Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Ingredients 120 g butter 3 eggs 130 g sugar 1/2 tsp lemon zest 200 g self-rising flour 60 ml milk 12 Italian Amarena Cherries (I used  Toschi ) to sprinkle: icing sugar Fresh As  Blackcurrant powder Makes 12 cupcakes Preheat the oven to 175°C. Line a 12-muffin tray with cupcakes paper cups. Melt the butter in a jug, either in the microwave or in the oven (while the oven is warming up for the cupcakes). Place the eggs and sugar in a mixing bowl and whisk, using an electric beater, until the mixture looks light and pale yellow in colour. Slowly add the melted butter and the lemon zest. Keep beating at a low speed now; add half of the flour followed by half of the milk. Add the rest of the flour and milk and keep beating making sure that there are no lumps. Divide the mixture between the 12-cupcake cases and add one cherry on top of each cupcake, pressing it down lightly. Bake for about 18-20 minutes, until golden brow...

A super easy and quick recipe for purple blackcurrant and coconut macaroons! My husband loves coconut macaroons, and I often make them if I have some leftover egg whites.  I just made a meringue base with egg white and more or less the same amount of icing sugar (this time I had 2 eggs whites). To add interest I included one tbs of  Fresh As  Blackcurrant powder. The colour was very pretty! Then I folded in some dried coconut, enough to make them 'spoonable' over a baking tray, lined with the  Lynette's baking sheet  I won form blogger  Zo . Nice to use a baking sheet that can be recycled over and over again! I Baked at 100 C for an hour or so and then I let them dry with the oven door open. They aren't pretty, but they are nice, and gluten free too :-).  Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

Tofu Scaloppine with wine and parsley, and thin roast potatoes I used 4 dried blocks of Japanese tofu: first I let it rest in 500 ml of warm vegetable broth to rehydrate, then I cut each piece into two thinner slices (scaloppine must be thin) and pressed them well to get the extra stock our (keep it, you will need it later!) and flatten them a bit more. I passed the slices in flour, and then placed them in a pot with plenty of sizzling melted salted butter (Vegans use margarine). A quick sauté on both sides, and then I added a good glass of white wine. Once the wine was absorbed and the scaloppine had been turned around a few times I scraped the bottom of the pan (you may need to remove the scaloppine to do this, I didn't) and added the leftover vegetable broth. I simmered everything until I had a thick sauce, then I added salt and pepper to taste, and plenty of (bought) chopped parsley. To accompany the scaloppine I made some thinly cut roast potatoes, (simply brush...

I have fond memories of eating  cachi  (Italian for persimmons) as a child in Italy. Ahhhh delicious sweet  cachi,  from October to December, always so soft that they were bought in trays from the fruit vendors, and then Mum would put them in a bowl, give us a spoon, and let us enjoy the runny soft flesh. Then at 19 I went to live in the UK, and for 6 years I had no persimmons, with one exception. To be honest I could not believe how little fruit they had in the UK (back then), every house I went in seemed to have only three types of fruit: oranges, green apples and bananas. Berries and stone fruit were luxuries and mostly used canned, or to top desserts. There was exotic fruit but mainly in fruit baskets given as presents (with the exception of the previously mentioned bananas, and the occasional pineapple). Persimmons were probably considered exotic too, although things may be different now. During those six year the only time I saw them was when a f...

I picked about two large handful of gorse flowers, made a syrup with a 100ml of water and 1 tbsp of icing sugar, put the gorse in the hot syrup and let it rest for one night.  For the gorse cupcakes:  120 g butter 3 eggs 130 g sugar 1/2 tsp lemon zest 200 g self-rising flour 100 ml gorse flowers and syrup Makes 12 cupcakes Preheat the oven to 175°C. Line a 12-muffin tray with cupcakes paper cups. Melt the butter in a jug, either in the microwave or in the oven (while the oven is warming up for the cupcakes). Place the eggs and sugar in a mixing bowl and whisk, using an electric beater, until the mixture looks light and pale yellow in colour. Slowly add the melted butter and the lemon zest. Keep beating at a low speed now; add flour followed by gorse and syrup and keep beating making sure that there are no lumps. Divide the mixture between the 12-cupcake cases and  bake for about 18-20 minutes, until golden at the top. You can ...

This is too easy and yum!!! And how often do you get plums in your smoothie? 500 ml apple juice, 2 bananas, 1 tbsp  Fresh As   Plum powder Blend well. Serves 3-4 vitamin loving kids! Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

Carrot and cucumber sticks, grapes, blueberries and Cape gooseberries, Olive focaccia (homemade) When I was living in Japan I learned to present lunch boxes including a spectrum of at least 5 colours. I try to do this with the kids' lunch boxes now, and these days the  5 + a Day  is also promoting 'colours', which is a good way to make food more interesting. Of course here in NZ lunch boxes are stuffed down the school bag and tossed around, so I could never make them like  these  super pretty bentos, (I also wouldn't have the time in the morning or late at night!) but sometimes I do them for a lunch at home. Now it is a complete coincidence that these lunch boxes are all Vegan (and containing mostly raw food!), often the kids would have cheese rolls and homemade pizza, and often a milky chocolate drink or a drinking yogurt too, but as they have so much milk and yogurt for breakfast everyday that they can do without for lunch! My problem has been tr...

I have silver beet (Swiss Chard) in the garden, one of the easiest green leafy vegetable to grow in New Zealand! I usually pick the leaves as I need them, but two of my old winter plants are starting to grow heads so I decided to cut them before is too late. For this recipe first I washed two big bunches of silver beet and cook them. I boiled the white stalks first, and then the green leaves. To do this I put the stalks in a big pot with a little water, and a pinch of salt, then after they have simmered for 5 minutes I add the leaves but no more water: the steam is enough to cook the leaves.  Then I made a thick besciamelle: I melted 100 g salted butter, took the pan off the stove and quickly mixed in 100 g flour, then back on the stove and slowly added 1 l milk. I stirred well until thick, and then I added salt to taste, white pepper and freshly grated nutmeg. In the meantime I cooked 500 g of pasta, I drained it and dressed it with a couple of tbsp of bes...

I used more or less the same recipe as for the  pineapple agar agar : 500 ml of water for one tsp of agar agar, then instead of  Fresh As  pineapple powder I used their Passion Fruit powder, one and a half tbsp of it, and two tbsp of sugar (since the passion fruit powder is more sour than the pineapple powder). I still have Cape gooseberries in the garden, I picked a few and cut them into two, them place then in the jelly cups before pouring in the hot agar agar.  Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

Or with capsicums... In the last month I had a larger number of visitors form the US for all of my blogs, and I was asking myself if I am using the right English names for them. There is one person who keeps 'correcting' me ("we call them this and we call them that") so for once (once!) I changed the title! On the other hand... maybe I could call this recipe  Paprika Tofu ! :-) I chopped two stalks of celery, one small onion, and sliced a carrot. I put everything in a large pot with olive oil and sautéed for 5 minutes. I added one yellow, one orange and one red bell peppers/capsicums/paprika and then after 5 minutes I added one can of Mutti tomato pulp (like a thick  passata ), one cup of vegetable stock and one block of tofu cut into cubes. I simmered the lot for 30 minutes, then I added salt and smoked paprika to taste (quite a bit of smoked paprika actually, I love it!). I simmered everything again until the sauce was quite thick, and then I added...

This is a first. I like stuffed cabbage leaves but I always use this dark green curly cabbages (like Savoy) to make them, and I never used the round and firm white cabbages that are used to make coleslaw. But I happened to have a big white cabbage and the outer leaves were sort of green... I managed to remove 7 leaves before the cabbage become to compact to pull apart. Then I washed them and boiled them in salted water (which I later used to make vegetable broth for an Asian noodle soup - never waste!). I also boiled a few more cabbage leaves that got broken while I was trying to pull them away: they were going to be used in the filling. For the filling I used some cooked cabbage leaves, a couple of slices of vegetarian bacon, chopped parsley, breadcrumbs, smoked salt, chili flakes, coriander seeds and smoked garlic. I mushed everything with my hands and divided the filling between the 7 leaves, and then I rolled them up. I prepared a soffritto with a shal...

Chop one large leek and wash it, then sauté with olive oil until soft. Add one cup of shelled edamame (I used the frozen ones) and sauté until the edamame are starting to cook. Add 400 g arborio rice and stir, when the rice is hot and starting to toast add a glass of white wine at room temperature (not chilled). Stir and after the wine has been absorbed add about 1 l of vegetable stock, one ladle at the time, stirring often until cooked.  Serves 4 Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

With one hand only because with the other I was taking pictures :-)!!!. Cheese cigars are rolls of filo pastry filled with cheese and then fried or baked (I bake them). I just put all my filo pastry sheets on a tray and fold them one by one until I used them all up. Proceed like for a spring roll, rolling the cheese stick up a few times (picture 2 and 3), and then folding in the sides in (picture 4) before continuing to roll. This way you will seal the cheese in. You can repeat it with a second sheet of pastry if you think that the cheese will melt out into the tray (or if you like to have more pastry!). Once more: this time I put a bit of chopped parsley with the cheese so that it is easier to see. In pictures 5 and 6 you can see how the sides are rolled in. Last time now, pizza cigars, I put a strip of tomato paste, then cheese, then oregano, roll, fold the sides in, and roll again until the end.  Brush with water and bake at 180 C °  until golden ...

We all know of the  enzymes of certain raw fruit (pineapple, papaya, kiwi etc) that won't make jelly, or agar agar, set. And also that cooking the fruit first will stop the problem. Or using canned fruit!  But the only canned fruit I use is mango pulp (to make  mango agar agar pudding , in fact) and I was just wondering... wondering... if the  Fresh As  pineapple powder, having been freeze dried, would still have those enzymes... so I tried. I used 500ml of water, boiled it and added 1 tsp of sugar, 1 tbsp of  Fresh As  pineapple powder and 1 level tsp of agar agar. I simmered everything for one minute and then poured it into 4 individual jelly moulds. I used these colorful ones, when the agar is set you just remove the lid at the bottom and they should pop down. Should. We actually shook them a bit! The pineapple puddings were fresh and fragrant, not too sweet (the sugar ratio was perfect) and I liked the flavor, although my husband and t...