Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

This is real ' cucina povera ', a simple dish made with humble ingredients and leftovers. Chop two red onions and sauté with a couple of tbsp of olive oil and some fresh thyme. Add 1 litre of vegetable stock and one or two crusts of parmesan cheese. Simmer until the onions and the parmesan crusts are soft. At this point you can either remove the parmesan crusts and cut off the softest parts (to put back into the soup), or keep simmering the lot until the crusts are really really soft (you will need to add another half a litre of water). I usually use only the softest part and then cut the rest of the crust (which is a bit chewy) for the cats. Dogs also love it!  Blend everything with an immersion blender and serve with some home made bread! Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

Here there are some images form  a market in Montevideo , where I introduced the zapallito, a vegetable that looks like a round zucchini. Today I will show you a recipe we made during an Uruguayan cooking class  (offered by our Spanish language school  La Herradura ) . Faina is like a flan, but be aware: this is not like the  faina  that you get in pizzerias here (which is more like an Italian farinata made with chickpea flour - lots of immigrants from Liguria here!). These  fainas  are different and based on eggs an flour, plus different ingredients for flavor. A part from the faina de zapallitos we also made a faina de queso (cheese) and Arantxa and Max made a salchichon de chocolate (just like the Italian salame di cioccolato). Faina de zapallitos 500g zapallitos half onion 2 eggs 3/4 cup oil 1 cup milk 12 tbsp flour 1 tsp baking powder salt and pepper to taste butter to grease and breadcrumbs to sprinkle Ch...

Quick Risotto di verdura Ingredients 1 small onion 1 small carrot 1 celery stalk with leaves 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 1 tbsp chopped parsley 400 g carnaroli rice 1 glass white wine 1.5 vegetables stock 1 portion of frozen spinach 4 tbsp frozen peas Chop the onion, carrot and celery, then sauté with olive oil. Add the parsley and rice, then a glass of white wine. Add the vegetable stock ladle by ladle, stirring constantly. Halfway through cooking add the spinach, and 5 minutes before finishing add the peas. Serve hot. Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©