Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Fresh pineapple, kiwi, banana, raspberries, mango, mandarin, blueberries and strawberries Nothing better than a colourful fruit plate for breakfast, dessert, or snack!  Berry fruit salad: strawberries, blueberries and raspberries Tropical fruit salads: pineapple, banana, mango and kiwi Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

To make gari, the lovely pink pickled ginger for sushi, you need to have very fresh ginger roots, which are not to easy to find. So I grew my own! Bough ginger roots sometimes have a little green bud, or develop one if you leave them outside the fridge, and in this case you can just break a piece off (the one with the bud, of course) and plant it! I did just this, not knowing what to expect, and I was rewarded with a big leafy ginger plant! When I 'harvested' the roots they were fresh and fragrant, perfect for making gari.  For the recipe I looked up one of my favourite books,  The Book of Sushi , published by Kodansha International. Sadly Kodansha doesn't publish anymore in English, which is a real pity as they made some outstanding books on Japanese culture, including several cooking books, so this book may not be easy to find now. I washed my ginger roots (I could not break much of it, as I made the mistake of planting it in a pot with a lemon tree and t...

Sage flowers are beautiful and have a delicate taste of sage, lighter than the leaves. They are perfect for sprinkling on food like risotto, pasta, bean salads and roasted vegetables. I also like to make sage flower butter, which is also a way to make the petals last longer (sage butter will keep in the fridge for a couple of months, depending on the expiring date of the butter, of course!). There are two ways to make this: one is to melt the butter completely (a bit like making ghee) and then insert the flowers little by little while the butter is cooling, and then pour it into a container before it is completely solid. This way you loose a little aroma, but the butter lasts longer. The other is to soften the butter at room temperature and then work the flowers in with a fork or spatula, and then roll the butter up into a log and refrigerate. I love this but then I end up using too much butter as it is so good on warm bread...). In either cases every time you need a bit of flavoured...