There’s nothing as fresh and healthy as a nice homemade meal that uses local products and specialties. Living in Nice, France, we are very close to our Italian neighbours. So close that one third of what we eat on a daily basis is similar to the food in Italy. Only we don’t have the exact…
Fish’n’Chips. UK
About 6 weeks after the 2020 Confinement started in France, all I could think of after long hard days at work was to go to our local Irish pub and eat a delicious Fish’n’Chips. Obviously, doors were closed, and all I had left for dinner were my fingers and a glassful of bitter tears, regrets…
Chirashi. Japan
Japan, again. It seems that we can’t help it but eat Japanese food all the time in our house. It’s so good. And so healthy too. No guilt. Just pure love and pleasure. The Chirashi bowls are very trendy at the moment. Chirashi litterally means in Japanese “not assembled sushi”, which lets us understand that…
Cape Malay Chicken Curry. South Africa
Cape Malay Chicken Curry is a famous dish of curry in South-Africa. It’s been brought and locally adapted when Malaysians have been forced by the Dutch to immigrate as slaves in South-African colonies in the 16 and 17th centuries, when the needs for building the country’s infrastructure were not met by the locals, and more…
Marinated Fish Salad. Jamaica
Have you every been to Jamaica?! I haven’t myself (yet). From a European person point of view, Jamaica sounds like the island that everybody knows about, talks about, and dream-plans about, but not many of us actually go there for real. Accessing this small island of the Caribbean Sea isn’t the simplest plane journey of…
Homemade TWIX
About a month ago, my husband felt an irresistible urge to try making a homemade version of the worldwide known Twix chocolate bar. We had a piece of that delicious treat in a small café of “La Petite France”, a famous district in the city of Strasbourg where is held every year the world’s largest…
Asian-style Beef & Citrus Salad over Niçoise Socca
This one definitely is the pure expression of Staycation-on-a-plate. Fusion food being the ultimate trend for the past 15 years, it goes without saying that the various influences of my travels push me every now and then onto mixing cultures in the kitchen and combining ingredients from different parts of the world for the sake…
Tel-Aviv like a Local
Last year in May, I travelled with my entire family to Israel for my cousin’s wedding. My husband and I found it really fun to meet our siblings, parents, grand parents, uncles, aunts and cousins right across the eastern part of the Mediterranean sea, and have this unique experience of a traditional ceremony in the…
Delicious & Pillowy Gnocchi
While writing this post, I meant to look online for an anecdote or two about gnocchi. I told myself something like “today is Sunday, Sophie, don’t keep so serious, adopt a laid-back attitude and look for fun facts instead of going through the traditional and way too serious history of gnocchi”. Well, as surprising as…
Lobster Pasta, Tuscany style.
Last Summer, my husband and I went for fabulous family holidays in Tuscany, Italy, with my sister, brother-in-law and nephews. Only a few hours away from Nice, France, where we live, we stayed in the small town of Donoratico, in a former Club Med that is now owned and managed by an Italian group, and…
Chicken Curry. Sri Lanka
There are, at times, travel destinations that suddenly come out from the unknown and become the ones that everyone around me is interested in. Lately it’s been the combined tour of the Maldives and Sri Lanka. The Maldives, of course, are worldwide famous already. But who actually goes to Sri Lanka, this magnificent autonomous island…
Coriander and Lemongrass Beef. South-East Asia
I have been having a lot of thoughts lately about Thailand, Vietnam, and all of the other countries that are located in the South-East Asia peninsula. However not for the reasons one would expect. It’s been raining awfully lots in Nice, France, during this de facto uninteresting month of November, and I don’t know if…
Lahore style Chicken. Pakistan
About five months ago, I watched with passion the TV cooking show called Million Pound Menu on Netflix. It showcasts British amateur chefs who started a small food truck business or the like in whatever small town England, and who are now competing to get the chance of opening a three-day ephemere restaurant in Manchester,…
Socca
Simply the best and most delicious local snack you could possibly find in Nice, South of France. Wanna experience the most typical Niçoise way of life? Munch on Socca. Period. With your fingers of course, just tear large yummy pieces apart, no fork allowed. Socca is the basic combination of chickpea flour, olive oil, water…
Yom Kippur Chickpeas Chicken Casserole
Last year, Yom Kippur was on the exact day of my husband’s 40th birthday. For us Jews, that coincidence was sort of a big honor, Yom Kippur being the most important day of the religious calendar. After a full 25 hours of faste (yes 25, not 24), the dinner that comes and breaks the faste…
Caribbean “Bokit” Sandwiches
Living on an island, far from just about anywhere, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, what I used to like the most in French Polynesia was eating fish with everything and in many different ways. Meat was 100% imported from both New-Zealand and Chile, but fish was 100% locally collected – and my daily…
Grilled Mushrooms Skewers and Carrot Salad with Sriracha and Feta Cheese
There comes again this time of the year when Spring is kicking out Winter, and I am trying and kicking out a few kilograms. When the weather gets less cold and the body needs less heat thus calories, it is indeed the best time of the year to get back to a healthier diet, and…
Bibeleskäss
I have recently grown to like more and more the food from Eastern Europe and Northern Europe, somehow as if my new taste for this food directly translated a craving coming from a reminiscence of my mother’s family habits, roots and culture. And by that, I mean yogurt-based platters, cured cold meats, smoked fish and…
Lamb Shank
This year for the Passover Seder, I decided to challenge myself a little bit and cook my first ever Lamb Shank. My husband and I love eating lamb shanks once in a while, but I always thought that mastering the cooking of a large bone-in piece of meat as delicate as lamb was out of…
Upside Down Bowl. Mauricius
I’ve been told – by Pinterest – that an upside down bowl like this one would be what I’d get if I were to have a meal on the beautiful island of Mauricius. Located in the Indian Ocean, the island mixes influences from many of its immigrant communities as well as from neighbor countries. What…
Soy Chicken
I am always on the lookout for new cooking books, leaflets, dictionaries and anything readable about food, local traditional cooking techniques or – the opposite – trendy and new combinations of flavors. Ten years ago, when I moved out of China and met my husband’s family in France for the first time during the week…
COOKING TRIPS 