lemon soufflé rice 

Accompaniment: roasted potatoes with skins on 

Dairy : strawberry ice cream 

(impressive no? for a 2.5yo school lunch) 

2

G's second day of "adaptation" at school, a couple of hours only. Went to my dad's place for lunch and he cooked Chinese "teriyaki" style salmon.

3

Tuna-egg-Boursin-corn sandwiches for us today, picnic outside the Philharmonie de Paris where we heard the Beethoven 5th piano concerto, how a 2.5 year old stayed still and (mostly) silent for all of the first movement and half of the second is incredible to me - it has entered the legends of our family history 

4

a "macaron rose" from the boulangerie near G's school, little treat to celebrate the end of the week..  

 

5 

Chinese lunch at the "wrong" restaurant (not the one I intended to book!), the food was quite tasty but the restaurant was empty - does an empty restaurant affect how we feel about food? 

We made wontons and I made Cyril Lignac's invisible cake for my dad's last dinner in Paris before he headed back to Sydney  

7 

Overnight oats, the last of the bircher muesli from Germany 

Out for dinner with the girls at the local brasserie Oui Mon General!, a huge side of pork with a sauce of pleurotes (a kind of mushroom) and roasted potatoes. so good! 

9 

fresh pesto pasta today! we love cutting the basil from our window planter and making our own pesto. it was combined with the super fancy shell pasta that costs 10x the normal pasta, it was very good though. 

11

we were supposed to go to Italy for the weekend but the flight was cancelled at the very last minute. we went to the park then to Necker to visit the rabbits, with vanilla yoghurt for our goûter, G's special treat. he got his finger stuck in the cage of the rabbit and had a kind of awful degloving injury when he pulled it out. not so much fun! 

12

we went to La Manifattura for dinner today, the pizza was excellent, napolitana style with soft fluffy crusts and great toppings 

13

went to the community garden to do some gardening and we had a good old debate about whether to harvest this pumpkin. finally democracy wons - 5 for, 2 against and 2 abstention. very French! 

we made our chunk into a pumpkin purée with chilli crisp and crispy onions, yum! 

14 

we made our own pasta! G has been listening to Giga Pasta, an audio book about pasta, so he asks me everyday if we can make pasta

15

G helped me to plate out the dinner tonight, and we had some more "healthy cookies" after dinner. also couldn't go past a bottle of cider brut to celebrate the last super hot day (32 deg!) of summer 

16 

which nurse brought in these grapes? amazing 

17 

a long day at work, followed by some gnocchi with sausage chickpea tomato sauce, yum yum 

18 

planted some more things in the balcony garden project! 

19 

everyone comes down with gastro, we have worry for lunch while we go through to almost the last pair of G's undies with diarrhoea... 

22 

I realise that G knows how to describe his meal now, when he describes his dinner in detail to S who is away in Germany : 

I'm like rice! (He says I'm instead of I) 

Edamama no eating when cold, mama cook first, no good cold 

Carrots ! I'm like carrots !

Eggs, lots of eggs 

Tomatoes 

Yum yum rice! 

23 

Random catch up with Tandy of Lavender and Lime, the first IMKer I have met in real life! We went for a long walk and ate sandwiches on a bench overlooking the Seine. Strange how you feel like you "know" the IMKers from following their blogs every month.. 

24

I'm saving some tomato seeds for next year, I got 57 seeds from one single cherry tomato! 

26 

Moon festival time ! I have never seen these black lava truffle mooncakes before, they were a special present from S' colleague from HK 

27 

We have a picnic in the park with my friend from Australia 

as we say Mastercard ad style - 

baguettes : 3 euros  

vegan picnic lunch : 30 euros (dips, olives, muscat grapes, coconut yoghurt) 

having an old friend visit : priceless 

29  

Impromptu lunch at home with S, unfortunately forgot to take a photo ! I've become a huge fan of De Cecci pasta, and the fusilli is just the perfect size / bouncy chew. I had pesto pasta with avocado, rocket and mozzarella, with a generous sprinkle of parmesan and sunflower seeds

30

I end the month at a fashionable rooftop bar with a couple of newfound friends from work.. I don't go to these places anymore now that we are so nuclear in the early toddler years, it was really a blast from the past having a giggly catch up with the girls but this time in French 

Curveball of the month... still food related 

 Here's my little monster with our windowsill basil, I'm so proud of how beautiful they are (both the basil and the monster). 

Sending this to Sherry who hosts the IMK series. Have a great month everyone!

In My Kitchen : September 2026

Well well, how did we get to September already? The French love their concept of the rentrée, a return to school and regularity of life after the summer holidays. Let's have a look at my kitchen for the month of August.. 

Ever seen a honey vending machine? I saw it at the Westfield La Defense where I went to escape the heat. Only in France I would say... 

The heatwaves continued in August, often unbearably. One day we found a patient room measuring 41°! I invented my own new favourite drink, iced earl grey tea with a shot of sports drink and lots of ice cubes.  

August was tough for work. I had two "disaster" weeks in August where I worked 100 hours in one week and 187 hours total over two weeks.. There was a huge surge of deaths, 7 in one week is a lot even for ICU. Not related to the heatwave directly but one says it goes with the phases of the moon...

I even stayed in the hospital accommodation for the 100hr week to reduce the commute time. Here's one of the meals I had, ravioli, canned lentils with frozen veg made into a "stirfry" and fresh zucchini, all washed down with a cold soft drink

The flavour of this roast mushroom and ricotta ravioli is incredible - it's earthy, warm and rich 

In August, I tried super hard to go to the forest as much as possible to recuperate. Here with the hospital canteen lunch of the day - rice, fish, spinach and lentil curry. 

Another hospital lunch, couscous royale, potato salad and watermelon 

I also took a lot of joy in visiting my tomato plants that I planted next to the cemetery at work, they finally gave me some fruit in August!

One of the nurses made this amazing tiramisu, it was for everyone to share but he gave me a portion to take home 

the boys went to Italy while I was doing my disaster week and S came back with supermarket edible presents, my favourite kind of presents - peperoncino (incredibly spicy), dark chocolate spread and sundried tomato pesto 

Back at home the Sunday crêpes tradition continues, there's something about crêpes with fromage blanc and mango, so smooth and sweet. They remind me of the mango pancakes at yum cha...  

Bear with me - this was hideous but absolutely delicious, an apricot upside down cake from the influencer Ainsley Durose who kind of infuriates me with her amazing hair, beautiful dresses and seemingly effortless baking. She's always baking something gorgeous in beautiful serving ware, and I'm fascinated by her. Here we enjoyed it with our new music friends over the Haydn Op 20 No 5 and Rosamunde string quartets. Fingers crossed that we are on our way to make a real string quartet again... (I had to dust off the viola because I haven't played for so long) 

I just had the urge to braid bread one day and so we made this sourdough challah, my little monster finally has the coordination to help brush the dough with eggwash!

Here he is - isn't he a beauty? 

Two curveballs this month... 

The solar eclipse happened during my semaine de cata, and everywhere was sold out of the special glasses but I googled online and it was true that you can see the eclipse through anything with holes on it! This was the drainage part of a coffee machine, showing the croissant shaped solar eclipse. It was pretty cool. 

And we went to the aquarium which G just adored. Here he is singing and conducting as he walks alongside the fish. It's bizarre to me that he prefers Beethoven to Peppa Pig or other cartoons. He is obsessed with the 5th piano concerto and has been demanding me to play it on the piano all the time. Is it usual that a 2.5 year old can sing extracts of Beethoven works that he likes and demands that we sing or play what he likes? I tried asking ChatGPT and ChatGPT was not impressed, I am though!! 

Sending this to Sherry who hosts the monthly IMK series. Have a great month everyone!