Strawberry and Banana ice-cream: sugar free, gluten free, raw and vegan

You just need two ingredients: 2-3 bananas, sliced and frozen, and 2 punnets of strawberries, cut and frozen. It is actually better if both the banana and strawberries are quite ripe - jam quality!

Freeze the fruit for a few hours (one day is better) then put in the food processor and blend. Eat immediately. Healthy and yummy!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Elderberry Flowers Syrup and Elder flower Tea

Elderberry Flowers Syrup

For this you will need 1 l of water, 1 kg of sugar, about a dozen elderberry flower heads, 30 g of citric acid and 3 organic lemons (I picked some juicy organic lemons from Regina's garden). 

Wash and cut the lemons and put them in a pot with all the other ingredients (or in a large jar, if you have it). Let this mixture stand for three days, stirring from time to time. Don't go over three days or it may ferment. After this time filter the syrup through a muslin cloth, squeezing the lemons and flowers well. Boil the filtered syrup for 5 minutes, removing any possible scam forming at the top. Cool down and filter again, through a finer cotton cloth this time. 

Bottle and use as a cordial (it is very thirst-quenching), or to flavour desserts (like panna cottaor blamanche), ice cream, fruit salads and berries.

Elder flower Tea

I am drying the remaining flowers for tea. Dry them in the shade and keep them for winter: the tea is traditionally used to relieve cold and flu, cough and sore tummy.

Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

 

Elderberry Flower Fritters

Elderberry Flower Fritters

Yes you can eat elderberry flowers!

Shake and clean (no need to wash in water) the elderberry flowers to make sure that there is no dirt (or insects).

Mix 100g of plain flour with a tsp of icing sugar and enough cold water to make a light batter (a bit like tempura). 

Pick the flowers heads by the stalk and drop into the batter, and then into hot oil. Fry, turning once, until the fritters are golden and crispy.

Dust with icing sugar and fresh elderberry flowers, then serve, hot or cold. 

Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Pasta e fagioli soup with Cavolo nero and a ... purple carrot!

I love pasta e fagioli (pasta and beans) soup, especially when there is cavolo nero too, this Italian kale is my favourite brassica and makes any soup taste amazing! But the surprise here was a purple carrot. Carolyn brought me one, thinking that with me being a foodie I would appreciate the novelty. I told her that I grew purple carrots but that only the outers skin was purple, and inside they were orange. She was a bit disappointed, but hey Caroly look here: I peeled the carrot and, surprise surprise, it was purple all the way through! I never seen anything like it! It almost bleed like a red beetroot (and had a light beetroot taste too, but maybe that was just my imagination, it mostly tasted like... carrot)! And it coloured the soup too, it looked like a borsch!

For the soup use one large (purple) carrot, peeled and cubed, a bunch of cavolo nero, washed, white vein removed and chopped, and one onion, chopped. Sauté everything with one tbsp of extra virgin olive oil  then add one litre of vegetable stock and simmer for about 30 minutes. Add one can of cannellini beans and simmer for 10 more minutes. Remove some of the beans, add one cup of cold water and blend the soup. Bring back to the simmer, then add a handful of risoni pasta. Simmer, stirring often, until the pasta is cooked. Add back the whole beans and cook for one more minute. Serve hot or at room temperature, with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. The best soup I made in a long time, thank you for the carrot Carolyn, and for the cavolo nero Sue!

Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Better than you can ever imagine: Vegan Cabbage Bolognese Sauce

This is not a quick recipe, but require slow cooking, so if you are in a rush just look at the pictures :-).

There are several vegan Bolognese sauces around, mostly using soy or fake mince, and some with lentils, but I wanted to try one with cabbage, which is not a veggie I particularly like myself, but it is highly nutritious. It came out better that I hoped!

Ingredients

Half a cabbage

1 large carrot

2 sticks of celery with leaves

1 large onion

1 garlic clove

A few Italian parsley leaves

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 glass wine (white or red)

1-2 tbsp tomato puree

1 l vegetable stock

salt and pepper to taste

more extra virgin olive oil to serve

With a food processor finely chop the vegetables, then put in a pan with the olive oil and sauté for a few minutes. Then add the wine and stir well. Add the tomato puree, cover and cook slowly, stirring from time to time and adding the vegetable stock little by little. Simmer for one to two hours, the more the better, I think I went over two hours. I started in the afternoon but by the time I took the last photos it was dark, so the images are a bit blurry, sorry!

Taste and add salt and pepper to taste (I like it with quite a bit of black pepper!), then use to top your pasta, drizzling with more extra virgin olive oil. Enjoy! This can also be used to fill pies, or for a gluten free variation try it on polenta! Yummy!

Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Haute Vegan Cuisine: Asparagus and onion weed soup with edible flowers

This is so easy to make, but looks impressive and tastes delicious.

Ingredients

1 big agria potato

1 bunch asparagus

3-4 onion weeds with flowers

1 l vegetable stock

nasturtium flowers and baby leaves

sage flowers

violet flowers

Peel the potato and cube. Clean the asparagus, remove the woody stalk ends and cut into small pieces keeping the tips aside. Clean the onion weed, set the flowers aside and cut the stalks. Place potato, asparagus spares and onion weed stalks in a pot with the vegetable stock and simmer until all the veggies are soft. Add the asparagus tips and blanch. Remove the asparagus tips and blend the rest of the soup. Serve and top with the whole asparagus tips, decorate with nasturtium flowers and baby leaves, sage flowers, violet flowers and onion weed flowers. Eat everything!

Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Ochazuke, Japanese comfort food

When I was teaching Italian in Japan I once asked my students to tell me what was the typical Japanese dish they had for dinner, one answered ochazuke, and everybody laughed! Ochazuke meant that you lived alone, or your mum/wife was out for the night and you couldn't cook. Or that you run out of money! For homework they had to write a description of Ochazuke (in Italian) and the week after they came with their recipes and, most surprising for me, they all brought a sachet of flavoring for ochazuke, for me to try. The basic idea is to use leftover plain rice and top it with hot green tea, and then some toppings (and these where the sachets, a bit like furikake, but with green tea added, so that you just needed hot water). Most of the students in that class were young and lived by themselves, thus the need of quick comfort food, and they always had left over rice, and possibly a sachet of seasoning. I got to love ochazuke, but rather than seasoning from a sachet I use some chopped-up nori, some wasabi or ume plum, salted sakura flowers, dried shiso... anything I have at hand really, and then some green tea. 

Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Soba with nori tagliolini, onion weed and salted sakura (cherry blossoms)

In this post you saw my idea of cutting nori with a pasta machine. So here is what I did what that cool nori 'fettuccine'.

Just cook the soba and top with the rest of the ingredients. To serve just add a drop of soy sauce.

To make the nori tagliolini … just cut the nori sheet with a pasta machine! For the onion weed... just forage it, wash and cut (you can eat the flowers, stems and bulbs... the lot!). I bought the salted sakura (cherry blossoms) in Japan, I love them, a bit like salted capers really!

 Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Making nori seaweed 'fettuccine' with a pasta machine!

I had an idea! Instead of cutting nori seaweed with scissors (like I usually do) I tried with a pasta machine, with the tagliolini setting. And it works really well! Next time I'll show you how I used it, but for now I just wanted to share the idea! Anyway, great to top rice, soba, soups, salads... so pretty too!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

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 ©