Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

 First I started with a simple paste made with a small piece of ginger (peeled), one shallot (also peeled), fresh coriander (with stalks), green chili (not too much for me, maybe one or two), and fresh lemon grass (one stick). If you have kaffir lime leaves or rind, the are good too, apparently, but I didn't have any so I added a little lemon juice. Mush with a mortar and pestle or with a blender (I used the blender, too hot for the mortar and pestle!) adding salt towards the end.  Now, the only thing in the paste that came from the garden was coriander, and frozen (from last year) as this year my plant died! I also have lots of frozen chills to use, and a little plant that don't even have flowers yet!  The veggies: 1 carrot, 2 yellow zucchini, a few tomatoes, a few broccolini, borage tips, green capsicum, Thai mint, basil, onion weed flowers  and borage flowers to decorate. then: organic tofu and coconut cream. I cut the tofu and placed it in a ...

Photo by Alessandra Zecchini © This is a lovely way to serve rice, one of my favourites in fact! Ingredients 400 g Thai rice 1 x 400ml can coconut cream half tsp salt (In Thailand they also add sugar, but I prefer not to). Wash the rice a few times with cold water, place it in a saucepan and add the content of the can of coconut cream plus half a measure of water from the same can (in this way you can also rinse the coconut cream out). Add salt and cover with a lid. Cook very slowly by absorption, if your lid is not very heavy line it with a tea towel to avoid loosing too much steam during cooking. When the rice is ready turn the heat off and let it rest for 10 minutes before serving. At this point you can also add some fresh leaves of Thai mint, they will perfume the rice and give it more flavour.