Paella
Mr friend Florence cooked this for us. She learnt it from an old Spanish gentleman long time ago and she's been cooking this for years.
We started with onions sauteed in olive oil , then added risotto and tomato sauce. 
The secret is a generous pinch of Spanish saffron . We put in Australia mussels, clam, squids, scallops and shrimps, super yummy! The rice is a bit chewy and so satisfying! We thought that was too big a pot for five ladies to finish but we were wrong!

It's sea bass season, the fish is delicious and fat and abundant in this time of the year. So I decided to have sea bass for dinner.
I was going to fillet and fry it. My friend Bonnie showed me a how to bake it in a batter of flour and sea salt. Fish I cleaned and pat dry the fish. Then we rolled out two sheets of pastry, put the fish on the bottom sheet and put the other sheet on top of the fish. We pressed the top pastry gently along the side to squeeze out excess air .

We cut the pastry in a fish shape with fins along the actual size of the fish. We also 'printed ' the eye and 'carved out' the scales and tail.

We baked the fish for 20 minutes in 160 degrees Celsius.  There is no need to season the fish as the dough is salty and the flavour  will go into the fish when it's being baked.

It was juicy and tender when done. All the flavour was kept inside the crust . 

We had turkey for Christmas dinner. It was a chilled turkey "flew in" from France. When it came ,it still had feather on it's head. It weighted 11 pounds.

But we never had such delicious turkey!  And we finished it in just one meal!

Compare to the regular butterball turkey , this is quite simple and easy to make. It needn't be defrosted and massaged . I just stuffed it with fig and chestnut , baked it in medium heat for about two hours. Voila, it smelled so good! And even the white meat was tender and juicy. 

Too bad we didn't take a picture when it's done (we were too eager to eat it and forgot to take a picture) .

I thank my friend Bonnie for ordering the turkey for me and teaching me how to cook it. 

Macaroon

My friend Bonnie So gave me this recipe and taught me how to make this. They are so light and dainty that eating them make me feel like an elegant French lady! The best thing is they are so small that they satisfy the crave of my sweet tooth yet never over run my calorie count. Then I can always fill them with different fillings according to seasons and moods. Fruit jam is my all time favourite, chocolate is always tempting. They go well with a cup of Earl Grey.

Mrs Lee's napoleon

We had great fun making this napoleon. I have to thank my friend Florence for teaching me to make this. This is the best napoleon I have had since our Montreal days in the 80s : layers of crispy buttery pastry, whip cream, sponge cake and mango. The slightly salty flakes and the just right sweetness of the soft sponge give interesting sense of taste . The fragrance of the Australian mango adds another dimension to the flavour and it goes so well with the cream. Satisfying yet never filling. The magical thing is that it stayed crispy after a whole day in the fridge!

Mango Jam

Swiss Roll

Swiss rolls use sponge cake as the base. There are many variations for the sponge cake. e.g. plain, chocolate, marble... and there are even more variations for the fillings. I like rolls versus layer cake because I can use less cream between the layers and enjoy more the flavour of the sponge. And I like to use fresh fruit for the filling. The top choice fruit is mango. Mangoes go extremely well with cream. When the special kind of fruit is out of season, I use fruit jam instead. It goes well with a cup of English tea in the afternoon. For even more fun, special flavour can be added to the cream too.