Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Photo and Recipe by Alessandra Zecchini  © Well, it isn't a tea as such, maybe just a hot drink? But very nice! Squeeze the juice of one orange into a cup, top with boiling water, add a teaspoon of honey (I used  beechwood honeydew ) and stir with  cinnamon quill.  Also I would like to take this chance to congratulate   J.Friend and Co  for winning the Cuisine Artisan Awards ! Bravi!

Today I want to let you know about  this initiative  (in Italian, but you can find something in English here ). If you have a blog and you would like to join in and have a tree planted for your blog, write a post  about it , use the logo and let the  Doveconviene.it  team know by sending them an email  here , and then they will plant a tree for your blog. I did this in June 2011 (you can find the post -in Italian-  here ), and so far they have planted 927 trees, but if they get to 1000 trees by the end of February  iPlantatree.org  will plant 100 more trees for them.

My daughter is making sugar roses. This was videoed by the Western Leader newspaper when they came over to our kitchen for an interview about our book, Party Food for Girls . I think that we need to make a better video where you can actually see the fingers 'working' and shaping the rose petals! And just the fingers (I wasn't even supposed to be in the video myself, I would have smiled more, if I knew!!); what do you think?

This is the last  baby bear pumpkin  that I harvested last Autumn from my garden, and kept it in my potato draw for months (the others got eaten during Winter). Yesterday I finally cut it. I planted  baby bear pumpkins  for three years, and loved them, they are little so when I cut them they are perfect for one meal. To be honest last year I had a new mysterious pumpkin too in my garden (possibly from a seed in my compost), and my baby baby bears were quite different! Some were green and some were gray... A friend told me that I may had some cross pollination going on.  This year I planted a different pumpkin, a big Italian one, and had no more space in the garden for baby bears... I regret it now, when I cut my last tiny pumpkin inside it was fresh and perfect and sweet smelling... what a perfect veggie to grow since it can be stored for months!  For the sauce I used 20 g or dried porcini mushrooms soaked for 30 minutes in water. I c...

Photo by Shaun Cato-Symonds,  and Recipe by Alessandra Zecchini  © These Plum Cupcakes are from  Party Food for Girls , they are fruity and dairy free, and you can find the recipe  here .  On the same page there is also a lovely review by  Lyn Potter for the 3News website. Lyn was helped by an almost 11 years old girl to make four recipes out of the book, and Arantxa and I really appreciated this :-).  The verdicts by both mother and daughter were really positive, in particular we like one of the comments the young reader made:  " I like having a party book that a girl my age helped to write: she knows what kind of party food we like".  Read the rest of the story here:  http://www.3news.co.nz/Party-food-for-girls/tabid/420/articleID/231917/Default.aspx#ixzz1d4M33W5o

The sauce is a bit like a caponata, or at least, the caponata that I make! Eggplants and capsicums are more affordable now, and are among my favourite vegetables: Ingredients: 1 eggplant, 3 capsicums (red, yellow and green) 1 stalk of celery (optional) 1 garlic clove (peeled) 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (plus some to drizzle) one  2 tbsp black olives a few capers salt to taste Cut the eggplant into cubes and sweat with salt for 30 minutes. Rinse well. Cut the capsicums into cubes as big as the eggplant, and the celery cut into thin slices, if using. Place all the veggies plus the garlic into a pot that can be covered with a lid, add the olive oil and sauté for a few minutes, then cover and simmer on low for about an hour, adding a little water from time to time and stirring often. I usually add the olives, capers (rinsed) and salt halfway through the cooking (actually, I add them when I remember...) and cook until the eggplants are mushy ...