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! 

In My Kitchen: September 2025

I can't believe I just typed September... The French say metro - boulot - dodo (subway - work - sleep) and maybe this is how life just passes us by? Let's take a look at the last month in my kitchen... 

My dad arrived from Australia with a hand of bananas from his garden (I know.. highly dodgy, but extremely delicious)

I finally bought a new bread knife along with a stainless steel frying pan. I've been baking two loaves on the weekends (one for us and one for my dad). 

I've also gotten into this seed mix which I bought from the local supermarket while we were visiting Padova last time.

I found the French equivalent of sav blanc! I will never go past a Pouilly Fumé again 

  

Our neighbour got us these from a popular chocolaterie Jeff de Bruges. We have never had anything from there and they are really decadent and rich

My dad has been bringing us dinner twice a week and it's an incredible help. Here was one of our dinners - rice with steamed fish, home-sprouted sprouts (he's been growing them from mung beans) stir fried with tofu, and green veggies. 

The other days of the week we have meal prep meals - here coconut taro, dal and cabbage tomato stirfry. I was so moved because I got home from a 24 hour shift at the hospital and saw S had prepared the plate for my lunch along with my favourite beer and a pistachio tart from downstairs. What a stellar husband!

Picnic in the park with an eggplant omelette (unusual, but delicious), camembert with baguette, chickpea tomato salad, and fava bean mash. 

Dumplings at home - these were filled with a combination of TVP, cabbage, carrot and coriander

Another day, another amazing Cyril Lignac pastry

In the summer holidays we have been going very often to the blind school garden across the road from our place, where we have had a whole summer of blackberries, mulberries, strawberries and tomatoes. Here was a particularly beautiful strawberry 

In the work kitchen... 

One of the nurses brought in these gorgeous grapes from her vine at home 

You know you live and work in France when the physiotherapist brings in home made macarons. The shells were incredibly light and the filling of salted caramel was *chefs kiss*. 

I love Picard the frozen supermarket and as cliché as it can be, their frozen meals are actually really good. Here is one I had for one of my on calls. 

We had an excess of bananas one week so I made these "healthy cookies" with banana, oats, chia seeds, almond meal and sunflower oil. They were the perfect mid-ward round pickup and G also loved them for his afternoon tea

Wild blackberries from the hospital cemetery

The curveballs..

I excuse myself for having two food related curveballs... 

The first is this vending machine of fresh produce from local farmers within a 100km radius of Paris, pretty crazy idea right? I wonder how they keep the stuff fresh.. 

And the second is my little monster eating blackberries off the vine at the local park. Eating berries with him all summer has been a truly wonderful experience of motherhood. 

I'm sending this to Sherry who hosts the monthly IMK series. Thanks for visiting and have a great September everyone!

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