Showing posts with label Avocado. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Avocado. Show all posts

Sunday, April 27, 2025

Vegan and sugar free chocolate mousse

 

I have decided to resurrect this Vegan recipe blog. I am not sure if it will go well or not. 

Why did I stop? I am certainly not making money since I only have google ads on so I make zero dollars! Nor I ask companies to sponsor me with products. 

And I got a bit tired of seeing my recipes copied here and there, often full text and photos (and spelling mistakes) without credits. Ok, when something is on the net you should let it go ... and things are going to get worse with rise in spambot traffic ... but somehow I felt that even if one more vegan recipe gets shared it is good for the world. 

Nope. Most of the vegans I seem to meet can't be bothered with cooking. Some even expect pre-pacaked ready to eat vegan meals, everywhere. 

Ok, it is fun to have a veggie burger now and then, but this thing of 'industrial food' is not exactly environmently friendly! I try not to buy process food, I make my own food. From scartch. 

And I hope that there are still vegans who cook out there.



 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 ©

Friday, August 4, 2017

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 ©

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Avocado and celery cocktails with home-made 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 ©

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Halloween Vegan Sushi - just a few ideas


There are plenty of Sushi rice recipes on this blog, so I won't repeat myself, and if you never made sushi just click here and you can find all the different ways to prepare rice and create vegan sushi, norimaki and onigiri (rice balls). 

So just follow the basic or your favourite sushi recipes and just apply these cool Halloween variations! I used lots of seaweed, nori, seaweed salad and a Japanese dried seaweed that looks like the wrapping of a scary mummy. You can find everything in Japanese shops :-). The skulls and pumpkins are made with Takuan (pickled daikon), the zombi eyes with asparagus, the 'slime' with avocado and seaweed salad, and the details with cut nori.


Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Sushi in a bowl - Chirashi-zushi




I like chirashi-zushi, sushi in a bowl, a part form the fact that you save time, it also looks pretty. For topping you can add what you fancy, here I have avocado, salted sakura (cherry blossoms), nori (cut with a craft puncher) takuan (Pickled daikon), cherry tomatoes and ume paste (I use wasabi but the kids wanted ume…). A perfect light lunch for summer!


Sushi rice

Wash the sushi rice (or Japanese rice) several times in cold water, until the water runs clear, and then cook it by absorption. The doses are about 1 and 3/4 (three quarters) cups of sushi rice for 2 cups of water, but that depends on the type of pot. You need a pot with a good lid, or you will loose too much steam. I kind of regulate myself by ear now, since I know my pots and pans. Bring the pot to boiling point, lower the heat and simmer until all the water has been absorbed. Once the rice is ready pour it into a bowl and stir it with a wooden spatula, cooling it with a fan if you can. I then add some ready made sushi vinegar, about 2 tablespoons, but this is my personal taste. If I don't have sushi vinegar I use 2 tbsp of rice vinegar, a little sugar and a little salt (to taste, and I don't like to use too much sugar or salt!). Spoon the rice in a bowl and add your topping. Serve with soy sauce and wasabi on the side, like for rolled sushi.


Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Fried Mochi and capsicums served with soba, seaweed salad, avocado and Japanese pickles

I really like the mochi cakes, the Japanese glutinous rice blocks that are traditionally found in the traditional New Year soup (zoni). Mochi is usually grilled before going into the soup, but I don't have a grill for it, and tend to just boil it into it for a little. I love it. My family less so. And they don't like the idea of mochi in any our miso soups. So I tried to pan-fry it, thinking that they like everything fried, and guess what? Fried mochi is a new favourite! Now I add a block of pan-fried mochi in almost every Japanese meal I make (that is, while my mochi stock last: it is not so easy to find it in New Zealand!). 

In my (short) experience one of the best ways is to pan-fry mochi is with something that will also give it a bit of flavour, like capsicums. These are the little capsicums from my garden, small but tasty! Heat the oil in the frying pan, add slices of capsicum and mochi, turn everything a few times (I like to turn the mochi blocks on all six sides) and serve hot. Here is my mochi and capsicums served with soba, seaweed salad, avocado and Japanese pickles, a quick and balanced lunch!


Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Avocado sashimi








This is the first course of my Japanese Vegan and gluten free dinner...
 Raw food is better as a starter, apparently it gets the digestion going, and this is easy to make and really delicious.


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 gluten free soy or tamari sauce on the side.   




 Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Friday, June 3, 2011

Garlic and Cilantro Guacamole

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!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini and Max ©



Friday, April 22, 2011

Avocado Sushi















To make the sushi rice I usually follow this recipe, but this time I also added some Japanese dried herbs (the green is spinach and the purple is red shiso, or perilla) and toasted sesame seeds.

On top of each rice ball (you need to have wet hands to shape the balls) I put a slice of avocado, soaked in lemon juice. Under some avocado slices I put a little bit of wasabi, and because this may be too hot for some palates, I added a thin strip of nori seaweed to recognize which pieces had the wasabi and which didn't.

Avocado sushi is very filling, eat with a drop of Japanese soy sauce.





Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©