Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

For the first time in my life I planted friarielli (cime di rapa), I got the seeds from Slow Food Auckland and I was so excited that I didn't wait for Autumn but I planted them straight away. Auckland is hot and wet, so they grew fast and started flowering quickly, I had to pick them before they seeded even if the tops were small. But they were delicious. I also have to confess that I ate some as salad, when the leaves were very young, and they are probably one of the best alternative to rocket salad around. After I got my first batch I cleaned it and then cooked in a pan with olive oil, garlic and salt. You can add chilli, but I prefer to taste the friarielli rather than the chilli. Simmer them slowly with a lid for 20-30 minutes stirring often, if they are fresh you don't need to add water (mine came directly from the veggie garden!). The best pasta to have them with is orecchiette, but I didn't have any so I used some tofe, which are close enough in shape, but d...

The Florence Fennel seeds from NewWorld Supermarket's Little Gardener have grown into big long fennels, not the round fat fennels unfortunately. So I decided to pick them before they became too tall and create something with them. I washed them, removed the leaves and cooked them with a tbs of butter and a little light vegetable stock until they were tender, and then I added another tbs of butter I blended them into a cream which I used to dress pasta with. It was delicious! I have a couple more fennels in the garden and this will be their destiny too!  PS: The leaves are just for decoration Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

Borage is a great plant, you can eat the flowers, stems and leaves, but I prefer to stick just to the top 10 cm of the plant, when the leaves are soft. Don't worry if they are prickly: this goes away with cooking. For this dish: Pick the fresh tips of borage flowers, with a few flowers and buds, plus tender leaves (but before they have seeds, these are quite hard!). Wash well, keep some flowers aside and then through the rest in a pot with a tbsp of butter. Sizzle, then add a little water and salt, cover and simmer until the greens are tender. In the meantime cook the wholemeal penne  al dente . When the borage tips are cooked add a few walnut kernels and then a slice of gorgonzola or other blue cheese. Stir and melt the cheese, adding a little water from the cooking pasta from time to time to make a creamy sauce. Drain the pasta and toss in the sauce, decorate with borage flowers and serve. Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

Fresh pasta in Emilia Romagna (Italy) is traditionally made with flour and eggs, but since I am using  aquafaba (the brine from a can of chickpeas)  a lot these days, and it works very well as an egg replacement for many recipes, I thought that it could work for fresh pasta too! And yes it works! The chickpea brine gives protein to the mixture and elasticity to the dough which is easy to roll exactly like an egg dough. Only the colour is lighter (not so yellow) but I don't see this as an issue, and you can always add a pinch of saffron to the aquafaba if you like your pasta more yellow. The taste is perfect and the pasta dries very well, and cooks well too. Plus the taste is great! So, while I am from Emilia Romagna and will continue to make pasta the traditional way (eggs and flour), I can now also make fresh pasta for my vegan friends, and use this recipe in winter when chickens don't lay eggs. Alessandra's Vegan Homemade Fresh Pasta 200 g high grade ...

Too hot to cook but I still feel like pasta, so the solution is fresh pasta, which doesn't take long to cook, just a couple of minutes boiling instead of 10-11 minutes. You can make your own fresh pasta (there is a recipe  here ) or if you are in Auckland you can go to  Pasta & Cuore  and bring home some really yummy super fresh pasta, made daily! And for sauce? Too hot to make a sauce too, but fresh pasta doesn't need much if it is good: top with some ricotta, cubed or crumbled, salt, black pepper, extra virgin olive oil and fresh basil leaves. If the ingredients are good you don't need many, nor big amounts.  Simple is best! Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

To do this you need an afternoon, as it is not a quick dinner! On the other hand, you could make it the day before, which is actually better, but I will tell you later about that. To start I cooked a pack of paccheri from  Italian Foodies , then I drained them and cooled them under cold water. In the meantime I made a vegetarian ragù, starting with a  soffritto : finely chop 1 onion, 1carrot, 1 garlic clove, 2 stalks of celery with leaves and some Italian parsley. Sauté the vegetables with some olive oil and a pinch of salt. Then add soy mince, vegetable stock and tomato passata and simmer for at least 30 minutes, or until the sauce is thick. Make a white sauce  ( Besciamella )  with milk, flour, butter, salt, pepper and nutmeg:  melt 100 g of salted butter in a saucepan, then add 100 g of plain flour and stir. Add 1.5 l of milk slowly (this needs more milk than usual as it needs to be a little runny), stirring constantly without ma...

Yes they do! I have a few recipes with Brussels, but the easiest way to cook them is in a soup, a bit like a minestrone, so that all the flavors from the other vegetables, plus the starch of pasta, 'improve' the distinctive taste of Brussels sprouts. Chop one onion, half a carrot and one celery stalk with leaves, sauté with a tbsp of olive oil and then add 1.5 l of vegetable stock. Simmer until the carrots are soft and then add the Brussel sprouts, a cube of frozen spinach and a handful of small pasta (like  stelline ). Simmer until the pasta and Brussels sprouts are cooked, add a little more extra virgin olive oil and black pepper to taste. Easy and yum!   Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

A low fat, high protein vegan dish 1 bunch of cavolo nero 1 shallot 1.5 l vegetable stock 1 can chickpeas plus the same amount of water 1 cup of small pasta  salt and pepper to taste extra virgin olive oil to drizzle Wash the cavolo nero and remove the white stalks. Slice the shallot. Put everything in a pot with the vegetable stock and bring to the boil. Simmer for 30 minutes. Add the content of the can of chick peas, plus a can of water. Simmer for other 30 minutes then blend with an immersion blend, but not too finely, leave some of the chickpeas whole. Bring back to the boil, add the pasta and simmer until the pasta is al dente. Taste for salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil before serving. It is actually better the day after! Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

More asparagus! For the pasta I used penne, and for the sauce: 1 onion 1 bunch asparagus 2 tbsp olive oil 1 glass white wine salt to taste 200 ml cream black pepper chopped Italian parsley Parmesan to serve (optional) Finely chop the onion and the asparagus spares (keep the tips aside). Sauté the onion and asparagus spares with the olive oil, when they start to colour add the white wine, then cover and simmer, stirring from time to time and adding a little water when necessary. Simmer for at least 30 minutes, better if longer: the onion needs to be really soft. Add salt to taste. Add the cream and then the asparagus tips and simmer for a few minutes until the cream bubbles. Add freshly ground black pepper, chopped Italian parsley and the penne pasta, cooked al dente and drained (a little of water from the pasta is good too for a creamier sauce). Serve immediately, with parmesan cheese if you like. Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

This is not a quick recipe, but require slow cooking, so if you are in a rush just look at the pictures :-). There are several vegan Bolognese sauces around, mostly using soy or fake mince, and some with lentils, but I wanted to try one with cabbage, which is not a veggie I particularly like myself, but it is highly nutritious. It came out better that I hoped! Ingredients Half a cabbage 1 large carrot 2 sticks of celery with leaves 1 large onion 1 garlic clove A few Italian parsley leaves 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 1 glass wine (white or red) 1-2 tbsp tomato puree 1 l vegetable stock salt and pepper to taste more extra virgin olive oil to serve With a food processor finely chop the vegetables, then put in a pan with the olive oil and sauté for a few minutes. Then add the wine and stir well. Add the tomato puree, cover and cook slowly, stirring from time to time and adding the vegetable stock little by little. Simmer for one to two hours, the m...

Cook the linguine al dente, In the meantime clean the broccoli, cut the stalks into small pieces and the florets in fork size pieces. Heat some olive oil in a pan and add two cloves of garlic, peeled (chopped if you like a stronger garlic flavour). Sizzle the add the broccoli stalks. Stir, after one minute add the florets. Stir for a couple of minutes, add salt, cover with a lid and simmer for two minutes, then turn the element off but leave the lid on: the broccoli will cook in their steam. Cut the semi-dried tomatoes into strips and cube the feta. Drain the pasta and place in the pan with the broccoli (you can add a bit of water from the pasta or a bit more olive oil to mix everything well together. Top with the tomatoes and feta. Serve immediately.  Photos and 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...

I have silver beet (Swiss Chard) in the garden, one of the easiest green leafy vegetable to grow in New Zealand! I usually pick the leaves as I need them, but two of my old winter plants are starting to grow heads so I decided to cut them before is too late. For this recipe first I washed two big bunches of silver beet and cook them. I boiled the white stalks first, and then the green leaves. To do this I put the stalks in a big pot with a little water, and a pinch of salt, then after they have simmered for 5 minutes I add the leaves but no more water: the steam is enough to cook the leaves.  Then I made a thick besciamelle: I melted 100 g salted butter, took the pan off the stove and quickly mixed in 100 g flour, then back on the stove and slowly added 1 l milk. I stirred well until thick, and then I added salt to taste, white pepper and freshly grated nutmeg. In the meantime I cooked 500 g of pasta, I drained it and dressed it with a couple of tbsp of bes...

I am trying to eat more wholemeal pasta, something that I am not really used to. But for some reason I like wholemeal spaghetti, as long as they have a rich creamy sauce, like this one! Toast a handful of pine nuts in a frying pan until they start to get brown and oily. Using a mortar and pestle mush half of them with a clove of garlic (peeled), a few leaves of basil (not too many, this is not a Genovese pesto) and then thin everything down with extra virgin olive oil. Add a few tbsp of ricotta and adjust with salt and pepper to taste. Cook the wholemeal spaghetti al dente, then thin the ricotta sauce with a little hot water from the spaghetti pot. Drain the spaghetti and mix in the sauce. Top with the remaining pine nuts, and with some parmesan cheese, if you like.  For a vegan version instead of ricotta you could add some soft tofu: the pine nuts, basil, olive oil and garlic should be able to flavor the tofu sufficiently (unless you are one of those crafty pe...

Pick the silverbeet from your veggie garden (or buy it!), as much as you can, since it goes down a lot! I used young tender leaves of rainbow chard. Sauté with olive oil, one sliced shallot and salt. Cover and cook in its own steam (if you pick it fresh it will have enough water, otherwise you will need to add a little). Once it is cooked blend everything with an immersion blender until you get a dark green 'cream'. To make the pesto I used some basil (from the garden), garlic, salt, olive oil and this ground pistachios that a Slow Food friend gave me in Italy. I really love this product, you can put it on pasta, in sauces and dips, and desserts!   To assemble: I cooked the pasta al dente, then tossed it in the pan with the silverbeet cream, then dished it, added a slice of ricotta on top (not for Vegans, and also not necessary to the dish, but I had some to use up, also if you like the idea of something white you can use a slice of so...

This is the last  baby bear pumpkin  that I harvested last Autumn from my garden, and kept it in my potato draw for months (the others got eaten during Winter). Yesterday I finally cut it. I planted  baby bear pumpkins  for three years, and loved them, they are little so when I cut them they are perfect for one meal. To be honest last year I had a new mysterious pumpkin too in my garden (possibly from a seed in my compost), and my baby baby bears were quite different! Some were green and some were gray... A friend told me that I may had some cross pollination going on.  This year I planted a different pumpkin, a big Italian one, and had no more space in the garden for baby bears... I regret it now, when I cut my last tiny pumpkin inside it was fresh and perfect and sweet smelling... what a perfect veggie to grow since it can be stored for months!  For the sauce I used 20 g or dried porcini mushrooms soaked for 30 minutes in water. I c...

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 ...

For the fresh pasta recipe just click  here , for instruction on how to roll the pasta with a pasta machine click  here , and to fold the tortellini just look at the pictures below. The filling was improvised: a bit of feta cheese, some breadcrumbs, and a few chopped herbs (Italian parsley, chives, basil, but anything goes).  Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini, Artwork by Arantxa Zecchini Dowling  ©