This week in the kitchen...

Very quick and easy raspberry sorbet (gently heat 1 cup sugar with 1 cup water to make a syrup, then blend with 1 cup frozen raspberries.  Add a squeeze of lemon juice.  Pop in the freezer for half an hour to chill and then churn in your ice-cream machine.  If you don't have an ice-cream machine you can just leave it in the freezer for a couple of hours, stirring every half hour or so to keep the texture light)

Green tea ice-cream made with some very special matcha powder I bought in Japan.  Matcha is an incredibly popular flavour in Japan (probably akin to vanilla here in Aus) - you can get matcha flavoured kit kats, cookies, ice-cream - just about anything you can think of.  It really is delicious and I couldn't get enough of it when we were in Tokyo.

I just had to show you a photo of this packaging!  After wrapping the matcha tin with intricate origami style folds the lady in the shop presented it to me and said in a self-deprecating way 'is this ok?'  Amazing!  I wanted to hug her and ask her for gift wrapping lessons!!

Pumpkin and asparagus quiche (recipe found here).  I was too tired to make pastry and this was just a week-night dinner so I cheated by lining a greased pie dish with thinly sliced slightly stale bread and then pouring over an egg beaten with a little milk to moisten it.  I'm not going to try and tell you it's as good as pastry (because let's face it, nothing is as good as pastry!) but it's certainly passable as a quicker and healthier alternative.

Wholemeal spaghetti with kale and swiss brown mushrooms sautéed with some onion and garlic in a little home-made chicken stock.