Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Broccolo Romanesco is a beautiful vegetable, but if you cannot find it you can substitute here with a cauliflower. Cut the florets and drop them in salted boiling water, then cook them until soft but not mushy. Cool in cold water and drain, then dress with white wine vinegar or white balsamic (about one tbsp). Drain one can of chick peas (keep the chickpea water - aquafaba, to make  vegan meringues  or  other vegan recipes ) and add to the Broccolo. Add olive oil (about 2 tbsp) and salt to taste. To finish add some olives (ascolane olives are the best, otherwise used other marinated olives). Mix well and serve at room temperature. Photo and Recipe by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

I love beans and lentils, but I also love salads and raw food, my body feels like it needs them! I usually mix cooked beans with raw salad vegetables, but when I remember I get some bean sprouts, and I particularly like this crunchy bean combo from  Sproutman . I can just eat the sprouted beans as they are, with a drop of olive oil and lemon juice, 

Preserving olives is a rewarding experience. If you don’t have an olive tree you may be able to forage olives from trees in community gardens and in parks.    Usually olives are ready around April-May (in New Zealand). Pick the olives from the tree (never from the ground) and wash well in cold water. If you prefer sweet-tasting olives you can put them in a bucket of water for up to 40 days, or 20-30 days for very small olives, changing the water every 24 hours; the olives will become brownish in colour, and lose a lot of bitterness. After this period make a brine (recipe follows) and bttle your olives. If you prefer crispy green olives with a peppery taste, just wash them and soak them for a day, then preserve them in brine. Brine for preserving olives Before making the brine, be sure to have plenty of glass jars with lids, sterilised and completely dry. Ingredients Water Salt Prepare 10% salt brine (100 g of salt for every litre of water) by placing...

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...

The sauce is a bit like a caponata, or at least, the caponata that I make! Eggplants and capsicums are more affordable now, and are among my favourite vegetables: Ingredients: 1 eggplant, 3 capsicums (red, yellow and green) 1 stalk of celery (optional) 1 garlic clove (peeled) 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (plus some to drizzle) one  2 tbsp black olives a few capers salt to taste Cut the eggplant into cubes and sweat with salt for 30 minutes. Rinse well. Cut the capsicums into cubes as big as the eggplant, and the celery cut into thin slices, if using. Place all the veggies plus the garlic into a pot that can be covered with a lid, add the olive oil and sauté for a few minutes, then cover and simmer on low for about an hour, adding a little water from time to time and stirring often. I usually add the olives, capers (rinsed) and salt halfway through the cooking (actually, I add them when I remember...) and cook until the eggplants are mushy ...

My silverbeet is not big enough to be picked, but I was working in the veggie garden and I broke one entire little plant by mistake. Well, I cut it right back, and maybe it will grow again. I  saut é  the leaves with olive oil, some  onion weed  (again) and a few black olives. A pinch of salt and pepper and some grilled bread for bruschetta, and lunch for two was ready, maybe unplanned, but ready! Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

I have been telling friends about onion weed these days, everybody seems surprised (and happy) that you can eat it, especially those who gave up growing spring onions because they seem to take so long for what you get. And onion weed is free and plentiful! I kept telling everyone to use it as a spring onion without realizing that most people here use spring onions just chopped in salad, and that'a about all! So now for more suggestions for onion weed, and spring onion! After reading about the creamy onion weed pasta sauce ( here ) you may like check this  old post  as well for more images of the plant and its uses, and in the photos above there are some more things I have been cooking this week. On the top left my  nabe  (pot) with simmering  Yudofu , one of my favourite tofu meals for chilly evenings: In a capable pot I put water with some dried kombu (about a large sheet broken into 3-4 pieces), and a few dried shitake mushrooms to simmer, a...

Since recently there has been some  talk  about bloggers' getting payed or sponsored, I better just say that I didn't get payed, not receive canned tomatoes for writing this :-).  As it happens tomatoes are not in season in New Zealand (you can buy them, of course, but they taste bad, are very expensive, and I don't know where they come from). So I use Italian canned tomatoes from Mutti. As a matter of fact I have been using Mutti since I left Italy, when I could find it, that is! It was ok in London, more difficult in Japan, and now I can get it in New Zealand and my pantry is a bit like the one of an Italian immigrant: dry pasta and canned tomatoes better came from Italy! For this pizza slab I used the canned cherry tomatoes. I made the base (recipe  here ) but also added a tbsp of wheat gluten (these days I find that High grade flour is not 'strong' enough for making pizza). After 2-3 hours I rolled the dough on a large baking tray, then...

Con questa ricetta partecipo al concorso piatti unici , proposta dalla bravissima Eleonora di Burro e Miele In famiglia siamo vegetariani e mangiamo leggero, quindi per noi il piatto unico perfetto contiene carboidrati (pasta), verdura di stagione, olio d'oliva e poco formaggio e/o legumi. Qui gli ingredienti ci sono tutti! Volevo proporre una ricetta pi ù 'preparata', e se troverò il tempo lo far ò  sull’altro blog ( Alessandra Zecchini ), ma per il momento, con terremoto e tutto, ho pensato che sia meglio postare subito qualcosa qui, perché non voglio perdermi il primo contest di Eleonora :-) The recipe is in English I am not sure why I bought this pack of pasta, I think it was because I never seen it before, because it was on special, and because in that supermarket they didn't have Barilla (my safe supermarket choice, since here the pasta selection is extremely limited). The price, similar to quality pasta like Garofalo (obvio...

One of my kids' favourite snack when they get home from school is a nice piece of freshly baked focaccia. I don't usually measure the ingredients, but the flour/water ratio is about 500 g of flour for 300 ml of water, plus a pinch of salt and 2 tsp of dried yeast granules and a pinch of sugar (this yeast dose is good up to 1 kg of flour. I made a dough. While the dough was rising I cleaned the pantry and found a jar of the olives I marinated last year. They were still good, small (I picked them from a friend's tree) but very tasty. If you like to know how to preserve your own olives go to the SOME OF MY RECIPES THAT HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED IN FOOD AND LIFESTYLE MAGAZINES section on the sidebar of this blog, and click Preserving Olives . First I needed to remove the stones, which I did with a knife. At first I did this over the jar, but it was messy and I wasted too much oil, so I drained a few olives (over the jar) little by little and then I cut the flesh off the stones. I add...

Photo by Alessandra Zecchini, © cover made with flickr This pizza has mozzarella among the toppings, for a vegan version just omit the mozzarella :-) In gredients Some basic Basic Pizza Dough, recipe here For the topping 1 red capsicum 1 yellow capsicum Salt to taste 2 tbsp olive oil, plus more to drizzle 1 can chopped tomatoes 1 pinch dried oregano 1 pinch salt 1 large mozzarella 3 tbsp black olives Fresh basil leaves Tops 3 flat pizzas Wash the capsicums and then place whole in the oven at 180°C until they smell cooked. Carefully remove the capsicums from the oven and place inside a paper bag for 5 minutes; this will help the skin come off easily. Peel the capsicums, remove the seeds and cut into small slices, then place into a bowl and stir in the olive oil and a little salt. Empty the content of the chopped tomato can into another bowl, add a little salt and the dried oregano. Top the pizzas with the chopped tomatoes, then add a few slices of mozzarella, a few strips of capsic...