All posts tagged: chocolate

nutella bread

Boozy Naughty Nutella Flower Brioche

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Belated Happy New Year to all my readers! Another year has rolled in silently, and my first post in the new year is a sunflower Nutella brioche. My mind has been racing with many thoughts and some new plans to simplify my life are brewing slowly, which explains the silence. 2017 was a very volatile year in terms of relationship and work, which involved two-city life. It has finally come to an end and we will start 2018 with more stability. Fingers crossed xx What it would mean, though, that I won’t be able to eat with you in Istanbul as much as I’d like to. It’s already happened, I know, since I took a semi-permanent séjour at the winery. Having said that, my winery posts are among the most popular posts on my blog! Anyway, I’ll continue to inspire with delicious stories, travels, more adventures as a cellar rat and a WSET Dip student, and the stories of living in Canakkale. Nutella… Mr.O has a weakness for it.  Hey, who isn’t? But not for …

chocolate raspberry cake

My first book and the kids cake

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Knock, knock… are you still there? It’s been a long break once again. My apologies… You can guess why I’ve been away, right? I got married and left for honeymoon without the ‘honey’. I spent 5 weeks in London for a wine course! Am I crazy? Yes, maybe I am. You need to be crazy in order to follow your heart and dreams, not money and fame. It’s challenging but more rewarding, no doubt. So I left the unpacking the boxes to Mr.O, the now-hubby, after moving to our new love nest, and off I went. I’ll share my experiences and discoveries in London soon. When I came back, I had loads of work to catch up on including the book. In addition, I had to organise the wedding – yes, I got married in May but the actual wedding ceremony was held last week – and also had to spend time with my family, who came earlier to travel around Turkey before the wedding. When my publisher sent me a photo of the book …

Chocolate beetroot cake

Honesty, really good?

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I’ve been thinking about ‘honesty‘ lately. You’ve probably heard enough of the cliché that living in Turkey will change your beliefs in what is right and wrong and what is logical and illogical. I’m still trying to absorb and digest all the confusions. I had so many ups and downs last week that I didn’t have any motivations to write or cook. Thanks to that, I discovered some hidden gem restaurants. The death of my lovely canary who used to wake us me at 7am with beautiful songs to start with, then came the news of my new nephew on the way, which isn’t entirely happy news as it should be…. and then, my good intentions and hopes got quashed by an unexpected tyranny, my naivety, and came the news of moving house. So I rummaged through my tiny bookshelf – nomads don’t have such a thing – and picked up Rumi’s poems to make sense of the things that had happened. I believe that life is fair no matter how badly it treats you from …

persimmon chocolate

First Snow – Chocolate Persimmon Muffins

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Today Yesterday, one day before New Year’s Eve, I woke up to the first snow of winter. It wasn’t much to speak of, let alone to cover the streets and trees with a blanket of white snow, however, it surely made me accept that the cold winter had finally set in. For some reason, I have a history of baking something with chocolate on the first snow day, not that I intend to do. Watching it snow, I felt lucky not having to go out in the wind and cold. I opened the fridge and found only one egg…grrr…I used up all the eggs to make Caramelised Leek Goat Cheese Tart for the Christmas dinner. Oh, yeah, the party was good, crowded with expats married to Turks and their kids, and we had a feast with all the typical Christmas foods, even mulled wine and panettone, which was probably the most popular.We played a present exchange game and I was the last to pick or steal a present. The Canadian lady who got panettone and …

Autumn Colours of Jura / Seafood Tartare / Blue Prawn Gratin / Fondant Ice Cream

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Yesterday I made tartare au saumon fumé, well, smoked salmon tartare;please excuse my overuse of French. I’m still in the holiday mood. The smoked salmon was a gift from a Canadians guest, which is home-made. I happened to have some avocados so I threw it in a bowl with chopped tomatoes, onions, garlic, dill, etc. It’s simple but delicious. That dish reminded me of this post I had been meaning to post but been delaying because there is so much rambling in it. I hope you don’t mind it but at least enjoy the magnificent photos of the Jura mountains at their best. Just down the road from the house there is a path in the woods that leads to a bridge or a river. We set off for a walk to look for mushrooms, but the walk was the main and the mushrooms were just extra bonus, just the way one’s life works. Reaching a goal isn’t important; what’s important is what you meet on the way there. We didn’t have much luck with …

Confit de Carnard / Quick Easy Fondant au Chocolat

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The days of blue sky, as in the photo, seem to have ended in this part. The trees have lost their charming colours and now have more naked colours of brown. As I’m having my last week in Jura, I’m already being nostalgic, looking at all the photos from my crazy 3 week-long adventure of the Jura mountains and Jura wines. I have the last mission to complish, which is to visit the froggy lakes that were featured in Triplets of Belleville and eat frog legs, which will be the last supper to celebrate the end of my gastronomic holiday.