Italian Kiwi – Recipes, Travel, and More!

  • Pasta with Eggplant, Speck, and Tomato

    Pasta with Eggplant, Speck, and Tomato

      Pasta is always a great comfort food.  Just don’t use chicken! The world is experiencing a very difficult time right now.  I hope you are all safe, well, and staying out of public areas.  In the meantime, it seems that a lot of us are cooking up a storm.  Everyone is on the prowl…

  • Greek Inspired Pie For Pi Day

    Greek Inspired Pie For Pi Day

        A Savoury pie for Pi Day Pi Day is coming up in on March 14th (Get it?  3/14 for those of you who live in countries where they put the month before the date).  A physicist called Larry Shaw came up with this idea in the late 80’s as a kind of geeky…

  • 10 Things To Do With Under-10s in Amsterdam

    10 Things To Do With Under-10s in Amsterdam

        This is a revamp of a post I wrote a few years ago.  My boys are teenagers now and way taller than me.  Don’t let that put you off!  It’s still valid!  I think they would still like doing quite of few of the things to do in Amsterdam listed below.  When they…

  • Pasta With Zucchini And Gorgonzola

    Pasta With Zucchini And Gorgonzola

        How to learn to like blue cheese This recipe comes from the mother of a good friend of ours who originates from Florence in Tuscany.  When we all lived in California, Simone used to make us Pasta with zucchini and Gorgonzola cheese whenever we went to dinner at his place, which I was always…

  • The Farm, New Zealand

    The Farm, New Zealand

        Just a few short hours before, I was calmly seated on a long-haul flight from the other side of the globe.  Now, I am holding on for dear life to the back of my Dad’s quad while he careens up and down hills, swerving between trees and splashing through boggy creeks while chasing…

  • Honeycrunch

    Honeycrunch

        It’s not a party if there’s no honeycrunch! When I was growing up in the seventies in New Zealand, Rice Krispies seemed to be one foodstuff that every family had in their kitchen.  Whenever a kid had a birthday party, along with little red “cheerio” sausages on sticks and Bluebird chips, there would…

  • Pam’s Cookies

    Pam’s Cookies

        The recipe that was used around the world This cookie recipe was given to me years ago by a well-traveled friend of mine who, at some time in the past, had met a woman called Pam when she was visiting Borneo. Pam gave her this cookie recipe. My friend carried on with her…

  • Blowing in the wind at the Rimini Kite Festival

    Blowing in the wind at the Rimini Kite Festival

        The joy of kites at the Rimini Kite Festival In April we drove over to Rimini on the East coast of Italy to visit some friends.  We were incredibly lucky to hit town on the weekend that the once a year kite festival was on; and not only that, there was a perfect…

  • Chocolate Crackles

    Chocolate Crackles

        Chocolate Crackles: essential New Zealand party food When I was growing up in New Zealand in the Seventies, every single birthday party I went to would have a plate of chocolate crackles sitting proudly on the party food table, just waiting to be gobbled by sugar-frenzied, over-excited herds of children. The Seventies seem to…

  • Fennel Bulb And Orange Salad

    Fennel Bulb And Orange Salad

            On being introduced to fennel bulbs This isn’t so much a recipe as such, as it is an introduction to a vegetable I never knew you could eat before I set foot in Italy.  In New Zealand, where I grew up, fennel was known as a herb that you sprinkled over…

  • Hokey Pokey: New Zealand’s Best Kept Secret

    Hokey Pokey: New Zealand’s Best Kept Secret

        Candy surprise from Down-Under I had forgotten all about hokey pokey until recently when we went down to visit my family in New Zealand.  Suddenly I saw it everywhere: in ice-cream, in biscuits, in chocolate and even by itself.  It’s New Zealand’s best kept secret (or maybe second best, after the fact that…

  • Panissa From Liguria

    Panissa From Liguria

        What is panissa anyway? I’m glad you asked that.  I didn’t know myself until we went to visit the seaside village of Noli a couple of months ago. I have eaten the Piedmont version of panissa many times, and I discovered that it is a completely different dish to panissa from Liguria.  Panissa from Piedmont…