Canazei via Agordo and Moena

Agordo

Last Saturday we left Feltre for a week in Canazei, via Agordo and Moena. It has been almost two years since we had a skiing holiday (in Bormio), and we are loving it! This time I am also doing a 5 days course, 3 hours every morning, and for the last day, tomorrow, a whole day on the slopes with the teacher and the other students. There are six of us, three Italians, two Russians and one Serbian, all keen to improve!! I will post some more photos during the rest of the week, and so far I greatly recommend this place as there are a lot of slopes for beginners and also for advance skiers, and the mountains are stunning!

Moena

From top left clockwise: on the slopes, Canazei, coffee break, Alba di Canazei

From top left clockwise: getting ready for a steep descent, Canazei, hot chocolate with cream, on the slopes.

Photos by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Walnuts in black and white

Photo by Alessandra Zecchini ©

We saw these big bags of walnuts in a supermarket in Feltre, walnuts are common here, there is even a noce feltrina (Feltre walnut). I don't think that these were the Feltre ones, but they were local, and we bough a few just to have after dinner.


And today's photo for Black and White Wednesday, organized by Susan of The Well-Seasoned Cook, is entitled: walnuts!

Castagnaccio: the easiest cake ever for Sweet New Zealand???

This month Sweet New Zealand is hosted by Arfi of HomeMadeS (click here to enter), and because Arfi is gluten free I am offering a typical Italian treat from my childhood: castagnaccio.

First of all I have to inform you that I was raised on chestnuts, and chestnut flour. We made many things with the flour, mostly fritters (you can find the recipe here) and castagnaccio. There are so many versions of castagnaccio, the main being just chestnut flour and water, with a pinch of salt (optional) and a sprig of rosemary on the top. The best thing is that chestnut flour is naturally sweet, and that you just need water to mix it, making it the perfect low fat (chestnuts are the only low fat nuts) high protein, gluten free and vegan treat!

I mixed chestnut flour with enough water to make a batter, and this time I added 2 tbsp of cocoa (cocoa also go well with chestnuts) and a very small pinch of salt. No sugar needed. Pour the batter into a large baking pan lined with baking paper and bake everything at 180°C until the cake is ready (about 20 minutes, check with a toothpick). Let it cool down before serving. Unfortunately I forgot to take the photo on the first day, so this was the morning after and the top of the castagnaccio had cracked like a dry desert... but it was still great for breakfast :-).

Photos and Recipe by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Frances sent me some photos of the article on Your Home and Garden

This month I am in the magazine Your Home & Garden, and since I am in Italy my friend and food blogger Frances from The Bake Club has sent me some images of the 9 pages (plus cover and index - so I know that I am on page 15!). Thank you Frances, it is lovely to see the magazine before coming back to New Zealand!

There are a couple of photos with Arantxa too, working in the kitchen with me, and the photographer, Melanie Jenkins, was a pleasure to work with.

And of course there are a few extracts from the book Party Food for Girls (here the link for Amazon Italy, ecco il link per Amazon Italia!!!) with the photos by Shaun Cato-Symonds.

Photos of the magazine pages by Frances Chan ©

Belluno

Photo by Alessandra Zecchini ©

I have already written about Belluno here, it was Summer then (still, have a look, it is a very charming city!), and as I did post quite a few photos already, today I will just post one single photo, one that expresses how cold it was!

Cortina D'Ampezzo

This is not a post about the recent Blitz in Cortina (in the news in Italy, fraud office - guardia di finanza - looking for riches who don't pay taxes), but just a few photos from a recent visit.

Cortina is beautiful, the mountains are beautiful, some of the houses are charming, and some of the tourists are ... interesting. Anyway, this must be the first place where I saw the greengrocer selling Champagne!

Photos by Alessandra Zecchini ©

This morning from my window...

Feltre 6 January 2012, finally a bit of snow.

Photo by Alessandra Zecchini ©

First taste of snow in the Dolomites Mountains

The frozen Welsperg lake, and horse sleigh ride (with added wheels!)

No so much snow in Italy so far, nothing here in Feltre, but a little further up the Dolomites, here we are in the Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, a Tonadico (lovely and quiet) near Fiera di Primiero (busier and more touristic). 

Just enough snow for a snow ball fight!

Photos by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Hot chocolate in Italy

After a longish break I am back for Black and White Wednesday, organized by Susan of The Well-Seasoned Cook. Today's photo is of hot chocolate, with cream. It seems that a lot of cafes now serve cream on the side, and not on top of the chocolate (btw, in Italy  hot chocolate is very dense and strong, yum!), this café even gave us a dark chocolate tablet on top of the cream! Triple calories!!! But real hot chocolate is a bit of a weakness of mine... do you like hot chocolate??

Photo by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Red radicchio, green cauliflower and the Vegan version of the banana cake

What do vegetarians eat? Lots of vegetables! Some people call it rabbit food, I don't know why, I swear to you that we are not rabbits!  Let's start with the red radicchio, my brother made this: cut the red radicchio into strips and place onto an oven tray lined with baking paper. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, salt and dried oregano (he says that dried thyme is better but we didn't have any).  Bake until the red par of the leaves is crispy (and most of the bitterness is gone!).

 And what about this lovely green cauliflower? I think that green cauliflowers taste 'sweeter' than the white ones, and this one did! I just boiled it al dente, let it cool down and dressed it with extra virgin olive oil, salt and Aceto Balsamico di Modena. Simple but perfect!

I had more mushy bananas so I made another banana cake, but vegan this time. The original version is here, I just changed the ingredients a little, removed the eggs and added sultana and grappa!

Vegan Banana Cake

2 tbsp sultana

1 small glass of grappa

5 ripe bananas

A few drops of lemon

100 g icing sugar + some for dusting

100 ml vegetable oil

200 g self rising flour

Soak the sultana in the grappa. Mush the bananas with the lemon juice, add the sugar and the other ingredients and beat well, then fold in the sultanas with the grappa. Grease a cake mould and pour the cake mixture in, bake at 180°C for approximately 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. Reverse onto a serving plate and serve warm or cold. It will be moist and I think that this cake taste better than the previous one, great with tea or coffee, although it may not be as suitable for breakfast. (Don't worry about the grappa, you can barely taste it and the alcohol is all gone!)

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini and her brother ©

Happy New Year 2012 and secret resolutions

Aunt's Alice Persimmons. Photo by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Happy New Years to all my blogger friends and readers, I had a wonderful year with you and I look forward to another one. Thank you for all your messages, support, and chats :-). 


Do you have any good resolutions for 2012? I have only secret resolutions, and I wonder if that is appropriate: can you have secret resolutions or do they have to be 'public'?


Well, see you next year (if you are down under you are already there!!!) and all the best for your own resolutions!


Ciao
Alessandra

Banana breakfast cake for Sweet New Zealand

It is so cold that all the bananas in the market turned black, and the stall holder gave me a bunch for free, so I made a dairy free banana cake for breakfast.

Ingredients

4 ripe bananas

Juice of one lemon

100 g icing sugar + some for dusting

1 pinch ground cinnamon

100 ml vegetable oil

2 eggs

200 g self rising flour

Mash the bananas with the lemon juice, add the rest of the ingredients (in the order given above) and mix well. Grease a cake mould and pour the cake mixture in, bake at 180°C for approximately 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. Reverse onto a serving plate (I used my Mum's cameo plate), dust with icing sugar and serve. We have this for breakfast with caffellatte.

Photo and Recipe by Alessandra Zecchini ©

This recipe is for the monthly blogging event Sweet New Zealand, this December hosted by Bron Marshall.

Almost Christmas in Feltre, Italy

We are in Italy, in Feltre, getting ready for a mountain Xmas. Decorations in the streets are really subtle,  mostly pine branches, fairy lights, and Christmas trees outdoors, in the gardens, balconies or squares, that light up at night. My Mum put a few decorations on the doors, and we made one too with the little red lanterns that we got in Singapore.

Feltre Winter Bliss: hot chocolate and caramelized fruit from Sommariva (above) and winter vegetables and citrus fruit from the market this morning (below).

Photos by Alessandra Zecchini ©

I would like to wish you all the best for Xmas and New Year, I will try to visit you to send you my greetings, but as I have little internet connection these days it may take me a long time to get to all your blogs... still, you are in my thoughts, have fun and have a good time!

Cheers

Alessandra

Artwork by Arantxa Zecchini Dowling ©

More vegetarian (and vegan) food in Singapore

One of the best places to eat for vegetarians in Singapore is Waterloo St.: this area is full of temples, Buddhist shops and vegetarian restaurants and grocery stores. All of the food I tried here is also suitable for vegans, since there are no dairy products and eggs in traditional Vegetarian Chinese cuisine.

The dishes are quite interesting, lots of tofu and gluten dishes (first left below is lemon 'chicken' - chicken made with gluten), and there is a Japanese vegetarian restaurant called Herbivore where they make vegan sushi that looks like fish! In the food courts the kids kept going for Indian, their favourite, but I tried Pandan cuisine, (Indonesian and quite spicy), they didn't have lots of vegetarian options but enough to fill a plate with rice, tofu and vegetables). 

I also suggest that you try kaya, the coconut curd/jam, but remember that this has egg in it (and it is very sweet!)

Kaya is the typical Singapore breakfast, served with buttered toast, boiled eggs on the side, and coffee. It is green because it contain pandan fruit.

Last photo: my friend Marcella, a talented designer and silversmith, made me this beautiful necklace with black river pearls and a silver pendant with an Amethyst. Isn't it beautiful!!!

Photos by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Fish Spa in Singapore

Yesterday's new experience was to try to be fish food! There are these Spas around Singapore that offer a special fish spa experience: you put your feet inside big fish tanks and all the little fish rush around to chomp off your dead skin. It doesn't hurt, of course, but at first it is quite strange, as it may tickle! It lasts 30 minutes, the kids loved it and laughed all the time, and since we were the only customers there they moved around different tanks to make sure that they feed every single fish! I stayed still in my initial spot, I didn't want to deprive the fishes that had started working on my feet of their morning feed, I even kept my position when I realize that my tank was in the shop window and passers by could see my feet through the glass! Two small children stopped and observed the strange aquarium for a while, but most passers by didn't even notice.  Anyway, I recommend the experience, the fish spa is called Kenko and there are 6 around the city, we went to the 313 Orchard Rd Shopping centre (Tel. 6509 0303).

Photos by Alessandra Zecchini ©