Roast chicken with sumac and za'atar

While planning my trip to Dubai, my sister in law asked me if there was any particular food I wanted to try. I told her anything but rice and curry. Actually, I wanted to try out Lebanese and where better than where it's made best- after Lebanon, of course! Fortunately, there was Al-Shami restaurant at Sharjah, a hop, skip and jump away from home. Quite popular with the locals, the place was...

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Happy Easter; baked Alaska coffee cupcakes for a birthday

About a week ago, I got a mail from Google congratulating my blog for turning 2 years old. Caught up in the midst of a humongous project, I ignored this missive, thinking someone somewhere had got their dates wrong. Yeah, it was me alright!! It was only last night when I realised I had missed the date. In all seriousness I told a dear friend about my misery in forgetting my blog's birthday and...

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At the Cakes & Desserts with Fruit workshop

The one fruit that was so difficult to source this time around was lychees. None of my usual suppliers could get a can for me though I was told there were cans available at a premium store- the brand was not one I liked. I finally pushed myself into going to Parry's and luckily, was able to get hold of a couple of cans. I'm told in a month or so, the fruit will be available more readily. Besides...

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Gingery Eve's pudding

With a name like Eve's pudding, there has to be a couple of apples around, right? The recipe is a traditional British one with apples and a cake "hat". It's a fuss free dessert that gets done quite fast and tastes even better served with ice cream or custard. My recipe has a couple of non standard additions, nothing like a bit of spice to shake up things. So I've flavoured the sponge with a little...

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Cakes and desserts with fruit- a workshop

Summer's here. And that's also when there's lots of fruit available in the markets. After a while, watermelons turn into watermelon juice, watermelon prawn cocktail, watermelon punch, mangoes turn into mango shakes, mango ice cream, mango cheesecake...you know where I'm going with this... So what better time than now to make fruit based cakes and desserts. Hence, a workshop on "Cakes and Desserts...

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