I’ve loved panna cotta ever since my parents bought a delicious cranberry and orange one for Christmas from Marks and Spencer one year. Buying it sort of became a tradition, but for a long time that was the only flavour I’d tried. I’d always thought making it would be too hard, but after browsing through a few recipes, I realised it was pretty simple.

I wanted to make something with matcha for my recipe in NEO this month, after my holiday in France when I spotted a rice pudding recipe with it in in a cooking magazine. As you can see, the results, are pretty good! Getting the recipe right was pretty tricky, and I went through three batches before I got it right, ending up adding more gelatine and matcha powder by the end.

Also, check out my nifty new verrine in the top pic. It seems as though all of foodie France is totally obsessed with these cute little glasses, which you fill with sweet or savoury treats to show off to your guests. First of all, I came across recipe books for them in the Forum, then I found a shop with loads of them on sale. Obviously they were so cute I had to buy them, and once I did, everywhere I looked there were hundreds of the blimming things. Now I’ve got two sets of spoons specially sized for mini glasses (I should have bought the cute little forks too…) and two cookbooks dedicated to them… I wish I’d bought more, but that’s just me…

Who doesn’t love vending machines? More importantly, who doesn’t love Coke? I love Coke. Do you love Coke? It’s possible that the entire population of the world, with the exception of my fiance, Michael, loves Coke.

So, in this age of consumerism, where everyone wants to do their own thing, and forge their own, brave trail through the mountains of life, what better than a vending machine that dispenses customised drinks? Why drink lemonade like everyone else, when you can make up your own beverage? Why toe the party line when you can be an inventor? A brave discoverer of new culinary frontiers?

You know what, I may sound sarcastic, but this is fricking awesome and I want to go to America right now so I can try one of these babies out.

The deal is, Coca Cola has unveiled this new breed of vending machines, called Freestyle, which are programmed to dispense 140 different flavours by way of a touch-screen interface. You simply select the basic drink you want (Coca-Cola, lemonade, etc), and then you can add further flavours like cherry or whatever. Apparently, you can also choose your drinks by calorie count, or caffeine, and you can even choose how much to put in your cup – I know that sounds lame, but it does mean you can add loads of different flavour combos, so you can add in some limeade on top of that cherry cola to create something a bit more unique – and probably utterly disgusting.

Coca-Cola will be monitoring every transaction (Big Brother, Big Brother, 1984 has come!) and might use the machines to trial new flavours and see what consumer demand is. The vending machines supposedly use some new magical technology which makes it possible for the machines to stock a much larger range of flavours than ever before, and keep everything fresh, so it’s mixed right on the spot. So, this is more of a soda fountain than an actual vending machine, but I won’t argue.

If you live in Orange County, California, you might have seen one of these in your local restaurant. Lucky b. I hope you like them, because if you do, maybe we’ll end up with them in the UK. One day. I can dream.

I watched a hilarious programme last week, which I’d seen advertised when I was on holiday in France (TV from the Channel Islands, gotta love it) but forgot about until I browsed through the On Demand section of BT Vision, looking for a cooking show. I sort of knew Economy Gastronomy was going to be lost on me when I heard one of the presenters, Allegra McEvedy, claiming you could make three or four meals out of one £16 fish, one of which was evidently composed mostly of bones… Anyway, I watched the second episode, which followed a family that spent £17,000 a year on food, and still managed to eat crap. Magically, Allegra and Paul Merrett reduced their outgoings by something like three hundred quid, down to over two hundred a week. Needless to say, having spent an average of £15 a week on food and household stuff like cleaners, shampoo and toilet rolls, for two people for the last three months, I was unimpressed.

In a way, I feel sorry for the presenters, as obviously their hearts are in the right place, but the concept’s had to be jazzed up for TV so it sounds more exciting. But still, when Allegra McEvedy cooked up over £20 of beef for a daube which was supposed to last three meals, and then added in a tonne more other ingredients which surely doubled the price, and then one of those meals turned out to be lunch, I totally lost the will to sympathise. It must be a really hard gig, but surely they could have reduced their weekly bills by a lot more than they did. I want to see suffering. Blood, sweat and tears. And don’t even get me started on the marinade recipe which appeared to call for just the juice out of a jar of preserved ginger…

Economy Gastronomy is on BBC2 Wednesday at 8pm, or can be watched on iPlayer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00m5wtl. If, you know, you want a laugh.

This was my lunch today – lovely store cupboard ramen. The soup stock was from a packet, but with all the other toppings it doesn’t make a lot of difference. (Who makes their own stock every time anyway?) At the top is preserved bamboo shoots, then to the right is pickled ginger, under that is dried spring onions, then under that is simmered konbu tsukudani style (with mirin, sugar and soy sauce), then sliced boiled egg, and in the middle is some wakame. I always have dried spring onions and wakame around anyway because I add it to miso soup sometimes, but the tsukidani and the other pickles are new ingredients I was sent by Japan Centre for a feature in the magazine. I absolutely love the tsukudani – you can make it yourself at home. The package calls it konbu and kelp, but I actually think it’s hijiki – which is worrying considering that the FSA has advised against eating it due to the presence of inorganic arsenic. I eat very little so I’m not too worried! But eating large quantities daily is probably a pretty bad idea…

I decided to create this blog in order to chronicle my kitchen based exploits, which are admittedly slapdash, hodgepodge, but never half hearted! I enjoy Asian cooking, particularly Japanese, and have another website with a blog at www.bentobusiness.co.uk, where I write about the Japanese lunch boxes I have made, shared recipes and try to act as a resource for UK bento fans. Obviously though I eat more than lunch, and I don’t just cook Japanese food, so I thought I’d give this a whirl and see where it goes…