Easy Braised Endive

Finding some endive at the grocery store was exciting! I have recently been wanting to try cooking it. Simple cooking is best for me - I don't have the patience to faff about too much. So I read up about cooking endive and distilled what I learned into the simplest tasty recipe.

A Three-Star Lunch at Caprice

My husband and I went for the set lunch at Caprice this weekend. It's a three Michelin-starred restaurant in the Four Seasons hotel in Hong Kong. The view looks out over Hong Kong harbour.

We had three courses with a glass of wine. Allow me to describe each in a bit of detail.

Starter: chilled tomato consomme with mozzarella and tomato cocktail

Pumpkin and Cranberry Muffins (Grain-Free)

What I love about cranberries is the way they make my mouth pucker. My teeth pop them open and the acidic juice quirts out. Just thinking about eating one of these muffins is making my saliva start to run. Does that happen to you when you think about eating sour foods?

Pork and Shiitake Mushrooms in Lettuce Cups

Using my hands to eat seems to make the meal more fun. Don't you think? There is something about picking up the food that makes it so much more enjoyable. Except perhaps on a date, when I inevitably spill sauce down my wrists and into my sleeves. Or at a fancy restaurant when my sharp elbows pointing out at the neighbouring table make me feel conspicuously out of place. But at home I can eat with my fingers and let the sauce drip where it may.

The Penguin Books "Great Food" Series

This month for the Kitchen Reader book club we were able to choose any book from the Penguin books "Great Food" series. It's a collection of twenty slender volumes by beautiful food writers that cover 400 years. I chose to read two books from the collection.

Love in a Dish by MFK Fisher

I have enjoyed the work of MFK Fisher before so this was my first choice from the "Great Food" series. Her writing is always insightful, useful, and funny. She strongly advocates for home cooking, which may explain why I like her so much, saying that eating average American restaurant food is "deliberate mass poisoning, a kind of suicide of the spirit as well as the body."