This has been my very very new experience: pears cooked in red wine and flavored with spices. Though I don’t drink much and very often, but I like wine. I feel excited whenever I try a glass of wine and it tastes good. I’ve never read much about wine and I criticize the quality of wine based solely on my taste and liking. But I do hope when conditions allow, I will learn more about wine and wish to experience the varieties of wine more deeply and widely.

Normally I don’t like eating pears, maybe because the taste is not to my liking. Even when I make cakes with pears, I often don’t feel very interested in eating. When I see pears look so good at markets, I will buy some as my husband loves them. This time I bought some small pears then I decided to try this dessert, which I’ve observed in many websites on the Internet. I followed the recipe in one of my cookbooks titled "Guilt-free desserts" – a collection of low-fat desserts. Then, what I liked most was not the pears but the syrup made from red wine which was enhanced with brandy and other spices.

I toasted some pistachios for decoration purpose and for adding texture to the dish. The pear was very tender and the flavor of wine was very deep, it was absorbed a lot into the pears, which made the pears very special in taste.

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I first heard of saffron when I watched TV shows on cooking competitions, seeing great chefs using saffron as special spice in their dish. I was so curious about these tiny red threads and I searched for more information about them. Then I decided to buy a box of saffron threads. It was rather expensive for a small box of around 50g, but each time only a small number of threads are used, so I think it is quite reasonable and that I will not finish a box like this too soon.

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Ripe tomatoes are so easy to be made into simple yet delicious soup. I followed the recipe in my cookbook of Party Food and Appertizers. In fact the recipe calls for sun-dried tomato paste so that the soup has intense flavor. However, I didn’t have that kind of tomato paste so I went ahead using normal tomato paste. The soup was still tasty though I wondered how the authentic taste would be like.

We can choose to cook with either chicken stock or vegetable stock, and I picked vegetable stock to get a real fresh and vegetarian soup. I made the toasted cheese croûte with baguette slices and grated Parmesan cheese.

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It’s been very cold in Hanoi these days, and I felt like having something hot and crispy, not minding if it is greasy as any dish of this kind is so suitable for these days’ weather. And it is greater to enjoy a bowl of this sweetcorn fritters with my hubby while watching our favorite movies.

It only needs a little preparation in advance for the fritter batter should stand in the fridge for several hours before you can combine it with sweetcorn kernels, then your fritters will taste so good. I followed the recipe from the book "Professional Cooking" by Wayne Gisslen. However, as it is high in calories and fat, I do not suggest to have these fritters often, especially when we just sit and relax as couch-potatoes.

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Blue cheese has a strong and distinctive flavor, which is so outstanding in this soup. I like having this soup with freshly baked hard-crusted bread. As this type of bread stales quickly so whenever I make them, I often plan to prepare some soup to serve with bread as our main meal.

Blue cheese is already salty. My soup this time was a bit salty for our taste even if I used home-made chicken stock – to which I do not often add any salt, but after doing several seasonings, the final soup was still salty after I added the blue cheese. In addition to that, the bacon was a little salty, the hard crust bread was also a little salty, we could only get through our meal with a glass of water. So be careful with seasoning when you make this soup.

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This pasta soup is easy to make. In fact, this is the first time I made pasta soup. At first I wanted to make something with butternut squash and I came across this recipe. It was just perfect as I like both pasta and soup. 

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In the past, when I didn’t like the taste and flavor of bell peppers, until I learned to cook them myself in a proper way and I became a fan of bell peppers. I hardly eat them raw (like eating an apple), but when they are chopped and mixed in salad, I really appreciate the freshness, juiciness and crispiness of those small bits. When cooked in stew dishes, their taste is so palatable and easy to eat. My sister used to refuse any dish with bell peppers, but then I cooked her some pasta dishes with bell peppers and she adores bell peppers so much now.

As much as I like bell peppers, this is the my first time trying the taste of roasted bell peppers. The taste is so good, so sweet and a gentle smoke smell enhances the taste. When it comes to this salad, the sweet taste blends with the fragrant sourness of balsamic vinegar to bring out a very special flavor. This is another dish that leverages the taste of bell peppers.

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I seldom eat fast food at fast food restaurants. The only one that I go to more often than the others is Subway, where the meals are supposed to be healthier and that I can choose what I want to add to the sandwich. I remember I’ve eaten burgers just only a few times at McDonald and Burger King. They were not so fancy to mel. 

Until I watched Kitchen Nightmare hosted by chef Gordon Ramsay and seeing him making beef burger, I was so inspired to make a real homemade burger. What I like is that I can substitute part of the beef with breadcrumbs, and I can control the amount of onion I want to put in the patty, just that the amount is reasonable to be equally distributed in the ground beef.

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