Coconut and ginger tofu

Ingredients:

Two blocks of soft tofu

1 shallot

2 fresh red chillies 

1 can coconut cream

500 ml vegetable stock

1/2 teaspoon fresh grated ginger

fresh coriander

fresh Vietnamese mint (or basil)

Drain the tofu and cut into slices. Finely chop the shallot, and roughly break up the chili, discarding the seeds unless you like your food very spicy. Place everything in a pot with the coconut cream and vegetables sock and simmer for 20 minutes. Grate the ginger and add to the tofu, finish off with some fresh coriander and Vietnamese mint leaves. If you don't have Vietnamese mint use fresh basil.

Serve with Thai rice or noodles.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Saffron Quinotto

In Lima I heard a lot about quinotto, quinoa cooked like risotto. Many of my Italian blogger friends also  make it, and I though of trying, starting with a classic saffron style 'quinotto'.

I chopped one onion and cooked it with a little olive oil, then I added 450 g of quinoa. Once the quinoa was 'toasted' and 'greasy' with oil, I added one glass of white wine, and then, ladle by ladle, slowly slowly, and stirring often, one litre of vegetable stock. I added the saffron just at the end, when the quinotto was cooked.

How was it? Well, I liked it very much, my son liked it too, but my husband and daughter weren't so sure... they ate it, but are they are not going to beg me to make it again, they prefer risotto with rice :-).

And did you ever try to make quinotto?

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Chili and garlic Swiss chard (coste aglio olio e peperoncino)

Swiss chard (silver beet) is a vegetable that you can find all year round, and fortunately I love it. Also it can be cooked in so many ways, as a side or as an ingredient for a main. This is a quick side, I never had it 'spicy' and I was pleasantly surprised! 

Just wash the silver beet (chard), cut the white stalks and leaves into fork-size pieces (pieces that you can pick up with a fork). Heat some extra virgin olive oil in a pan, add a peeled clove of garlic or two, and some fresh chilies (I added a green and a red, chopped). When the garlic and chilies sizzle add the white stalks and stir. After a few minutes add the leaves and salt to taste. Cover and let the leaves cook in their own steam, stirring from time to time. Serve hot. Yummy, different and super easy!

Vegan and gluten free soup: Minestrone with veggies from the garden

Do you get tomatoes plants that die and leave you with green tomatoes hanging there not ripening? I do! What a pity, but even if some veggie are ugly I can still manage to make a soup out of them!

I don't know why the yellow zucchini plant is three times more prolific than the green one! Still, I am not complaining, look at the colour!

My favourite additions to soups are beans, it is just so much fun shelling them and look at the beautiful colours. Pity that they become all brown during cooking.

And here is the minestrone. No recipe, just wash, chop and boil, add salt to taste and extra virgin olive oil at the end. So tasty and healthy! Some of the photos are mine, but the prettiest are Arantxa's!

Photos and recipe by Alessandra Zecchini and Arantxa Zecchini Dowling ©

Feijoa zest agar agar jelly

In this post you can find the recipe for the feijoa zest syrup, and from it I took about one tsp of sezt for the feijoa zest meringues. The leftover syrup (full of zest) was about 350 ml, and I decided to use it to make a little jelly with agar agar. I added a level tsp of agar agar and brought it back to the boil. The I poured it into a jelly mould and waited. It tasted great and was quite a visual treat, with all the zest floating in jelly! 

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

feijoa smoothie

Feijoa is one of those fruits that really symbolize Kiwiana for me, and in particular the joy of sharing produce in New Zealand. There is always someone ready to share feijoas in New Zealand, and this to me is like sharing joy: no matter how little fruit my plans produce in a way or another a bucket of feijoas alway reach my kitchen from another garden.

 Feijoa smoothie:
for 4 smoothies I used about 10-12 feijoas and some natural apple juice: so delicious and full of vitamins!

Photos and Recipe by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Chestnut fritters, vegan, gluten free and naturally sweet!

The best thing about these fritters is that chestnut flour is naturally sweet, so no sugar is needed. Also these are vegan and gluten free, all you need is chestnut flour, water, sultana (optional) and some oil for frying. You can find the recipe here.

Photos and Recipe by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Fried Mochi and capsicums served with soba, seaweed salad, avocado and Japanese pickles

I really like the mochi cakes, the Japanese glutinous rice blocks that are traditionally found in the traditional New Year soup (zoni). Mochi is usually grilled before going into the soup, but I don't have a grill for it, and tend to just boil it into it for a little. I love it. My family less so. And they don't like the idea of mochi in any our miso soups. So I tried to pan-fry it, thinking that they like everything fried, and guess what? Fried mochi is a new favourite! Now I add a block of pan-fried mochi in almost every Japanese meal I make (that is, while my mochi stock last: it is not so easy to find it in New Zealand!). 

In my (short) experience one of the best ways is to pan-fry mochi is with something that will also give it a bit of flavour, like capsicums. These are the little capsicums from my garden, small but tasty! Heat the oil in the frying pan, add slices of capsicum and mochi, turn everything a few times (I like to turn the mochi blocks on all six sides) and serve hot. Here is my mochi and capsicums served with soba, seaweed salad, avocado and Japanese pickles, a quick and balanced lunch!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Alpine (wild) strawberry smoothie

Alpine (wild) strawberry smoothie

Ingredients:

All the wild strawberries you can find

One banana

Natural apple juice

Photos and Recipe by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Super quick vegetable risotto

Quick Risotto di verdura

Ingredients

1 small onion

1 small carrot

1 celery stalk with leaves

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 tbsp chopped parsley

400 g carnaroli rice

1 glass white wine

1.5 vegetables stock

1 portion of frozen spinach

4 tbsp frozen peas

Chop the onion, carrot and celery, then sauté with olive oil. Add the parsley and rice, then a glass of white wine. Add the vegetable stock ladle by ladle, stirring constantly. Halfway through cooking add the spinach, and 5 minutes before finishing add the peas. Serve hot.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Fregolotto (Fregola risotto)

 Outside Italy it is very difficult to find fregola, but Israeli couscous is readily available in many shops now, and can be a great substitute. 

Fregolotto

1 small onion

1 capsicum (any colour)

1 celery stalk with leaves

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

400 g fregola (or Israeli cous cous)

1 cup Italian tomato passata

1.5 l vegetables stock

Parsley and cherry tomatoes to decorate (optional)

Chop the onion, capsicum and celery, then sauté with olive oil. Add the fregola and stir, when hot add the Italian tomato passata and then, ladle by ladle, the vegetables stock, stirring constantly like when making a risotto. When the fregola is cooked and all the liquid absorbed serve, decorated with parsley and cherry tomatoes (optional).

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Wonder of Venice beans with parsley and garlic

I don't like to boil beans, I rather stew them slowly. For this recipe I just sizzled some garlic with olive oil, then I added the beans (washed and topped and tailed) and then cooked them on low with the lid on, adding just a tiny bit of water and a pinch of salt. They take about 20-30 minutes. In the meantime I chopped some garlic, parsley and salt, and then added this mixture to the beans once they were cooked. So simple, and the taste is so good!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Fruit pearls

Quick post today, and a quick idea!

I make fruit salad with watermelon and blueberries quite often, scooping the watermelon with one of those gadgets that makes little balls (and using the watermelon shell as a container). I really like the colours together, and there is no need for sugar. This time I also added some Cape Gooseberries and some Alpine (wild) strawberries from the garden, very effective, and a sugar free healthy dessert!

Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Rangpur, not Tahitian limes

Sue brought me some organic citrus fruit from a friend's garden in Coromandel, she told that they were Tahitian limes. I heard this before in NZ, I think that this is the common name here, but they don't look like limes, more like yellow mandarins, and they taste a bit like grapefruit. So I did a quick search and found that they probably are Rangpur, a cross between a mandarin and a lemon.

What to do with them? Well, I read that they are great for gin and tonic (maybe this is why they call them limes), but usually I only drink gin and tonic when I go to other people's houses (a very common pre-dinner drink in NZ), but they can be used in desserts and to make agar agar puddings. And I can add that I had a good use for the peels: I put them in a gauze and tied it up to make a gigantic 'tea bag' to put in my hot bath. The fragrance is divine, a bit like a bath with the Japanese yuzu fruit, very citrusy and full of 'zest'.

Please let me know if you know this fruit, and what you do with it.

Photos by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Pumpkin with coconut cream and basil (and add tofu to make it into a main!)

I had half a pumpkin to use, but just a little bit of Thai herbs mix (ginger, lemon grass, chili, garlic and coriander), certainly not enough to give my pumpkin a spicy flavor! Still, I felt like coconut, so I cut the pumpkin and two celery stalks with leaves and put them in my pot, then I added one can of coconut cream plus one can of water (to rinse the cream out), the remaining Thai herbs mix (about half tsp) and one organic veggie stock cube. I cook the lot until the pumpkin was soft, then I adjusted it for salt and added plenty of fresh basil leaves. I wanted to add some of my Vietnamese mint but it has all dried up (no rain in Auckland either) but the basil was strong flavored and I was surprised how nice this tasted in the end! I though of using this as a side dish (like in the photo) but I run out of time to make the main and since this dish had so much sauce I just added some cubed firm tofu to it when I warmed it up for dinner. I served with Thai rice. Very nice way of eating pumpkin in summer!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©