pasta italiana

made a new pasta illustration. It's available as a print here!

cardnest

my latest illustration for uk greeting card company cardnest.
photo by cardnest.

a newspaper

life is full and busy! i've started collaborating with italian newspaper corriere della sera, for their food section of course.
here are some samples.

cardnest

started a collaboration with new card company cardnest. a really nice idea i think, to pick up writing to people again. i do miss that, from the pre digital days. here's a little interview too.

illustrated recipes: cacio e pepe

a little reprise in honour of an old favourite of mine, the deceivingly simple cacio e pepe.
deceiving because, to make a good creamy cacio e pepe, you need a bit less calculating, a bit of love for the few items required, and a bit of practice.
adapted from rachel's true to roots recipe. serves two.


this illustrated recipe is available here with all the others, with free shipping til 17th november.

illustrated recipes: end of series (may and june)

I made it, managed to post this final recipe pair on the last day of the month.
It's a special post because it features the amazing photo work of my dear friend Mike Baker, who came over for a day of shootin and eatin fun. a kindof test of sorts, to see what we could do.
So, to close this illustrated recipe year, we have:

Calamari ripieni, or stuffed calamari, is probably my favourite of my mum's dishes. I always ask her to make it for me when I go back to Australia. For best results buy small calamari, which will cook quicker and become like little dumplings of joy. the recipe is for 2 people.

Next we have:

This is a great summer dish, with its burst of colour from the figs. You can use balsamic vinegar glaze instead of balsamic reduction if you can find it in your supermarket. delicious.

Here are a couple of Mike's pictures from yesterday's session.
Now I'm off to sweden, you can see more of Mike's photos here.
(including my 'stepford wives' kitchen pose).

illustrated recipes: april (with design sponge)

Well, this month's recipe comes a little late because it was waiting around for anzac day to make its appearance on design sponge, where i had the honour to be featured this week.
lamingtons are a bit of an aussie icon, but do require a bit of baking skill, and a bit of delicate rolling in chocolate and coconut at the end. because neatness and baking are not my forte, it was design sponge's lovely food and drink editor Kristina Gill who braved the task of actually making them! You can see the post here.

So here you go. cheers to the Anzacs, cheers to design sponge, and cheers to the ol' lamington.

this print can be bought here as usual.

and here are Kristina's lamingtons. yum!

illustrated recipes: march

what better way to celebrate the beginning of spring in rome than to take advantage of the explosion of globe artichokes that overflows on market stalls around every corner?

My mama has always cooked a lot of artichokes, this round, typically roman variety when we lived here, and other varieties in australia, but i never really appreciated them until i got a little bit older, and i never had the patience to learn how to clean them and cook them. until i figured out it wasn't so hard at all.

artichokes / carciofi are beautiful to draw too. now, because this is not a cooking blog and the illustrated recipes give importance to drawings rather than precise methods and culinary perfection, i recommend you head over to rachel's artichoke post if you want clear instructions on cleaning and prepping the chokes, other than this, it's super simple and delicious.

took me a while to post this as i needed to finish the roll of film on the canon A1. bear with me!

the print for this and other recipes can be bought here.

"..and the sweet

artichoke
there in the garden,
was dressed as a warrior,
burnished
like a grenade and proud,
and one day
assembled with its fellows
in large wicker baskets,
it walked
through the market
to make its dream of
soldiery
come true."

from Ode to the Artichoke
  - pablo neruda

illustrated recipes: february

a couple of sundays ago we went to our friends' place for lunch and they made this risotto with rabbit stock (they just happened to have a carcass lying around from a previous rabbit stew), which gave it an incredible wild flavour. it is true what they say though: the secret to a great risotto is a great home made stock. i made this again at home with chicken stock and the addition of rosemary, which i think was created for radicchio.

the recipe print is for sale here, along with all the others. also, free shipping on all prints until sunday the 24th!

illustrated recipes: january

the past week has been mercilessly cold, well, for roman standards anyway, and we've been cranking the soup action in the kitchen. this is one of my favourites, a turkish dish from the Moro cookbook.
also goes to show my obsession with putting greek yogurt in pretty much everything. this is for 4 people, you might want to add more stock as you like it.

illustrated recipes: december

I don't make many cakes or sweets, but this one is a favourite. There's always a couple of bananas nobody wants to eat because they're over-ripe, but nobody wants to throw out because, well, the waste. I think this is why they invented banana cake, seriously.
and also because it tastes amazing.

have a wonderful christmas, people!

illustrated recipes: november

to the sound of better late than never, here is november's recipe.
the story is, we were walking around the tiny fishing village of Baan Koh Jum, a tiny island in the Krabi province of southern thailand, when we heard a woman calling out to us saying she had fresh barracuda. we sat down under a fan and tiger balmed the sixty odd mosquito bites collected during the walk through the jungle to the village,  and chatted to the elderly couple. she showed me the fish in the icebox, big and shiny. I asked if I could watch her cook and this is what she made.

The coriander and lime are my own addition, because I love them, but the original recipe was so incredibly simple and tasty it threw all my preconceptions about needing a million ingredients to make thai food out the window. 

while we're at it, here are a few snaps from the holiday to set the mood for the sunshine goodness that emanates from this dish (or the memory of it).

illustrated recipes: october

october's almost over and with the film not developing, lots of other work on my hands, and preparations for the trip back home, i almost didn't make it this month!

but here it is, the apple maple cake, another winner from donna hay's seasons, adapted for a small loaf tin. warm and autumnal.
all recipe prints for sale here.

illustrated recipes: september + morocco on film (part I)

this is a really simple little vegetable dish i adapted from 101 cookbooks. i was going to make something more complicated for this morocco post, like a fish tajine or something fancy, but i have had no time because of the craziness of september. i have been roasting vegies all month though, and sometimes you need to spice things up a little.
this illustrated recipe and all others can be bought as prints here. 

i also got back the last batch of film from our trip to morocco in may. this is part one of the photos i'm going to share. it was such a beautiful place. these are from fez and a little bit of the dadès valley in the atlas mountains (with some friends we made). i love not having to photoshop film.

illustrated recipes: august

this month i have a double illustrated recipe for you! greek and perfect for summer and sharing. there's something about the mixing of mint and lemon and garlic that makes anything unbelievably amazing. i'll definitely be making more of it before eggplant season is over. happy weekend!

recipe taken from donna hay's seasons. i got this book as a gift from a wonderful friend and it is dangerous.

(illustrated prints available here)