Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

In Uruguay I have discovered  this vegetable , and I thought of using it to create a pasta sauce before going back to New Zealand (where I guess that I could use zucchini or small marrows??? We'll see). Ingredients 3 zapallitos 1 tbsp butter 500 ml vegetables stock 2 garlic cloves, peeled Half cup parsley leaves salt and black pepper to taste Pasta Parmesan to serve (optional) Wash and cut the zapallitos, then put in a pan with half of the butter and one garlic clove. Sauté and when the zapallitos start to dry up add the vegetable stock and cover. Cook until all the liquid has been absorbed and the zapallitos are creamy. In the meantime finely chopped the last garlic clove with the parsley and cook the pasta al dente. I used egg  Farfalle  (bow ties), made in Uruguay. Add the remaining butter and chopped parsley to the sauce and season with salt and pepper, then drain the pasta and mix. Serve immediately.  For vegans just substit...

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...