Time flies. I can’t believe it’s already November. In a bit more than a month, we will head to Paris to spend some time with the family and celebrate Christmas. We are really excited about it. Simon will  have his first real Christmas experience with all the family, and us, parents, will hopefully enjoy a long-awaited break. I can’t remember the last time Nico and I went to a restaurant. But what better place other than Paris to catch up?

There are many dishes from around the world that I would like to try but never had the chance. You always hear or read about it on TV or internet and you know it must be delicious. You could do it yourself, follow a recipe, but you’re not sure how it’s supposed to taste like. Things like Mexican mole, Filipino pata or Peruvian ceviche are on my must-try list. Until last month, Jerk Chicken was also on that list. One of my friend who’s from Jamaican origin prepared Jerk Chicken not long ago and I was lucky to be able to try it. Of course, the next step was to make my own.

I really love when I combine two ingredients for the first time and it magically works. That’s what happened to us this weekend when we made this bread. Sometimes, a combination sounds good but the magic is missing when executed. But that’s not the case with blackberry and rosemary, these two are natural. They even sounds like two sisters.

Any foreigner who has lived long enough in Shanghai must know the famous Nepali Kitchen cheese balls. Nepali Kitchen was hands down one of our favorite restaurants in Shanghai. Over the years, we had countless lunches and dinners at this restaurant. The food there was great but what really made people come back was the cheese balls. It seems odd but they inexplicably had something special and very addictive.

Last month we posted a recipe for raspberry and peach pie. While the pie was delicious I wasn’t fully satisfied with the lattice top. It was my first time doing it and the result was a bit clumsy. One of the reason for that was the amount of pie dough. Most pie crust recipes call for exactly the right amount of flour needed for the crust and top. That leaves not much room for error when rolling out the dough. You almost need to make a perfect round shape each time. So you might have noticed why I use so much flour for the crust. I just had to make sure there was more than enough to avoid any uh-oh moments throughout the making of the pie. After several pies I’ve made in the past few weeks where I experimented with different flour measurements, I found a more reasonable yet comfortable amount of flour for the pie crust. But that’s not all.