Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Ingredients 400 g kumara (red or yellow) 1 lemon 150 g sugar 250 g cream cheese 3 eggs Icing sugar to dust Fruit to serve Serves 8–10 for dessert, or even more for coffee if you cut it in little squares  Wash and boil the kumara until soft (check with a fork), then peel while still warm. Grate all the zest from the lemon and put aside. Extract all the lemon juice, discarding pips. Place the kumara, lemon juice and sugar in the food processor and reduce to a smooth paste.  Add the cream cheese and process again. When the mixture is smooth add the eggs, one by one, while the food processor is on low. Finally fold in the lemon peels.  Line a baking tin with baking paper. Pour the mixture in and bake in a pre-heated oven at 180°C for approximately 40 minutes, or until the top is golden and the edges start to detach from the sides of the tin. Let the cheesecake cool down completely before cutting and moving it into a serving plat...

...gluten free and sweet. It all started when my husband came back from Japan, I alway ask for some edible souvenirs, so this time I got a bottle of  Choya Umeshu  (sweet plum sake), soba noodles, umeboshi (pickled plums) and nama choco. I love nama choco, it finished in no time, the kids loved it too since this was a type without liqueur, so maybe one day I should make it, it is so easy and blogger Nami has a good recipe for it  here !  After indulging in this extra cream + extra chocolate treat I decided that it was time for a less sweet and possibly non dairy sweet treat, and I remember that one of my favourite Japanese sweet is the baked sweet potato wagashi. I made something like  this  before, and I thought that the New Zealand kumara looks like a Japanese potato... but then I ended up with something completely different :-). First of all kumara are much softer that Japanese sweet potatoes, then I only had ...

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...

This is such a classic NZ soup, everybody seems to know how to make this one: You just need some kumara (I used the red ones, peeled). Cook about 2 large kumara with 3 or 4 celery sticks (with leaves, most Kiwis do not add the leaves here, but celery leaves have lots of flavour and they are perfect for soup) in a litre of light vegetable stock. When the celery and kumara are soft blend well and serve. No need to add cream, in my opinion,  but do if you like. Serves 4. Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

Kumara , the New Zealand sweet potato, is a very Kiwi winter staple. There are different types of kumara, but the most common are the gold/yellow/orange ones, and the red ones. The reds look prettier, but if you peel them inside they are white, while the orange ones are still colourful under their skins. Kumara are sweet and they mush and blend so well that I used them a lot when I was making baby food, years ago. The kids have progressed from baby food now, but I haven't stopped blending kumara: I am just adding more seasonings to it now :-). Kumara dip I used the orange kumara here, peeled. This is not a recipe as such, you can add what you like to your blend.  Peel and boil the kumara, or roast them for more flavour. Blend with a couple of garlic cloves (peeled), salt and pepper, olive oil, lemon juice, and a fevourite spice (some examples are smoked paprika, cumin, coriander, or a mixture of all of the above if you like). ...