Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Hops grow wild at my Aunt Alice's in the North of Veneto Pick the new shoots and wash well, then chop. Add a small chopped onion and then sauté with butter or olive oil (if making a vegan risotto). Add carnaroli or another risotto rice and then, when the rice is hot, vegetable stock, ladle by ladle. Keep stirring and adding stock (we made this over a wood fired kitchen, it didn't take long!) Serve, by itself or with grated cheese (vegetarians) or grated toasted almonds (vegans). Flowers for Pinterest Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

The Kahikatea trees in the bush are full of berries, and birds are singing happily. The berries ( koroī)  are edible, but the trees are too high to climb for me, so I can only pick what falls on the forest floor. It takes time, but foraging runs in my veins, plus it is a good squatting exercise! After picking you need to wash the berries well and remove the hard blue seeds, another time consuming job! After all this you are left with an handful of berries so it is easy to understand why you don't see  koroī jam around! In fact there are not many recipes with these berries, and this is my third one only (the other two are  Flan with Kawakawa cream and Kahikatea berries , and  Kahikatea Cupcakes .  The berries don't have much taste so I added one tsp of sugar and a tbsp of lemon juice and I let them marinate overnight. They day after they were yummy and ready to put on cereals, but I preferred  making a tart. I use quinces from Oratia, in season n...

Borage is a great plant, you can eat the flowers, stems and leaves, but I prefer to stick just to the top 10 cm of the plant, when the leaves are soft. Don't worry if they are prickly: this goes away with cooking. For this dish: Pick the fresh tips of borage flowers, with a few flowers and buds, plus tender leaves (but before they have seeds, these are quite hard!). Wash well, keep some flowers aside and then through the rest in a pot with a tbsp of butter. Sizzle, then add a little water and salt, cover and simmer until the greens are tender. In the meantime cook the wholemeal penne  al dente . When the borage tips are cooked add a few walnut kernels and then a slice of gorgonzola or other blue cheese. Stir and melt the cheese, adding a little water from the cooking pasta from time to time to make a creamy sauce. Drain the pasta and toss in the sauce, decorate with borage flowers and serve. Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

Nothing beats a green green green smoothie! Kale, spinach, banana, frozen mango, and coconut water as a base.  The croquettes are zucchini (raw and grated) mixed with feta, eggs, herbs and bread (stale bread soaked and crushed) and instead of frying them, as I usually do, I just drizzled them with olive oil and place them in the oven. Turn over halfway through baking and add more oil in necessary, you will be happy for how good they taste, even if they are not fried! Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

This is a delicious raw and vegan dish, serves 4 as a starter or side salad, and 2 as a main Ingredients 2 avocados 1 tbsp lemon juice 2 crunchy legs of celery 2 tbsp  vegan mayonnaise cherry tomatoes and edible flowers to decorate Cut the avocados and remove stones, drizzle with lemon juice. Clean the celery legs and remove the strings (I use a carrot peeler for this). Cut into small bite sizes and mix with the vegan mayonnaise (click  here  for the recipe). Fill the avocados with the celery and decorate with cherry tomatoes and edible flowers (yes you can eat the flowers, even the impatiens, they taste like rocket!) Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

I love summer and the smell of my veggie garden! It is a bit like a jungle now and we are towards the end of the season so there are more weeds than veggies, but what a joy! One of the best things for me is to make minestrone soup with whatever I can pick on the day, even when it is hot (and then you can have it warm). And I am saving some for winter in some old ice cream containers. So funny, my boy opened the freezer the other day and was excited seeing boxes and boxes of ice cream, I felt a bit mean telling him what they actually contained... Then I like to put veggies on focaccia and pizza, yellow and green zucchini slices look good and taste even better! Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

Here is an idea, just for variety, instead of rolling all the norimaki with seaweed leave some without and then stick on some flower petals (find out here what flowers you can eat  here ) I used impatiens here, not many people know that you can eat them, they taste a little like rocket salad. And if rolling the sushi in petals is too hard you can always put the flowers on the top. Below vegan norimaki with fresh borage flowers and salted sakura (cherry blossoms).  Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

It is so cool to make grissini, I just use some basic bread dough (500g high grade flour, 2 tbsp gluten flour, 300ml water, pinch of salt, brewer yeast and pinch of sugar), add a bit of olive oil and stretch out long grissini which I roll in polenta flour before baking. Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©