Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Happy New Year I would like to wish each and everyone of you a Happy New Year. Buon Anno! To make the sushi rice you can follow the recipe here . I have a Sushi rabbit stamp from Japan, but you can also use a cookie cutter, if you have one (maybe among your Easter's stuff?). I have to say that the sushi rabbits looked really nice and stylish even plain! I would have them plain for a more 'formal' dinner :-). But today we have little faces: I used borage flowers, cucumber, chives, takuan, (Japanese pickled daikon), Ume (Japanese pickled plum), and black sesame seeds. And then it was my daughter's turn, and she also used some tiny basil leaves. We had so much fun making these, and I hope that you like the idea! Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Next year will be the year of the Rabbit: a very important year for our family as my daughter is a rabbit! I made some little bunnies, the white one is made with fondant, and the cream bunny is made with marzipan. To show you the sizes I put a cherry next to them :-). I thought I did a pretty good job, and them my daughter showed me the rabbit she had made... What do you think? Isn't it cute!!! Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Rocket, roasted cashews, lemon juice, olive oil and a pinch of salt. The easiest dip ever! Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Yep more almonds, but for something savoury today. I love dukka, and I wander why I don't make it more often, but as I still have lots of almonds no excuse! My base recipe is in my book Savour , yet the beauty with dukka is that it can be personalized each time, and it is always good. For this one I toasted 100 g of almonds (not blanched) in the oven for 10 minutes, then I added one tbsp of sesame seed, one tsp of cumin seeds and half tsp of fennel seeds and put everything back into the oven for 4-5 more minutes. All in the food processor, and then grind until fine but still a little chunky. At the end I added some smoked paprika and some salt. Dukka can be used as a rub, a topping (great on hummus) and as a dip. And it can be made with a variety of nuts, seeds and spices. The best way to eat it, for me, is to use it with bread: dip some bread in extra virgin olive oil first... And then in the dukka!. Quite addictive, and the perfect party food. It lasts a few days in a sealed tin ...

My husband loves coconut cookies and cakes and macaroons... anything to do with coconut. The other day I mentioned to him that I wanted to make some of those fashionable French style macaroons that you see everywhere here in NZ now. But when I said the word 'macaroons' he immediately thought of coconut macaroon type cookies, and he was quite excited. The I showed him a picture and he bacame skeptical about the pretty pink and pastel green things I wanted to make. "Have they got coconut?" "Ehm... no.... almonds...." In his opinion this made no sense at all: he wanted to bite into something coconutty!!! So I made some chocolate and coconut cookies instead, (I will post about them later on), and these cupcakes, and called them coconut macaroons cupcakes. Roses from my garden to decorate and... could not decide which background was better for the photo: Blue or white? So I put both photos in. What do you think? Coconut Macaroon Cupcakes For the cupcakes 3 eggs 1...

A break from Xmas decorations, and on to cookies... although even these could be a nice homemade present... Ingredients 100 g dark chocolate 50 g butter 50 g sugar 1 egg 80 g self-rising flour 80 g shredded coconut, plus more to dust Makes 20 biscuits Preheat the oven at 160°C. Melt the chocolate with the butter. Add the sugar, egg, flour and shredded coconut. You will get a very oily cookie dough. With a teaspoon shape 20 small balls, which should be each about the size of a walnut. Roll the balls shredded coconut and then place them onto an oven tray lined with baking paper, making sure that you leave some space in between, as the cookies will flatten during baking. Bake for 20 minutes. Let the cookies cool completely on the baking tray before lifting them. Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

I am not quite sure if I will have a nut roast or vegetarian polpettone for Xmas this year, but I thought of having a try with the veggies... and then I could not resist buying these baby carrots! I didn't plant carrots (yet), the carrot bed needs some serious stirring of soil, the clay is all compacted down in my garden, and crooked carrots are so hard to clean! Maybe I will plant some in the weeks to come, for now I enjoyed these :-) It takes a while to clean the baby carrots, but then they look so cute! I put them in a pan with butter (you can use margarine) fresh sage and a pinch of salt. Just a little stir, while the butter is frying, and then turn the heat off and cover with a heavy lid: the carrots will cook in their own steam, and stay bright orange and lightly crispy. I washed and boiled the potatoes in salted water until I was able to cut them with a knife (so, not too mushy). Then I cut them in two or three pieces, placed them in a roasting pan lined with baking paper, a...

A few years ago a French girlfriend gave me some Calissons for Xmas. It was love at first bite, and I always wanted to make them myself. I looked around on the net, as you do, but I didn’t find a recipe I liked, or a recipe that made me think of that taste… one blog had a recipe with apricot jam among the ingredients, but I was sure I didn’t taste apricot jam in those Calissons from Aix en Provence! So I got out my copy of the Laorusse Gastronomique, a good French tome, not very precise when it comes to describe Italian food, but for French food… well, it is my best reference. There was not a recipe, only indications that they are made with 40% blanched almonds, and 60% crystallized fruit (melon with a little orange), mixed with sugar syrup and a little orange flower water. I blanched some almonds, like for the marzipan , and used my usual mixture of candied melon/papaya. I had some orange blossom water, very strong, so I decided not to add candied citrus peel. I used 80 g of almonds ...

It is raining in Auckland today, but the bush looks happy and green, and the water tank is filling nicely (yes, we drink rain water!). It is also the last day of school for my daughter, holiday mood in the air, Xmas trees alight. The boy is already home, with a friend who is staying for a sleep over. They are playing with lego: domestic bliss for me! Yesterday I posted about making your own marzipan, and today I'll show you my little fruit. For the marzipan recipe click here , and for the colours I used some spirulina powder dissolved in hot water, and some juice from berries. Shape the fruit with your fingers, you can either colour the marzipan before, or you can paint it later using a small brush, or opt for a combination of the two for a stronger colour. For the stalks I used the smallest cloves that I could find, but this is because I made some miniature fruit! I like miniatures, in a past life I am sure that I belonged to a Jane Austen world where ladies painted miniatures a...

This is another recipe from my book Sweet As , and something that I love to make for Xmas. I would like to say that for marzipan you should get the best almonds around, natural, but here in New Zealand the almonds taste different from the ones in Italy. They are imported, not sure where from most of the time, but they are not top grade almonds. Still, with a few tips, you can make your marzipan taste great even with 'regular' almonds! Buy them natural, not blanched, you need to blanche then yourself or the result will be too dry. To blanch them you need to put them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, and then add cold water and take the skin off, one by one. For this recipe you will need: 200 g almonds 100 g icing sugar 5 apricot kernels. As I was saying before, the almond here have little taste, so I like to collect the stones from apricot and get the almonds out. They are a real pain to crack! In the photo above you can see apricot stones and kernels. The apricot kernel...