Vegan and sugar free chocolate mousse

I am on a diet but really wanted some chocolate for Mother's Day, something mostly raw, low carb and healthy. This dessert is so easy and delicious that I made it two days in a row, once with hazelnuts and once without. I'll share the basic recipe:

12 dates

a little water to cover the dates

1 heap tsp cocoa (I used Dutch cocoa)

half tsp vanilla essence

1 firm avocado

berries to decorate

Remove the stones from the dates and place in a nutribullet or blender and add enough water just to cover them. Soak for 20 minutes, then add cocoa (a real heap tsp of it) and vanilla. Blend. Add the avocado, sliced, and blend again. Divide into three serving bowls or glasses, top with berries (frozen ok) and refrigerate until serving time. Decorate with edible flowers if you like, I used Alyssum here. If you want to add hazelnuts you will need about 8, toasted and grounded, to add to the date mixture. 

My husband couldn't believe that it was made with avocado and no sugar! The texture is just like a mousse, you can increase lightly the cocoa for a more bitter-chocolate flavour, increasing the dates (or using dates that are too big) will make it sweeter but may give out more of a date rather than cocoa flavour. If the mousse is too thick add a drop of water and mix again.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

 

Rainbow guacamole

A rainbow guacamole for Auckland Pride Festival! For this guacamole I blended avocado with garlic, lime juice, salt and coriander (can use lemon juice too, it depends on what is available)

To top, from left: friarielli flowers, yellow and orange marigold flowers, poppy petals, red and purple verbena, dianthus, borage flowers, cornflowers. 

I could eat guacamole everyday (and in summer I almost do!!) so adding edible flowers can be fun. Of course I don't always have the time to design rainbows, but even a few petals will do (dianthus below)...

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Soft tofu and avocado sashimi served on homemade disposable bamboo dishers made with bamboo leaf sheath

There is no much to this dish really, just soft tofu with grated ginger and avocado (add wasabi and say sauce) plus some pickles, mostly bought except for the cucumber (recipe here).

The exciting thing for me here are the bamboo platters! I have some bamboo in the garden and it is shedding leaf sheaths. I love those fancy bamboo disposable dishes that you can buy in home stores, so I though of making my own. To clean the sheaths I just placed them in the dishwasher! Some rolled up a bit, but after a couple of days they were flat again! The dishwasher took away the dirt but some black stains remained, which makes me wonder how ecologically they treat the commercial plates, since they are so pale and spotless! But now I can make my own and doesn't matter if they are a little stained, they are natural and lovely to look at!

Photo and Recipe by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Avocado and celery cocktails with vegan mayo and edible flowers

This is a delicious raw and vegan dish, serves 4 as a starter or side salad, and 2 as a main

Ingredients

2 avocados
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 crunchy legs of celery
2 tbsp vegan mayonnaise
cherry tomatoes and edible flowers to decorate

Cut the avocados and remove stones, drizzle with lemon juice. Clean the celery legs and remove the strings (I use a carrot peeler for this). Cut into small bite sizes and mix with the vegan mayonnaise (click here for the recipe). Fill the avocados with the celery and decorate with cherry tomatoes and edible flowers.

Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Florence Fennel and avocado salad with walnuts

This is a lovely salad and also a light main, filling, nutritious and full of different textures and flavours!

For two serving use:
1 medium Florence fennel, sliced
1 avocado, sliced
1 small carrot, grated
A little red cabbage, finely chopped (this is mostly to add a dash of colour, red radicchio would work well too!)
8-10 walnut kernels, crushed
A few drops of lemon juice
Extra virgin olive oil and salt to taste (optional)

Usually I just put the lemon juice on the avocado and the carrots only, and then assemble the salad, and it taste great even without salt or olive oil (avocado and walnuts are full of good fats anyway).

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Fruity lunch box for two, Vegan and mostly raw

Thank you to all of you for your lovely thoughts about lunches in New Zealand schools. Little time to post recipes today, So I am adding a photo of another lunch box idea, a lunch box for two (to share with your friend at school or at work :-)). The 'main' is avocado pita bread (the pita bread being the only thing pre-made here (and baked too, the rest is raw). In the pita sandwiches there is avocado (treated with lemon juice not to go brown), lettuce and cherry tomatoes. The rest, as you can see, is fruit: green and gold kiwi fruit, mandarin, grapes and strawberries. Believe it or not this was actually quite filling!

Have a great week!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Japanese Vegan dinner, starter: avocado sashimi

To all of you waiting for the recipes of the Japanese Vegan and gluten free dinner... well, this is the starter (and the easiest!). Raw food is better as a starter, apparently it gets the digestion going! 

For each person you will need:

Half avocado, not mushy

Lemon juice

A little wasabi paste

Japanese pickled ginger

Soy or Tamari sauce

Slice the half avocado like in the picture, not to thin and not to thick (diners need to be able to pick up the slices with chopsticks) then spray with lemon juice. Serve with wasabi, pickled ginger and soy or tamari sauce on the side.   

 Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Pretend Prawn Cocktails (i.e. celery cocktails!)

Prawn cocktail is something I remember from the 80's when I was living in London, but I don't eat prawns, of course :-). But I eat celery, and when you cut celery stalks they have that 'c' shape a little like prawns.

I also remember very well from working in a coffee shop in Oxford St where we made lots of prawn cocktails that the sauce was a simple mixture of mayonnaise and tomato ketchup! So I mixed my celery with that.

I remember the cocktails in glasses, on slices of bread, or even in melons (yuk, not for me) but I think avocado works well here: just cut, remove the stone and sprinkle with lemon juice. And then fill with the celery mixture and top with freshly ground black pepper. This is so basic that I wasn't even sure if it was worth publishing, and yet sometimes the most simple things are the ones that some readers appreciate, especially when they are so quick, easy, and don't even require cooking. What do you think?

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Max makes Guacamole, and wrapping presents for boys

My little Max made Mexican dinner the other night. The highlight was guacamole, since he loves avocado. Making dinner for the family was on his school list of things and chores to do at home, everybody in his classroom had to do 7 things from a list of 10, and I think that he did pretty well :-).

The best guacamole is the one my Mexican primo Alejandro makes. Actually, he makes different types, all good, but when I have to make it I have some personal preferences:

1 I prefer smooth to chunky

2 I like it green, no tomatoes

3 I prefer garlic to onion

4 I don't like it spicy, I want to taste the avocado, not the chili.

Fussy ehhhh!!! So I gave Max all the ingredients for a garlic and cilantro smooth guacamole.

He had to mush (with a pestle) 5 small avocado with the juice of half a lemon. Then he added the garlic, squeezed (that was hard work!!!)

Finally he chopped the cilantro in my hollow herb chopping board (it comes with a curved herb knife which is quite easy to use). He likes doing that. He added the salt, to taste, and that took a while (he was adding about a grain at the time, just to be safe).

Taaaa Daaa!!! It was lovely! It was part of a roll your own tortilla meal: warm tortilla, refried beans (these came from a can, just had to re-heat them) sliced tomatoes, grated cheese, guacamole and chili sauce (from a bottle). I prepared it all, and we all enjoyed it.

And finally, the Xmas idea of the day: wrapping present for boys with tags made out of rugby players cards: this is going to Japan, where they love the All Blacks!

Photos by Alessandra Zecchini ©