Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Roasted pumpkin medallions with pumpkin and sunflower seeds Slice, peel and place onto an oven tray, drizzle with olive oil, salt, smoked paprika, garlic and crushed cumin seeds. Roast until tender. Toast a few pumpkin and sunflower seeds the oven and sprinkle on the pumpkin medallions before serving. In addition I had the last zucchini in the garden, not quite a marrow but quite big, so I sliced it and baked it too: Baked zucchini Wash and slice lengthwise, drizzle with olive oil and salt, bake. That all! To serve I added some basmati and lentils Lemon basmati and lentils Wash and cook the basmati with a small pinch of salt, open a can of lentils, drain from the water and pour the lentils on top of the rice during the last five minutes of cooking. Turn off the heat, add two tbsp of lemon juice and stir. And to top some instant hummus with almond dukka: Instant hummus Open a can of chickpeas, drain and keep half of its water. Blend the ch...

I had half a pumpkin to use, but just a little bit of Thai herbs mix (ginger, lemon grass, chili, garlic and coriander), certainly not enough to give my pumpkin a spicy flavor! Still, I felt like coconut, so I cut the pumpkin and two celery stalks with leaves and put them in my pot, then I added one can of coconut cream plus one can of water (to rinse the cream out), the remaining Thai herbs mix (about half tsp) and one organic veggie stock cube. I cook the lot until the pumpkin was soft, then I adjusted it for salt and added plenty of fresh basil leaves. I wanted to add some of my Vietnamese mint but it has all dried up (no rain in Auckland either) but the basil was strong flavored and I was surprised how nice this tasted in the end! I though of using this as a side dish (like in the photo) but I run out of time to make the main and since this dish had so much sauce I just added some cubed firm tofu to it when I warmed it up for dinner. I served with Thai rice. Very nice way of e...

Ingredients: 1 red onion 2 tbsp olive oil 2 kg pumpkin flesh 1 celery stick with leaves 2 l vegetable stock Salt and pepper to taste A few sprigs of thyme A few rosemary flowers Instructions  Chop the red onion and sauté with olive oil. Add cut and peeled pumpkin, a celery stalk with leaves and some vegetable stock. When the vegetables are cooked blend the soup, adjust with salt and pepper and then decorate with fresh thyme and rosemary flowers (these can be eaten and will give the soup a lovely rosemary flavor without any of the woody leaves!). Photos and Recipe by Alessandra Zecchini 

The original recipe is  here , but this time I didn't roast the pumpkin because... I had time to cut it! (I don't like cutting pumpkin...). Also I had some celery so I put that in too, plus one carrot and one onion. I added water and organic veggie stock ( Rapunzel ), and when the veggies were soft I blended them with an immersion blender.   At this point I usually add the coconut milk/cream, but I didn't have any, so I used this coconut powder my husband brought me from a trip to  Hainan  in China (the place is famous for coconut!). he was told to place the content of a sachet in a cup and add hot water to make a hot coconut drink. We did, and it is ok, basically it is just coconut... but I am not really used to drink hot coconut milk, so I added 4 sachets to the soup instead (we still have plenty more). I simmer everything for a bit longer and then added coriander and Vietnamese mint to flavour. I love this soup!! Photos and Re...

One of my family's favourite Japanese dinner: Zaru Soba and Vegetable Tempura (mostly pumpkin). For the recipes I have to direct you  here for the Zaru Soba , and  here for the tempura  (my own recipe). I have learned to cook zaru soba in Japan, but mostly thanks to the book  The Book of Soba   by James Udesky. There is a bit of process involved, but  here  you can find the step by step instructions. The soba is Vegan, and the tempura Vegetarian (egg in the batter), but you can make a vegan batter by omitting the egg. Apparently it works just fine! Let me know if you try! The tablecloth is shibori (Japanese tie-dye) and natural indigo dye. Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

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...

I was not sure if you post this or not... I roasted some veggies, pumpkin, potatoes (previously boiled but not too soft) and orange kumara with red onion... everything was drizzled with olive oil and the first two were seasoned with salt, smoked paprika, garlic, cumin seeds and just a little chili. The kumara and red onion just had salt and olive oil, and once baked I added some Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena. Everything was so yummy, but ... by mistake I must have deleted the image with the roasted veggies! I looked for it on my phone, it was gone, completely gone! I think that these days I am taking far too many photos with my iPhone, and to make space I need to delete a lot of them, and sometimes I delete them before downloading them!!! Yes, it is not the first time that something like this has happened :-(. Does it ever happens to you? And does anyone know how many pics I can have on my iPhone at any moment? I am so scared of overloading it... thank you and enjoy the...

John showed me his Italian pumpkin from his veggie plot. As soon as I saw it I though of  zucca barucca,  but I am not so sure now, so many years have passed since I had one... maybe the name is not correct. I have been told by an agronomist that it is a  zucca barucca  :-), possibly a Marina di Chioggia or Mantovana. John gave me half of his pumpkin! Half is a lot, we made a soup, a sweet pie, some ravioli... and I still have some left! The kids made the ravioli. I prepared some pasta dough for them (recipe  here ), then I took out the pasta machine and handed it over to two very excited kids. They took turns rolling the pasta out, from the larger to the thinner setting, and when I say 'took turns', I mean literally: one roll each, and then start again, boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl... In the meantime I made a quick filling for the ravioli: I used some steamed pumpkin (steaming is better than boiling, which would make the pumpkin too ...

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...

A few weeks ago my little boy started wearing dental plates, and since it is still hard for him to chew I have been making lots of creamy soups. Soups are nice, and quick, but not necessarily photogenic. To make it more fun I have been using the Camera+ iPhone application that  Arfi  showed me. Roasted leek and Potato Soup with Leek Broth Generally I sauté the potatoes and leeks in the pot to make this soup, but I wanted to try something different. So I cut the potatoes (Agria) and leek in big chunks, placed them in a roasting dish lined with baking paper, added olive oil and salt and roasted everything for about 30 minutes. I didn't want the potatoes to become brown, just lightly roasted on the outside, and soaking up the flavour from the leeks. I washed the green leaves from the leek (the ones that are too hard to be eaten) and place them in a pot of  water with some rock salt. I cooked the leaves until I got a fragrant and light leek broth. I removed the...

One day long time ago I started adding coconut cream and fresh coriander to my pumpkin soup... and my life changed! The fact is that I always found creamed pumpkin soup a little... predictable? It always tasted the same to me! This time I also added some Vietnamese mint (one of the few herbs still alive in my garden) and the result was a fragrant pumpkin soup. Another thing that I have to say about pumpkin is that I hate cutting it! So this time I roasted the whole pumpkin first, in the oven, for well over an hour... can't remember really, but I was baking other stuff and I thought of putting in the pumpkin too, and after a while I added an onion, peeled. In the end the pumpkin was so soft that I could cut it with a spoon! I removed the skin and seeds and placed it in a pot with the onion. I added vegetable stock and then I blended everything. Finally I added one can of coconut cream and simmered it for 15 minutes. I turned the stove off, then I added some fre...