Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

First I made a vanilla pudding (following  this basic recipe , but omitting the passion fruit), and I filled the bottoms of the jars (they are 125ml jars) with it. I put the jars in a bowl with some cold water to cool quickly. I added a few pieces of 72% dark chocolate to the pot with the remaining vanilla pudding, which was still hot, and stirred to make chocolate pudding. I poured some in to make a second layer in the jars. I had a lot of chocolate pudding left over for four ramekins, so I made a separate dessert too :-).  In the end, when the puddings were cold I made the final pink layer: I whipped about 100 ml of cream with a tsp of  Plum Powder  (the flavour was lightly tangy and really nice, and the colour very pretty) and pour it on top. Refrigerate with the lid on, and serve with the lid on!! Very cute! Bye! Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

Did you ever see the blog  Cooking Gallery ? It is on my blogroll and among my favourite blogs to visit because it is full of fantastic bento ideas! And my kids like it too, but they cannot really take proper decorated bentos to school, it is not practical in NZ, so they usually have a sandwich, some fruit and when possible some raw veggies too, all stuff that can be eaten with fingers or with a bento pick. So bento tend to be fun meal to eat at home!  And just for children? No! Yesterday I was at home alone for lunch and I thought that I should eat more salad.  Kazuyo  gave me some of her quails' eggs and inspired by  Cooking Gallery  pretty 'faces' and figurines I made a fun bento just for myself. To be honest with you if I had made this for the kids I would have taken out all my flower cutters to cut the veggies like flowers and so on, but here I limited myself in making a little sleeping doll. Of course I would like to have a set of n...

I heard about  Pinoli  a while ago, and since all the pine nuts that I used to get in NZ just didn't seem to taste right, I decided to try the new NZ home grown variety. My Italian readers will notice the name (pinoli means pine nuts in Italian) and yes, it is quite typical here to give a product a 'brand' name like this. Do we ever do it with English names in Italy? I can't think of any at the moment, but let me know if you do! But back to Pinoli (the brand). The nuts are fresh and quite big and long, and once toasted they smell and taste good, so I was very happy to buy them (yes I bought them, this is not an ad.). The price is reasonable, they may look expensive to those who are not used to buy pine nuts, but so they should be: they are not cheaper in Italy either and you need a lot of pine cones to get a few nuts out! I mostly use them for pesto and savory dishes, but they are great for sweet stuff too (btw, did you see this  Japanese di...

Potatoes and Cape gooseberries The veggie garden is full of small potatoes, I picked a few, some really tiny, but I didn't want to leave them there, and the kids love them. I washed them and boil them, in three batches, from the largest to the tiniest. After boiling them, the larger (but still new potato size) were then sautéed together with small steamed carrots and green beans in olive oil, garlic, smoked paprika, cumin seeds, chili flakes, coriander seeds, and salt. A very satisfying combo! The smaller potatoes were sautéed with garlic, olive oil, rosemary, sage and salt. A real luxury to eat such small potatoes, but I need to make more space in the garden, and there are plenty more to dig up!  Any suggestions for more tiny potato recipes? Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

Pink Plum Cupcakes   The other day in  Titirangi  I bought something new, a  plum powder ! I was very keen to try it and so I made some vanilla cupcakes and added some to the mixture. I also made a soft royal icing topping with about 1 tsp of plum powder. In baking I would say that you possibly need quite a bit to make a difference in colour and taste, but for icing it works really well, giving off a mild colour, smell and taste. I am keen to try more  Fresh As  flavours now! And of course the flowers are from my garden :-). Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

One of my family's favourite Japanese dinner: Zaru Soba and Vegetable Tempura (mostly pumpkin). For the recipes I have to direct you  here for the Zaru Soba , and  here for the tempura  (my own recipe). I have learned to cook zaru soba in Japan, but mostly thanks to the book  The Book of Soba   by James Udesky. There is a bit of process involved, but  here  you can find the step by step instructions. The soba is Vegan, and the tempura Vegetarian (egg in the batter), but you can make a vegan batter by omitting the egg. Apparently it works just fine! Let me know if you try! The tablecloth is shibori (Japanese tie-dye) and natural indigo dye. Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©