I remember...

I've been going through my big dusty tin of recipes I collected over the years. Some are ripped out of magazines, some are the cut-outs from the back of chocolate bars or pasta packets, others are handwritten by friends lost by time and distance. The recipes that touched me the most are those I printed out at work from websites in 2002 when I was pregnant and all I could think of was eating. The result: pizza for breakfast at work with Gudrun, my best friend, said best friend gaining 10 kilos, and me cooking and cooking and cooking in my tiny kitchen literally the size of a closet (not that it bothered me).

Those nine months were probably the happiest in my life. Nothing but food mattered. The first few months were savory, mashed potatoes, moussaka, fondue, pizza, aaaaargh!! just ask Gudrun! Then came the sweetness...movenpick ice-cream, chocolate, only chocolate...apple pie, fondant au chocolat...You name it, it was in my belly, Andre skipping happily around in there... Laughter, so much of it I thought I would pop, get lock-jaw, the kind of laughter that is silent in the end, tears streaking down your face, big Santa Claus ho ho ho's with my big belly moving up and down! Wierdo, with the glasses and curly hair, coming down to our office to see what all the fuss was about and Gudrun looking up and, without the slightest hesitation, slamming the door shut in his face (sounds mean, but we did think he was a serial killer then).

Then disaster struck. I could no longer stay for hours in supermarkets in France choosing ingredients. My feet hurt. I could no longer bounce around for hours and get back to Gudrun who was always in the same spot I left her hours earlier, reading for e's on products and complaining about labels... We would drive back to my place in the tiny company fiat minivan (umbrellas open because it was usually raining and the van had holes in the ceiling, seats covered with black plastic rubbish bags in order to avoid getting our bums wet), cross the borders with shopping bags up to the ceiling and blatantly lie to the French border guards. 'Do you have anything to declare?' Gudrun's answer: 'Non, Monsieur, nothing at all. Absolument rien'. It was funny. Even funnier was when we crossed the borders having just baby furniture and it was all piled up in the back.

Well, I could go on and on and tell you about the great times we had, but I did promise myself I would write for 15 minutes only in order to restrain myself from cooking something. Will leave it for another time and another recipe. Nearly forgot - here's today's recipe - one found in the dark recess of my suchard chocolat tin - The EBU Chocolate Cake. Now, I managed to get this recipe after harassing the EBU's Chef Christophe. Easiest thing to make, hardly any sugar, and amazingly delicious, moist, full of flavour (please use Swiss chocolate if you can find it!). Very, very good! Sorry but finding cooking adjectives is not my forte (yet).

EBU Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

100 grams sugar

150 grams butter (salted, naturellement)

2 tbsps sugar

200 grams chocolate (swiss, belgian or French)

5 eggs (whites and yolks separated)

100 grams crushed almonds

Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt till fluffy. Set aside. Melt the chocolate en bain marie, add the sugar, butter, the eggs yolks and the 100 grams of almonds. Add this mixture to the egg whites. Cook for 40 minutes at 180 degrees. When ready, put it in the fridge for a few minutes (if there's room, which was not my case so out on the balcony it went). Please note that it will deflate and look a bit squished. This is normal.

Taverney Forever

Today was a beautiful autumn day. I sat for a while on a bench watching Max in the park. Under the iron canopy of another bench further away, a couple was kissing. I wasn't being a voyeur, I was only keeping an eye on Max who had gone to do number two right in front of them. They were too busy to notice...hopefully.

Imagine what these benches have seen and heard. We speak of what the walls of houses have seen, but never benches. How much more colourful and varied must be their accounts! Couples talking, fighting, crying (yes, I know - we've all all done that), old people, homeless people, lonely people, children, mothers with prams...

Autumn always reminds me of Geneva, as do empty parks (sorry, but they were always empty leaving me wondering where everyone was) and apple pie. Here, in Greece, the parks are never empty. If there are no humans, there are cats - hundreds of them - and the occasional stray dog sunning himself. Until, that is, Max bounds up, scares the cats away and and annoys the dog.

The best apple pie I have ever tasted is the one Chez Lipp, La Brasserie Lipp in Geneva. I used to go there with Viviane who, at 72, was the youngest person at heart I've ever met and one of those people who touch your life forever, an angel, as I used to call her and the kind of friend you meet once in a lifetime. It was usually sunday, a day people are with their families. I was with mine, Viviane and Andre, a little astronaut in his push-chair. Lipp's apple pie is thin, as thin as can be, filo pastry, salted butter, thin slices of apple and a caramel glaze. Needless to say, I have tried to reproduce it a thousand times and although I haven't managed to reproduce the exact pie, I nearly have it! I would like to make a very important point here: I always, always, use salted butter in deserts that have apple or chocolate. It brings out the taste of the apple and chocolate and thereby avoids creating that over-sweet taste that overwhelms everything else.

Now, this apple pie has a story, an epic story. Over the years, it was the witness to nearly all of Andre's birthday parties and the goodbye party held for my neighbors before our departure forever from Geneva. It sat there and witnessed the chatter and the strong bonds between people from different walks of life, different cultures. Unlike my past parties, this last one was terribly sad. I bordered on tears, my heart breaking. I knew what they were all thinking. 'Go, we will miss you, but we understand'. The best kind of people. The ones I used to sit with on benches watching Andre. The bench in the right hand corner of my park, the one with the overhanging tree from which we would watch the first buds of spring growing. We would all squish on that bench. Neighbours from Taverney 3. The park wasn't empty then.

Taverney Apple Pie

Ingredients

5-6 apples (preferably Golden)

110-130 grams salted butter

150 grams sugar (preferably brown)

juice of half a lemon

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 filo pastry

Start by cutting 1 apple in thin slices, then cut the slices in half. Put them in a small pan, add 100 grams sugar, the lemon juice, cinnamon and butter. Cook at medium-high heat, mixing from time to time until the apple has softened and the mixture has caramelised. Set aside. Cut the remaining apples in very thin slices. Open up the filo pastry on baking paper in a metal tart pan and spread the apple mixture on it. Arrange the apple slices in a tight circular pattern on the mixture. Sprinkle with cinnamon and distribute the remaining knobs of butter equally on the pie. Bake at 180 degrees for 45min. Five minutes before taking it out, sprinkle the remaining sugar on top. For a more caramelized base, lower pie to the bottom rack for an additional 5-8 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla ice-cream (preferably Movenpick Swiss Ice-cream).

The kitchen in my chicken!

Hello people! I strongly suggest you turn up the sound on Thorn in my side, put your dancing shoes on and get that bio chicken out of the fridge and prepare yourselves for my chicken soup bok bok bok squack!!!!! It is finally getting cold here in Thessaloniki, my son has a cold, my dog has started to lie on the couch (naturally forbidden but one does have a tendency to turn a blind eye) and I can finally wear my mud-incrusted boots! Today I did nothing of great value but I did 'run' the dog, I did talk to George, the homeless man, and I did go to ballet class and had a gigantic ice-cream (chocolate with orange) afterwards to soothe my pains with Erica, my new wonderful friend (and most importantly, witness of my ridiculous antics in class). I did read half of Steven King's book on writing and, lastly, I did cook my family's famous chicken soup... Now, this soup is the traditional avgolemono Greek chicken soup and is chickenlicious - healthy as healthy gets, lemony and soothing to the palate, a full meal that keeps you warm the whole day... It's a simple soup and although unpretentious, it certainly could be!

Kitchen in My Chicken Soup (said with a heavy Greek accent)

Ingredients

1 large biological chicken

2 egg yolks

olive oil

juice of 1-2 lemons

1-2 cups of rice

salt and pepper

Boil the chicken at medium heat for 1 hour or more depending on the size of the chicken, making sure you turn it over from time to time. Season the water with salt before boiling. Meanwhile put the two egg yolks in a bowl, add the lemon juice and mix. Once the chicken is ready, strain the water stock and pour it back into the pot. Add a generous amount of olive oil, season with salt and pepper and then add the rice. Also add more water, the amount depends on how thick you want the soup to be. When the rice is nearly ready, add roughly 10 tbsps of the liquid to the egg/lemon mixture making sure to mix constantly so as to avoid curdling. Pour this mixture back into the rice, mix and let it simmer for 5 minutes. Cut the chicken in strips, and serve in individual plates. Season with pepper.

In case you were wondering about the name of this post, my mom has been speaking English for more than 25 years but still confounds kitchen with chicken. Go figure. Must be a Greek thing...

A hard day's night

Why is it that Ikea furniture absolutely needs a man's strong hand? On friday night we went to Ikea with the bright idea of buying my son Andre a bunkbed. I naturally assumed I could fix it all by myself considering I had built two bedside tables this summer and they had only taken me four hours! So, my mom and I set to work. It took us around one hour to get all bothered and angry at each other, another hour to push part of the frame together which absolutely refused to stick and another hour to realize something was wrong, very, very wrong...We had stuck the wrong parts together with superhuman strength and succeeded, in order to take it apart, by breaking those little annoying wooden pieces. At this point, my son had given up on us forever and I ended up calling my boyfriend Dairy trying to keep my voice calm and composed (which of course it was not - it was whiny bordering on hysterical) as I begged him to come help us useless weak pathetic and dusty females.

To cut a very long story short, he came and we had to undo the whole thing and after many other incidents involving bent nails we couldn't remove and that had to be removed, me hyperventilating, my threatening to throw the whole thing out right this moment as it was clearly the end of the world for me, my dog max jumping on us for attention, Dairy nearing leaving from exhaustion, we finished it!

Well, all this to tell you that no, I won't be giving you the recipe for swedish meatballs but rather a recipe for a chocolate fudge cake. This, my dear patient readers (if any at this point), was the reward for our backbreaking work. As this cake is cooked in a pan of water, it has a soft, compact and extremely moist interior and a brownie-like appearance and texture on top. I got the recipe for this cake from my mom who, in turn, got it off some Greek television cooking programme... Sorry, not very original, but believe me, this is the chocolate cake that will disappear at the speed of light. I didn't even have time to take a picture of it in its glorious entirety.

Dewy Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

250 grams margarine

1 cup sugar

300 grams black chocolate (70%) preferably chocolat noir cremant de cailler

5 eggs (yolks and whites separated)

1/2 cup flour

Zest of 1 orange (optional)

Heat up oven to 180 degrees celsius, lightly butter and flour a medium sized round baking tin. Mix the margarine with the sugar until the mixture is creamy and white. Melt the chocolate in a small bowl which you have placed over a saucepan of boiling water making sure that it doesn't actually touch the water. Add to the previous mixture. Incorporate the eggs yolks, flour and the eggs whites which you have beaten with a pinch of salt. You may also add the zest of one orange to give it a little more flavour even though, rest assured, the chocolate in this cake is so good it doesn't need anything else.

Place the baking tin within another larger one which you have half-filled with water keeping in mind that the water level will rise (when you put in the second pan with the mixture) and risk flooding the cake if you put too much. Bake for 45min, then switch off oven and leave for another 15min. After the 15min, place cake on a cooling rack and when it has cooled considerably, lightly dust it with icing sugar. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

In case you are wondering why the Beatles are running in the picture above, it's because they caught a whiff of my cake and were running to find it in desperation. It's true, I swear...

Underneath the Mango Tree

Today Max and I went running in the rain on the seafront. Who would have guessed three years ago that this would be my life, that I would be privileged enough to be able to have the time to do things I've always wanted to do. Don't get me wrong though, living in Geneva did have its positive points and one of those was eating pumpkin soup with Andre and Sugi, his Mongolian nanny and best friend of mine, at lunch time when I would rush home for an hour of sheer happiness and the occasional poetry reading by yours truly (needless to say that this provoked unprecedented squeals of laughter) because I wanted Andre to learn how to appreciate poetry.

Well, unfortunately, despite my efforts, we always ended up singing Underneath the Mango Tree from some James Bond movie with Sugi as chorus and the cat gone all wild hanging by his nails on the walls. With a spring in my step, I would walk back to work in the rain, snow or north wind that blows all winter in Geneva and takes out your soul, as a Greek saying goes...

This recipe is my adaptation of the typical French/Swiss one which only has carrots and is rather too sweet for my taste. I would also sometimes make it for my sister when she was pregnant and she would cross town in rush hour traffic just to savour it with warm bread and a slice of swiss gruyere cheese. With the wind howling outside and rattling the window panes, this soup is the perfect companion, velvety and smooth, sweet and savoury. Perfect with a dollop of cream, gruyere, warm bread on the side...

Musical Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients

1 small butternut pumpkin

3 small onions

3 tomatoes

3 small potatoes

3 carrots

1 small handful of parsley

2 cubes of chicken stock

salt, pepper

hot spice (optional)

Cut the pumpkin in cubes, roughly slice the potatoes, carrots, tomatoes and persil. Set aside. In a big pot (a steam cooker if you have one) lightly fry the onions in 5 tbsps of olive oil. Add the pumpkin and carrots, continue frying for a few minutes until the pumpkin dissolves somewhat. Add the potatoes, tomatoes and parsley. Heat a kettle with water and pour over the vegetables until covered and add the chicken stock. Season accordingly. Cook over medium-high heat for at least an hour (less if using a pressure cooker) and with a small hand-held mixer, puree it. Let it simmer for a few more minutes.

Underneath the Mango Tree lyrics (John Barry and Monty Norman)

Underneath the mango tree

Me honey and me can watch for the moon

Underneath the mango tree

Me honey and me make boolooloop soon

Underneath the moonlit sky

Me honey and I can sit hand in hand

Underneath the moonlit sky

Me honey and I can make fairyland

Mango, banana and tangerine

Sugar and ackee and cocoa bean

When we get marry we make them grow

And nine little chil' in a row

Underneath the mango tree

Me honey and me can watch for the moon

Underneath the mango tree

Me honey and me we plan marry soon

Mango, banana and tangerine

Sugar and ackee and cocoa bean

When we get marry we make them grow

And nine little chil' in a row

Underneath the mango tree

Me honey and me can watch for the moon

Underneath the mango tree

Me honey and me we plan marry soon

Underneath the mango tree

Underneath the mango tree

Underneath the mango tree

Underneath the mango tree

A little pinch of me...

My dear readers, let me start by humbly introducing myself. I love cooking, reading, chatting and dancing - preferably all at the same time - if I am not making something complicated that requires transforming pints into grams, in which case, I suddenly get very very edgy and nervous (you must understand that I was possibly the worst maths student in the entire world). Anyway, I am always seeking new ideas, improving my improvements, and generally making everyone around me slightly overweight (that's where the dancing comes in handy). I am now taking this a step further. I need you, sweet readers, to be my guinea pigs!!! Please rest assured though that all my recipes have been approved by others and nutty perfectionist that I am, I would love to have your feedback.