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I was interviewed a few days ago for a Christmas related cooking feature in the Sunday Times. Mushroom & mincemeat tartelets in herbed crust pastry. Recipe and pics to follow shortly.

Meanwhile, for queries on food & lifestyle photography, drop me an email or take a look at my portfolio.

New York City photos from 2010 & 2011 - finally

[Click on the image above to my entire New York City photo set on Flickr.]

Alright! I have only just finished processing the remaining pictures from my May 2011 New York City stopover. I was halfway through them earlier on in September when my external hard disk - with all my photos since 2006 - crashed. My Mac guru friend David couldn’t restore the HDD , three shops in Sim Lim shook their heads in trepidation when I said that it was a Mac formatted HDD, the only Mac enabled establishment took the HDD, ran tests for three days and pronounced it dead.

I did have the raw files on my MBP but I needed to put them through Lightroom again so it’s taken a little bit of time but I’ve finally finished processing and uploading to Flickr so I’m ready to share and anecdote on the blog, which I will do over the next few days.

Click for my other New York posts so far.

Featured on Notabilia: quinoa salad with green pepper and grilled cauliflower

I am absolutely thrilled to be featured on Notabilia - thank you Pooja - sharing my failsafe go-to recipe when I’m knackered after a day’s work or when I have vegetarian friends coming to dinner or when it’s so hot outside that all I can stomach is something crisp and clean on the palette.

Click through for the recipe and I hope you like it too.

And here’s a link to some of my other recipes.

An afternoon at K ki

My friend Sue told me about K ki a few weeks ago, said it was a Japanese style French patisserie which sold cakes! Cakes? I’m always to try a cake place. Especially for the pretty delicate cakes that I don’t make myself. And after reading The Endangered Sartorialist’s review of the Noisette, I decided it was what I wanted to have, even before I entered the patisserie.

It’s very similar to Pierre Hermé’s Deux Mille-Feuille. Layers of milk chocolate mousse, sponge and hazelnut praliné. Not quite as fine as Pierre Hermé’s, probably not as sweet. It was really light and easy to eat.

Met Pooja of Notabilia for a chat coz I’d been feeling down the past weekend and had the Antoinette - white chocolate mousse and mango.

We had a lovely afternoon chatting over cake and coffee (well coffee for me).

Oh and there was a bonus. In the same space as K ki is a little shop that sells a variety of things from clothes to book bags, cameras and other fun bits & bobs. It’s called The Little Dröm Store, the word “dröm” means “dream.” Isn’t that nice?

The people in Essaouira

Essaouira, being a seaside town, draws many tourists but probably not as many as Marrakech. Many people come for the day. Some come for water sports. A guy I met on the bus (well, actually we were at the rest stop enroute) was going there to learn kite surfing and had no idea how many days he would be there.

I see a lot of folk in traditional clothes, particular the older men and women. It could be blisteringly hot out there and my instinct is as short a skirt and no long sleeves. The Moroccan djellaba (loose fitting garment that you put over whatever you are wearing) makes many an appearance. Because it’s loose, I guess it’s comfortable.

Eating in Essaouira

When it’s hot, and boy was it hot in both Marrakech and Essaouira, the best meals are made with loads of fresh vegetables. But Moroccan food doesn’t seem to be very veggie centric. Accompanying every meal that we had though, was this simple but deelish dish tomatoes.

Made mainly from tomatoes, all chopped up, with chopped onions, slithers of cabbage, cucumber and a smattering of chopped flat leaved parsley, seasoned with salt & pepper, this dish is very similar to the Italian bruschetta that everyone is probably more familiar with.

And because we were by the sea, we thought we’d have some seafood as we had been eating too much meat tagines in Marrakech. We didn’t really come across many restaurants in Essaouira; maybe we didn’t know where to go. So the food we had was mainly street food, little cafes in the main streets, very functional seating, at “eat & go” types of places. Here we had an assortment of seafood, fried in some crispy batter. It was alright and we were hungry but fine dining it was not. (I personally don’t think too much of Moroccan food. There are other more appetizing cuisines.)

Oranges must have been in season, or are simply in season all year round. Even in the cities, there are orange trees lining the sides of roads and courtyards. Orange juice was good. :)

Walked around the market streets and came to an actual (wet) fish market.

Dinner that evening was with the locals and we bought stuff to cook - make a guess - a tagine. Chicken this time. We went to the food area of the market streets.

So much of the stuff in Morocco is preserved. Preserved lemons, dried herbs, toasted spices, and of course olives. I wonder why? Maybe withthe combination of the heat and a slower rate of adoption of modern conveniences such as refrigerators.

So with a couple of handfuls of olives, some chicken and some potatoes, we left the market and walked back to the house and started making dinner.

Market stalls & locals in Essaouira

When we were in Essaouira, we had the opportunity to look out the upstairs window of a restaurant owner whose resutarant was closed after lunch and before dinner service. Looking down at the streets from a very different vantage point is really interesting. A Berber artisan apparel shop sports a sign that reads L’Etoile du Sud - the star of the south. Though why I am not so sure as Essaouira doesn’t seem very far south to me.

While we were queueing up for Moroccan snacks (okay, I was the one who wanted snacks but Lydia was the one who queued and asked for them), a nice Moroccan boy came to our rescue when we had no idea what the shopkeeper was saying to us. Omar was his name and he invited Lydia and I to his shop for some “whisky Maroc” - Moroccan green tea infused with fresh mint leaves and lashings of sugar cubes. We had to request for less sugar.

Here, a picture of Omar’s shop and his assistant. For some reason the name Hassan comes to mind though I don’t actually recall.

Lydia and I in Omar’s shoe shop.

Omar took us for a little walking tour around the city which included mini stops at his fellow shopowners’ shops, most of which we didn’t stop in, just pausing outside enough for Omar and friend to exchange hellos.

Now, this gem of a shop with wooden and glass baubles turned into the loveliest trinkets and accessories, we loved. And it so happened that Hamid, the owner of the shop was one of Omar’s good friends, so we went in.

My favourite part of the shop was the sign above that reads rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée, tout se transform. My average French seems to think that there’s something amiss with the tenses but it means “nothing is lost, nothing is created, all is transformed.”

Moroccans are extremely hospitable and friendly. I do caution again, however, that nothing comes for free and I honestly think that is an accepted way of life, a culture if you will, in Morocco.

It was a most fun afternoon and I love the colours of Essaouira, the blues and whites of a seaside town, more than the Marrakech rouge. Everything seems more vibrantly hued and it seems more open. Sometimes the warm breeze comes in from the sea and at nightfall, cools down most deliciously.