Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

This recipe is from my book  Savour ,  it is really easy and the result is guaranteed to make your dinner guests go WOW! All you need is ordinary brown onions (one per person for a main or just half per person for a starter). Peel the onions and boil whole for about 10 minutes (or until half cooked but not too soft) then cut in half horizontally. For every two onions melt about 50g of salted butter in a pan and add 2 to 4 tsp of brown sugar (it depends on your taste). Put the onions, cut side down, into the pan and them place them into individual ramekins (still cut side down. Add the remaining butter. Cover each onion with a disk of flaky puff pastry (your own or bought, I used  Paneton ) and press down well until you get a 'bowler hat' shape around your onion. Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C for about 20 minutes, or until the pastry is golden. Reverse over a serving plate (or individual plates, they will pop out easily). Serve hot, they are deliciously butte...

The original recipe is from  Loredana  and you can find it  here  (in Italian).  The ingredients from Loredana: 3 egg whites (About  100g ) 200 g icing sugar 100 ml water 200 ml cream 250 g plain yogurt  1 tbsp fruit compote First you have to make an Italian meringue base. I must confess that I really enjoy making Italian meringue, possibly because it is not something that I see here in New Zealand. Beat the egg whites really stiff, in the meantime make a syrup with the water and icing sugar (I never used icing sugar for the syrup before, so this was a new one for me!). I don't have a sugar thermometer (didn't I say this already?? A few times?? Yep!) but you see, Loredana in her original recipe doesn't talk about temperatures, she just says to make quite a thick syrup. Ahh, a real home cook! I made my 'thickish' syrup, and I wish that I could explain it better, but it is that stage when the syrup just start to ...

A few years ago a French girlfriend gave me some Calissons for Xmas. It was love at first bite, and I always wanted to make them myself. I looked around on the net, as you do, but I didn’t find a recipe I liked, or a recipe that made me think of that taste… one blog had a recipe with apricot jam among the ingredients, but I was sure I didn’t taste apricot jam in those Calissons from Aix en Provence! So I got out my copy of the Laorusse Gastronomique, a good French tome, not very precise when it comes to describe Italian food, but for French food… well, it is my best reference. There was not a recipe, only indications that they are made with 40% blanched almonds, and 60% crystallized fruit (melon with a little orange), mixed with sugar syrup and a little orange flower water. I blanched some almonds, like for the marzipan , and used my usual mixture of candied melon/papaya. I had some orange blossom water, very strong, so I decided not to add candied citrus peel. I used 80 g of almonds ...