In My Kitchen: January 2026

Welcome to 2026! December has all been about Christmas - funny I never got into it, having grown up in Communist China, but now with a toddler and an Italian family (who are very much into it) I'm getting into it more year by year! 

I'm really into this oolong tea with white peach pieces that we brought back from China - it's so floral and fruity

For our Christmas lunch at the cafeteria we had venison stew, stewed greens and the most incredible potato gems, as well as pate en croute

Homemade stuff this month... 

I've been on an orange theme this month - here is Claudia Roden's orange cake, I had a bit of batter leftover so made a mini one too for our afternoon tea - it really is the best "easy" cake to make! 

Home candied orange peels that I dipped into chocolate and gifted friends, these are called orangettes in French - what a cute name!

Some of the peels I kept natural, and used these later

Such as in this sourdough stollen, my first attempt at making a stollen. This was more stodgy than I had imagined but people gobbled it up anyway (probably because of the yummy marzipan core)

The orange theme continues with mulled wine - also super easy to make as I found out. I think this might become a new Christmas tradition! 

I continued my Christmas baking with gingerbread men, I've never actually made them before, and had a lot of fun drawing their expressions. I think next year I'll do a murder scene with red icing... 

This matcha-misu was actually a reconversion from my failed bûche de noël. I tried to roll the matcha sponge and it cracked, so I decided to make it into a matcha-misu instead, with the cream spiked with candied orange peel and dark chocolate bark on top. It was a hit!

Christmas baking continued with chocolate and almond biscotti.. 

And ricciarelli - Italian gluten free biscuits with almond and cranberries 

And finally this sourdough Christmas star with apricot jam and salted coconut... such a great combo!

More Christmas stuff... 

Christmas is bûche de noël season in France - how cute are these creations? 

We had one from Cyril Lignac our usual go-to fancy patisserie, flavours of clementine and almond, absolutely incredible!

We had another one from Eric Kayser our daily boulangerie where we go to buy bread often, this one was "tropical" with coconut and mango flavours. Also incredible!

I rarely buy things for myself but we were in la grande épicerie one day and I was drawn to this blue tea - who knew there was blue tea? I also misread the price label and almost had a stroke at the checkout, but hey this is my Christmas present! I haven't tried it yet, but I'm looking forward to drinking the most expensive tea of my life... 

I worked on Christmas eve and the nurses put together this dinner spread - it was amazing! incredibly fleshy smoked salmon, foie gras, home made bricks (Algerian pastries), lots of charcuterie, crackers and dips, crudites, and McChicken nuggets!

And it couldn't be a party in France without a cheese platter! Kept cool by the 0 degree temps of Xmas eve... 

The curveballs

Here is our little Christmas corner at home. The advent calendar was a present from S' sister a few years ago and this year we filled the pockets with our favourite memories of the year. The Christmas tree was made by the childcare, and the rest of our decorations by us (first time decorating ever!) 

And here the Christmas windows are hugely popular. We live quite close to le bon marché and despite their excellent range, G decided that all he liked was the carrot window. We must have listened to that song 1000 times in December, as he just refused to leave every time we went to le lapin magique. We heard the song so much that I started playing it on the piano at home and G would dance. It's a sweet memory! 

That's all folks, wishing you all a great beginning of 2026 and thanks to Sherry for hosting.

In My Kitchen: December 2025

I missed the last round of IMK as I was behind the Great Firewall of China so this time will be a bit of a 2 month recap, let's have a look at our food happenings...  

Beginning of October saw the Moon Festival, a very important festival for Chinese people. Here we made for probably the 5th year in a row Shanghainese style pork mooncakes. A great success this year as they were wrapped by my dad and none burst! Even the baby ate one... 

We spent a weekend in Lyon with our friends, who are big gourmands. Who can go past a home made tarte tatin as gorgeous as this one? 

Or a plum and blackberry clafoutis anyone? I promise it's as delicious as it looks

We also had heaps of fun making these soft coing jellies (quince I think they are called in English), from a friend's backyard quince tree 

Off to China we go... 

I keep forgetting that my husband is a bit of a celebrity in his domain and I keep getting surprised that he gets invited everywhere - we were in Japan in April so that he could talk about his work, and this time we headed to China for 2.5 weeks. I happily tagged along to eat. 

These are like Chinese hamburgers, made with a short puffy pastry and stuffed with beef and capsicums, and a spicy sauce too! 

These lime flavoured taro chips were incredible!

I succeeded in my goal of eating as many dumplings as possible... 

And wontons...

We went to a few fancy lunches with friends but nothing went beyond this one which was inside a gastronomic museum and we were served individual meatballs topped with crab roe, in a light broth gently kept warm by a candle, isn't the presentation beautiful?  

I know gelato is not Chinese but it is ALL the rage in Shanghai right now. Here was a Japanese gelato bar which had not just matcha gelato, but 3 strengths of matcha (mild, medium and strong). The black sesame gelato had swirls of toasted sesame in it and the textures were simply amazing. It would contend with any gelato place in Italy.  

A typical Shanghainese breakfast - fried doughsticks youtiao and savoury pies dabing 

Along with fresh tofu - this is like a savoury pudding 

Another breakfast classic is jianbing which is incredibly popular in France because it's like a crepe surrounding a savoury filling, here the doughsticks. Often it's made with an egg but always with a sprinkle of coriander and salty spicy sauce

While in Shanghai I got to catch up with a dear friend who lugged these pickles all the way from Wuhan just for me to try. The one on the left is radish and the right mustard pickles. 

She also brought me fresh noodles from Wuhan - the typical dish from there is called hot dry noodle, made with a sesame paste -soy-chilli sauce and topped with pickles. 

For our last dinner in Shanghai my cousin made a huge pot of mapo tofu, one of my favourite dishes. It was nice to catch up with family there!

Still in China, we really enjoyed the changing of the leaves season, Beijing was a gorgeous sea of yellow with its many gingko biloba trees, including a wonderful garden in the maths department of the Chinese Academy of Science (where we were visiting and staying). Who knew that gingko biloba trees had nuts like these? 

The Curveball....

I hadn't really planned to go to China this year. The last time I was there was in November 2019 just after I met S for the first time in Paris. On a sunny afternoon, I took my grandma out of the ward where she was (she was staying long term in a slow stream hospital) for a wheelchair walk. We went to a corner near my old primary school and sat facing the sun, sharing a mandarin segment by segment. She asked me when I would be back in Shanghai and I said I'd be back as soon as work allowed. Then covid hit, and she died in 2022 at the age of 100 during the severe lockdown in Shanghai. I never saw her again. 

My grandma had really wanted to come to our wedding in France and that she used to say that was her motivation to keep living. I didn't realise that this trip would become so sentimental, taking my husband and son to China, but when we passed that street corner all the emotions rushed to the surface. It was also an immense moment taking G to the great wall, something that all Chinese parents want to take their kids to (and my father had taken me to at the age of 7). He must have gone home in the phones of 5000 people, there were that many people amused by a Chinese-Italian English-speaking toddler running around on the great wall! 

Sending this to Sherry of IMK - thanks for hosting and happy holiday season everyone! 

In My Kitchen: October 2025

Where did September go? Someone told me once that once you have kids time just starts to fly, is it true??  

At work... 

The French eat their radishes with butter, and here was how it was served at the cafeteria, with a 250g block of butter!!!

A sunny day calls for lunch in the park - omelette, stuffed tomato, rice with mystery sauce, side of corn bean salad and a slice of melon, bread and cheese of course. The cafeteria feeds us well!

There are quite often get togethers "le pot" for various occasions at work, and only in France it's acceptable to have a glass of prosecco while on call! Here with an excellent strawberry cheesecake, one of a selection of delicacies...

At home... 

Our friend brought us these cute little sacher tortes from Vienna. They are the classic sacher torte but in round form, chocolate cake with plum jam inside. Very decadent and rich.  

S has been buying me little treats from the boulangerie near G's childcare for my long 24 hour shifts. Here was an excellent fig tart, the shell crisp with just a light layer of crême patissière and look at the topping of luscious figs!

Another on call, another beautiful tart - this time a raspberry one. 

A Fancy Friday we had with roasted fennel topped with lemon and parmesan, delicious! 

I've written about my love of Picard before, and their icecream is also excellent! 

We continue our Sunday lunch at grandpa's series with home cooked Chinese food - here Chinese greens, chicken soup with wombok, vermicelli and tofu, "fake crab" - an egg omelette dish made with vinegar and ginger to simulate the taste of crab, and mung bean sprouts with tofu (home sprouted) 

Finished one of our Sunday lunches with a cheese course - a tomme with pesto, a Saint Marcellin, and a mouldy chevre that I've forgotten the name of

on weekends I've been baking our daily bread and this was a particularly handsome one...

I've been wanting to bake something crazy for a while - I finally managed this dark chocolate and coconut swirl 

We also finally found freselle, a kind of super dry cracker from the south of Italy - in Brussels of all places! and enjoyed them with some heirloom black tomatoes. 

In Brussels...

One weekend we went to Brussels to visit S' sister who just had an adorable baby girl, unfortunately we were all sick and it was a freezing miserable weekend (and we had to keep away from the baby!) I had a checklist of foods I wanted to eat in Brussels and we barely managed any of it... anyway we did stop by a great Italian place and had coffee and cannoli there. 

And at the train station we picked up some waffles for the childcare and my workplace, and some chocolate with pistachio for us. 

The Curveball...

My little monster loves walking around the supermarket with the trolley! He went to the beer section one day and was fixed on the La Chouffe beer, probably because it had a picture of a smurf on it (there were so many smurfs in Belgium!) Anyway it's been really interesting to see the parallel development of 3 languages, and he also knows a few words in Chinese that he only uses with my dad! He has been standing in front of the fridge shouting cena (dinner in Italian)! dîner (in French)! dinner! tofu! compo (compote = mashed apple in French) eat! snack! We remind ourselves often to bottle these precious memories because in the blink of an eye he will be no longer so little. 

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