Well, this blog has gotten horribly out of date recently as we’ve been run off our feet. So here’s the nutshell update of the last four months.

There! That was a heck of a lot to cover in five little bullet points. So I’m going to pretend that the first four didn’t happen yet and concentrate on the last. I will circle round to the others in the next few weeks once I get all my photos sorted!

The long and the short of it is that Claudia has managed to secure a transfer to Shanghai with her current company Morgan Stanley, so we’re going. Just what I’m going to do there we’ve yet to establish with certainty. I was very keen on the idea of being a kept man, but the likelihood of that appears sadly to be shrinking. The odds-on bet at the moment is that I will get a job with Morgan Stanley also working in their IT department. I’m in final negotiations at the moment so I won’t say more in case I jinx anything!

Claudia is leaving on Friday for three months training in Sydney while I stay on in London to see out my current contract and tidy up the loose ends like renting out my house. The plan is that she will fly direct to Shanghai from Sydney in mid-July and I will meet her there.

We both pretty excited to say the least. It promises to be a great chance to make some real progress on improving my Mandarin - something I’ve been studying for some years now - and getting to know a side of my heritage I’ve always felt a bit cut off from. China is definitely on the move and it will be really exciting to be able to see the changes from a ringside seat.

We don’t know how long we will stay - the transfer is technically indefinite - but we expect to stay for at least two years except in the unlikely event that we decide we really really can’t stand the place. If all goes well, I’m also seriously considering starting an MBA in June next year. There is a a really top-notch EMBA program run in conjunction with Tsinghua in Beijing and Insead in Paris which would be fantastic for me as it would give me links to both China and France. The program runs over 18 months, so if that goes ahead we would be committed to Shanghai until at least the end of 2010!

This was a regular favourite my Dad used to make when I was a kid. It’s a sort of zucchini tart made without the pastry and apparently it comes from Lucca in Italy. It’s very easy to make and very tasty. Once you have the basic recipe down you can try substituting all sorts of green veges (brocolli works well).

Dad lost the original recipe we used to use ages ago so I’ve reproduced this from memory and with lots of cribbing from the internet particularly from italy-recipes.com. There are all sorts of variants out there including a desert version which is still made with zucchini but includes sugar!

Ingredients
500 g zucchini
1 onion
100 g flour
100 grams of grated pecorino
2 eggs
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

Preparation
Slice the zucchini and onion finely and place to one side. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees. Combine the salt and pepper, flour, a cup of water, grated pecorino cheese, eggs and oil and mix well. Add vegetables Grease a large rectangular oven pan (scarpaccia should be thin like pizza), and pour the batter into it. Cook for roughly 30 minutes or until golden brown and crispy on top.

Here’s a recipe we made for Xmas dinner recently that went down a treat. Nicked from UKTV Food, but reproduced here in full in case they take it down….

by Nadine Abensur from Good Food Live
(with minor modifications by me!)

For a truly splendid vegetarian meal try Nadine Abensur’s tasty pastry parcel, filled with a rich mushroom and nut filling

* Servings: 12-16
* Level of difficulty: Intermediate
* Preparation Time: 40 minutes
* Cooking Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

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