Cooking is my life but it does not necessarily mean that I have to reinvent the wheel every time I get the pots and pans out. As part of my daily routine at work I’m challenged most days to cook classic well known recipes and cook them really well rather than create new ground breaking recipes, concepts and ideas. However I may apply a twist and update the techniques and enhance the flavour profiles.

That is exactly what I have done with this age old dish of moussaka. I was brought up in a country with a healthy Greek community so moussaka was a well known dish on our dinner table. The interesting thing is that we never used to make our moussaka with potatoes. Recently I was challenged to make a moussaka at work and a lengthy debate ensued as to whether it contains potatoes or not.

Well after

I have always loved the combination of cauliflower and cheese. However I do have a rather sad memory of a cauliflower cheese incident. Dad was accustomed to having his food cooked in a simple way, he preferred plain boiled vegetables, boiled rice and over cooked meat, otherwise there would be “war at home”. Dad classed this combination as devils food, and one year when I visited it caused a rather unpleasant family feud. I insisted on making cauliflower cheese as mum loved it but dad did not eat his supper and well the rest is history.

I discovered the existence of Morbier about 10 years ago and always perceived it as being rather sophisticated and classy cheese. I still think so and continue to be in love with it as much as that very first discovery. I love the subtle but perfect blue line that runs through middle of this

They are crispy and crunchy and that’s exactly what makes these biscuits the prefect dunkers. It’s amazing the kind of topics that make an interesting conversation and those that turn into a pleasant but pointless debate.

The topic to dunk or not to dunk is one we had quite recently. Why……I’m still not entirely sure but I’m a sucker for dunking and therefore like crispy biscuits. I’m not sure about soft biscuits or cookies with no “back bone”,they are the ones that as soon as you dunk them in your tea or coffee then they go all soggy and plop to the bottom. No this simply does not work for me, my biscuits need to stay firm once dunked into a hot cup of tea or coffee. Mr.P likes soft biscuits and he’s not a dunker, he eats them straight without the need for a cup of tea. I do

This luxurious and velvety lemon curd recipe is very close to my heart. I have had this recipe for nearly 15 years and it’s been used in many of the restaurants where I have worked. I had to think really very hard about where I obtained this recipe but if my memory serves me well, it was from a grumpy old French pastry chef, no not my friend Fabien head pastry chef at Browns Hotel, he’s French but not grumpy….he’s lovely!

It’s interesting how I have changed the recipe overtime, at one stage I used only egg yolks but then I decided to make it a bit more cost effective by incorporating some whole eggs, as well as egg yolks, which made the curd rich and extra creamy without the use of any cream. I have also played with the method and adapted the conventional method for Thermomix users. Both