Chinese Quince Cake

 

Chinese quinces! I got two and decided to make a cake! 

First I peeled and sliced the quinces, removing the stones, and then I cooked them with lemon juice, a tiny bit of water and very little sugar (about a tbsp).

Then I made the base, and for this cake it comes from my book Sweet As..., it is the base for most of my fruit cakes, and the original recipe is on page 28, where is used for a cherry berry cake. I start by mixing 4 eggs with 200 g of sugar, then 250 g of self-raising flour, and the zest of one lemon (optional) and 50 g of partially melted butter (I use salted butter, otherwise add a pinch of salt to the mixture). In the recipe in the book I start with mixing the butter with the sugar, this gives you a 'sponger' cake and it is suitable for berries, but quince slices and heavier fruit pieces call for a lightly more compact base and you can achieve that by adding the butter last. 

Honestly, this basic recipe is so good ... I know that I shouldn't brag because it is my own creation, but it is one of those that I make over and over again, and even my Mother in Law was complimentary (and she was a great baker, from Christchurch too, and they are choosy about their recipes there, especially when they come from foreigners).

Last step: I poured the mixture in a 23 cm round baking tin lined with baking paper, and arranged the cooked quince slices on top (had some left over, in the freezer now, for cupcakes later on). I sprinkle just a little bit of sugar on top and baked the cake at 180°C for approx. 45 minutes. I eat it as it is, and my 

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Cauliflower cream soup — two ingredients — Easiest soup ever

This has to be the easiest soup ever: cauliflower cream. Two ingredients: cauliflower and vegetable stock (simmer the cauliflower in the stock and blend). Decorate with a drizzle of olive oil and freshly ground black pepper (if you want to make it into four ingredients!). 

Vegan, low carbs, low fat, gluten free, delicious. 

  Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Candied violets - violette candite, step by step

 

Pick the violets, rinse and drain. Place in a bowl and cover with boiling water and a drop of lemon juice. Cover and leave overnight. Drain and save the purple water into a pot. Add equal parts of sugar (I had 200ml water, 200g sugar). Boil until the syrup bubbles and add the violets. Patiently pick them up with a teaspoon and let the dry (it may take a few days). I used the leftover sugar to candy chestnuts, but any other fruit would do. Store your violets in a jar. 

  Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Frittata di primule / primrose frittata

Frittata di primule / primrose frittata, using both leaves and flowers. I pick just the youngest leaves and sauté them with a little olive oil and salt. Then I prepare the frittata mixture with free range eggs, some breadcrumbs (not too much), salt and pepper and plenty of rinsed primroses. I add the sautéed leaves and mix. Everything back into the hot frying pan to cook, slowly and covered, flipping over with the lid just towards the end of cooking. So yummy! The dandelions in the photos were used for nuggets (recipe coming up soon).

  Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

 

Dolcetti alle mele - apple cupcakes/muffins

Ingredients for 12 cupcakes/muffins

3/4 Oratia apples

40 ml water

10 ml lemon juice

A pinch of ground cinnamon

3 cloves

120 g salted butter

3 eggs

130 g sugar

A few drops of pure vanilla essence (optional)

200 g self-rising flour

Granulated sugar to top, or icing sugar to finish (optional)

Preheat the oven to 175°C. 

Line a 12-muffin tray with cupcakes paper cups.

In the meantime place the water and lemon juice in a mixing bowl, peel and slice the apples and drop them directly into the lemony water.

Melt the butter in a jug, in the oven (while the oven is warming up for the cupcakes). Place the eggs and sugar in a mixing bowl and whisk, using an electric beater, until the mixture looks light and pale yellow in colour. Slowly add the melted butter and the vanilla essence, if using.

Drain the apples (keeping the water) and remove the 3 cloves.
Keep beating the mixture at a low speed now; add half of the flour followed by half of the lemony water from the apples. Add the rest of the flour and water and keep beating making sure that there are no lumps. Divide half of the mixture into the cupcakes paper cups.
Add the apples and then cover with the rest of the mixture. 
Bake for about 18-20 minutes, until golden brown at the top.

I had some Italian granulated sugar so I sprinkled it on top, but it is not necessary, and I have never seen it sold in New Zealand. A sprinkle of icing sugar will do.

  Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Spaghetti with chives pesto

This is as easy as it is delicious!

For the sauce you just need chives, salted cashew nuts, olive oil and cooking water from the pasta. Blend the lot and stir into the spaghetti (or any pasta). Decorate with chive flowers, if you wish.

Everyone is always amazed at the taste, and no one guesses that it is chives until I tell them. The colour is beautiful too!

 Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Creamy pasta with pumpkin and sage, step by step

The sage is flowering, and the flowers are edible!

I love to make a creamy pasta sauce with pumpkin, and sage is the perfect herb for it!

Cut about 500 g of pumpkin, into cubes, big and small. Sauté with olive oil for a few minutes, then add about 400 ml of vegetable stock and simmer for 20.

When the pumpkin is soft add about 200ml of cream, sage leaves (save the flowers for later) and black pepper. Simmer for other 10 minutes.

You can use the sauce immediately, or let it sit for a while, covered, to absorb even more sage flavour. I also like to break some of the bigger cubes with the spoon, for a creamier sauce (but always leaves enough pumpkin cubes visible).

Toss the cooked pasta in! I used 500g of fusilli here. Stir well to incorporate the sauce, and then top with the sage flowers. Not only they are beautiful, but they also taste great!

 Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

 

Lentil salad with onion weed

It is onion weed time again! Possibly one of the easiest plants to forage in New Zealand because it grows like a weed in many gardens and fields - so you can pick it and weed the garden at the same time. 

Bulbs, stems and flowers are edible (discard the flowers with the hard seed though, a bit tough). Eat raw or cooked. Here I used it in a brown lentil salad, just cooked lentils, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and chopped raw onion weed. Quick, easy and delicious!

 Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Crostata di marmellata di more e lamponi

I mede a lot of jam this Italian Summer, from fruit that I foraged and also picked from the garden.

Foraged: raspberries, blueberries, blackberries.

Picked: red currants, yellow plums, cornelian cherries.

I gave away some jam because I cannot take it back to New Zealand, but also made several crostata, Italian jam tarts, and this one has two jams: half raspberry and half blackberry. 

Ingredients:

100 g butter

100g sugar

300g flour

1 tsp of baking powder

1 small glass of Sassolino 

(this is a local aniseed liqueur, you can substitute with Sambuca, or with your favourite liqueur)

2 eggs

jam to fill

Mix the butter with the sugar, then add the other ingredients in order and mix. You will get a soft sticky dough. Keep about a fifth of the dough aside for the topping, and spread the rest in a tart pan based with baking paper. You cannot roll this dough with a rolling pin, it is too soft, you must spread it on the base and borders with your fingers. It may sound strange but this way you will get a crostata base that is not dry (as it often happens!).

Add the jam (or jams, in this case)

Roll the remaining dough into thin strips and place over the tart. Because this recipe has baking powder the strips will become larger during baking, so make them thin.

Bake at 180°C fan oven for about 45 minutes. Let it cool down completely before lifting out from the baking pan.

And here another one I made with yellow plum jum!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

 

Risotto with radicchio

 

Sauté a small chopped onion with olive oil until translucent, then add chopped radicchio and a pinch of salt. Keep stirring. 

When the radicchio is soft and your Italian ancestors whisper to you that the time is right, add the rice. If you don’t have Italian ancestors then gently sauté the radicchio for about ten minutes, or until you lose the bitterness but not the taste. Add vegetable stock little by little until the risotto is ready. Adjust with salt and pepper five minutes before the end. It tastes great with a drop of Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena, if you have it.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Rice frittata with nettle leaves and zucchini flowers

 

This is the type of recipe that I really like, it involves foraging (for stinging nettles this time, easy to find them in Italy, but rare in New Zealand, as they are a weed), then the use of leftovers (cooked rice), and flowers. I usually fry zucchini flowers by themselves, but I only had a few, not enough for a meal. And my neighbour gave me some fresh eggs, so frittata it was!

Nettle leaves are super tasty, but you will need to pick them with gloves!! Only pick the younger tips and tender leaves, then soak in water and rinse well. They will stop stinging when they are cooked.

For this recipe I cooked them in boiling water with just a small pinch of salt, drain them, and squeezed out all the water I could. You can also boil them without salt, and then use the cooking water as a hair tonic!

At the end I had a small cup of cooked nettles, but a little goes a long way (they are tastier than spinach).

Clean the zucchini flowers and remove the style and stigma, then flatten them. 

Whisk 4 eggs with a fork, add 2 tbsp of Parmigiano reggiano, a cup of leftover cooked rice and then the cooked nettles. Mix well. Grease a frying pan with olive oil and heat. Pour the frittata mix and then arrange the flatten zucchini flowers on top. Lower the heat and cover the pan with a lid. Cook slowly until the bottom is crispy and the top is not wet anymore. Then turn the frittata (I use the lid to do this) and cook on the other side. Enjoy, hot or cold.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Fennel salad with chicory flowers

 

I am not a huge fan of chicory, but I love chicory flowers. And I love fennel salad. I generally don't mix fennel with other vegetables, unless it is lentils (I love lentil salads with fennel). Usually I really like to keep a fennel salad nice and simple, dressed with a pinch of salt and a drop of olive oil. But it is so ... white! To make it more 'photogenic' today I added some chicory flowers I have foraged in my field in the mountain. They only have a tinge of chicory taste which goes well with the sweet and aniseed taste of fennel. Good combo for digestion too :-)

Pick the flowers and drop in a bowl of water to rinse, then on a paper towel to dry. Sprinkle the petals over your favourite salad (not necessarily a fennel one).

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Edamame Basil dip

 This is so easy: I used frozen edamame beans, blanched them in boiling water and then blended them with garlic, fresh basil, lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper. Keep a few whole edamame for decoration. Tip: the more oil the better (for me, I love olive oil!)

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Ricciarelli with a pistachio version - and my orange Christmas tree

Ricciarelli are delicious Italian (Tuscan) almond sweets, apparently originated in the XIV century.
Making them in New Zealand is quite special, as they really give Xmas an Italian flair. Bitter almonds are one of the ingredients though, and I have not found them here, so I add just a few apricot kernels (be careful, they are poisonous so you just need a tiny amount, and they MUST be blanched). Of course this is optional, you will get great results just with regular almonds. PLUS, this year I also made up a pistachio version - not ’traditional’ really, but they taste so good that I had to share the recipe (for both!)

200 gr of almonds
about 6 to 10 apricot kernels (optional)
200 gr of sugar
2 egg whites
zest of an orange or a tbsp of candied mix citrus peels
THEN
About 50g of ground almond for the traditional type, and 50 g of ground pistachio for the pistacchio version.
plenty of icing sugar to roll and dust

Blanch the almond and the apricot kernels separately in hot water and remove the skin.
Place them in the food processor with the sugar and grind to a powder. Do this in two lots, on pulse, making sure that the mixture doesn't heat or becomes a paste.

Lightly whip the egg whites, just gently, they don't have to be stiff like for a meringue, just starting to be white. Add the ground almonds and the orange zest or candid citrus peels. Mix well, divide into two and add the ground almond to one lot and the ground pistachio to the other, If it feels too soft add a little ground nuts. Cover and place in the fridge overnight.

The day after flour a board or working surface with icing sugar and roll the paste into thin rolls, about 2-3 cm thick. Cut and shape into biscuits, about 1.5-2 cm high. the traditional shape is like a grain of wheat, with two pointed ends.

Place on a oven tray lined with baking paper and sprinkle with more icing sugar. Bake at 150C for 15 minutes or until the edges start to be golden. Ricciarelli should not be overcooked! Let them cool down completely before removing them from the baking tray.

2023 Christmas tree was orange themed, in fact it was orange, sugar and spice (with sried orange slices, sugar and cinnamon decorations). 

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©