My Top Ten Italian Recipes

tiramisu with vin santo

I’m sure I’ll regret writing this, but for the last few nights Nino has been sleeping better. All that restorative snoozing means he’s bright eyed and bushy tailed the wrong side of 6am most mornings but, while exhausting in its own way, this has encouraged us as a family to make the most of our extra long days. Yes, we may be ready for lunch come 11am, but we’ve also packed in an exercise video or two, a walk round the park, breakfast, snacks, stories, several rounds of coffee, four outfit changes and maybe managed to read a blog or two. On a good day I might even use the time while Nino is down for his first nap to post a recipe of my own . . .

Today, I’m afraid, isn’t one such day: we’re off to Italy on Sunday and in between some freelance recipe development and raising said little human, I haven’t had a chance to successfully re-test and photograph my latest creation. What I do have, however, is  a round up of my top ten Italian recipes from the archives. I can’t take you all to Italy with me, but this is hopefully the next best thing. We’re planning to eat pretty well while we’re away – including my birthday meal out and experimenting with a brand new pizza oven (which I’m inordinately excited about) – so do hop on over to Instagram and follow me if you’d like the latest updates. Continue reading →

Sweet & Salty Nori Popcorn

Sweet & Salty Nori Popcorn - 4

In a couple of weeks I’ll be half way through my maternity leave. While I appreciate that I’m extremely lucky to be able to take a whole year working on the project that is our delicious baby boy, I also can’t quite imagine the time when I’ll spend a whole day apart from him. The longest I’ve gone so far is four hours at the hairdresser, most of which were spent texting his babysitting Nonna (my Mum) for updates and photos and missing him madly. Six months from now he’ll be sitting, talking, possibly walking, eating real food and showing even more of that fabulous personality we’re seeing more glimpses of every day. Reflecting on how quickly things are changing truly makes me savour every second of these precious days.  Continue reading →

Apple & Peanut Butter Muffins

Apple & Peanut Butter Muffins - 2

When I was little, I swore I wouldn’t be the kind of grown up who constantly remarked on how much a child had grown: it’s such a boring conversation opener. And yet here I am, parent to an almost five month old and constantly amazed by how he changes every day. The time since February feels both long and life-changing and simultaneously gone in an instant, those snuggly newborn days a thing of the past and this bright, beady, blue-eyed little boy now making himself and his personality known.  Continue reading →

White Chocolate Pistachio Butter Cups

White Chocolate Pistachio Butter Cups

Exactly one year ago to this day, I found out that I was pregnant with Nino. Of course we didn’t yet know exactly who that poppy seed-sized embryo inside me would turn out to be, but we were pretty sure he (yes he, somehow we knew from the start he’d be a boy) was going to change our lives. I still get goosebumps when I think about seeing those two blue lines for the very first time, Luke’s face when I crept back to the bedroom to tell him the news, his giant beam behind a pair of very bleary eyes . . . Continue reading →

Fifteen Favourite Food Instagram Accounts

the little loaf instagram

I’ve long been an Instagram fan, but becoming a breastfeeding mum turned me into a proper addict. When I wasn’t googling ‘why won’t my baby sleep in . . .’ and ‘is it normal for my newborn to . . .’ during those first few weeks, I spent our wakeful nights scrolling through my favourite accounts, imagining all the delicious treats I would make when I had a moment without a baby attached to my chest.

Now we’re nearly four months in and Nino is sleeping through the night, I’m not quite so scroll happy, but still love spending time during the day to catch up with my favourite Instagram feeds. Ok, that’s a lie, Nino still wakes up a couple of times to snack on a good night, but he now nurses quickly in complete dark, the two of us rolling over and back into sleep as quickly as possible without the distraction of technology.

Regardless of when you get your Insta-fix, I thought it would be fun to compile a list of my favourites – a mixture of beautiful photos, sugar-laced treats, mum and baby eats and more. Enjoy!

Continue reading →

Milk Chocolate Tahini Blondies

Milk Chocolate Tahini Blondies - 9

Way back, before Ottolenghi opened his first deli in Notting Hill and when the general public still thought the anchovies that Delia Smith used on her BBC cooking show were exotic, my Mum was using tahini as an ingredient. On shopping trips out we’d frequent cafes like Food for Thought and Cranks for lunch, while at home the cupboards were stocked with packets of wholesome seeds and grains. While most wound their way into savoury dishes – ours was a household decidedly lacking in childhood sweet treats – my Mum had a wonderful recipe for tahini flapjacks studded with sesame seeds and peanuts which we’d eagerly await the appearance of as an after school snack. Continue reading →

Malteser Ice Cream Bars

Malteser ice cream bars

Like the Banoffee Pie I posted a few weeks back, I hadn’t planned to put this recipe up on the blog, but an enthusiastic response on Instagram (my most likes ever, where did all you people come from?) led me to believe I should share the details. In fact I’m thinking of starting an Insta-recipe series (Izy does something similar) of treats I haven’t had time to test multiple times or capture with anything other than my iPhone, but which I’d like to log recipe details of for a future me – and for you to try, of course. Continue reading →

Pistachio & Apricot Granola

Pistachio & Apricot Granola

One night last week I rocked our baby boy to sleep singing ‘Twinkle twinkle little star’ on an infinite loop, standing next to the tumble dryer because its continuous grumble was the only thing (besides my twinkly twinkles) that seemed to soothe his tired cries. We might have got Nino out of hospital, but that doesn’t mean we’re not now faced with all the usual problems that being the parent of a brand new baby brings. And as any tired parent knows, when you’re sleeping less and singing (bouncing, shhh-ing, swinging . . . you name it) more, an energy boosting breakfast you can quickly sling into a bowl one-handed becomes a very important thing. Continue reading →

How To Mend a Broken Heart: Nino’s Hospital Story

Nino Doran

Blogging is a funny thing. In the five plus years since I first pressed publish, I’ve built up a community of not just contacts but friends, sharing life-changing events like getting engaged and married, writing a cookbook and getting pregnant. It’s a deeply personal place, yet simultaneously accessible to any stranger, which is why I had to think hard about how much of Nino’s story to share in this space. But after some deliberation I realised that it’s too important not to tell; for me as a journal and catharsis of sorts, for Nino when he’s older to see how far he’s come, for loved ones to understand what we’ve been through, and even for those strangers to raise awareness of the rare congenital heart conditions that can happen in any pregnancy.   Continue reading →