Vegan Recipes: Walnuts

Showing posts with label Walnuts. Show all posts

Sunday, January 20, 2019

Marzipan with Amaretto

Assorted natural flavours and colours, including green tea, cherry syrup, berry juice, candied citrus,
and some stuffed dates too!

Last Sunday I did a demo about making Marzipan at the Auckland Art Gallery, to celebrate Italian Language week with the Dante Auckland. I have a basic recipe which I always follow (without egg white, thus suitable for Vegans too) and you can find it here. But since almonds don't have much taste in NZ (sorry... need to be said) I always add a few apricot kernels (not too much, they are poisonous!) so follow this recipe carefully! Now, apricots are not in season yet, and I made a little variation, which worked well: I added a little drop of Amaretto.

Marzapane with Amaretto

Ingredients
200g raw almonds
100g icing sugar
1 tsp Amaretto

Blanch the almonds in boiling water and remove the skins. Keep a few almonds aside for decoration, if you like, and ground the rest into a fine powder, almost like a paste. Add the icing sugar and Amaretto and mix until you get a dough. Shape into your favourite morsels, and colour with berries, green tea powder, spirulina, or anything you like. Some ideas for shapes and colours here.

Perfect for presents! Coloured with cocoa, green tea and berries

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Florence Fennel and avocado salad with walnuts

This is a lovely salad and also a light main, filling, nutritious and full of different textures and flavors!

Red Walnut and Rocket (rucola) Salad, and Red Walnut Pesto

This post comes from the diary of my trip to Austria, where I stayed with Imogen and Günther, who grow walnuts. Walnuts are one of the best nuts I know, and I was surprised to see that Imogen and Günther also have a tree (not commercial) of red walnuts. I have never seen red walnuts before, the shells are normal brown, but the kernels really red! Our hosts gave us some red walnuts, but also some walnut oil. In the photo above you can see the walnut plantation (only one tree produces the red walnuts).

For an easy salad mix the walnuts with rocket, walnut oil, salt, and lemon juice. Quick, healthy and good looking!

I decided to also make a walnut pesto for pasta. Using a mortar and pestle (or food processor if you don't have a mortar and pestle) mush the walnuts (I used the red ones, but you can use normal walnuts) with a peeled garlic clove, then slowly add some walnut oil (or olive oil), and a little salt and pepper to taste.

The pesto was great! I cooked some pasta with rocket (I added the rocket leaves to the pot a few minutes before draining the pasta), and I used the pesto as a sauce. We really liked it and I'll definitely make it again!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Vegan Pizzoccheri

Pizzoccheri is a traditional pasta from Valtellina, in the North of Italy, made with a percentage of buckwheat flour. The taste is similar to the Japanese buckwheat noodles (soba).

The traditional recipe for pizzoccheri, born in the village of Teglio, is to boil them together with pieces of potatoes and green cabbage (put the potatoes in the biling water first, then the cabbage and the pizzoccheri (which take about 15 minutes to cook). Pick up everything with a slotted spoon and mix with casera cheese and butter melted with garlic. Very filling! A vegan could stop at the cheese and butter steps, adding a little tamari sauce instead, and the stock from the pizzoccheri can also be recycled in real Zen style as it is full of proteins. But I didn’t feel like going for Asian flavours.

So I made mine with onion, potatoes, spinach and walnuts.

Ingredients

500 g pizzoccheri

1 small white onion

4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 big boiled potato, peeled

1 bunch spinach leaves, washed

1 handful freshly shelled walnut kernels

salt and pepper to taste

Cook the pizzoccheri in plenty of salted boiling water according to packet instructions. Finely chop a white onion and sauté with two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Add the boiled potato, cubed, and after a few minutes the spinach leaves and the walnut kernels. Add a couple of ladles of the water from the pizzoccheri and cook until the potato pieces start to mush. Add salt and pepper to taste. By this time your pizzoccheri should also be ready, drain them (keep the water if you like for later use as a stock), and place in the pot with the potatoes. Add two more tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, stir and serve.

Serve 4 as a complete meal, very filling!!!

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Salad with Red Radicchio, Florence Fennel and Walnut

A lovely and crisply salad made with fresh mixed leaves and red radicchio (the round type, which is crispy and lovely to eat raw). I find red radicchio a bit bitter, this is why I like to mix it with other green leaves. Then I added some finely cut Florence fennel, and some freshly shelled walnuts. For dressing I just used some good extra virgin olive oil, some lemon juice and some salt.

Vegan Recipes

Pages