Pea, onion weed and feta dip, and butter peas with onion weed, again!

Spring recipe for New Zealand! Personally I find frozen peas a bit boring, but I love the colour, plus the frozen ones are so cheap, and if you add some onion weeds, which are free, and a little butter and salt, you have a quick and delicious side veggie. Plus you can use the leftovers to make a low cost dip just by adding a little feta. 

For the peas, just clean and chop the onion weed (bulbs, stem and leaves, leave the flowers aside for decorations, they can be eaten too!). Melt a dollop of butter and add the chopped onion weeds, then add the frozen peas (don't boil the first, it is not necessary) and a little salt. Stir, cover and simmer (add a tiny bit of water when needed, but never too much). Enjoy!! 

With the leftover peas, just blend them with some feta and some of the brine from the feta (if you feta has no brine use a little water). Add more raw onion weed if you like a stronger taste. Super yummy on bread and crostini, with chips, eggs, salads or as a spread.

And now a photo of my cat Nikita

And of my garden! Happy weekend!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Flower fritters

My kids go crazy for these! Only three ingredients

Ingredients: edible flowers

 (I used zucchini flowers and borage flowers - but any edible flower will do)

tempura flour

oil for frying

Clean and wash the flowers. Mix the tempura flour with cold water to make a batter, then add the flowers. Spoon into hot oil and pan fry on both sides until the fritters are golden. Serve hot.

And this is my cat Marameo sleeping on the trampoline (I am glad someone is using it!). She is 18 years old now, poor old cat, so sweet but a bit senile, she is shrinking too, and becoming a bit like a kitten, sleeps a lot and demands lots of attention. But she is sweet! The cats are the only ones eating meat in the household, and so far they have been on a raw meat diet, but in the last week I started 'cooking' meat for them (especially Marameo) as they didn't seem to appreciate too much their raw food. When I say cooking I just mean boiling, just boil pieces of beef or chicken, and then give them to them (and the stock too). Personally I find it disgusting, the smell is horrible, but they love it! Do you have any experience of your pets preferring cooked meat to raw meat?

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Plum jam and the last of the summer sun?

It feels like summer is slowly coming to an end. I had the very last of the plums from the Oratia orchard and made some jam. I usually blend my jams as my husband like them smooth, but I prefer jams with chunks of fruit and peel in it, so I just remove the stone and cooked the plums with a little water and some jam setting sugar (this was a present, and I wanted to try it). The NZ jam tradition seems to be 1kg of sugar for 1 kg of fruit (or even more sugar if you make raspberry jam) for an Italian this is too much. I go for 40 to 60%, with the latter being my preference if I need to preserve the jam for a long time (it helps agains botulin). You can taste the fruit better with less sugar :-).

Finally I am getting sunflowers in the garden, now that summer is ending… well, I got three now, and they are my little personal suns!

And our cats, Nikita (left) and Marameo (right) are also enjoying the last of the sun, sleeping outdoors all day long! Marameo is 18 now, an old lady cat 

 Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

The human, the cat and the fridge

Marameo spends more time in the kitchen than me these days, always positioned in front of the fridge. I am sure that she resents humans for being able to open it, while she cannot. And she needs milk! Meow meow meow stupid human the fridge door is here, here look! Open it! Meow meow meow get the milk out! Meow meow meow oh this is so irritating, I know that you came here to make a cup of tea, I can hear the kettle, make sure that it is a milk tea and give some milk to me too. Meow meow meow, why do you take so long! Humans are so slow meow meow... oh why can't I just open the fridge myself!!!

Photos by Alessandra Zecchini ©

The joy of free feijoas, and feijoa smoothie

Feijoa is one of those fruits that really symbolize Kiwiana for me, and in particular the joy of sharing produce in New Zealand. There is always someone ready to share feijoas in New Zealand, and this to me is like sharing joy: no matter how little fruit my plans produce (I think that this year I had 3!) in a way or another a bucket of feijoas alway reach my kitchen from another garden. This time it was a Dante member who brought in tons of feijoas at the Italian school. We gave many to the children and then there were still lots left for me to take home. We mostly eat them with a spoon, but for a big feijoa zing try a shake: for 4 smoothies I used about 10-12 feijoas and some natural apple juice: so delicious and full of vitamins!

Another thing I love about feijoas is their smell, so fresh and tropical! So I like to use the zest too, and made more recipes which I hope to publish soon (a peak preview here).

Keeping the green theme going, these small capsicums are the last thing I got our of my garden the other day. They didn't turn yellow-orange like the previous ones, but it was time to uproot the plant, and I fried them :-).

And this is Marameo, keeping me company in the kitchen (I mean, she is there just to see what she can get to eat, but still, she is company!). And she got big green eyes!

Have a lovely week everyone!

Photos and Recipe by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Miaooooo

I have been cooking so much this weekend that I actually don't feel like posting recipes, also I have guests coming soon and I don't even have the time. I thought of posting something about the garden, but the gardening too has been mostly weeding and clearing and cleaning... but there are the cats in the garden, and with very funny poses too! Look at Nikita, she is so fluffy (but really light when you lift her) that she looks so cute lying on her back to get some sun!

Yes close up she is quite sweet, but she loves to bite, especially she loves to attack my naked ankles when I walk by, especially if I am carrying the washing basket and can't defend myself. Marameo, the black and white, is older and wiser, but she is a milkoholic, sleep in unusual places (like homework, books and newspapers) and sit in strange positions. Do you like cats?

Photos by Alessandra Zecchini ©