Food has always been a focus in my life. I learned to appreciate food growing up in a home where my mother would prepare food reflecting her background. My mother roots where of Sephardic Jew from Turkey. I would watch her making her own Filo pastry, stretching the dough on the kitchen table till it would be paper thin. She had a Cook, Jean, (John in English) in the Belgian Congo. Jean had been a cook at the

Hotel Leopold II and taught my mom all the subtleties of the French Cuisine. Eager to learn she mastered the art of the Mille Feuilles, Salade Nicoise, and Eclairs.

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By the time that I was 17 years old, I had lived in 3 continents and 4 countries. In Belgium, I discovered the Pommes Frites (Chips) with Mayonnaise, the Gaufres (waffles) and the Chocolates. I also discovered that I hated Choucroute (sauerkraut).

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My formative years were spent in Buenos Aires, where I discovered Panqueques con Dulce de Leche (Pancakes with Dulce de Leche), Asados (barbecue) and Empanadas.

My mother, would take me to the food market and I learned from her how to choose fruit and vegetable, meat and fish. Every piece of food bought was examined, weight, smelt and finally brought home, where the melon would be left in the kitchen fruit bowl, to ripen, smelt and pressed till it was considered ripe and ready to eat.

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From Buenos Aires we came to Cape Town, a discovery of the Cape Malay cooking, with the Samosas and the Curry, the Afrikaans dessert of Koeksisters and Melktert and of course, the influence of the British Cooking, the Fish and Chips.

My Jewish cooking extended beyond the Sephardic one when I married my husband who is an Ashkenazi Jew. His grandmother was doubtful of my Jewishness, as I did not know Gefilte Fish and Kneidlach. But I was lucky that my mother in law was an excellent cook and instructed me in the art of the Ashkenazi Cooking.

The love of food is evident from the above, but what made me decide to do this website, is that there is an information overload of recipes on the net, but very little on how to match the different courses.

Today there is no time to cook as our mothers used to, there is a whole industry of readymade meals, and no doubt that a ready made Filo pastry is as good as the one

 my mother made.

I found that I ponder for days before having a dinner party, on what to serve with what. I have kept truck of previous menus of dinner party and have included some here, others are made of choice of contrasting flavour, ease of making, and time needed to make the different courses.

I hope you will found the menus helpful, the recipes interesting and you will gather around a dinner table, not only wishing each other Bon Appétit, but also making the wish

come true.