Flavour Wheel – REAL SIMPLE FOOD

May 11, 2015May 10, 2015

Smokey Banana Bread – Goes Well With Coffee – 8th Edition

I wasn’t supposed to be in Brussels this weekend. I had booked flights to Rome to see Alessandro who just moved back there after taking his final exams in Turin. Alas, thanks to the fire in Rome’s airport, that weekend in 32 degrees Celsius temperatures was not meant to be. Instead I spent all of Saturday at work (thankfully this doesn’t happen too often and being in Brussels definitely made it easier having to work) and what was left of my weekend was mainly spent on the sofa, drinking my first batch of this year’s cold brew coffee and eating one too many slices of this Smokey Banana Bread. The inspiration for this recipe goes back several years. Back to before I moved to Brussels, back to before I had even moved to Rome, when my sister Helena was still living in Brussels and I was living in London. Helena came to see me often – to spend time together, to

March 16, 2015

Tamarind Pate de Fruit – Goes Well With Coffee – 7th Edition

As much as I like cooking food at home, I actually adore going out for dinner. Growing up as one of four kids, meals at restaurants were few and far between and mostly happened during the summers we spent in the South of France. Visits to restaurants are more frequent for me these days, yet having dinner at a restaurant still feels special. And I would actually like to keep it that way. I much prefer to eat at home as a general rule and save those restaurant visits for special occasions (and very special meals). And when I do go for dinner at a restaurant, I love the entire experience. A glass of bubbly while I peruse the menu, ideally already accompanied by a few small bites ‘courtesy of the chef’. If I am lucky, the menu is one that leaves me struggling to decide what to eat thanks to the myriad of enticing options: dishes composed of ingredients I (i) either don’t know,

February 17, 2015February 17, 2015

Blueberry and Thyme Buckle – Goes Well With Coffee – 6th Edition

We are already half-way through February and so far I am not sure 2015 is all that. A good friend had a pretty scary car accident in January and while he is lucky to be alive, various broken bones mean he faces a long road to recovery. And maybe it is an age thing, but suddenly numerous friends are having had to deal with sick parents. Yet while the normal reaction to these kinds of news would be to be grateful for your own good health (which I generally am) and to try and live in the moment a bit more (well, I try), I must admit that I have been in a bit of a funk and generally feeling a bit ‘meh’ about everything. But this weekend I decided I had had enough. After three weekends away and with the sun starting to show its face just long enough during the day to remind me that winter is nearing

January 27, 2015

‘Everything Bagel’ Rye Scones with Scallion Cream Cheese – Goes Well With Coffee – 5th Edition

When my eyes first fell upon the SCAA’s flavour wheel I remember scanning the different flavours and at first nodding in agreement – citrus (yep), berry (yep), chocolate (yep) – and then my eyes fell on ‘alliaceous’ (garlic and onion) and I was a bit flummoxed. I had certainly never tried a coffee and thought – ‘hmm, not bad, I just wish it did not taste so strongly of onion or garlic’ (nor in fact have I ever reminisced fondly about a coffee that reminded me of our favourite alliums!). So I had to do some research to understand where that onion or garlic flavour in coffee can come from. It turns out, there are two reasons why the flavour of coffee can remind you of onion and garlic. Both can be a side effect of ‘wet processing’ (also referred to as washed processing) of coffee beans, a process which involves coffee beans (after being removed from the coffee cherries but

September 29, 2014September 29, 2014

Toasted Cornmeal and Salted Honey Shortbread … Goes Well With Coffee – 1st Edition

This post is a little different from my regular posts as I have decided that, over the next few months, I want to do a series of posts all around one theme. And no, we are not talking Christmas cookies (even if Pinterest might have you believe you should be dusting off your star-shaped cookie cutters already). Instead, this little series will be all about things that go well with coffee. And by things that go well with coffee, I, of course, mean cakes, cookies, pastries and all their various incarnations. Because, really, isn’t the whole point of sitting down for a cup of coffee the opportunity to enjoy something sweet alongside said cup of coffee? The series is inspired by the Coffee Taster’s Flavour Wheel produced by the Specialty Coffee Association of America. As it says on the SCAA’s website, the Flavour Wheel develops a glossary of coffee terms based on sensory science and is used by coffee cuppers