Fig, Dark Chocolate & Almond Flapjacks

When we were first sent home from hospital with Nino I was tasked by the staff with fattening him up before his open heart surgery. There’s something statistically significant about a baby weighing over 5kg in terms of operation survival rates and, although we weren’t aware of it at the time, Nino’s abnormally complicated network of coronary arteries meant it was even more important that he pack on the pounds. In those early days before his heart was re-plumbed, helpless to fix him myself, food was truly my love language to our little boy. Continue reading →

4Oct2016

Creamy Barley Breakfast Bowls with Hazelnuts & Figs

Despite a coupe of un-seasonally warm days, it’s starting to feel like autumn round here. My evening walk with Nino is bathed in hazy light, it’s dark by the time that supper swings round and those 6am wake up calls? Like the middle of the night. Comfort food feels like the order of the day and dark mornings call for warm breakfast bowls. Nino and I tend to share blueberry porridge made with flaked oats and quinoa, dolloped with thick greek yoghurt and a spoonful of nut butter, but this week I’ve branched out and made a batch of creamy barley to last us several days. Cooked until tender with homemade hazelnut milk and topped with honey roast figs, this nutty grain makes for a delightful porridge substitute and one I’ll be making time and again in the months to come. Continue reading →

11Dec2013

Festive Fig Rolls with Orange, Honey & Cinnamon

They say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. If my husband happened to be said man, you could pretty much guarantee his affection for life with a humble packet of fig rolls.

When he was little, Carnivorous Husband’s mum would always buy two packets of fig rolls at the supermarket: one to keep in the cupboard and one for my hungry husband-to-be to consume in one sitting. A couple of hundred miles away, at a similar age and unaware at this point that he even existed, I took a similar approach to a freshly baked loaf of bread. Some treats, it seems, are made to be savoured, others to be eaten in enormous quantities. Continue reading →

30Sep2011

Cinnamon, Chocolate & Fig macarons

Cinnamon, chocolate & fig – flavours to welcome in autumn

Summer is definitely my favourite season. I don’t know if it’s because I was born in July, but there’s something about the feeling of the sun beating down on warm bare skin, long light evenings and leaves on the trees that makes me inherently happy. Summer food is pretty good too. I’ll take alfresco eating, beautiful ripe fruit and salad over stew any day, and don’t even get me started on the joy of frozen desserts – bowls of soft, sweet ice cream and melting scoops in cones, icy granite with shots of syrup and silky sorbets best enjoyed on a hot hot day.

However – like a lot of good things – summer inevitably comes to an end, and despite this recent bout of freakishly warm weather (please let it last!), it feels about time to welcome in the autumn. Continue reading →