This is a nice recipe out of my favorite cake cookbook (Cakes, M. Lizambard. Ed Solar). Do slice the apple big and enjoy the cake cold just out of the fridge with fresh red berries or ice tea. It feels fresh while summer heats up outside.

80g butter, 2 large eggs, 170g floor, baking soda, 100g brown sugar, 3 apples, 50g macadamia nuts
peel the apples keeping the peel ribbon uncut, cut in halves and put 1 minute in the micro wave 600W – mix butter, sugar, and eggs – Pour the floor and baking soda in – Add the nuts and spread them evenly in the dough – preheat the oven 180°C/ 360°F – Put the bottom apple halves in a silicon mould – Pour in the dough – and put the top apple halves on. Bake for 45 min 180°C/ 360°F

Please, share with me how you liked it.

A delicious banana crumble to bake on week end and indulge every morning at breakfast. As usual, I altered slightly the original recipe to make it lighter in calories with 30% less butter and brown sugar. The ginger and coconut add a rewarding taste to it. It’s however a sweet treat, then do not eat it all at once! Summer (and the bikini season) is coming!

I read this in the Newsweek – 18 April 2011 at my gym club. (It was after my exercise routine, not during … ), and thought …. OMG, it’s me, I will live longer and end up still alive at 100-year-old. An old granny who cannot takes cares of herself and should rely on others to do so. I guess the Queen Mom of my host country had been living the luckiest eldery on earth. At 100, she was still taken care of and surrounded by her beloved rather than aliens in some nursery … Okay, it’s not the only thing we’ll never share … And I have bizarre thoughts on Friday mornings!

Anyway, I should find a way to get rich, otherwise I’m ahead of a painful end of life.I am off to have breakfast in Notting Hill. Should it taste good, I’ll post pics! I promise.

One of the thing I enjoy in my new life is my kitchen. My previous flat in Paris was a scam and the kitchen was just a pain. It’s as if it hadn’t been designed to cook in.

I have resumed cooking lately, and since I eat at work during the week, I try to make something different and yummy on the week ends. It’s a way to shoot pictures as well, without annoying anyone posing for me for hours but the vegs. If I want, I can even turn them upside down until I reach the perfect picture of them ha ha ha …

Salty cakes are just fun to bake and to eat, as you expect something sweet. This one is vegan, but you can add ham or bacon in.

The original recipe, which I altered slightly to make it calorie-ligther, is from a wonderful cake book I bought back in Paris (Cakes, M. Lizambard. Ed Solar), which I recommend. It’s written in French!

To avoid purposefully cream and oil, you need to season the cake with condiments like olives and spices (chili, herbs). Keep the salt amount low and serve it with proteins (ham, bacon, or poultry). The salt of the side dish is enough.

It’s been so long that I haven’t visited my own blog that I hardly remember my password to log in.

It’s done. I’m a proud Londoner for 1 week and 3 days, 7 hours, and 50 min, 23 sec, 25, 26, anyway… And I enjoy. I enjoy so much being there. I enjoy having moved on from Paris. I enjoy having moved on into a newly minted neighborhood in that it’s not only a different place, but also it’s different cultures. People speak so much different languages around me.

I opened my british bank account on Thursday and went right away to open an internet connection … I can’t have one before mid march. My building is a new development, the phone is not yet set up and BT (Yeah British Telecom) engineer cannot come before mid March. Can you believe that? A western modern country inside Europe … Shame on them.

Therefore I’m at the McDonald’s every evening to sip a cup of hot chocolate, and 2 times a day every week end to have an espresso and get connected to the world through. I didn’t think I would say that after having cursed McDo just one year ago, so but it S-A-V-E-S my day. What’s amazing about it all is that the manic dieter I am may find some interest to pull McDo’s door once in a while.

I’ll try to post more often … Let’s say once every 2 week times … I’m kidding. Thing is I’m fitting smoothly in. I spend more time commuting (2 hours everyday vs.hardly 1 before: it’s huge!). I need some furniture to store all my clothes properly. Some grocery shopping habits needs to be changed. Supermarket chains are different. I need to find the ones that suit me best. Needs to find a local market as well for fresh fruits and special products. I heard about Notting Hill’s. No more cheese. As milk is not sterilized as it is in France, I can’t store it for 2 weeks. No more Evian bottles delivered at home : I need to carry them on from the supermarket. No more Pierre Hermé treat.

I just crossed the channel, and it’s a whole different life that I’m so excited to get in. I’m going to try to take pics and to deliver my first feelings. To take the blog as kinda diary. It will be interesting to get back to it in one, two or three year and say: ok it was how I felt.

The Nowness Fantastic Food contest is opened to everyone who likes good food and taking good photos to share them thru. Pics submission is yet closed, but votes continue until Jan 6th, 2011.

The 10 favorites will be included in a nowness guide on foodspotiing.com and the winner picked up by a panel of venerable judges will a Nowness contributors … which I’d love to!

I had fun taking on the competition as I like good food, and I like photography. I shot this Pierre Hermé 2000 feuilles pastry on purpose for the contest. It’s one of my so guilty pleasures I avoid to indulge too often. It’s at least 10 000 kcal right in my buttock. Then, after having posted it, I noticed this link to post more… oh oh oh. My lightroom library is full of food pics. My friends don’t invite me anywhere anymore as I keep them from eating until I take a good pic of their plates (I’m kidding… I have no friends. ha ha ha). I browse it all to find the delicious things I wanted to share.

1000 feuilles is a common pate feuilletée based French pastry. Pierre Hermé made it its own stuffing it with grossly squashed almond butter in between brick leafs. The brick leafs tastes less butter-like than the pate feuilletée. That makes almonds taste stronger. It’s called 2000 feuilles.

Those giant pomegranates are from my November trip in Roma. It was the mushrooms I wanted to shoot at first. They were displayed in the streets of Roma at the front door of several restaurants. Eventually, after developing the pics on my monitor, it’s the red of the pomegranates that caught my eyes.

I had a slice of this delicious brioche at the 144 faubourg’s brunch, the restaurant of the Bristol resort, a few yards walking from Elysée Palace.

Yakisoba noddles from Happa Tei.

Croissants and pains au chocolat are guessed about in the foreground while focus is made on the jams behind at a Plaza Athénée breakfast. It looks even more desirable than having the pastry on focus.

A typical saturday lunch at home. I never have lunch home during the week. Then, when saturday comes, I like to keep it easy and have some meal that tastes healthy. No useless fat, no overcaloric carbohydrates, lean proteins and vegetables. This is pasta sprinkled with parmigiano, shrimps, steamed spinach and mashed carrots.

I like that the Internet gives chance to any Miss Do to enter a worldwide competition.
Come on! Vote. It’s fun!
My pics are page 11/22 of Fantastic Food.