SMOKY FLAVOURS: Chestnuts & Lapsang Tea with Gluten-Free Cake

The good thing about the New Year so far is that my skin is beautifully hydrated! This is thanks to the fact that I spent the Christmas holidays in the UK countryside where it rained almost solidly for two or three weeks. Despite the weather it was a wonderful trip…. but it was definitely very,……

WHITE TRUFFLES & TOPINAMBUR: Jerusalem Artichokes on Fonduta with Crushed Hazelnuts & Truffle Salt

Early autumn mornings were unnaturally quiet for me this year in the Alta Langhe. They lacked those sudden pistol-like cracks echoing through the silent, misty pre-dawn – not actually gunfire as I had initially thought (well, everything is exaggerated at 4.00am in the morning!) – but nutshells being smashed and shattered on the stone path……

AN ITALIAN FESTIVE ‘STRUDEL’ in Assisi – the ‘City of Saints’

We couldn’t have arrived at a more perfect time. The setting sun was throwing it’s last rays on Assisi’s medieval walls and majestic Basilica, gently painting each stone a shimmering, dusky rose and transforming the whole town into a glowing beacon of warmth and peace …. one could almost feel a divine presence standing there……

HARVEST FESTIVAL, PEPPERS & AN ‘INNER GLOW’: with Red Pepper Salsa

It’s amazing to think that only a couple of weeks ago we were at the annual ‘Fiera del Peperone’ or Pepper Festival in Carmagnola, a well-known fixture on the Piemonte early autumn calendar. We were at the tail end of a long, blistering hot summer and still having to search for coolness, shade and chilled……

CHILLING WITH ROSES & ANGELS: An Easy Rosewater & Watermelon Granita

In this relentless heat we’re having at the moment, I’m becoming more and more like a rose every day. Sadly not in the way of looking beautiful or having a gorgeously heady and fragrant aroma, but in the way they shut down when it gets too hot or too dry! According to ‘Fine Gardening’ magazine……

VERGING ON PIZZA: Edible Wildflower ‘Pizzas’

Having narrowly avoided a minor car ‘incident’ today I just wanted to say a quick word about the Italian roundabout! You probably already assume – and why not – that a roundabout, as the name implies, is for driving ‘around’ with the idea of keeping traffic flowing fluidly and thereby easing congestion. However in Italy,……

BERGAMO, BUBBLE TEA and TOADS

Does anyone remember tapioca from their childhood? It was one of those hugely divisive puddings which herded all of us kids into two camps: lovers (that was me!) or haters and was referred to disparagingly as “frogspawn”…. which, I have to say, it had an uncanny resemblance to. Well since those early days (a lifetime……

ARTICHOKES AT THE DOOR: Raw Artichoke & Fennel Salad with Pecorino & Barley Flour Crumb

My honey arrived this morning. Not some random sweetheart of mine but actual raw-honey-in-a-pot brought right to the door……delivered fresh, almost dripping, from bee-hives near Lago d’Iseo by the beekeeper or apicoltore himself. Che bella Italia! This time, rather delightfully – and coincidentally in time for Valentine’s Day – I was not only presented with……

THE LUXURY OF SILENCE & ‘BURRATA’ CHEESE

We humans are a noisy bunch. Blasting alarms, screaming motorbikes and high-pitched beeping seem to follow me everywhere. I remember only realizing the high level of noise when I had my first mobile phone and tried to have a conversation in the streets of London. I ended up down some random  back-alley filled with rotting……

EXOTIC SPICES, VENICE & ‘FORBIDDEN’ BLACK RICE

If Marilyn Monroe had been alive and living in Venice around the 14th or 15th century she would have been singing a song not about diamonds but that ‘Spices Are A Girl’s Best Friend’. At that time La Serenissima (‘the most serene’), an honorary Byzantine title bestowed on the Republic of Venice, was the hugely……