I want to congratulate my friends, Micky and Lawrence, on the birth of their second child, a beautiful baby boy, named Kian. Micky is a great cook and we always look forward to her meals. One of her unique creations is this egg, mint and cucumber canapé. She often makes it for her infamous Christmas party spreads.

The canapés are tasty and super simple to make. They only require cutting up an omelette and slicing a cucumber. Top them with a piece of mint and a splash of hot sauce and voilà. They are light and easy to eat during a party.

We recently went to Ubuntu in downtown Napa, which is one of the hot new dining spots in wine country. Ubuntu is a vegetable restaurant and yoga studio. What can I say, we're in California. The yoga classes are held upstairs, but you have to walk through the restaurant to get to the studio. Imagine clearing your mind and body with some yoga, and then walking downstairs to dine on daily-harvested organic food, with a focus on farm-fresh produce. Brilliant!

We really like the fact Ubuntu labels itself as a vegetable restaurant and not a vegetarian place. Unlike many vegetarian places that try to make vegetables into meat substitutes, Ubuntu simple celebrates the beauty of the vegetable itself. We've dined at Greens and Millennium, two vegetarian restaurants in San Francisco, and walked away unimpressed. Ubuntu on other hand left us wanting to come back for more. Two of the highlights of our meal were...

• Cauliflower in a cast iron pot
  roast-puree-“couscous”, vadouvan spice, toast
  
• Chickpeas with burrata
  olive vinaigrette, pepper quenelles with mint and bread crumbs

Both dishes were delicious and I was taking notes with each bite, knowing that I wanted to try to recreate them at home. We were impressed by the presentation of the chickpea salad, especially the beautiful red quenelles of pepper puree. The crunchiness of the breadcrumbs in the puree was a surprise. We were expecting them to be a little soggy since they were mixed in with the puree, but somehow they remained crispy.