Zucchini with marigold vinegar and marigold fresh petals

 

This is a delicious starter or side dish. Cut the zucchini in thin long strips and pan fry with olive oil on both sides for just a minute (don't let them brown, they just need to soften). Chop plenty of Italian parsley and garlic with a pinch of salt and add to the zucchini, with a tbsp or two of marigold vinegar (recipe here). If you don't have marigold vinegar just use some white balsamic or white wine vinegar (but consider making marigold vinegar too!). Let the zucchini marinate for at least two hours, more if possible, then lay on a serving platter and sprinkle with fresh marigold petals. Serve at room temperature of chilled.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Stufato di verdura - vegetable stew

I love chopping colourful veggies, what a treat! 

For this stufato (like a casserole) I used red onions, celery, red, green and yellow capsicums and carrots. Gently sauté the vegetables with olive oil, then add plenty of tomato passata and salt to taste (or an organic vegetable stock cube). Cover and simmer on low for a long time (the longer the better), adding a little water if needed.

A couple of minutes before turning off the heat add some fresh basil leaves and a little more olive oil, plus salt to taste. Enjoy hot or cold.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Baby zucchini, zucchini flower and basil leaf beer tempura

This was so yum!!!! My zucchini plants now make only little zucchini, they must be tired. But baby zucchini are so delicious and special, and the flowers too, that I decided to make something scrumptious, like tempura. And also to add some big basil leaves: I love leaves in tempura, but I never tried Italian basil, it was amazing!!

For the batter I used a tempura flour mix and, instead of water, a chilled Peroni Leggera beer. Using cold beer produce a crispy tempura, plus you can drink beer while you are cooking :-).

Don't overtax the batter, make sure the oil is really hot, and cook the baby zucchini first, then the flowers and the basil leaves. sprinkle with salt and serve, with more beer!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Baby perlas potatoes two ways: hot 'in padella', and salad with flowers

I received a few potatoes to try from Potatoes New Zealand to celebrate November Means New Potatoes, and here are my first creations.

  I started with baby perlas, which I knew already. These little new potatoes are cute and a real little treat, so they deserve special attention!

I boiled them first (no mint... just cannot bear minted potatoes, sorry Kiwis!) and then I divided them: half I used for salad, I picked the 'bigger' ones and cut them into two pieces, then I mix them with Vegan mayonnaise (recipe here), chopped onion weed bulbs and stalks, nasturtium buds and petals, and Impatiens' petals. 

Keep a few flowers aside for decorations, and onion weed flowers too, if you like. I think that a lot of people now are comfortable with eating nasturtium flowers and buds (I left some buds for decoration too, and for you to see). Buds taste a little like capers. Young tender leaves are nice too (see soup below). Not so many people would eat Impatiens though, or know about them. They taste a little like rocket, and I prefer the red ones, although I always add a few pink ones just because the colour is so pretty. My preference for red ones may be just because I observed the chickens eating all the red ones while leaving behind the other colours, but maybe they are just colour blind? Anyway, I tasted all the colours and decided that the chicken were right... Of course don't eat the flowers if you spray your garden with chemicals!

As for the smaller potatoes, I just heated it some garlic with olive oil in a skillet and then tossed the potatoes around, with an extra good pinch of salt, until hot. Then turned the heat off and added some fresh thyme, another toss, and ecco fatto! Patatine novelle in padella al timo!

Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Italian chips - patatine fritte (with olive oil, garlic and rosemary)

How silly can a recipe be? I never thought that I would bother writing something so basic, but the world where I live is so full of chips, and terrible chips I must say, that I very rarely eat them out, and very occasionally I like to make them at home the Italian way, patatine fritte, like we made on special occasions, usually on a Sunday. These are not deep fried but pan-fried, and they are flavoured with garlic and rosemary, 

Peel the potatoes, cut the potatoes into chip sizes, rinse (or just soak in water) and pat dry. Sizzle some garlic in a frypan with extra virgin olive oil, then add the chips and pan-fry stirring and/or shaking the pan constantly. I add just a little salt at the beginning, and remove the garlic before it burns. Then I add rosemary when they are nearly cooked (they takes about 20 minutes), finish with more salt and eat immediately (although if you cook them this way they are also tasty when cold, unlike British style chips). 

And now for something completely different (especially if you like birds!)

A Kereru! The New Zealand native wood pigeon, all puffed up and using her chest for a pillow.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

No waste post: Japanese style pickled radishes - and eat the leaves too! Plus a beautiful Japanese Vegan meal

I picked some lovely radishes from the vegetable garden, did you know that you can eat the leaves too? They are full of nutrients, as well as delicious!

Wash the radishes well, then cut in halves (or quarters if big), keeping attached some of the centre leaves. Set the outer leaves aside to use later.

These are the radishes (with the tender centre leaves) ready to pickle.

Add some salt, I used Japanese unrefined salt because I had it, but ordinary kitchen salt is fine.

Put another bowl over the radishes and then a weight on top (a rock, or anything heavy that you may have in the kitchen). Leave for a day and night, move the radishes from time to time if you like, to get them pressed. They will put out lots of water and create a brine.

This is what they will look like the day after.

Put into a jar with their brine and keep in the fridge (they will last a couple of weeks... maybe more but I don't know, we eat them quite quickly!

And now for the remaining leaves: since I had the above raw I decided to cook the rest for a few minutes in boiling water. 

Then I drained them and when cool I dressed them with soy sauce (gluten free readers can use tamari) and lemon juice. The portion looks small, but they are a perfect addition to a Japanese meal...

 like this one!

Vegan Japanese lunch with produce from my veggie garden

Clockwise from top left: rice with vegetable furikake, nimono of radish leaves, silken tofu with chrysanthemum leaves, rice with spinach, gari (pickled ginger). In the centre pickled radishes. Radishes, ginger, spinach and chrysanthemum all came from my garden

Yes chrysanthemum leaves are also edible (I was given a variety that only seems to make leaves, I like to eat them young). and if you want to know how to grow ginger and make your own gari click here.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Carciofi alla romana

These type of artichokes are called mammole,  the 'petals' are rounded and not as spiky like for carciofi. But they are excellent cooked alla romana. Cut the outer petals off until you get to the tender heart, leave a bit of the stalks, but peel them, and then immediately put them in water and lemon (so that they don't become black) to wash them. Finely chop plenty of Italian parsley with garlic and a pinch of salt, and use this to fill the centre of each artichoke. Place the artichokes in a pot, drizzle some olive oil in the centre of each artichoke and add a little water at the bottom of the pan (about 2 fingers). Cover with a lid and simmer on low for a long time (1-2 hours) adding water from time to time. Sorry I didn't take a photo of the final product, but you can find one here.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Melanzane fritte (fried eggplants) and photos of peonies

I love fried eggplants, on pasta, on pizza, in a panino, as a side dish… or just by themselves, they are so versatile! Just cut them very thin (I use a bread knife) make them sweat with salt for an hour, rinse them and pat them dry. Fry them a few at the time with plenty of olive oil and a clove of garlic. Drain on kitchen paper and sprinkle with salt. Serve or use as required.

And now a few photos of peonies - now in season!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Oyster mushrooms with lemon soy

When asked what is my favourite vegetable sometimes I reply that it is a fresh porcino mushroom (boletus edulis), and I say this knowing very well that mushrooms do not classify as vegetables... they are fungi, neither fruit nor vegetable. But no one in New Zealand ever asks me what is my favourite fungi (they do in my village in Italy, for sure), only what is my favourite vegetable, and mushrooms are usually defined as a side vegetable (even eaten at breakfast! This thing still puzzles me).  

The fact is that to me mushrooms rarely take the place of a side vegetable, but they tend to be the main player: pasta with mushrooms, risotto with mushrooms, polenta with mushrooms, mushroom fritters, mushroom burgers, mushroom dumplings, stuffed mushrooms...

 For a vegetarian they substitute meat, and in the old days in my mountains in Italy they used to be called carne di bosco 'meat of the woods'.

We never bought mushrooms when I was a child, they grew all around us and we just foraged. We also dried them for winter, or preserved them in olive oil (more rarely, mushrooms may have been abundant, but olive oil was expensive). 

Here in NZ only very occasionally I find field mushrooms, more rarely porcini (it happened in Christchurch once long time ago and I was the only one who ate them, everybody else watching me to see if I was going to die a painful death from poisoning). 

As far as commercial varieties go, I use plenty of dried mushrooms (both porcini and different Asian mushrooms) and the usual button and portabello mushrooms that you find at the supermarket. Fortunately in recent years the interest in more 'exotic' types of mushrooms has increased and now you can find some types of fresh Asian mushrooms too, especially in Asian stores. 

Easy recipe: place the oyster mushrooms in a skillet with a little oil or vegan butter and sauté them on both sides. To make mushrooms easy to digest you need to cook them in a way that they 'loose' water, this is important with foraged mushrooms, if there is a toxic one in you mix making it 'loose water' made it edible (or lowered the risks of tommy ache). Button mushrooms and other varieties can be eaten raw, but personally I prefer them cooked. Of course if a mushrooms is deadly this cooking tip is useless, no matter how much you cook it, but this is not a problem we are facing with commercial varieties!

So, but back to cooking edible mushrooms: let them loose water, yes, but remember that generally mushrooms should not be cooked for too long or they will lose flavour too. So as soon as these oyster mushrooms looked ready to me (a few minutes) I added a drizzle of Japanese soy sauce and some lemon juice. Add more vegan butter too if you like, for a bit more fat, juice and taste. Serve piping hot on a bowl of plain short grain rice, drizzling the juices on top. 

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Peperoni e salvia fritti - fried capsicums and sage

Red capsicums are so nice fried in olive oil, and then sprinkled with a little salt… this time I tried a different pairing though: sage! And it works really well. Of course I really like fried sage, so I guess that that help. (In the background I have some fried eggplants, but you all know how to make that right?) :-)

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Lenticchie in umido - Brown lentils Italian style

I love a nice big pot of lentils, preferibly with some oven fresh crusty bread or a slice of polenta or creamy mushed potatoes. But also as pie fillers, for lasagne, or as a side dish, especially now that the weather is cold in New Zealand. For this recipes wash, soak and rinse 500 g of brown lentils, and then boil them in water with just a pinch of salt until cooked but not too soft or mushy. 

In the meantime roughly chop one peeled carrot, one peeled onion, one peeled garlic clove and one stalk of celery with leaves and a few leaves of Italian parsley. This time I also added one green pepper because it was all alone in the fridge, but this is not necessary.

Sizzle the vegetables with two tbsp of olive oil until the onions are soft, then add 1 tbsp of tomato puree, and if you like a little smoked paprika or a chili. Stir and sizzle for one minute.

Add the lentils and their water and more salt to taste, but not too much as the water will reduce.

Cover and simmer until most of the liquid is gone and you are happy with the consistency of your lentils. Add salt and pepper to taste, plus a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, and serve.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Roasted onion 'lily'

I saw this idea on Pinterest and loved it! Just peel and cut whole onions from the top into 6 or 8 slices, but leaving the end attached. Then, when you roast the onions they will open like lily flowers.

Of course the Pinterest photo had onions that looked brighter and … raw, yes possibly more photogenic, but surely not as tasty! Roast your onions properly, until they are soft and sweet. I roasted mine with potatoes, adding olive oil, salt and spices (also, I cannot digest raw onions, so I do prefer to cook them anyway). Next time I will try to boil them first and see what happens :-).

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Eating Red beetroot raw and cooked

I love making fresh juice with red beetroots, it tastes great and the colour always cheers me up. Then the other day my friend Alan from Dream of Italy gave me an Italian beetroot from his garden, I think that it must be this one. Well, when I cut it I though that it looked so pretty that I didn't want to juice it! So I just cooked it al dente, and then cooled it under cold water and added extra virgin olive oil, lemon and salt. Unfortunately the cooking took the colour away, but it still looked really pretty (scroll down for the photo). Next time I'll get another beet from Alan I'll try it raw, cut into very thin slices.

And then I used a 'normal' red beetroot for my juice!
1 large red beetroot, 6 large carrots, 4 stalks of celery, half a cucumber and 6 pears.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Florence Fennel and avocado salad with walnuts

This is a lovely salad and also a light main, filling, nutritious and full of different textures and flavors!

Crunchy Bean Sprout Winter Mediterranean Salad

I love beans and lentils, but I also love salads and raw food, my body feels like it needs them!

I usually mix cooked beans with raw salad vegetables, but when I remember I get some bean sprouts, and I particularly like this crunchy bean combo from Sproutman. I can just eat the sprouted beans as they are, with a drop of olive oil and lemon juice, 

Potatoes and carrots with sage, rosemary and garlic

Digging up the garden I pulled some ugly carrots and a few potatoes (white and yellow). I cleaned them and boiled them until cooked but firm, then I remove the skins (from the carrots too!) and sautéd them with olive oil, garlic, sage, rosemary and a pinch of salt. Really simple but super tasty!!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Zucchine ripiene - Stuffed zucchini

I have two zucchini plants in the garden, one yellow and one green. They produce a lot, the yellow three times more than the green (I don't know why) and we have been eating zucchini in 100 different ways: grilled, sautéed, fried and tempura, in soups, with pasta… fortunately they are very versatile!

Here I had a few big ones (sometimes I don't pick them for a day and they double overnight! But the important thing is that they don't get to the 'marrow' state - too big and bitter) so I decided to stuff them.

I cut them into two and scooped out the flesh. Then I baked the shells upside down with a pinch of salt and a drizzle of olive oil for 15 minutes. In the meantime I blended the zucchini flesh and then added chopped parsley and chives (about 1 tbsp), salt and pepper, a tbsp of olive oil and enough breadcrumbs to make a stuffing (add the breadcrumb one tbsp at the time so that you don't add too much). The zucchini were fresh from the garden and therefore they were very moist, so I needed more breadcrumbs, but if you buy them they may be a few days old and more dry, so less breadcrumbs are needed. I removed the zucchini from the oven, turned them up and filled them tightly with the stuffing. 

In the tray you can see also some zucchini slices, these where from 'regular' size zucchini, and I used them as side veggies.

Bake everything until the stuffing has a nice golden crust and serve.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©