Vegan Recipes

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

My Aunt Alice is growing green zucchini and round zucchini (which is a sort of 'zuccotto' and can grow quite big). I like the round zucchini!

Here how the round zucchini look like sliced.

Slice the zucchini and cut the bigger slices into quarters. Sauté two peeled garlic cloves with a little olive oil, then add the zucchini, lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring often. The round zucchini are softer and will mush a little, but they have a great taste. The round zucchini will 'almost' mush, but keep their shape and colour better (the round one turn yellow!). Add salt halfway through cooking. At the end add a tsp of fresh chopped Italian parsley and a few lemon slices (or the juice of half a lemon). It can also be used to to cous cous, pasta and rice.

I decided to try another type of Garofalo pasta (since so many Italian bloggers talk about it) and I though that with zucchini this format, called mafalde corte, would work well. And it did!!!

500 g pasta

Rock salt for the water.

4 zucchini

2 garlic cloves, peeled

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Salted water from the pasta (very important ingredient, read more later)

Freshly grated pepper (optional)

Freshly chopped Italian Parsley

Wash and cut the zucchini and saute in a large pan with the garlic and olive oil. Stir often, the zucchini should not burn! They actually contain quite a bit of water, so if you turn the heat down you should be able to cook them by themselves for about 15 minutes (as long as you stir often!!). Start cooking the pasta in plenty of salted boiling water, and keep your pot near the zucchini pan. When the zucchini finally start to dry up ad stick to the pot add a first ladle of water from the pasta.

Now, using the salted and starchy water from the pasta is normal in Italy, it is used to thin sauces, add taste, and even salt (since the pasta's water is usually very salted). But if the pasta is of very good quality, if it is a type that takes longer to cook, and it the sauce is white or green, rather that red (i.e., pesto, cheese, zucchini and other green vegetables, rather than tomato based sauces), the cooking water from the pasta becomes, in my opinion, the best ingredient you can add to it - and most people outside Italy don't know it!!!

I find it particularly suited to the zucchini, because it gives them a kind of creaminess...like butter. Basically all you have to do is to add a few ladles, one by one, of pasta's water, always simmering very gently, and stirring often. Taste for salt, and if you like add some freshly grated pepper. At the end add some chopped parsley, drain the pasta and stir into the zucchini pot, and serve.

It may look simple from the photo, but this was one of the best tasting zucchini pasta I had made, and if you are not a Vegan you may be fooled to believe that there is butter in the sauce.

I swear it tasted like it had lots of butter, instead nothing: just salted water from the pasta!

Making Fregola

I dug out these photos for my friend Tiziana, who was here with me making fregola (or fregula), and she is now a vegetarian! Fregola is something between cous cous and pasta, thicker than the former, and smaller than the latter.

Start with a blend of fine and coarse semolina and a little salted water.

You just need to sprinkle some water on you semolina mix.

Mix mix mix

collect the pellets

pass them through a sieve, keep only the big one and let them dry for 24 hours.

Start over with the smaller ones to make them as big as you like.

We cooked the fregola like a risotto. First chop and saute some fresh vegetables,

slowly add vegetable stock and, finally, saffron.

Yum!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Yes, this is my favourite creation, it takes time to make but it can last a week, and the flavour gets better and better. For the ingredients...no measures really, just be aware that you will need a lot of olive oil and lots of eggplants (I use both Italian eggplants and the long Asian eggplants), plenty of zucchini, and red, green and yellow capsicums. Cut all the vegetables in long and large strips, sweat the eggplants with salt for 30 minutes, then rinse and pat dry. Then, using plenty of olive oil, start frying. This is going to take a looooong time. First fry the zucchini, then set aside. Fry the eggplants, set aside; finally fry the capsicums (which have the strongest flavour, so they would alter the flavour of the oil). You will need to add oil from time to time, and be very careful to cook well the vegetables without burning them. When the capsicum are cold remove and discard the skins.

Finely chop plenty of garlic with tons of parsley. Add few more herbs if you wish, either a little mint of a little basil are good. Add salt to taste. You should make about a cup of this. Line a container with grease-proof paper and make a layer of vegetables (this will be the top, so make it pretty!), add some chopped herbs, then a few drops of white wine vinegar and sprinkle with breadcrumbs. Repeat, making as many layers as you can. Top with some more grease-proof paper and press down gently. Refrigerate for one day. Before serving you can tip the 'torta' on a platter, and then cut into small slices. You will get many portions out of it, as it is so compact and full of flavour!

For a Gluten free version omit the breadcrumbs.

I love Japanese food, it is light and filling at the same time. It may take time to prepare, but it gives me great satisfaction, a sense of peace, and the whole family enjoys sitting at the low table, in our Japanese room, especially the children. This is a very simple fare really, it is just that 'Japanese' seems always more sophisticated: food has to look pretty, no matter what. Even a simple bowl of plain rice, served in the right atmosphere, would satisfy me! So, here we go:

Seaweed soup

Ingredients:

1 sheet kombu seaweed

1 l water

1 tbsp dried wakame seaweed

Gently scrape the kombu seaweed with the tip of a knife. Place it in a saucepan with 1 litre of water and gently simmer (simmering, not boiling) for 30 minutes. Turn the heat off and let the soup stand for 30 minutes to 1 hour (the longer the better), then remove and discard the kombu. Gently bring the soup back to a gentle simmering and add the wakame. Simmer for 5 more minutes, and serve. This soup doesn't need salt, or anything else, the broth remains clear and the taste is delicious!

Sushi rice

I find cooking rice for sushi challenging: you need to buy proper sushi rice and then wash it 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!). I used the rice to fill some inari (Japanese tofu pockets), which you can buy already made from Asian stores. This time I also put a piece of avocado inside each inari, but this is not exactly 'traditional'.

And then I made some norimaki (large rolled sushi). To be honest this is not my best rolling, but it wasn't planned either! The truth is that there were 8 inari pouches in the packet, but I broke 4 trying to open them :-P!! I made a bit of a mess, not something to photograph! The children and I ate them while we were making them. I quickly rolled the reaming rice with a sheet of nori seaweed, and fill it with avocado, cucumber and red capsicum strips. Serve with wasabi, pickled ginger and Japanese soy sauce.

This was the easiest thing: I just bought it! Japanese pickled cucumber, crunchy and refreshing.

Seaweed salad

I found a punnet of seaweed salad in the Asian store, ready to eat. I rinsed it (just in case), and I made a dressing with:

2 tbsp Japanese rice vinegar

1 tbsp Mirin (sweet cooking sake)

1 tsp toasted sesamy seeds

and decorated the salad with calendula petals.

Zucchini and Zucchini Flower Tempura

For a Vegan tempura batter just mix a bit of flour with some chilled beer. If you don't drink beer use some chilled water (better if sparkling). Do not over-soak the vegetables in batter, just a little dip is enough, and make sure that the oil is very hot before frying. I used rice bran oil. The zucchini and flowers are from my garden, the fresher the better, I just added a sprinkle of salt before serving them. I did have some batter left and so, after taking this photo, I used it up to fry up some borage flowers as well (maybe you can see them in the first photo). They were lovely!

Dessert

Usually after a Japanese meal the only sweet thing served is seasonal fruit, so that was also easy ;-)