Happy New Year everybody! I hope you had a fun (and food) filled New Year’s Eve and I wish you all the best for 2014!!! Today I want to celebrate the beginning of the new year with a special recipe. We had these on Christmas Eve and they were a huge hit. Every year we…
COTECHINO WITH ITALIAN MASH POTATOES
As the last post of the year, I had to share with you a cotechino recipe. That’s because Italians always have at least one slice of cotechino on New Year’s Eve! It’s a tradition that I love to keep alive even down under. I often make my own cotechino (you can find my tutorial and…
JASMINE AND MANGO PANNA COTTA SHOOTERS
These panna cotta shooters are a very elegant and exotic dessert. I believe they would be the perfect dessert for any New Year’s Eve dinner party. When I smell jasmine, I am always brought back in time… you see, in the house I used to spend my summer holidays in Sicily, we had a beautiful…
PASTA BAKE – PASTA AL FORNO
MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone! I hope you are all having a fantastic holiday season, full of laughter and love. I hope you are spending more time with your family and friends and that you take some time to slow down and really savour each moment of this special time of the year. I am blessed as…
COFFEE AND VANILLA LIQUEUR
Like every year, I made some edible gifts to give my friends for Christmas. Last year, I had successfully made some Bailey’s Irish Cream, so this time I wanted to experiment with other flavoured liqueurs. I love Kahlua, so I thought I would try that. I found lots of recipes and in the end I…
MIFFY MARSHMALLOW POPS
I love making marshmallow pops for my girls’ birthday parties. They are very fast to make, fun and versatile: you can make almost anything out of marshmallows (check out my Sea Marshmallow Pops and my Pixie Dust Marshmallow Pops). What I like the most though, is the fact that they are easy and quick to make…
MIFFY CAKE
My little Georgia loves Miffy. She has had a Miffy doll since she ws very little and has never separated from it. She sleeps with it and takes it everywhere she goes… it even came with us to Tahiti! So when I asked her what cake she wanted for her 4th birthday party she had…
GEORGIA’S 4TH BIRTHDAY
On the 1st my youngest daughter turned 4! If you read this blog regularly, you will know that my family has been hit by a bout of flu that put my husband and daughters in bed for a week. We had planned Georgia’s birthday party for the 1st of December. Her nonni were meant to…
MOLTEN WHITE CHOCOLATE PUDDING
My husband doesn’t like chocolate. Or so he claims. No, wait. That’s not correct, he doesn’t like milk and dark chocolate… but he ADORES white chocolate. So, when I saw these little molten puddings, I knew I had found a recipe that would really please him. My kids and I have no problems with any…
BUFFALO STYLE WINGS
It is time again for the “Secret recipe club” reveal! I am sure you all know what the club is about, but for the few of you who still don’t know about it, here goes a brief explanation. It is a great concept… each month you are assigned a participating food blogger to make a…
LASAGNE WITH ZUCCHINI PESTO, SPECK AND SMOKED SCAMORZA
Mmmm Lasagne! My favourite dish ever. Growing up my parents and I would make Lasagne for big occasions, like Christmas or birthdays. And they would always be the classic meat version (you can find my recipe here). Well, lately I have been making all sorts of Lasagne. Remember my Pesto Lasagne (my all time favourite!), or…
MANU’S CHRISTMAS MENUS – BOOK GIVEAWAY
As many of you already know, I have recently published my first eBook: Manu’s Christmas Menus. The eBook contains 20 original recipes, divided in 4 menus, to help you bring Italy to your table this holiday Season. All recipes have step by step instructions and pictures and they have never been published before (so you…
SHANKARPALI – SHAKARPARA
Happy Diwali! Today is the beginning of Diwali (दिवाली), the “festival of lights”, a 5-day Indian festival that celebrates the triumph of good over evil and light over darkness. Light is the symbol of the celebrations and many clay lamps filled with oil are lit during the 5 days of the festival. As you may know,…
BLOOD ORANGE MARGARITA
Happy Halloween everyone! I cannot believe it’s the end of October already! This year has just flown by so fast. That means that Christmas is around the corner and I cannot wait as my parents will be arriving soon… and this year we already have our menus set for the holidays. They want to try…
MANU’S CHRISTMAS MENUS
Today is a big day for me. I can finally share with all of you a project that I have been working on for the last three months. It’s been hard doing all of it quietly as I am not very good at keeping things to myself when I am very excited about something. But…
SALTED CARAMEL PANNA COTTA
You know how much I love panna cotta, but what you may not know is that I consider it my “go to” dessert for when I have little time, but still want to impress my guests. You do need to make it in advance, but it comes together in 15 to 20 minutes. It is…
TORTELLI DI ZUCCA – PUMPKIN TORTELLI
In my last post I had promised you a recipe to use up some of that beautiful Mostarda Mantovana that I showed you how to make. Well… here I am to keep my promise. Today’s recipe is yet another recipe from Mantova, in Lombardy and it is an honour for me to showcase it on…
CABBAGE AND TALEGGIO CRESPELLE
The weather is getting warmer in Sydney, though I always find it hard to think of September/October as “spring”. To me it’s still autumn, back to school season and the time during which to enjoy mushrooms, cabbage and pumpkin! I am hopeless, I know! So… before it gets even warmer down here, let me share…
PESCHE DOLCI ALLA SICILIANA
I am very excited about today’s recipe. I am taking you all back to Sicily for this Regional Italian dish… a very special one. These are among my favourite Sicilian pastries. They are not as famous as cannoli, but they are just as delicious. The filling is in fact the same sweet ricotta filling of…
BEEF AGGLASSATO
Today’s Regional Italian dish is yet another dish from Sicily! It is a very easy and delicious beef pot roast (kind of) made with onions and white wine. It is a recipe from Palermo that comes from my father’s side of the family. I have already shared with you the recipe for Chicken Agglassato, and this…
MUGHLAI LAMB BIRYANI
Grace, one of our talented non-blogging Daring Kitchen members, was our Daring Cooks’ August hostess who shared with us some of her family’s tried and true Bengali Biryani recipes – all of them delicious and all of them prepared fresh from our own kitchens! The first thing I thought when I saw this month’s challenge was…
MANGO AND PASSION FRUIT COCKTAIL
Today I am sharing with you the recipe for a tropical and yummy sweet cocktail made with Mango and Passion fruit. I actually made this last year for the first time when my friend Anna was visiting us from Italy. We cooked a Thai inspired dinner together and this was our drink for the evening. …
WHITE CHOCOLATE PASSION FRUIT TRUFFLES
I told you I would not forget about you!! So here I am with a sweet tropical recipe: White Chocolate Passion Fruit Truffles! I love passion fruit and I think it goes very well with chocolate, especially the white kind, as its slightly tart flavour combines perfectly with the sweetness of white chocolate! These truffles…
SMOKED SALMON AND PROSCIUTTO CRESPELLE SNAILS
For my daughter’s 6th birthday party, I wanted to make a few savoury items as well. As the theme was fairies and nature, I thought of playing around with shapes. My first thought was to make sandwiches and cut them into cute shapes, but then I changed my mind as I wanted something a bit…
LEMON CHEESECAKE BARS
It is time again for the “Secret recipe club” reveal! I am sure you all know what the club is about, but for the few of you who still don’t know about it, here goes a brief explanation. It is a great concept… each month you are assigned a participating food blogger to make a…
PIXIE DUST MARSHMALLOW POPS
Pops are always a great idea for kids parties. I love cake pops, but they can be quite time consuming to make and as I was already making quite a bit of time consuming food for Victoria’s 6th birthday party, I decided to go for marshmallow pops instead. They were a great hit at her…
BUTTERFLY CUPCAKES
My eldest daughter requested some cupcakes for her Tinkerbell birthday party. I love cupcakes, I think they are the cutest little things, but I was making a cake covered with fondant, serving marshmallows, chocolate and lots of other sugary items already. The thought of making frosted cupcakes too, was not really appealing to me. I…
