Last night I met my food hero from the days I was a very young, very poor student in London. I remember I was always cold and hungry and leaving in a grotty place in Kings Cross, and once a week I watched Carluccio on TV and dreamed of home and sun and food. 

Gusto at the Grand, in Sky City, organized a special Christmas lunch and dinner with Antonio Carluccio, I attended the evening with my old friend, and president of the Com.it.es New Zealand Sandro Aduso. Wow we got to sit at Carluccio's table, with name places and all. 

Well, good position for taking photos, right across from Antonio.

The menu was designed by Antonio and by Gusto's talented chef Sean Connelly. Antonio said that Sean really understood Italian food and he was very complimentary, and rightly so, the food at Gusto at the Grand is really really really good!

Great evening, thank you to all the team at Gusto at the Grand!

Photos by Alessandra Zecchini and friends ©

Great shopping yesterday at the Mercatino di Natale (Italian Christmas Market), and look at the beautiful vegetables from Aldo! I made pasta with eggplants last night, and I am planning a parmigiana for the rest (I have plenty and I love eggplants!)

Today I made asparagus (which I had already) and Florence fennels with smoked scamorza (from Il Casaro). To prepare the vegetables: I washed and quartered the fennel bulbs and passed them in butter, then I added a ladle of vegetable stock and cooked them slowly slowly, with the lid on, until soft. I used some of their juice to steam a bunch of asparagus, and then I cut the scamorza and put it on the hot pan for a couple of minutes, turning them after one minutes, just to soften and sizzle (but not melt). Serve with crusty bread!

And now for something completely different:

my soft cane orchids are in flowers! I had to share the photos :-). 

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

I had a lovely dinner in Christchurch with Italian friends, and met local cheesemonger Emilio Festa of Emilio's cheese. I love cheese and this was a fantastic opportunity for me to try some NZ made Italian style cheese with a glass of Cracroft Chase Pinot Gris (my favourite Pinot Gris made in NZ by Italian Wilma and Alessandro Laryn). 

I first created these cute sandwiches about 20 years ago in Japan, the lack of brown bread there meant that every time we had a party I was really keen to offer something that was rare - yet not expensive (I was able to buy pumpernickel, cream cheese and edible flowers in an international deli) so that I could make plenty and feed large crowds.

Yesterday I held a fundraiser tea party with Slow Food Waitakere for Oxfam, and decided to make my flower sandwiches again, also as a topic of conversation (are they sweet or savory? Can you eat the flowers? What kind of bread is this?). All you need is pumpernickel (this comes from Germany and it is already sliced), cream cheese (like Philadelphia), fresh herbs (I used chives and basil), a pinch of salt, and lots of edible flowers, micro greens or seed sprouts. 

Chop the herbs and mix with the cream cheese (add a little milk to make it spreadable) and a pinch of salt. Spread the herb cheers over three layers of pumpernickel (including the to payer) and stack. Cut into the desired size. Top with edible flowers and leaves.

This was part of the first station of our tea party: the herbal tea corner, with different hot and cold herbal teas, rose and orange biscuits, strawberry meringues and scones with cream and jam.

But we also had an English High Tea table, with leaf Indian tea, cupcakes, club sandwiches, asparagus rolls, and more scones, meringues and chocolates.

Then in the kitchen there was more or an Italian fare with bread and focaccia, Italian biscuits, orange cake and chocolate cake… and coffee!

The last room was for the Japanese tea party, I forgot to take a photo during the preparations, fortunately Regina got this one, with guests! Here we had mango agar agar, brown rice crackers, Japanese sweets with bean paste, nashi and persimmons, and green tea.

 

Manu invited me to a 'Swap' on her blog, and my swapping partner is Billie from Scotland. We had to send each other an ingredient and then make a recipe with it. I sent Billie the Fresh As raspberry powder, and I look forward to see what she will do with it! She sent me some Kasmiri Masala, but because I got it late (I forgot to tell Billie my address, silly me, but fortunately she copied it from the parcel I sent her!). I had a super busy week (which included preparing for a full day TV shoot), and I am behind with my deadline for publishing a recipe! But the best thing about a Masala is that you don't have to sizzle all the spices at the beginning and work out the doses, in fact a masala should be added at the very end, to enjoy the fragrances of the aromatic spices (and the Kashmiri Masala is definitely very aromatic!!). So even if I was running around like mad I managed to throw together something starting with the leftover juice of a peperonata (stewed capsicums with celery, carrot, and garlic).

I had all that wonderful bell pepper's stock left from the night before (we ate all the capsicums and veggies), so I just peeled and cut 5 large potatoes, added the content of one can of chickpeas, and some cherry tomatoes from the garden (make an incision with a knife so that they don't 'explode' during cooking). I added a little salt and then simmered everything until the potatoes were soft. I adjusted for salt and added one tsp of Kashmiri Masala, put the lid on for 2 more minutes on low, and then served my aromatic stew to the family (with some roti and some raita). The only problem is that I don't have a last photo! We ate too quickly before remembering to take one! :-) But I hope that you will like the recipe, and it is super simple!

And for the weekly gardening photo: the last blueberry (I think) from my plant but still quite a few Alpine strawberries coming up, this is what we can pick every two days, not enough for jam maybe, but enough to decorate desserts :-).

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Yesterday I met Kate and Liz here and brought along some homemade marzipan. Note that this is RAW, VEGAN and GLUTEN FREE, so it seems to cover most of the current food trends :-). Click here to see the recipe and step by step images (including how to use apricot kernels). Note that for colouring this time I didn't use berry juice but Fresh As raspberry powder, and also quite a bit of spiraling powder for a darker green hue. The nuts on top are optional, of course.

I am so into juicing these days, and the kids drink all sort of vegetable and fruit juices, the greener the better! This one is particularly good: for four glasses I used half a stalk of celery (I use the stalks and only a few leaves - mostly to give it colour, usually I keep the leaves for cooking) then half a lemon and  to top a little (about 10-20%) natural apple juice. I will make this again and again, too good!

And then I noticed that the coffee was from my friend Mark from Atlas Power Coffee! Mark, just to let you know, the coffee was good, and in fact we decided to stop there on our return trip to Auckland too!

And now for something completely different: