Pea, mint and feta dip

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A blue dish of pea and mint dip with pretzel crackers and mint leaves

A new year is upon us. And like so many before it, we once more stand upon the precipice of a fresh 365 where things are ALREADY dreadful, globally-wise. I myself am no stranger to the minor inconveniences that can feel like they’re setting the tone for the year ahead against your will: wisdom teeth (that I thought had been removed! At great expense!!) dancing a merry ceilidh directly into my nerves, a will-they-won’t-they of trying to find the singular nice affordable apartment to rent in this city with my girlfriend only to have previously accepted offers retracted, like riding a rollercoaster directly into a brick wall. One only has to glance at the internet briefly to put all this into stark perspective and I was still blessed with a charming and delightful Christmas and an antic-filled, if woefully brief, summer break. While I feel neither rested nor organised, I nonetheless have spatula-d myself together for 2026 to bring you this recipe for pea, mint and feta dip. Much like the summer break, it’s quick.

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No-churn brandy snap ice cream

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A tin of ice cream with a spoon resting in it and green baubles behind it

This may not be my final blog post of 2025 but it probably will be my last one before Christmas (and may I take this opportunity to remind you of my recent 15th annual edible gift guide). So, I might as well stay right in my box of paints by offering you a no-churn brandy snap ice cream recipe that lends itself to post-Christmas-dinner carousing but which I’d be delighted to eat year-round. Being true to form begets itself; I’m also writing this at 2.30am on a school night because honestly, at this point, completing one blog post in 2025 at a normal hour would be the habit-forming equivalent of getting sunburnt all summer and finally applying some SPF15 to your left ankle the day before autumn kicks in.

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The 15th Annual Hungryandfrozen edible gift guide with 60 recipes for you

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A jar with a ribbon around it surrounded by baubles.

Something we can all count on, or at least, that we can all count: The 15th Annual HungryandFrozen Edible Gift Guide is back! This year you have a round-up of:

  • 60 delicious gift-ready recipes
  • Many also-delicious off-the-shelf ideas if you hate cooking or are simply not up to it at this juncture
  • Gift guide suggestions and further worthy places to powerfully channel whatever consumer dollars you may have

Although it’s hellacious to format I love the work of making this annual list because it serves to disabuse you of the notion that Christmas gifts have to be things. People love food, and food gifts are nothing but upside. They have immediate practical application, they will eventually cease taking up space in the recipient’s house, and it’s a simple way to demonstrate care, appreciation, and love especially in this continually punishing economy. My fifteen-year accumulative model was getting excitingly close to three figures, but in 2025 I respect your time more than mine and have whittled down the list so you have fewer decisions to wrestle with and less scrolling.

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Blonde Redhead Cookies & Marzipan Fruitcake Cookies

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Different cookies on a mint green dish with two bright green Christmas baubles

Well, well, well, if it isn’t the spectre of Christmas approaching one month hence, to say nothing of the ghost of my debut novel Hoods Landing—in that the canonical biscuits mentioned therein, which I made as offerings for my recent Auckland launch, inspired these two Christmas Cookie recipes: Blonde Redhead Cookies and Marzipan Fruitcake Cookies. They’re both exceptionally easy to make, I should know; I baked three batches of the unadorned originals the night before my launch party while in a state of extreme hecticness. And look, you don’t actually have to cordon them off to Christmas alone, useful if you neither condone nor care for that specific holiday; but I certainly was doing my best to evoke the season’s flavours and there’s rarely a more useful time to have some minimal-stress cookie recipes and indeed, cookies at hand.

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Chicken, red grape, pecan and brie salad

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A top-down shot of a leaf-shaped bowl of salad with a fork on a dark wooden board

Now that my debut novel Hoods Landing is past-tense launched in Wellington and Auckland, normal transmission must resume, and yet! Every time I blink an hour has passed and it’s next Thursday and a certain flat the-party’s-over malaise threatens.

Nonetheless I’m clambering onwards like a self-absorbed and energetic goat with a food blog, and bring you a salad of such glad tidings that it could only be inspired by a hedonistically carefree Silver Palate cookbook, whose authors address the reader as if we all have holiday homes in Portugal and the Hamptons, and let’s face it, the government still hasn’t worked out a way to privatise and flog off one’s personal vicarious thrills so you might as well get them while you can. And although it has a lot of words in the title, this chicken, red grape, pecan and brie salad is more or less practical, and can make quite a lot out of a little lux-ness.

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2 x Hoods Landing Cocktails

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Two cocktails in tall glasses with mint garnish and four books in the background

Although my debut novel Hoods Landing is now out, alive, sharing the same realm as us; I hope you’ll permit me one more literary-culinary flourish ahead of Thursday’s launch party in Auckland. For what it’s worth, despite actually being a double flourish of two cocktail recipes, I’m going to keep this relatively succinct as I am no less feverish and hectic and wild-eyed than I was eleven days ago when we launched it for the first time (and exceptionally so) in Wellington. Thus far I can tell you that the life of a novelist involves a lot of refreshing notification screens and being immensely humbled and grateful. To celebrate that launch, I made chocolate mousse; to féte Auckland, an Old Fashioned variation that I call the Hermit; plus a bonus reminder of the Hoods Landing Punch recipe that I shared on Instagram before the last launch in a fugue state of optimistic tangential self-promotion.

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Rita’s chocolate mousse

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Two coupe glasses of chocolate mousse, one resting on a stack of small plates with two pink teaspoons also on the plates. A stack of Hoods Landing books are in the background

Kia ora, and welcome to a special edition in honour of my debut novel Hoods Landing launching TODAY, 31 October 2025. If you’re in Wellington, please join me at Unity tonight to fete its arrival, if you’re in Auckland I will see you on 13 November, Christchurch—something’s imminent. And no matter where you are, you can order this book online or ask for it by name in your local indie bookshop! Thank you all so much for both bearing with me and being part of this momentum and this momentous occasion.

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Basal bil Sumac (Sumac quick-pickled red onions)

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An open jar of pickled red onions on a blue and white cloth with a pink spoon

If you don’t consider yourself a great condiment-maker, you could at least pause to consider the condiment as a magnificent concept. In Boustany: A celebration of vegetables from my Palestine, Sami Tamimi discusses Mooneh, or ‘pantry’ in Arabic—“preserving seasonal goods”, which “plays a significant role in maintaining the region’s cultural tradition”. Taking something fragile and making it last, to feed many mouths long after the emphemeral ingredients should be occupying the realm of memory; the condiment is both practical and beautiful. In the case of this Basal bil Sumac, it’s also monumentally quick—just chop some red onions, pour some water-diluted vinegar and salt over them, spike with sumac, and try not to watch the clock for an hour or so while the carmine cellular bitterness breaks down.

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triple tomato beans

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Triple tomato beans and a gold spoon on a black and white striped plate, sitting on a blue and white cloth
Mariah Carey has taught us many things: gratuitious vocabulary words, chopping the top off your jeans with scissors so they’re more low-waisted, and of course, the art of the creatively honourable remix. For the true of heart, riffing on an existing idea doesn’t mean simply swapping out a teaspoon of this or that—it’s about giving a recipe another reason to live. In this case, I suspected that my triple tomato risotto could also be lavishly excellent when pulsified with beans instead of rice. I was correct—and it took quarter of the time to make.

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Toasted rice sablés

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rice cookies on a cooling rack on top of a blue and white piece of fabric
More than once have I bellowed “CLAIRE!!” amid baking an eponymous Claire Saffitz recipe; it’s a kind of ruefully recalcitrant acquiescence at her calmly and warmly insisting that I embark upon what feels like an exceptionally complex additional step, usually with annoyingly stunning results. In the case of these toasted rice sablés, it was the titular toasting of the rice flour (delicious, worth it) but the horse had to buck somewhere and in this case I demurred on rolling the cookies in rice bubbles (I tried, they kept falling off, delicious without).

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