Only 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  ©

It is quite satisfying to make fake meat, meat eaters will not understand this, but they should try too, when the fridge is empty and you have little time. No hunting, killing, butchering … cheap and so versatile for many dishes. All you need is some gluten flour, and the flavouring of your choice.  This is also called seitan and can be made in many different ways, but I find that the easier for me is to mix one cup of gluten flour with one cup of water. To the gluten flour you can add salt and pepper, herbs, seasoning… smoked salt or paprika, garlic flakes, dried sage and rosemary… anything really. Then you mix everything with your fingers and then work into a dough. Once the dough is ready shape it into a sausages and with a pair of scissor cut into very thin slices directly into a pot of boiling vegetable stock and simmer for 30 minutes (it will grow and absorb more flavour). For this dish I drained the fake meat slices and then pan fried them with a little oil to brown...

Potatoes and Cape gooseberries The veggie garden is full of small potatoes, I picked a few, some really tiny, but I didn't want to leave them there, and the kids love them. I washed them and boil them, in three batches, from the largest to the tiniest. After boiling them, the larger (but still new potato size) were then sautéed together with small steamed carrots and green beans in olive oil, garlic, smoked paprika, cumin seeds, chili flakes, coriander seeds, and salt. A very satisfying combo! The smaller potatoes were sautéed with garlic, olive oil, rosemary, sage and salt. A real luxury to eat such small potatoes, but I need to make more space in the garden, and there are plenty more to dig up!  Any suggestions for more tiny potato recipes? Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

In my mind  Pâté is something made with leftovers: mince finely and add fat,  and  voilà le  Pâté! But leftovers in this household are very scarce indeed, so I needed to create some! Obviously my p âté has a vegetable base, Kazuyo gave me some runner beans, and I had some green beans myself, so I cooked them with carrot, onion and celery, and water and salt. That was going to be blended into a creamy soup, but I could use some veggies first.  Then in a saucepan I cooked a couple of zucchini with a green and a red capsicum, garlic, salt and olive oil. This ended up on top of a place of potato gnocchi (after keeping a couple of spoons for the p âté). Ok, so these weren't exactly leftovers, I worked in reverse, the main meals were the leftovers from my p âté!   How much to use? Well, a bit of all of the vegetables (without the stock) to fill a 500ml jag, to start with. Then I blended the veggies.  ...

Bored with the same side salad? Can’t get the kids to eat it? Maybe you need to roll it up! I did this because I had a few sheet of rice paper to use, just about a dozen, not enough to make a meal, but enough for some fun side veggies. Ingredients: Cooked green beans Cooked carrot sticks Mesclun salad Rice paper Sweet chili sauce to serve Follow the instructions on how to soften, fill and roll the rice papers  here . Btw, these were a hit with the kids, they like salad, but they had more fun eating it this way. Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

From my garden This is what I got from my garden: yellow and green beans (a few of the yellow beans where overgrown so I collected the big purple beans inside), celery, tomatoes and my first mini pumpkin. All in the pot, with some rain water and rock salt. Yep, rain water, our water comes from the sky and we collect it in a big tank. Can't stop thinking that a soup like this is almost self-sufficient, a part from the salt! Since my leeks are not ready and I don't have any onions or garlic in the garden, I thought of adding some chives at the end, for that ' oniony'  kick. But you know what? When I lifted the lid it smelled like I had just entered a huge veggie garden. The aroma was so strong and perfect that I didn't add anything else. It was a filling and satisfying garden soup (I called it  zuppa dell'orto ), you can add a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and/or some freshly ground black pepper in the end, or some pasta for a...