Onion on 🍽️ Recipes & ⚗️ Analysis by Diego

Lentil Soup with Aubergine and Tomato

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Lentil Soup with Aubergine and Tomato

A rustic, complete lentil soup, 100% plant-based and made in one pot: a soffritto of onion, carrot and celery, grated aubergine that melts into the base, a double hit of tomato (paste and passata) and lentils cooked gently. Blending a small part at the end lets you decide how creamy to make it, while still leaving lentils and vegetables to chew on. It is a dish to make unhurried and then let rest: the longer it waits, the more the flavours come together. It goes well with a rustic focaccina or a vegetable schiacciata.

Mexican Black Bean, Corn and Paprika Soup

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Mexican Black Bean, Corn and Paprika Soup

Black bean and corn soup is a classic Mexican soup, which calls for pre-cooking the black beans and a few ingredients that are hard to find outside Central America. This is a simplified version, 100% plant-based, made in a single pot, with only the recipe's core ingredients. The chilli is listed as optional, meaning you add more or less to taste, or leave it out. Leaving it out does change the final result noticeably: you get a more delicate soup, in which the creamy notes of the beans and the sweetness of the corn come through more. The avocado is added sliced or diced, raw, straight onto the plate: it brings creaminess without altering the flavour. In this Mediterranean version the avocado, too, can be left out. What I do recommend is eating the soup with a rustic focaccina or the multicolour cloud focaccine or, for an extra flavour boost, with a vegetable schiacciata.

Pumpkin Risotto: an in-depth guide

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Pumpkin Risotto: an in-depth guide

Set the amount of ingredients you want to use with one of the two options below:

you can pick the number of servings with x1, x2, x3 and so on. Servings are indicative, adjust them to your preference.
you can set the amount of Carnaroli rice you want to use. For example, if you want to use 340 grams, type 340 in the box below.

Quantity

Carnaroli rice (min g, max g): g

1. Ingredients

Risotto (saucepan, in order of addition)

Ingredient	Quantity
Delica or Mantovana pumpkin, trimmed raw	650 g
Extra-virgin olive oil (for the base)	25 g (about 2 tbsp)
Shallot, finely chopped (or 1 medium onion per 4 people)	2
Carnaroli rice	320 g
Dry white wine, optional, or see alternatives	120 ml
Hot vegetable stock	1400 ml

Halfway through cooking, fold in the cooked, mashed pumpkin (see method).

Soft Pumpkin Sformato (from the burger mix)

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Soft Pumpkin Sformato (from the burger mix)

This sformato comes from the same mix as the moulded pumpkin burgers/balls: up to the point where the mix is ready (roasted pumpkin, cannellini, onion, carrot, spices and oil, blended) the recipe is identical. From there, instead of pressing and slicing, you take part of it, set it in a pan with a little tomato and get a soft sformato, to eat with a spoon or as a mash. It is all done by eye, no weighing: add the tomato a little at a time, about half the weight of the pumpkin mix. It turns into a vegetarian dish by adding a tasty cheese like parmesan, mozzarella, scamorza.

Moulded Pumpkin Balls

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Moulded Pumpkin Balls

This is a really quick and versatile recipe: it starts from the pumpkin burger mix, and from there you can make balls, as in this recipe, or the pumpkin burgers themselves, or the pumpkin flan. The base mix, quickly prepared with pumpkin, potatoes or legumes and spices, can be put in a fridge container and kept aside for the following days, or it can be frozen and used when needed.

Pumpkin Burgers

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Pumpkin Burgers

What is the difference between these burgers and the moulded ones? Well, if you want a finished burger with a precise shape (round, heart-shaped, bigger/smaller, ...) then the hand-formed burgers give a more defined result, but this takes more time because you actually have to shape the burgers one by one. If instead you prefer a quicker preparation, once the mixture is ready you can put it into a container, as shown in the moulded pumpkin burgers recipe, and refrigerate it; then when you need to cook the burgers, just take the mixture from the mould and cut the slices you need, where each slice will be a burger.

Vegetable Purée Flatbread with Rosemary and Garlic

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Vegetable Purée Flatbread with Rosemary and Garlic

Set the amount of ingredients you want to use with one of the two options below:

you can pick the number of servings with x1, x2, x3 and so on. Servings are indicative, adjust them to your preference.
you can set the amount of Type 2 flour (semi-wholegrain, stone-milled) you want to use. For example, if you want to use 340 grams, type 340 in the box below.

Quantity

Type 2 flour (semi-wholegrain, stone-milled) (min g, max g): g

1. Ingredients

Vegetable purée (raw weight, before cooking)

Ingredient	Quantity
Golden onion (about 2 medium)	400 g
Red bell pepper (about 2 medium)	350 g
Peeled garlic cloves (~12-15 cloves)	30 g
Tomato passata (added raw at blending)	100 g
Olive oil (for the pan)	15 g
Fresh rosemary (roughly chopped needles)	5 g
Dried oregano	3 g
Freshly ground black pepper	1 g
(Optional) Paprika (smoked or not)	5 g

Dough

Ingredient	Quantity
Type 2 flour (semi-wholegrain, stone-milled)	750 g
Wholegrain durum wheat semolina (re-milled)	250 g
Water	340 g
Olive oil	60 g
Fresh yeast (or 3 g instant dry yeast)	8 g
Fine salt	13 g

2. Method

Prepare the purée.
Dice 400 g onion, 350 g red bell pepper (remove seeds and membranes) and 30 g garlic cloves, finely chopped.
Grease a pan with 15 g olive oil (indicative, adjust by eye) and heat the oil. Add the vegetables and sauté for about 10 minutes.

One of the first pans I made. I didn't have enough red pepper so I used a yellow one. In any case, I now cut the vegetables finer than this; as soon as I can I'll add a photo of the latest batches.

Put the cooked vegetables in a container (they are hot, I'd avoid plastic). Add 100 g tomato passata (raw), 5 g fresh rosemary, 3 g dried oregano, 1 g black pepper and, if desired, 5 g paprika. Blend until you have a purée. Let cool to room temperature.

Cooked vegetables, transferred to a glass container.

Adding tomato, spices and herbs.

Vegetable purée, blended with an immersion blender.

Make the dough.
Dissolve 8 g fresh yeast in 50 g water, lukewarm, and add it to the flours (750 g type 2 flour and 250 g wholegrain semolina), then add the vegetable purée. Start kneading, then add the remaining 290 g water in a stream as needed: you may need less, depending on how dry or watery the vegetables are.
As soon as there is no free water, add 13 g fine salt and 60 g olive oil. Knead a few minutes until you have a cohesive mass with no unabsorbed flour remaining. No need for a smooth ball; you will get that after the first round of folds. Then cover the bowl with a lid or plate.

This is what the dough looks like after briefly kneading flours, yeast, vegetable purée, oil and salt. In this case I added 200 ml total water per 1 kg total flour. The water is added afterwards, a little at a time, adjusted to how much the purée absorbs.

Folds.
After 30 minutes of covered rest, proceed with the first round of stretch and folds.
Perform two more rounds of stretch and folds at 30-minute intervals.
Bulk fermentation.
Cover again and let rise 3-4 hours at room temperature. The dough should increase by 70-80% (do not wait for a full doubling).

After fermentation is complete, now it goes into the pan. In this case, however, I divided the dough into different pieces so I could experiment with different thicknesses.

Shape.
Generously oil a baking tray (~30×40 cm). Transfer the dough to the tray and stretch it gently with wet hands to fill the edges.
Cover the tray with a clean kitchen towel, or place in a turned-off oven with a cup of hot water, and let rise 50-60 minutes until the dough is puffy and springs back slowly when pressed with a finger.
Bake.
Preheat the oven to 220 °C static. Dimple the surface with oiled fingers. Drizzle with olive oil. For a thinner, crispier result, in addition to dimpling you can prick the dough with a fork or skewer.
Bake for 25-30 minutes until evenly golden and crisp.
Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack before cutting.

The holes made with the fork are mainly for aesthetic effect, but they help make the flatbread crunchier while still maintaining a bit of softness inside.

From here you can see the different versions better. The central one is the flatbread rolled out like a sheet (about 2 millimeters), it comes out like a cracker. The flavor, however, is identical in all versions.

This is another version I made with a different batch.

Closer view.

3. Storage

Let cool completely on a wire rack before storing (prevents condensation and mould).