Timballo di cavoletti di Bruxelles e patate - Brussels Sprout and potato Italian style terrine

Not everyone likes Brussels, my husband doesn't... generally, but when I cook them he does, in fact after making this he went out and bought some more himself!!!

I love them, they are a great vegetable to use to make a main, and they are so pretty!

A timballo is a baked dish of rice and other ingredients, it can be made with anything, and I usually do it when I have left over long grain rice. It is also a good way to pair rice and potatoes, which may seems strange to some, but it works.

I cleaned the Brussels and slice a couple of big peeled potatoes, and then pass them quickly in a pan with olive oil and a little garlic. Just long enough to heat them, two minutes, stirring (don't burn them or colour them!). Then I covered them with vegetable stock, added a lid and simmer them on low until soft.

Add more stock when needed to make sure that there is always a bit of liquid. The potatoes will make the 'sauce' thick, and soften the bitterness of the Brussels.

Turn the element off, keep some Brussels and some of the best potato slices aside, and mix the rest with the cooked, or leftover, rice. Put in a baking dish and press down very well. Top with the potato slices and bake for 20 minutes, then cover with cheese and bake for other 20. Heat the leftover Brussels and pour over just before serving.

Golly, this was supposed to serve 6 but 4 of us gulped it down in no time!

And now: photos from the garden, and orchids in the house! Happy Weekend

 Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Potato salad with Fresh As Tarragon, capers and Friarielli flowers, plus focaccia with Fresh As herbs

I have been trying a few freeze dried herbs from Fresh As and this potato salad is definitely a winner.

Boil the potatoes and peel, then cut and mix with mayo and capers. Sprinkle with Fresh As French Tarragon. I also added some edible flowers from my friarielli (cime di rapa) plants.

The friarielli seeds come for Italian Seeds Pronto, such a great winter crop! Eat the leaves, tips and flowers!

I also tried other Fresh As powders: chili, garlic, oregano, basil and rosemary (plus the French Tarragon) on focaccia. I used letter stencils before adding the powders, just to record what went where. FYI, the garlic becomes orange after baking.

Delicious, and also pretty in a bread basket!

And on some fried eggplants (added after frying, with salt).

 Flowers from my garden

 Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Baby perlas potatoes two ways: hot 'in padella', and salad with flowers

I received a few potatoes to try from Potatoes New Zealand to celebrate November Means New Potatoes, and here are my first creations.

  I started with baby perlas, which I knew already. These little new potatoes are cute and a real little treat, so they deserve special attention!

I boiled them first (no mint... just cannot bear minted potatoes, sorry Kiwis!) and then I divided them: half I used for salad, I picked the 'bigger' ones and cut them into two pieces, then I mix them with mayonnaise, chopped onion weed bulbs and stalks, nasturtium buds and petals, and Impatiens' petals. 

Keep a few flowers aside for decorations, and onion weed flowers too, if you like. I think that a lot of people now are comfortable with eating nasturtium flowers and buds (I left some buds for decoration too, and for you to see). Buds taste a little like capers. Young tender leaves are nice too (see soup below). Not so many people would eat Impatiens though, or know about them. They taste a little like rocket, and I prefer the red ones, although I always add a few pink ones just because the colour is so pretty. My preference for red ones may be just because I observed the chickens eating all the red ones while leaving behind the other colours, but maybe they are just colour blind? Anyway, I tasted all the colours and decided that the chicken were right... Of course don't eat the flowers if you spray your garden with chemicals!

As for the smaller potatoes, I just heated it some garlic with olive oil in a skillet and then tossed the potatoes around, with an extra good pinch of salt, until hot. Then turned the heat off and added some fresh thyme, another toss, and ecco fatto! Patatine novelle in padella al timo!

I also tried some more potatoes, a variety called Carrera, which I used to make one of my classic spring soup, with asparagus and onion weed and flowers (yes, using lots of onion weeds and flowers, my Spring staples!), and you can find the recipe here, just substitute the agria potato for the Carrera potatoes and you are done!

Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Italian chips and beautiful things in my garden

How silly can a recipe be? I never thought that I would bother writing something so basic, but the world where I live is so full of chips, and terrible chips I must say, that I very rarely eat them out, and very occasionally I like to make them at home the Italian way, patatine fritte, like we made on special occasions, usually on a Sunday. These are not deep fried but pan-fried, and they are flavoured with garlic and rosemary, 

Peel the potatoes, cut the potatoes into chip sizes, rinse (or just soak in water) and pat dry. Sizzle some garlic in a frypan with extra virgin olive oil, then add the chips and pan-fry stirring and/or shaking the pan constantly. I add just a little salt at the beginning, and remove the garlic before it burns. Then I add rosemary when they are nearly cooked (they takes about 20 minutes), finish with more salt and eat immediately (although if you cook them this way they are also tasty when cold, unlike British style chips). 

And now something from my garden

The pink orchids are glorious this year, the yellow ones will follow soon, and every year they cheer me up in the middle of the Auckland winter.

And then, look who is sleeping on one of the Nikau palms!

A Kereru! The New Zealand native wood pigeon, all puffed up and using her chest for a pillow.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Leek and potato soup, who buys it?

I am surprised when I see people buying already made soups, especially the very simple ones. Ok to buy them if you are going camping. Or if you are staying in a motel and don't want to eat out. Or if you don't have any cooking facilities, for whatever reason.

Ingredients and instructions: peel and cut the potatoes, wash and cut the leek, put olive oil in the pot (for me, or you can use butter) to sauté the veggies, then add vegetable stock to cover and simmer. Blend. Done.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Gnocchi di palate step by step

To make gnocchi you need big floury potatoes, like agria, wash them and boil them with the skin. Do not peel first! Peel the potatoes only after they have been boiled, then press with a potato ricer. This is very important, if you you a blender or food processer you will not get the right texture.

I added a bit of cooked pumpkin too (not necessary, but I had it!). Then salt, pepper and ground nutmeg. And then a bit of flour, enough to get a workable dough. There is no exact dosage really, it all depends on how floury are your potatoes, and adding pumpkin does require a bit more flour too.

Take a piece of potato dough and roll it into long strips, then cut off the gnocchi.

Shape the gnocchi with the help of a fork to make some incisions on the top.

The gnocchi is ready! Cook in salted boiling water and as they rise to the surface remove with a slotted spoon and place in the pot with the sauce of your choice (or just melted butter with sage!).

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Potatoes and carrots with sage, rosemary and garlic, and do you know this flower?

Digging up the garden I pulled some ugly carrots and a few potatoes (white and yellow). I cleaned them and boiled them until cooked but firm, then I remove the skins (from the carrots too!) and sautéd them with olive oil, garlic, sage, rosemary and a pinch of salt. Really simple but super tasty!!

I also found this flowers… really pretty but I have no idea what they are! I didn't plant them and I thought that they were a weed, do you know them?

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Kashmiri Masala chickpeas and potatoes

Manu invited me to a 'Swap' on her blog, and my swapping partner is Billie from Scotland. We had to send each other an ingredient and then make a recipe with it. I sent Billie the Fresh As raspberry powder, and I look forward to see what she will do with it! She sent me some Kasmiri Masala, but because I got it late (I forgot to tell Billie my address, silly me, but fortunately she copied it from the parcel I sent her!). I had a super busy week (which included preparing for a full day TV shoot), and I am behind with my deadline for publishing a recipe! But the best thing about a Masala is that you don't have to sizzle all the spices at the beginning and work out the doses, in fact a masala should be added at the very end, to enjoy the fragrances of the aromatic spices (and the Kashmiri Masala is definitely very aromatic!!). So even if I was running around like mad I managed to throw together something starting with the leftover juice of a peperonata (stewed capsicums with celery, carrot, and garlic).

I had all that wonderful bell pepper's stock left from the night before (we ate all the capsicums and veggies), so I just peeled and cut 5 large potatoes, added the content of one can of chickpeas, and some cherry tomatoes from the garden (make an incision with a knife so that they don't 'explode' during cooking). I added a little salt and then simmered everything until the potatoes were soft. I adjusted for salt and added one tsp of Kashmiri Masala, put the lid on for 2 more minutes on low, and then served my aromatic stew to the family (with some roti and some raita). The only problem is that I don't have a last photo! We ate too quickly before remembering to take one! :-) But I hope that you will like the recipe, and it is super simple!

And for the weekly gardening photo: the last blueberry (I think) from my plant but still quite a few Alpine strawberries coming up, this is what we can pick every two days, not enough for jam maybe, but enough to decorate desserts :-).

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Sautéed Asian eggplants and asparagus with Italian herbs (and baby potatoes)

One of my favourite kitchen smells is garlic and herbs sizzling in olive oil! Here I used fresh rosemary, sage and oregano, a couple of garlic cloves, and a few long Asian eggplants, cut into halves or quarters (depending on their size). When the eggplants were done I added the asparagus (which take less time) and sauté the lot for one more minute, then added more fresh herbs, a good pinch of salt, a heavy lid, and turned the heat off. If you leave the veggies like this for 5-10 minutes they will just 'finish' cooking in their own steam.

I had herbs leftover, so I half-boiled some new potatoes, peeled them (sorry Kiwis, but I love to peel my potatoes, unless they are organic) and placed them on a baking try lined with baking paper. I added rosemary and sage, salt and olive oil. I baked the lot and the kitchen smelled lovely.

 Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Finto Pesce (fake fish)

When I brought this plate to the table everybody laughed, and it is a fun recipe! Finto pesce means fake fish, the original recipe is a kind of pate made with potatoes, mayonnaise, capers and canned tuna (I think very 1960s!). My Mother made it, we lived in the mountains far from the sea, so fish was rare (and frozen or canned). Of course being a vegetarian I don't use tuna for this recipe, but seaweed.

Brush and wash (but don't peel) 1 kg of mashing potatoes, then peel them and pass them through a potato ricer. Add a tbsp of capers, some nori seaweed, shredded, and a few tbsp of mayonnaise (to taste). Mix well. Shape into a fish and decorate with veggies and more nori ( I cut my nori with a flower cutter). Perfect for summer, and for kids!

Do you have a dish that makes everyone laugh?

A walk in my garden>

First harvest: radishes! 

Broccolini

Mixed salad leaves

Zucchini and borage flowers (to fry). Hopefully tomorrow I will have zucchini too!

More flowers and ferns in the bush

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©