Orecchiette con cime di rapa (o friarielli) e broccoli

The only reason I made these with both cime di rapa and broccoli is because in the garden I had just a handful of cime di rapa, so the broccoli made them go... further.

Wash the friarielli and broccoli, cut onto manageable pieces. Boil the water for the orecchiette, adding plenty of salt when the water boils, and before adding the orecchiette. In the meantime in a pot sizzle chopped garlic and a chili with olive oil, add the cime di rapa and broccoli, a small pinch of salt, and cook them stirring often, and adding the boiling water from the orecchiette (but only after you have put the orecchiette in!) from time to time. The cooking water from pasta is very useful for pasta sauces and for cooking vegetables this way. When the orecchiette are ready drain and add to the cime di rapa, stir well, add more olive oil and serve.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Linguine with broccoli... and some semi-dried tomatoes and feta too!

I love pasta with broccoli, but for this dish I just felt like adding some colour... and fancy that, it looks like the Italian flag! This is not a combo I would do every day, or with all my broccoli pasta (which I prefer plain) but it seems to go very well with Kiwis, who are still keen of having several things on their pasta (never understood why...), and it is easy and tasty too!

Cook the linguine al dente, In the meantime clean the broccoli, cut the stalks into small pieces and the florets in fork size pieces. Heat some olive oil in a pan and add two cloves of garlic, peeled (chopped if you like a stronger garlic flavour). Sizzle the add the broccoli stalks. Stir, after one minute add the florets. Stir for a couple of minutes, add salt, cover with a lid and simmer for two minutes, then turn the element off but leave the lid on: the broccoli will cook in their steam. Cut the semi-dried tomatoes into strips and cube the feta. Drain the pasta and place in the pan with the broccoli (you can add a bit of water from the pasta or a bit more olive oil to mix everything well together. Top with the tomatoes and feta. Serve immediately. 

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Honesty boxes, Tofu and Brassica Green Curry, and a Super Juice

One of the things I like best about New Zealand are the little stalls on the side of country roads, unattended and with a few offerings, mostly fruit, vegetables and flowers. Usually they are alongside a driveway, near the letterbox, and sometimes you don't see the house from the road, often you don't see anyone, as a matter of fact! So how do you pay? You leave your money in a honesty box. I have a couple of these near my house, one sells cute flower bouquets from the garden, and sometimes little bags of fruit, another sells orchids. When I don't have enough cutting flowers in my garden I go there, it is unexpensive, honest fun.

Tofu and Brassica Green Curry

Ingredients:
1 tbs green curry paste (see recipe here)
1 can coconut milk
1 couliflower, cut into florettes
half carrot, sliced (I sliced it in the shape of flowers)
1 block tofu, cut into pieces
1 large broccoli, cut into florettes
1-2 chili peppers
Thai or regular fresh basil leaves
Thai or Vietnamese fresh mint leaves

Place the paste in a pot with the coconut milk, the cauliflower, carrot, and the tofu. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the broccoli, cover and simmer for 5 minutes (I like my broccoli to be still green and a little crunchy). Add the chili peppers and the fresh herbs, cover and simmer for 5 more minutes. Add salt to taste and serve with Thai rice.
Serves 4

Super Juice

To make 1 litre of juice I used:

10 carrots

1 red beetroot

6 green apples

1 piece of ginger

Put everything through the juicing machine, filter and serve immediately.

Serves 4

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Roasted Leek and Potato and Other Soups, with iPhone Camera+

A few weeks ago my little boy started wearing dental plates, and since it is still hard for him to chew I have been making lots of creamy soups. Soups are nice, and quick, but not necessarily photogenic. To make it more fun I have been using the Camera+ iPhone application that Arfi showed me.

Roasted leek and Potato Soup with Leek Broth

Generally I sauté the potatoes and leeks in the pot to make this soup, but I wanted to try something different. So I cut the potatoes (Agria) and leek in big chunks, placed them in a roasting dish lined with baking paper, added olive oil and salt and roasted everything for about 30 minutes. I didn't want the potatoes to become brown, just lightly roasted on the outside, and soaking up the flavour from the leeks.

I washed the green leaves from the leek (the ones that are too hard to be eaten) and place them in a pot of water with some rock salt. I cooked the leaves until I got a fragrant and light leek broth. I removed the leaves and added the content form the roasting pan, oil included. I cooked everything for other 30 minutes, then blended the soup with an immersion blender.

The iPhone photos are so bright, not something I would use all the time, and not really suited to printed photos, but certainly fun for blogs, and soups!

Another good soup combo: Pumpkin and smoked garlic.
Here I just cooked some pumpkin (add a carrot for a brighter orange color) in vegetable stock, and before blending I added a couple of cloves of smoked garlic. More garlic salt and spices can be drizzled directly on the plate.

And then broccolini (from my garden), and potato soup.
Simmer the veggies in vegetable stock, blend and drizzle with
extra virgin olive oil.




















These soups are vegan, inexpensive, easy to make, gluten free, and healthy, so I am taking the chance to contribute to this great initiative, promoted by Oggi Pane e Salame, Domani..., to create awareness about Endometriosis.

Grazie Sonia!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Garden 'gnomes' and two salads

I don't plant much corn, but usually I get a beautiful photogenic crop... this year instead... just look at it!

I laughed aloud thinking that I could have told you that this was a heirloom variety of some sort of ancient Maya corn, but I will be honest: this is dreadful!

Still, I never get discouraged, and I hate wasting food. Not pretty? Never mind, it still tastes ok, and I could always match it with a good crop :-), like my broccolini!

So I made this salad: I boiled the corn, cut off the kernels that were pretty, added some steamed broccolini and dressed the lot with a miso dressing (just white miso paste thinned down with a little hot water). It was super yummy!

And now to another flop crop, but this was last year: my garlic was tiny! Some was so small that my daughter asked me if she could use it for her Sylvanian Family house! Still, it was cute, I could not trow it away, but this year I didn't plant any garlic and this is what I got left!

The last salad: plenty of tomatoes in the garden, not as big as I hoped, but they too taste good. I made a salad with just tomatoes, basil leaves, olive oil and salt, and some borage flowers for colour. It looked and tasted like a very happy salad :-). Some gnomes are good, and some do make me smile.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Cous cous with Broccoli Romani

I am the very happy owner of a few brassica plants. I grew them from seeds, bought from the Kings Seeds catalogue, and now that it is spring I am harvesting the last brassica to make space in the veggie garden for other seeds and plants.

But does it get tiring eating broccoli and cauli every second day? I need more recipes, and I found that Enza from Io da Grande had a lovely post on cous cous, and that she was using Broccoli Romani.

Yes, I had some in the garden just ready!

Broccoli Romani from my garden

Enza blanches the broccoli with boiling water, to which she adds salt and olive oil, then drains the broccoli and uses their water to cover the cous cous (the pre-cooked type, of course) while she fries the broccoli with olive oil. Finally she tops the cous cous with the broccoli.

I followed her instructions but made a few variations: I only added salt in the boiling water, and then added a little olive oil to the cous cous before covering it with the broccoli broth. I covered the cous cous with a lid and waited 5 minutes and then, because I have a weakness for cous cous with lemon, I stirred in the juice of half a lemon and one tablespoon of finely chopped Italian parsley.

Also, I did fry the broccoli in olive oil, but I also added 4 garlic cloves.

Considering that the broccoli, garlic, lemon, and parsley came from my garden I only had to buy the cous cous, salt and olive oil for this dish. Even the water is rain water and comes from my water tank, fulfilling a few of my self-sufficiency fantasies!

And here the last image from my veggie garden, I know that it has nothing to do with the recipe, but it is such a good looking cauliflower, and apparently it is also Sicilian (so the seed pack says...), so I am gifting it to Enza as a thank you for her recipe.

Cavolo di Sicilia from my garden

Photos by Alessandra Zecchini ©