Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

 I used one cup of chestnut flour, 2 tsp cocoa, a few sultanas and enough water to make a batter. I poured the batter in silicone moulds and baked for about 20 minutes (until a toothpick came out clean). Very yummy, incredibly filling, and healthy too. Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

This dessert is perfect after a Japanese meal, maybe not a traditional Japanese dish (I invented it, after all, like most of the recipes in this blog) but it taste great and and it is made with only two ingredients: persimmons and agar agar (and a little water). So it is sugar free, gluten free and vegan! All you need to do is peel two persimmons and cube them. Put the fruit in a blender with a just enough water to be able to blend it. Mix half tsp of agar agar powder with 50 ml of water and add to the persimmon 'smoothie'. Put everything in a small pot and bring to the boil. Simmer for just one minute then pour into a mould (rectangular is better). Let it cool down and cut into slices. Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

The other day I had a crazy craving for gomadofu, the 'tofu' made with sesame seeds. But I couldn't find it anywhere in Auckland! If anyone can help (or tell me how to make it at home!) please do! Anyway, I ended up buying konnyaku, a Japanese starchy-jelly food made from Konjak yam plant. It has nothing to do with gomadofu but perhaps the colour (a little) and to satisfy my  goma  (sesame) craving I thought of serving it with a sesame dressing. You don't need to do anything with the konnyaku except taking it out of the packet and slice it! For the veggies i steamed some cauliflowers florets and carrots (separately) and cooked some spinach. The spinach were rolled in a nori seaweed sheet (like a sushi roll, but with spinach instead of rice). For the dressing, usually I make  this miso dressing , but this time I tried to make  Nami's miso dressing , from  Just One Cookbook , mostly because I have never tried to put rice vinegar in my dressing and ...

After the  arrabbiata post  I was asked what I mean by 'putting' the tomatoes through a sieve. Well, traditionally in Italy we put the tomatoes through a vegetable mill, but I don't have one so I use a sieve. The skins and most of the seeds are left behind (or all the seeds, depending on the mesh of your sieve), and the sauce (passata) gets through. This, to me, is the best sauce in the world! Of course you need to cook the tomatoes first (maybe with garlic?) then put the tomato 'mush' through the sieve and back into the pot to cook until thick. Then I just add salt, olive oil and basil and serve, possibly with spaghetti! It takes time, but it is worth it! Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

Green, cleansing and refreshing!  Celery stalks and leaves, cucumber, and a few sprigs and leaves of coriander (to taste, it can be really strong). Happy detoxing! Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

… plus beetroots from the garden, carrots, apples, and a little ginger. For five juices I used about 1.5 kg of carrots, plus a few local apples, and i picked two beetroots from my veggie garden, they were small but the leaves and stalks are perfect for juicing too (of salad) so nothing get wasted. I used just a little ginger (not all the piece in the photo) to give the juice a little zest. It was really sweet and delicious!   Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

This is perfect if you: A:  follow a raw diet (or don't know what to give to a raw eater/vega/gluten free/allergic/etc.) B:  prefer fruit to dessert (i.e. no time to make dessert) C:  want to lose weigh or to eat breakfast all day long D:  are in love! All you need is a knife and a hear shaped cookie cutter.  Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini

The juice of the day is just carrots and orange. Usually I have this in winter, but I had a couple of oranges to use and it is refreshing (it has been hot!) Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

Freshly picked: tomatoes, basil, cucumber, radish, lettuce and mizuna. Make a salad. I just add olive oil, salt and lemon juice so the dressing is not that expensive. Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

This juice tastes good and feels good! For four glasses I used seven stalks of celery (no leaves this time) half a telegraph cucumber, two stalks of rhubarb from the garden (yes, raw!) and then topped up to taste with natural apple juice (no sugar added). The apple juice is optional, of course, but I like it ;-). For a change in my weekly bouquet from the garden I picked some parsley flowers. They look quite pretty actually, and there is no parsley smell around (I was a bit worried about that!). Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

I am so into juicing these days, and the kids drink all sort of vegetable and fruit juices, the greener the better! This one is particularly good: for four glasses I used half a stalk of celery (I use the stalks and only a few leaves - mostly to give it colour, usually I keep the leaves for cooking) then half a lemon and  to top a little (about 10-20%) natural apple juice. I will make this again and again, too good! And now for something completely different: Nearly bought this one… :-)   Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

This salad doesn't require much explanation: I have mixed salad leaves (lots of mizuna this year) and an variety of flowers. Did you know that you can eat impatient (busy lizzy) flowers too? They taste a bit like rocket, the best for me are the red ones, but the pink ones are so pretty! Mix and dress with extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice and salt.   Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

I love ricotta cheesecake, and it has less calories that regular cheesecake. This recipe is very simple and calls for many variations: here I used rum and raisins, but it is great with lemon zest, or vanilla, or candied citrus peels... Ingredients 1 sheet sweet butter pastry for the base 1 handful raisins (or sultana) 50 ml rum 3 eggs 3 tbsp sugar 500 g ricotta Line a square or rectangular baking tin with baking paper and the sweet butter pastry, pinching the pastry so that it lightly comes up to the borders (it doesn't need to come up all the way through, just about 2 or 3 cm.). Soak the raisins with the rum. Beat the eggs with the sugar until they are foamy and pale yellow, then add the ricotta and beat for one more minute. Fold in the raisins and rum and pour over the pastry. Place immediately in a preheated oven at 160°C for approximately 45 minutes, or until the borders look golden. Let the cake cool down for several hours before cutting.   Photos and recipes...

When I was teaching Italian in Japan I once asked my students to tell me what was the typical Japanese dish they had for dinner, one answered ochazuke, and everybody laughed! Ochazuke meant that you lived alone, or your mum/wife was out for the night and you couldn't cook. Or that you run out of money! For homework they had to write a description of Ochazuke (in Italian) and the week after they came with their recipes and, most surprising for me, they all brought a sachet of flavoring for ochazuke, for me to try. The basic idea is to use leftover plain rice and top it with hot green tea, and then some toppings (and these where the sachets, a bit like  furikake , but with green tea added, so that you just needed hot water). Most of the students in that class were young and lived by themselves, thus the need of quick comfort food, and they always had left over rice, and possibly a sachet of seasoning. I got to love ochazuke, but rather than seasoning from a sachet I use some cho...

In  this post  you can find the recipe for the feijoa zest syrup, and from it I took about one tsp of sezt for the  feijoa zest meringues . The leftover syrup (full of zest) was about 350 ml, and I decided to use it to make a little jelly with agar agar. I added a level tsp of agar agar and brought it back to the boil. The I poured it into a jelly mould and waited. It tasted great and was quite a visual treat, with all the zest floating in jelly!  Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

Quick Risotto di verdura Ingredients 1 small onion 1 small carrot 1 celery stalk with leaves 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 1 tbsp chopped parsley 400 g carnaroli rice 1 glass white wine 1.5 vegetables stock 1 portion of frozen spinach 4 tbsp frozen peas Chop the onion, carrot and celery, then sauté with olive oil. Add the parsley and rice, then a glass of white wine. Add the vegetable stock ladle by ladle, stirring constantly. Halfway through cooking add the spinach, and 5 minutes before finishing add the peas. Serve hot. Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

Quick post today, and a quick idea! I make fruit salad with watermelon and blueberries quite often, I really like the colours together, and there is no need for sugar. This time I also added some Cape Gooseberries and some Alpine strawberries from the garden, very effective, and a sugar free healthy dessert! I am entering this recipe in Sweet New Zealand, the monthly blogging event for Kiwi bloggers. Our October 2013 host is  Lucy from Lucy eats , click  here  to enter. Here you are Lucy, a sugar free dessert, perfect for Spring and Summer! Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

I though a lot about this, I am not the type to 'deconstruct' dishes, but I wanted to try.  The resulting spinach puddings are really soft but perfectly set and stable, the feta sauce easy and yummy, and the filo 'crackers' complete the dish perfectly, so you will make an impression with your guests! Ingredients For the savory spinach mini puddings: 500 g chopped frozen spinach Water 100 ml milk 2 tbsp grated parmesan cheese 3 eggs Salt to taste Salted butter to grease the ramekins For the Feta Sauce: 100 g feta A sprig of oregano (or a pinch of dried oregano) A little milk and hot water For the Filo Crackers: 5 sheets of film pastry Salted butter, melted, to brush Boil the spinach with water, then drain but do not squeeze. Put the spinach in a bowl and blend with an immersion blender. Add the milk and blend again. Add the parmesan and eggs and blend again. Taste for salt then add salt. Grease 8 ramekins with butter...

The first time I used filo, long time ago now, I learned to spread melted butter every two sheets of pastry. It seemed a lot but I didn't have the courage to skip this step. Then I started to put less and less (only for baklava I keep using lots of butter, but then you only get a tiny piece so that is ok, I guess :-), or to use olive oil, which felt more 'Mediterranean' than butter. But filo pastry is very low fat in itself and I wondered if I really needed to use fat... this version has no butter or oil, and yet it tastes great!  Generally I use feta, spinach, garlic and cumin, or oregano. But while the  onion weed  abounds I thought "why not?", and made it with it. I picked, washed and chopped some onion weed, using the bulbs, stems, leaves and flowers. I mixed with 600 g of frozen chopped spinach (defrosted at room temperature) and a big block of goat feta. I used about 180 g of filo for this pie, half in the bottom, covered with the...