Lentil Ravioli with Fennel Butter, and Summer in Auckland

Happy New Year to all! The weather has been lovely here in Auckland, and there are so many good places to go. Yesterday we went to Takapuna beach in the North Shore:

For Xmas we stayed on our West side, where the sand is black and the beaches are dramatically beautiful and wild:

Green walks in the Waitakere Ranges,

And bright red Pohutukawa flowers, the New Zealand Xmas flowers.

Today we went to see the qualifyings for the ASB Classic Tennis. We watched Italian Alberta Brianti play against Elena Bovina from Russia. So strange, I don't feel very Italian at times, and yet, when there is a sporting event all of a sudden my heart starts skipping. It felt like there was my own sister there playing on the courts, and I was really happy when Brianti won. Great match!

Lunch was a picnic in the park. Quite novel for us, who live in the bush, to go and have a picnic in the city! It was lovely :-)

And now to the ravioli! I made some flower pasta (recipe here), I used roses, borage and nasturtiums. I cooked some brown lentils, then I passed them in a pot with olive oil, a shallot and salt. I used them as filling.

Possibly herbs would have been better: the lentil filling is quite dark, so the petals were not so visible. I'll remember this next time :-)! For the sauce I cooked some baby fennels very slowly with butter and a little water. I added more butter, and just a pinch of salt at the end.

The fennel butter matched the lentil filling beautifully. A great dish for New Year (FYI, in Italy it is traditional to eat lentils for New Year). The borage flowers are decorations, but they too can be eaten, and we did!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©