I love carrot salads. Well, not really. I actually never liked carrots, and especially not carrot salad. When we were little we’d regularly eat carrot salad at home, and I never really understood what all the fuss was about. Yeah, carrots are said to increase your night vision, but the taste, nah, not for me. But then, as I grew older my palate may have changed or something happened, but I discovered the beauty of carrots. From the heavenly combinations of carrot and ginger, carrots and peanuts, carrots and spring onions, carrots and hummus – so many great ways to enjoy raw carrots .

One of my favourite ways to eat raw carrots is in coleslaw, that mayonnaisy cabbage/carrot salad. Yum. And, this recipe is actually a twist on your traditional coleslaw – ok, it’s without cabbage, but actually my original creation contained cabbage, so feel free to add Chinese cabbage to this salad.

What makes this carrot salad so super special is its Japanese-style dressing. It plays with lots of ingredients used in Japanese cookery, so you may find yourself scratching your head at the likes of mirin, rice vinegar and sake. Don’t worry, I’ve indicated simple replacements that will still make this salad taste great, so don’t run off to the shops and buy expensive new ingredients that you’re likely never to use again.

A note about the mayonnaise. I know that people in England tend to consider Hellmann’s to be a delicious mayonnaise… it’s not! Please, don’t use their ‘mayonnaise’ in this dressing, or best never use it at all. It’s just not right. Their white, fatty, tasteless spread has nothing to do with real, yellow, eggy mayonnaise. In fact, I always import my mayonnaise from Luxembourg, where we have the best mayonnaise in the world. Now, I don’t expect you to buy yours in Luxembourg too, but at least buy a really eggy mayonnaise – preferably French- or Japanese-style. The Japanese do in fact make the second best mayonnaise in the world (sorry, I have to be patriotic on this one, Luxembourg still rules!): so if you find yourself near a Japanese store, do go in and buy the mayonnaise tub that has a baby drawing on it (called Kewpie)! Yeah, it does look weird to buy mayonnaise with a depiction of a naked toddler, but believe me, you’ll never go back to Hellmann’s – ever!

Anyway, enough now! This is a great salad, perfect for sunny springtime days and picnics in the park.

Some of you may be surprised to find a plate of raw vegetables in this entry, instead expecting to find a hearty meat pie (as previewed on my Facebook Fan Page). No, don’t worry, I haven’t converted to the raw food movement (although I had a damn great raw food dinner at a new London restaurant last week). No, the reason that some beautiful carrot salad is staring at you is because I misplaced the recipe for the promised meat pies!

Yes, yes, yes, I know, I’m disorgaized. But it’s just been quite a bit of a whirlwind the past week. I’ve been planning the details of my food photography workshop that I’ll be running at The Hive European Blogging conference in Berlin next week. I’ve also been preparing TV shoots, researching great Berlin foodie hunts for an article I’m writing for Delicious magazine – and on top I’ve been baking, shooting what I baked, meeting friends and actually also working. Phew! And it’s actually at work where I left the said meat pie recipe…. So, please bear with me for another week, and enjoy this salad instead for now.

Japanese Carrot Salad

Serves 2 as a main, or 4 as a side

3 carrots
3 spring onions
10 radishes
3 tsp black sesame seeds (or normal sesame seeds)

For the dressing:
30g mayonnaise
1 + 1/2 tbsp rice vinegar (or white wine vinegar)
1 tbsp sake (or 1 tbsp white wine or just leave it out)
1/2 tsp wasabi (or strong English mustard)
1 tsp sesame oil (this is essential! no replacement!)
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp grated ginger or ginger paste
1 tbsp mirin (leave it out if you don’t have it)
1 tsp sugar

Peel the carrots and grate them into fine shreds. Wash the spring onions and radishes. Cut the spring onions into fine slices, discarding the dark green ends. Cut the radishes into sticks or slices.

Prepare the dressing: mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl until you get a smooth, liquid dressing.

Arrange the salad ingredients in a bowl, pour over the dressing and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Yipee, asparagus season is upon us! I really love love love asparagus.

When I was growing up in Luxembourg, my mum would cook with asparagus every springtime. They were white asparagus, typically cooked with in northern Europe. She’d simply boil them and serve them with a creamy béchamel sauce and new potatoes. If there were any leftovers, she’d prepare a soup with them the next day.

Since moving to the UK, I discovered the delights that green asparagus have to offer. They’re slightly different from their white sisters – more intense in flavour, more ‘green’, and slightly bitterer. Green asparagus are perfect for grilling – just throw some on a hot griddle pan or on a BBQ, and let them release a smoky, chargrilled flavour that’s just amazing.

I still like the idea of making asparagus soup, so I decided to make one with green asparagus. I’ve added potatoes to create some texture, and made a few heavenly butter croutons to go with it. As always, there’s a dash of wine in my cooking (just adding a great dimension). If you prefer not to cook with wine, just substitute it for water or vegetable stock.

A heavenly springtime dish – ideal for the cold weather spell we’re experiencing in the UK at the moment.

Cream of Asparagus Soup

Serves 4

2 bunches of green asparagus
2 potatoes
1 onion
15g butter
100ml white wine
1 tbsp crême fraîche
2 tbsp chopped chives (optional)
2 tbsp toasted pine nuts

For the croutons:
4 slices of sourdough bread
40g butter

Wash the asparagus, cut around 4cm at the ends off and discard those hard ends. Cut the asparagus into 5 cm long slices.

Peel the potatoes and cut into cubes (around 3cm cubes).

Peel the onion, cut into cubes. Melt the butter in a pan and fry the onion for around 5 minutes, or until transluscent.

Put a pot of boiling water on the hob. Add 2 tsp of course cooking salt. Boil the asparagus and potatoes for about 10 minutes. Fish out 8 asparagus spears with a slotted spoon, put into a colander and cool down under a tap of running cold water. They’ll be used as decoration later.

Add the onion to the boiling potato and asparagus and keep cooking until the potatoes and asparagus are soft (about another 7 minutes).

Drain the vegetable cooking water until it’s the same level as the vegetables. Puree the vegetables in the water with a hand blender. Now, pour the thick soup through a fine sieve, so that you get rid of the asparagus fibres.

Put the sieved soup back on the hob, and add 100ml of white wine (or vegetable stock), season generously with salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Once the soup is boiling, turn off the heat, and add a tablespoon of crême fraîche. Keep warm while making the croutons.

To make the croutons: cut the bread slices into little 1cm cubes. Melt 40g butter in a frying pan, add the bread cubes and fry until golden. Sprinkle with sea salt flakes and pepper.

To serve, sprinkle some chopped chives, toasted pine nuts and croutons over your soup and enjoy.

Did you know hops do not only produce beer – they can also be a fantastic food ingredient? I had no idea.

So when I received a press release that branded hop shoots as ‘the poor man’s asparagus’, I was intrigued. The London Brewers’ Association was behind the idea – inviting chefs, restaurateurs and brewers to a day out in Kent, to go hop picking and then cook with the produce.

The idea to cook with hop shoots seemed so novel, that I realized it had great potential for a TV feature. When I pitched it to my editor, she raised an eyebrow and said “So, basically you want me to pay for you and Emma to have a fun day out?!”. Erm, actually, yes!

With a commission in our pocket, Emma and I headed to the Kentish coutryside to spend the day filming hop pickers – and drinking beer with them. Sometimes this job is too good to be true. We were really worried about the weather though, since it’s been raining non-stop for the past week. But somehow, the ‘weather gods’ were on our side, and we were greeted with sunshine.

Once all the hop pickers had arrived from London, the hop picking started. Everyone picked a spot in the field, and cut off the small, delicate shoots to cook with in their restaurants tonight. The atmosphere was really serene – only the wind blowing, birds singing and the odd chatter of enthusiastic chefs sharing recipe ideas.

Hop grower Christopher Lillywhite gave me a bit of background on the wonderful hop plant.

He told me that hop has been grown in Britain for over 300 years. There are 12 hop varieties in England, which all have different flavoured hop oils – these create the great variety in beer flavours.

The hop plant is a perennial plant that throws a fresh set of shoots every springtime. Hop growers then carefully wrap these little shoots around strings attached to a wire lattice, so that they can grow upwards. Heavily influenced by daylight, the hop plants need to have reached their highest growing point by the 21^st June, which is the longest day of the year. This usually takes 6 weeks.

Cooking with hops is a quite a novel idea, although I found out that the Venetians used to eat them back in the day. But these days, it’s been completely forgotten that young hop shoots can in fact be eaten – before they grow up to become full-grown plants, yielding cones used in beer production.

The period for hop picking is very short: the delicate spears can only be harvested to cook with from the end of April until early May.

Now, you probably wonder what hop shoots actually taste like. Alan Stewart, chef at West London restaurant Manson, described the raw hop shoot flavour as “green, very fresh, with a slight bitterness and a little metallic hint.”

The hop shoots’ flavour is a bit too intense to eat raw in a salad – they’re best eaten cooked. So, the chefs prepared some hop shoots in a makeshift kitchen next to the hop field. They fried the hop shoots in olive oil and garlic, and served them with pan-fried scallops. A real revelation: while retaining its fresh, grassy flavour, the shoots had acquired a gentler, more buttery aroma, which went really well with the sweet scallops.

And since the day was all hop themed, we were served some great local ale to drink with our hop shoots.

Once they had all picked enough hop shoots, the chefs headed back to cook with them in their restaurants – as part of the ‘Hopfest 2012′.

Emma and I joined the lovely guys from the Old Red Cow, a great craft beer pub next to Smithfield market.

Chef Rob McMillan had created a special hop menu. His trio of hop inspired dishes were hop infused cod tempura on a bed of hop shoots, lamb with steamed hop shoots and a Venetian risotto with hop shoots.

For his cod tempura, Rob replaced sparkling water with beer and added a few drops of his own-made ‘hop infusion’ to it. Made from dried hops soaked in liquid, the infusion had turned out to be so strong that Rob ended up only using a few drops in the tempura batter. The fish was then deep-fried for a few minutes and served on a bed of flash-fried hop shoots.

While Rob told me he enjoyed working with this new ingredient, he admitted that the hop shoots don’t really live up to their name. “I mean everybody keeps telling me it’s the poor man’s asparagus, I’m not really sure it stands up to that. It’s more like a samphire, it’s more like some of the shoots that you’d be more used to seeing, like pea shoots.”

Still, the diners I spoke to at the Old Red Cow seemed to enjoy the hop shoots a lot.

Emma and I ended up filming for 13 hours that day, and came home with great pictures. What a fantastic day that was!

So, a great thanks to the London Brewers’ Alliance for taking us on this trip, and to Elliot and Rob of the Old Red Cow for kindly letting us film in their kitchen! Thanks guys, from Emma and Anne!

Hey you! Fed up with the ongoing rain? Desperate for some sunshine in your life? Then let me introduce you to the most summery dessert ever – a plate of golden sunshine: a mango pavlova!

No matter how crap the weather gets, there’s always a remedy: any recipe involving mango! Mango is one of my all-time favourite fruit. In Thailand I stuffed myself with heavenly ‘sticky coconut rice with mango’ on a daily basis. The combination of creamy coconut and mango really is hard to beat.

So, when I came back to the UK, I was still truly inspired by this heavenly combination. I bought all the ingredients needed to make sticky rice with mango, but somehow I never really got round to making it. You know how it is: back from a holiday, still buzzing with all the memories, desperate to recreate the experiences – but somehow it ain’t the same at home…

That’s why I decided to come up with a dessert that reflects the flavours of sticky rice with mango, but that’s completely different. Call it a play on my favourite Thai dessert, mixed with antipodean flair: a coconut pavlova with cinnamon-infused mango. It can’t get better than this!

So, let’s get down to the details of this superb and easy dessert!

A pavlova is basically a meringue topped with cream and fruit. Now, I hear some of you say “boy, this looks soooooo pretty, I bet it’s soooooo hard to make!”. Well, it ain’t. Meringues are in fact super easy to make! All you need is a bit of patience, since they need to bake in the oven for about 2 hours at a very low temperature. This will give them their crispy shell, but keep them chewy inside.

As for the shape: yes, it may look tricky, but it isn’t. You need a piping bag fitted with a star-shaped nozzle. Start by piping a spiral circle (starting in the middle, then piping in a spiral shape around the middle, so that it becomes a round spiral). Make it roughly as big as the inside of your hand. Then, pipe the outer “crown” layer: put the nozzle down on the outside of the disc, and pipe while doing an upward movement, ending on the top of the disc. This will give you little spikey bits, which will create the crown effect.

If that’s too daunting, just take a large spoon and chuck a couple of spoonfuls of mixture onto a baking tray, and flatten to a roundish disc with the back of your spoon. Simple as that! It may not look as fanciful, but it will definitely taste just as yummy. Plus, the rustic style is hip! Right? I mean, come on, Jamie Oliver wouldn’t start piping out these fancy crown discs, he’d just make some plain ‘bad boys’ that would taste just as good!

So, whatever meringue style you choose, you’ll love this dessert. Trust me, it’s one for the books!

Especially since it’s eternally versatile. I added toasted coconut to the meringue here, but if you don’t like coconut, just leave it out. Once you have your meringue base, top it with crême fraîche or Greek yoghurt and then add anything else you like. I’ve made it with raspberries, with rhubarb compote, even with chestnut cream (and it becomes a sort of Mont Blanc). A pavlova is just absolutely amazing… Amen!

Coconut Mango Pavlovas

Serves 4

For the meringues
4 tbsp dessicated coconut
4 egg whites, at room temperature
200g sugar

For the topping
1 tub crême fraîche or Greek yoghurt
1 packet vanilla sugar or 1 tsp vanilla essence and 1 tsp sugar
2 mangos
cinnamon

Start by making the meringues. Preheat the oven to 90° celsius.

Toast the dessicated coconut in a pan until lightely golden. Put aside until later.

Place the egg whites into a metal bowl and whisk with an electric whisk until soft peaks begin to form. Still whisking, add the sugar gradually, a couple of spoonfuls at a time, whisking for 20-30 seconds between each addition. Continue whisking until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is stiff and shiny.

Add the toasted coconut to the mix and whisk for another few seconds until well mixed and stiff. The meringue mixture needs to be so stiff that it holds its shape.

Transfer the meringue mix into a piping bag, mounted with a star-shaped nozzle.

Pipe the meringue onto a baking tray lined with baking paper: start by piping a spiral circle (starting in the middle, then piping in a spiral shape around the middle, so that it becomes a round spiral). Make it roughly as big as the inside of your hand. Then, pipe the outer “crown” layer: put the nozzle down on the outside of the disc, and pipe while doing an upward movement, ending on the top of the disc. This will give you little spikey bits, which will create the crown effect.

Bake for 2 hours or until they are dry to the touch and still white in colour. They will at that point still be chewy on the inside. Alllow to cool completely before removing from the baking paper. (At this stage, the meringues can be stored in an airtight container for up to 5 days).

Now make the topping: Mix the crême fraîche or Greek yoghurt with the vanilla sugar. Set aside until later.

Peel the mangoes, cut the flesh off the stone and cut into litte cubes.

Top each meringue nest with a generous dollop of crême fraîche, then scatter a handful of mango cubes onto each meringue and sprinkle with cinnamon. The pavlova should be filled only shortly before serving as otherwise it will get soggy and lose its crispness.

Enjoy!

One thing the Brits are really damn good at is pies. Old-fashioned crusty pies, filled with all kinds of comforty goodness – from hearty steak and ale fillings to creamy fish pies –  a pie is always a winner.

You can really just chuck in anything, and as soon as you cover it with some puff- or shortcrust pastry or even creamy potato mash, you may name it a pie. Seriously, go on, open your fridge, see what’s left, throw it together in a pan, add some sauce and make a pie with it. Simple as that!

I like to keep some puff pastry as stand-by ingredient in the freezer, since you never know when you may need to whip up a pie, a tart or some cheese straws as appetizer. Magic ingredient, that puff pastry.

So, when the weather turned cold again, the wind howling around the house and raindrops bashing against my windows, I knew it was time to defrost that puff pastry!

I decided to make a very classic British pie, a chicken, leek and mushroom pie. Apparently, that’s what all British schoolchildren get served at school when they’re little, so it’s kind of a national dish.

Since I have no British childhood memories to dwell on, I just got on with it and created a chicken, leek and mushroom pie – the way I envision it. With lots of white wine (which, I’m pretty sure, no school canteen would have ever used) and rosemary (giving it a Meditteranean touch). Turned out absolutely lovely.

I hope you like it too!

Chicken, Leek and Mushroom Pie

Serves 4

2 chicken breasts
250g mushrooms
1 big leek
1 tbsp rosemary
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tbsp flour
250ml dry white wine (or 250ml chicken stock if not using wine)
250ml chicken stock
3 tbsp crème fraîche or 50ml cream
1 sheet ready-rolled puff pastry

Preheat the oven to 200° celsius.

Cut the chicken breasts into bite-sized chunks. Heat 1 tbsp oil in a pan and sear the chicken with a pinch of salt until you can’t see any pink bits anymore.

Meanwhile, wash the mushrooms and leek and cut them into slices.

Once the chicken is seared, remove from the pan and put aside until later.

Pour 1 tbsp oil into the pan and now fry the mushrooms and leek with the rosemary and a pinch of salt for a few minutes. Once they’re soft, add the garlic and fry for another minute. Then, put the chicken back into the pan with the other ingredients. Add the flour, wine and chicken stock and bring to a boil. Let it cook for a minute. Add the crême fraîche and season. Take off the heat.

Pour the chicken mix into an ovenproof dish. Top with the puff pastry sheet, which you tuck in on the sides.

Bake the pie for 20 minuts or until the pastry is golden brown and crisp. Serve with mashed potatoes and French beans.

I couldn’t actually care less about Easter. Seriously, it’s just some religious fest that’s somehow turned into Easter egg hunts and excessive chocolate consumption. Call me a cynic, but I just don’t see the point.

I really couldn’t care less about Easter – if it weren’t for the baking. Ok, ok, I admit it, any holiday that’s connected to some kind of traditional baking can’t be that bad in my books. So, Easter’s actually kind of alright!

You see, in the UK they have these traditional hot cross buns that they eat for Easter. They’re basically little round sweet bread buns, made from a firm yeast dough. They’re flavoured with lots of cinnamon (yes!) and other delicious spices, and dotted with dried fruit.

Traditionally, hot cross buns are eaten on Good Friday – the cross being the symbol for Christ’s crucification. But these days you tend to get hot cross buns in supermarkets all year round – so they’ve kinda lost their magic a bit. Shame.

Still, even though you get hot cross buns all year round now, I’d never made them.

Consider this: I’ve been in this country for nearly 9 whole years, and had never even attempted to make hot cross buns. Why? No idea, it just never occured to me.

Then, this Easter I decided to pull up my sleeves and give it a go. And hey, they’re super easy to make! They’re basically like making bread or Christmas Stollen. You need to work the yeast dough, give it some elbow grease, then let the dough rest for an hour, work it again, let it rest again etc and then bake.

So, a word of warning: these do take some time to make! But, they’re very easy and super yum. Expect a chewy bread texture, with bursts of dried fruit and strong spices. You should eat them while they’re still hot, but they’re actually just as good the next day when you toast them. Then spread a generous portion of butter on them, and maybe some jam, and enjoy!

So, a Happy Easter to everyone! Hope you get to do some baking over the long weekend!

Hot Cross Buns

Makes 15

For the buns:
175ml water, lukewarm
14g dried yeast (or 30g fresh yeast)
680g strong white flour
5g salt
100g sugar
80g unsalted butter, soft
8g cinnamon
3g ground ginger
1/2 tsp cardamome
2g nutmeg
175ml full-fat milk, lukewarm
1 egg
70g mixed citrus peel (or just orange peel)
130g sultanas

For the cross:
80g strong white flour
20g butter, melted
100ml water
pinch of salt and sugar

For the bun wash:
75ml boiling water
3 tbsp sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

Dissolve 1 tsp of sugar in the lukewarm water, add the dried yeast. Stir and let the liquid rest for about 15 minutes, until it becomes frothy on the top.

In a big bowl, mix all the bun ingredients (flour, salt, sugar spices, milk, egg and yeast mix) except the mixed peel and sultanas. Once you get a loose dough, start kneading with your hands (or with an electric mixer with the dough hook fitted on). Knead the dough thoroughly for 10 minutes. Then, knead in the dried fruit.

Lightly oil a big bowl. Put the dough into the bowl, cover with a teatowel and let the dough rest in a warm place for 45 minutes, until the dough has doubled in size.

Line a deep baking tray with baking paper. Tear off pieces of the risen dough and mold into balls. Place the buns into the baking tin, with a finger’s space between each of them.

Cover the baking tin with a teatowl and let the buns double in size again for 50 minutes in a warm place.

Meanwhile, make the white cross mix. Mix all the ingredients until you get a smooth batter. Pour into a piping bag, fitted with a 50mm nozzle.

Preheat the oven to 190° degrees celsius.

Once your buns have risen, pipe a cross on each of the buns.

Bake the buns for 15-20 minutes, until nicely golden.

Meanwhile, make the sugary bun wash: dissolve the sugar in the boiling water and add cinnamon.

Once the buns are baked, take them out of the oven and brush with the sugary bun wash.

Eat immediately whilst still warm, or toast them the next day.

Right, what is the nicest, most delicious treat in the world that makes me go ‘oh oui’ all the way?! A macaron of course!

Macarons are these delicate almond cookies, brittle to the outside, chewy on the inside and filled with all kinds of creams and pastes. Ladurée and Pierre Hermé are certainly names that pop into mind when you think of macarons – the two French pâtisseries have dedicated themselves to perfecting macarons, and always come up with new, imaginative flavours.

Now, the interesting thing is that people always have this ‘fear of making macarons’. Everyone I speak to has a huge respect for macarons, thinking it’s the hardest thing ever to bake, convinced that they show a baker is at the pinnacle of their career. I say no way! Macarons are as simple as baking a plain sponge cake! Seriously! You just need to follow a few very basic rules!

So, are you ready to make your first batch of macarons? Believe me, it’s so incredibly simple! The only thing you absolutely can’t do without in macaron production is an oven thermometer! Really, don’t even try to wing it, it won’t work! Full stop. No discussion. Get a reliable oven thermometer and monitor your temperature while baking – keeping it at a constant 160° celsius.

The second thing is that you need to make sure your egg whites are at room temperature. Take your eggs out of the fridge the night before, and let them acclimatize themselves with the kitchen temperatures.

And the third rule is that you need to let your macarons rest for one hour before sticking them in the oven. That will harden the outer shell, so that the macarons will rise in the oven and reveal their little ‘foot’ (the little frothy crown at the bottom).

Also, I have found one more little thing: silicone mats aren’t ideal for baking macarons. I love silicone baking mats, since they are completely non-stick. But I have found that you just end up without any crisp bottom. So, the problem is that when you bake your macarons on a silicone mat, they always come out gooey on the bottom. That’s not a big problem if you don’t mind (and I don’t), but it’s just not the way it should be. So, get some really good baking paper, and bake them on metal trays – to intensify the heat and let them crisp up at the bottom.

Now, I’ve told you so much about making macarons, and you still don’t believe me that it’s easy? Ok, I’ll prove it! I’m shooting my first Anne’s Kitchen video this weekend (on the most amazing camera in the world: the Canon EOS C300!!!!). So, please be patient for a little longer, and you’ll soon be able to see me in full macaron action!

White chocolate and cocoa Macarons

Makes around 20 macarons

For the macarons

3 egg whites, at room temperature
30g caster sugar
200g icing sugar
125g ground almonds

cocoa nibs for decorating the shells

For the white chocolate and cocoa ganache

150g white chocolate
75ml cream
15g butter
2 tbsp cocoa nibs

Start by preparing the macaron shells. Beat the egg whites with an electric hand beater until they foam soft peaks, add the caster sugar and beat a bit longer.

Sift the icing sugar and ground almonds into a bowl. Add the stiffened egg whites and carefully fold in with a silicone or wooden spoon. Don’t vigorously stir the batter, instead, carefully lift the mixtures into each other.

Fill the batter into a piping bag, mounted with a round tip. Pipe little discs onto a baking tray, lined with baking paper or a silicone mat. Sprinkle cocoa nibs onto half of the discs. Let the discs rest for 1 hour before baking (this will harden their exterior, so that they create their iconic little foot when they rise in the oven).

While the macaron shells rest, prepare the ganache. Put the chocolate, cream and butter in a saucepan and melt over a medium heat. Once the mix is smooth, take off the hob and stir in the cocoa nibs. Let cool down, and keep in the fridge until needed.

Preheat the oven to 160° celsius (best use an oven thermometer to make sure you get the temperature absolutely spot on). If you can, put the baking tray with the macarons onto a second baking tray (this will generate more direct heat to bake the bottom of the macarons). Bake the macarons for 10-12 minutes, until lightly golden.

Take out of the oven and let the macarons cool down completely before removing them from the baking paper.

Spread a bit of the chocolate ganache onto a bare macaron shell, and top with a cocoa nib shell. Store in the fridge until needed. These will keep up to 3 days.

What’s the worst about when Christmas and New Year are over? Not the end of the binge-eating and binge-drinking (hell, you can continue with that, no problem)! No the bad part is that there’s a whole few months of grim winter left to get through (without the joy of cinnamon-scented everything).

So, what to do? Well, just get the heck away from it all!

I decided to ditch the terribly depressing British January and escape to warmer climates. The destination: Thailand and Cambodia. Instead of freezing in grey-skied Britain and having to put up with moody Londoners cursing the weather, the tube, the tourists and anything else in their lives, I got to indulge in 30 degrees heat, explore foreign lands and eat my way through the most amazing South East Asian dishes! Not a bad move, ey?!

My first stop was Bangkok. Brilliant city! Most amazing place! If you ever want to die from over-stuffing yourself with street-food, go to Bangkok. I’d happily have my stomach burst from Pad Thais, Som Tams and Thai fried chicken.

Anyway, this post is not about Bangkok though, this one focuses on the other fantastic Thai city of Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is in the North of Thailand, in the more mountaineous part of the country. It’s famed for its beautiful temples, its elephant nature resorts and foremost for its food…  Yeah, now you know why I went there! Chiang Mai is in fact the culinary capital of Thailand.

For those of you in the UK who watch Masterchef – it’s where this year’s contestants had to cook their way through the markets, temples and hotels. Amazing city! Amazing food!

We started our stay with trips around the local markets, discovering wonderful – and really weird – stuff….

Ever eaten grubs and maggots? No…? Really…? Why not…? Well, me NEITHER!!! It’s my worst nightmare to ever get in direct contact with a maggot! These funny-looking insects truly freak me out! Something about them not having any legs, and doing these weird winding movements really seriously deeply disturbs me!

So, can you imagine what it was like seeing some deep-fried maggots lying on a stall (next to some lovely smelling curries and yummy sausages)?! Freak out! Still I managed to calm myself down and stop myself shaking so that I could take a (partly-focused) photo of these beastly food insects!

Now, wanna find out the really freaky bit about these maggots??? Yeah, go on, you want to! So, let me tell you that apparently (and I say apparently because you will really never find me doing this – ever!) these deep-fried looking maggots are not crispy! Apparently when you bite on them, they pop open and are full of mushy mush!!!!! Arrrrggghhhhhhhh!!!!

Anyway, enough disgusting stuff on Anne’s Kitchen! This is supposed to make you hungry, not want to reach for a bottle of whiskey to drown traumatic information.

So, over to some nice stuff. One of our days was spent in the amazing Thai Farm Cooking School. After a trip to the market in the morning, we headed to the cookery school, housed in open bamboo huts. We learnt how to make Thai soups, curries, noodle dishes and desserts – all in really relaxed and fun surroundings.

Our cookery teacher was slightly nuts by the way. She couldn’t be serious for just one single minute – everything, everything had to have sexual references. Chilies were “good for your man” *wink*, pounding the curry paste turned into a competition to see who’s the “woman who makes their man the happiest”, and later on she asked all the men to start “massaging their noodles” with soy sauce! All accompanied by heaps and heaps of giggling. As I said, completely nuts!

In case you’re wondering what these round “cakes” are, they’re khanom krok the most delicious thing ever! We discovered them on one of Chiang Mai’s night markets. It’s in fact a coconut custard, that’s poured into these round holes. They then sprinkle adzuki beans, sweetcorn or chives on it and let it cook for a while. The bottom of the custard ends up becoming crispy, while the middle is still gooey. It’s just unbelievably yummy. I’d love to be able to recreate this at home, but wouldn’t know what mold to use… Maybe a waffle maker?

So I’ve come back full of inspiration, eager to try out these fabulous dishes at home. Fortunately I’m lucky enough to live in London, where I can easily get hold of even the most obscure ingredients. You’ll regularly find me rummaging the shelves across Chinatown these days.

One of my favourite dishes in Thailand was Khao Soi – a Northern Thai curry, made with egg noodles and chicken. It’s not as spicy as the typical Thai curries, made with green or red curry paste. This one is far gentler and more subtle in taste. Khao Soi is traditionally eaten for lunch around Chiang Mai.

We were obviously on the search for the best Khao Soi in town, so we jumped on a bicycle and went for a 40 minutes ride, to the Northern part of Chiang Mai, where, apparently, we would find the best version the town has to offer (in case you’re in Chiang Mai: it’s at Khao Soi Smer Jai, next to Wat Fa Ham on the East side of the Ping river). And indeed, it was pretty good! The only criticism I had was that the chicken was pretty tough and not falling off the bone. So, in this recipe (which I’ve adapted from David Thompson’s Thai Food) I made sure to cook the chicken for ages, so that it would be succulently tender. Yum. Amazing. Transported me straight back to the heat and loveliness of Chiang Mai…

So, why don’t you try it at home? It’s far less daunting than you’d think. Just set a couple of hours aside, go shopping at your local Asian grocery and just try it! It’s so incredibly simple, but so incredibly wow! ★

Khao Soi Curry

Serves 6

Curry paste:
8 shallots (or 12 Thai shallots)
3 fresh red chilies
3 dried soaked chilies
12 tbsp chopped ginger
15 garlic cloves
6 tbsp fresh turmeric root
6 tbsp ground coriander
3 handfuls fresh coriander

1 tbsp sunflower oil
1 can coconut cream
12 tbsp light soy sauce
3 tbsp dark soy sauce
6 tbsp palm sugar
1 + 1/2 litres chicken stock

6 chicken legs

500ml vegetable oil
800g fresh egg noodles
6 spring onions
12 lime wedges

First make the paste: peel the shallots,  garlic and turmeric and put all the ingredients in a blender. If you want to make it the Thai way, you’ll have to pound everything with a pestle and mortar – which will take ages considering you’re making 6 portions. The flavours are more intense if you pound the ingredients. However, I think that blending them, and then quickly giving them a pounding with the pestle and mortar also does the job.

Once you have your paste, put the sunflower oil into a big pot. Fry the curry paste for a few minutes, until it becomes fragrant. Add the coconut cream and fry for a further 5 minues. Add the chicken legs, turn down the heat and simmer for a few more minutes.

Now add the soy sauces, palm sugar, chicken stock and season with salt. Cover the pot and gently simmer the curry for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until the chicken literally falls off the bones.

Meanwhile, heat the vegetable oil in a wok. Once it’s steaming, drop 200g egg noodles into it, and deep-fry for 5 minutes or until crispy and golden. This will be the topping for your curry.

Once the chicken is cooked, add the remaining noodles to the curry and cook according to package instructions (normally just a few minutes).

Serve in bowls, topped with the crispy noodles and sprinkled with sliced spring onions – with lime wedges on the side.

Do you also have that tendancy to always re-use the same things? From clothes and recipes to bakeware?!

I have a wardrobe filled with lovely jumpers, flowery dresses, stripey T-Shirts and checked shirts – but I always end up wearing the same favorites… And, I have a bookshelf filled with cookery books and magazines, which I love reading over and over again – but I always end up making the same recipes… The same goes when it comes to my kitchen utensils!

I’m a sucker for cute bakeware: from mini-cake tins and little cannelés pans to silicone and metal muffin tins, you name it, I have it! And so over the years my kitchen cupboards have filled with the most amazing baking tins – only for me not to use them!

The other day I was rummaging through my baking cupboard, and came across these lovely little madeleine tins. I had bought them in Istanbul two years ago! Two years ago! Seriously, time flies by… So I decided that these poor little tins need to be released from their lonely existence, and finally get used!

So, here you go: lovely little traditional madeleines – the kind that Proust would have been proud of!

Now, a little note on food photography. First of all: I have been given the incredible opportunity to be a guest speaker at the “The Hive“, a European Blogging Conference that’s taking part in Berlin from 19th-20th May!

But, don’t expect any long lecture from me, no no! Instead, I will be leading a food photography workshop! I’m currently brainstorming on how to do this, and on what to actually teach! Not so evident.

In any case, food photography is by no means easy. It may look simple, but there’s a lot of thought going into each and every food photo. It’s just so easy to get it completely wrong – from the colour scheme to the background, crockery, fabrics, arrangement and food styling – Food photography can be a real minefield.

So, I need to come up with a way of conveying the tricks that I’ve learnt over the past two years, and teach it to fellow bloggers… If you have any suggestions/questions about food photography, do let me know!

I’m also currently playing around with Instagram and trying to get my head around how to use it for the sake of this site.

Instagram photos have this fantastic quality that no matter what, they look delicious! It’s that nostalic filter that just works incredibly well with food photos! So, hopefully in the next weeks I’ll be adding an instagram widget to the sidebar of Anne’s Kitchen, so that I can post preview photos of upcoming posts.

For now, you can follow my Instagram photos here, or just follow me on Twitter, where I’ll be regularly posting my yummy Instagram pics.

Madeleines

Makes 12 madeleines

*** Note: batter needs to be prepared one day ahead ***

80g butter
3 egg whites
seeds of one vanilla bean or 1 tsp vanilla bean paste
100g icing sugar
60g flour
1 tsp baking powder
40g powdered almonds

Melt the butter in a saucepan until it slightly starts to go slightly golden/brown – this will add a bit more flavour to the madeleines.

Beat the egg whites until stiff, add the van

Mix the icing sugar, flour, baking powder and almonds. Incorporate into the fluffy egg whites.

Cover the batter and leave in the fridge overnight (or at least for a few hours).

The next day, preheat your oven to 180 degrees celsius. Grease your madelaine tins and lightly dust with flour, so that the madeleines come out easily in the end.

Fill the madeleine moulds with spoonfuls of batter. It’s a real art to fill them enough without overfilling. My trick is to fill them with batter, then use a knife and scrape over the mould once – like that you ‘cut off’ any excess batter.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until the madeleines are nicely golden. Devour on the same day!

Right folks, it’s time to pop open a bottle of bubbly! Anne’s Kitchen has been given the seal of approval by my favourite food magazine: Delicious Magazine.

Each month, this fantastic UK food magazine picks out one food blog it loves, and gives it the “Blog We Love” label. And, amazingly, Anneskitchen.co.uk is their pick for the April 2012 edition! You can’t believe how surprised I was!

The funny part is that I hadn’t actually seen it myself. When my copy of Delicious arrived in the post a few days ago, I put it aside to read over the weekend (so as to not distract myself from actual work during the week, and so that I’d have a food magazine to look forward to reading over the weekend). But, somehow I didn’t actually get around to reading it this weekend… Instead, I ended up finding out the news via a friend, who texted me to congratulate me on my mention in Delicious Magazine. I was like “what is she on about?”, so I immediately grabbed my copy of the mag and flicked through it, and *wham*, indeed, there it was! Anne’s Kitchen on page 117!!! Woop Woop.

So, it’s a day of celebration in Anne’s Kitchen today! Come join me for a glass of bubbly!