RAW Popcorn

Courtesy of Gone Raw http://goneraw.com/recipe/raw-popcorn

Ingredients:

• Cauliflower
• brewers yeast
• celtic salt
• cayenne

Preparation:

Wash you cauliflower and chop into popcorn sized chunks. Put into ziploc bag and just shake in enough brewers yeast to cover cauliflower with celtic salt to taste and a pinch or two of cayenne. zip bag and shake to cover all cauliflower evenly. Now you can just eat right out of the bag or put on dehydrator for about 3-4 hours.

The Lunch Bunch: Salad Flax Wraps

Courtesy of Kitchen Dispensary http://thekitchendispensary.wordpress.com/

A few people have asked me to post the types of things that I take for lunch. I am fortunate enough to work in an office with a modest kitchen, so I can quite easily assemble salads and things with produce I keep in the work fridge or that I grab from the supermarket over the road. I’m not really into eating a lot of fats anymore, I’m close to 80/10/10 but I’m not strict about it, I just try to keep it low-fat with lots of fruits and vegetables. So with these wraps I try to keep the amounts of flax seeds quite low and bulk them up with celery and psyllium instead. The amounts are very approximate so use what you have on hand and they’ll probably still turn out fine. I’ll write it down properly with the next batch.

Flax Wraps

Ingredients:

• 1 large zucchini
• 3 large stalks of celery
• 1 Red Pepper/Capsicum
• 1/2 cup ground flax seeds
• 1-2 tsp psyllium husk powder
• About 3 cups of water

Preparation:

1. Blend everything in a high speed blender until smooth. You may want to add the water gradually. The psyllium and flax will absorb the water and make a thick gel like mixture, so you can always add more water if you think it is too thick.
   
2. Spread the mixture out into circles about 3-4mm thick on dehydrator mats. Make sure not to have any spots that are too thin.
3. Dehydrate for about 4 hours. Check as you go that they are not getting too dry. They should still be pliable.
4. Flip them over and dehydrate another 2-4 hours.
5. Store in a ziplock bag or container.

Tip: If you over dehydrate and end up with large thin crackers instead, you can take a spray bottle filled with water and finely mist them. Lay them between damp paper or tea towels and they will become bendy again.

Fillings

1. You can pretty much use anything you would normally have in a salad sandwich. For these I had lettuce, cucumber, tomato and grated carrot with a squeeze of lemon juice and a wee bit of sea salt. A small amount of avocado would go down well in the mix too. I find that grated veges are more juicy so I don’t have the need for a dressing or dip which keeps things nice and simple.
   

Ginger Mushrooms & Wilted Asian Greens

Courtesy of Kitchen Dispensary http://thekitchendispensary.wordpress.com/

This is so like a cooked stirfry you could easily fool your cooked foodie friends. The mushrooms you need to do in advance, but you could get away with not dehydrating the greens if you let the dish sit and marinade for a half hour or so, or just eat them crunchy.

Ginger Mushrooms & Asian Greens

The Ginger Mushrooms

Ingredients:

• About 20 Button Mushrooms
• 1 Tsp Minced Ginger
• 1 Tsp Minced Garlic
• 1 Tbsp Tamari
• Juice of 1/2 Lemon
• 1 Tbsp Cold Pressed Oil (flax, olive, sesame or similar)

Preparation:

1. Wash and slice the mushrooms about 5mm thick.
2. Throw all the ingredients into a large bowl and mix with your hands until the mushrooms are well coated.
3. Place onto mesh dehydrator trays and dehydrate for about 6 hours.

The Wilted Asian Greens
About 4 Cups of Chopped Bok Choy or Similar Asian Greens

Place on mesh dehydrator trays and dehydrate for 1 hour

The Sauce

Ingredients:

• 1 Tbsp Tamari
• 2 Tbsp Cold Pressed Sesame or Olive Oil
• 1cm Piece of Ginger
• Juice of 1/2 Lemon
• 2 Tbsp Water

Preparation:

1. Place in a blender and blend until well combined.
2. Strain to remove any large chunks of ginger.

Putting It All Together
The Ginger Mushrooms
The Wilted Asian Greens
The Sauce
3 Tbsp Sesame Seeds
1-2 Cups Mung Bean Sprouts

Combine all everything in a bowl and toss to combine.

Zucchini Linguine with Basil Pesto

Courtesy of Kitchen Dispensary http://thekitchendispensary.wordpress.com/

I made this dish for a raw potluck this weekend. There are plenty of cheap organic zucchini and tomatoes at the Victoria Street farmers market in Wellington now that it’s near the end of summer. I also picked up the basil there for the pesto. All the classic italian flavours are there which makes this a favourite for friends and family who are not raw. You can make a big batch of pesto up to keep for the week and just do the zucchini on the night.

Basil Pesto

Ingredients

• 2 Cups Tightly Packed Basil
• 1/2 Cup Pine Nuts
• 1/4 Cup Pumpkin Seeds
• 1 Tbsp Lemon Juice
• 1 Clove Garlic
• 1/2 Tsp Himalayan or Celtic Sea Salt
• 1/4 Cup Cold Pressed Olive Oil
• Spring or Filtered Water

Method

1. Soak the pinenuts and pumpkin seeds for at least 4 hours. Drain and rinse.
2. Place all ingredients apart from the water into a food processor and process until almost smooth. You still want a little texture to it. Add a little water at a time if it seems too dry.
3. Store in a glass jar in the fridge for up to a week.

Zucchini Linguini

Ingredients

• 3 Large Zucchini
• 2 Medium Tomatoes
• 8-10 Dried Olives
• 1/2 Red Capsicum
• 2 Tbsp Pine Nuts
• 1/2 Cup Basil Pesto

Method

1. Use a julienne peeler to slice the zucchini lengthways into long noodles and place in a large bowl. You could also use a spiralizer.
2. Chop the tomatoes and capsicum, destone and chop the olives and add these with the pine nuts to the zucchini.
3. Add the pesto and mix thoroughly to combine.
4. Leave to sit for 1hour before serving if you would like the noodles to soften a bit.

Double Dip

Courtesy of Kitchen Dispensary http://thekitchendispensary.wordpress.com/

These are a couple of Turkish inspired dips that you can use with almost anything. Perfect with celery sticks, cucumber slices or flax crackers, delicious with salad stuffed into a large leaf of romaine and great on their own as a soup if you add a little extra water.

Zucchini & Avocado Dip

The flavour of this dip reminds me of Mucver (pronounced MOOSH-vair), the zucchini fritters often served in a mixed vegetarian kebab or as an entree in Turkish restaurants.

Ingredients:

• 1 Large Zucchini
• 1 Medium Avocado
• 1 Tsp Sea Salt or Himalayan Salt
• Juice of 1/2 a Lemon
• 1 Tsp Cumin
• 1 Tsp Tumeric
• 1/2 Tsp Cayenne Pepper
• 1 Large Clove Garlic

Preparation:

1. Chop up the zucchini, avocado and garlic into smaller pieces. Add with the remaining ingredients to your food processor or high speed blender and blend until smooth. You can add a little water if the dip seems too thick.

Beetroot Dip

This was once a favourite of mine in vege kebabs. The traditional version sometimes has yoghurt which I have substituted here with brazil nuts although you could easily use cashews or macadamias or omit them all together if you are looking for a nut free version.

Ingredients:

• 1 large beetroot
• 20 soaked brazil nuts
• Juice of 1 Lemon
• 1 Large Clove Garlic
• 1 Tsp Sea Salt or Himalayan Salt

Preparation:

1. Chop up the beetroot and garlic into smaller pieces. Add with the remaining ingredients to your food processor or high speed blender and blend until smooth. You can add a little water if the dip seems too thick.

Golden Kumara Chips

Courtesy of Kitchen Dispensary http://thekitchendispensary.wordpress.com/

This is what happens when you get the Raw Vegan to do the snacks for friday drinks at the the office.

Kumara is an iconic New Zealand vegetable and a staple of traditional Maori cooking. It’s also known as sweet potato in the northern hemisphere and comes in a variety of colours and flavours. It’s rich in anti-oxidants and one of the top potassium rich foods. Kumara is also high in vitamin A and C and full of fibre. You could really use any colour, the orange ones are just much sweeter than the red, white fleshed kumara.

Golden Kumara Chips

Ingredients

• 1 large Golden Kumara (Sweet Potato)
• 1-2 Tbsp Cold Pressed Olive Oil
• 1 tsp Himalayan or Sea Salt
• Optional: 1 tsp Smoked Paprika

Method

1. Peel the whole kumara into thin slices with a potato peeler. I have found this works better than my mandoline, it gets the slices much thinner.
2. Cut or break the slices into smaller chip sized pieces and place in a large bowl.
3. Add olive oil, salt and paprika and massage with your hands.
4. Layout evenly onto mesh dehydrator trays and dehydrate at around 43degrees celcius/110 degrees farenheight for 12 hours or until cripsy.

The Lunch Bunch: Red Cabbage Tacos

Courtesy of Kitchen Dispensary http://thekitchendispensary.wordpress.com/

Red cabbage is one of my favourite leaves to use as a wrap. It looks amazing, it’s crunchy and you can fit a lot into one leaf. It’s really one of the things we raw foodies use as a bread substitute. The ingredients below are pretty much what I had in the fridge today. You could just as easily use things like cucumbers, tomatoes, sprouts or leftover salad. Whatever takes your fancy.

Makes 5

Ingredients

• 5 smallish red cabbage leaves
• 2 medium sized carrots
• 1/4 avocado
• 1-2 tsp lemon juice
• about 8 stalks of fresh chives
• Greens of your choice (I used a mix of spinach, chard and lettuces)
• Dulse flakes (Karengo Seaweed) for saltiness

Preparation

1. Finely grate the carrot. If you have a fine grater like one usually used for parmesean you will get more juicy flavour from the carrot.
2. Mash in the avocado, lemon juice and finely chopped chives. Add a little himalayan or sea salt if you wish.
3. Take a red cabbage leaf and fill with a few green leaves of your choice and top with some of the carrot avocado mixture.
4. Top with some dulse (karengo) and a few chopped chives.

Feijoa & Manuka Icecream

Courtesy of Kitchen Dispensary http://thekitchendispensary.wordpress.com/

Feijoa & Manuka Honey Icecream

This recipe combines two iconic New Zealand ingredients. Feijoas and Manuka Honey. Feijoas, also known as the pineapple guava, are in abundance at this time of year and are one of my all time favourite fruits. This icecream has a delicate clean flavour, a slight sweetness and it’s not too rich or heavy. Very cleansing on the palette. You could play around with the quantities to make it sweeter.

Ingredients:

• 2 Cups Soaked Raw Cashews
• 6-8 Feijoas
• 1/4 Cup agave syrup
• 1 Tbsp Soy Lecithin Granules (optional, for extra creaminess)
• About 12 Large Ice Cubes
• 1 Cup Pure Water

Preparation:

1. Make sure your icecream maker bowl is sufficiently frozen. It will most likely need to have been in the freezer 18-22 hours.
2. Blend all ingredients in a high speed blender until smooth and creamy.
3. Pour the mixture into your icecream maker immediately and process according your your machines instructions.

Note: If you don’t have an icecream maker you can pour the mixture into a bowl and place it in the freezer. Then whisk with a fork every 30 minutes. Or you can freeze the mixture in icecube trays and once frozen, blend in a food processor.

What is a Feijoa?

Although originally from South America, some might say the feijoa is now even more kiwi than the kiwifruit. They come around once a year in the autumnal months and people tend to go a little crazy for them when they are about. Besides being overly delicious, feijoas are a good source of vitamin C, folate and fibre. and they are so low maintenance that at least one house on every block is likely to have a tree.

Tom Kha or Tom Yum with Spiced Coconut Dumplings

Courtesy of Kitchen Dispensary http://thekitchendispensary.wordpress.com/

I love Thai food. The flavours are always so fresh and vegetables are often the star. Tom Yum is one of the cooked dishes I will eat if I am going out to dinner with friends and there are no raw options. It’s still all vegetables in a light spicy broth. But making a raw version of Tom Yum or Tom Kha is so easy to do at home. The main difference between the two is just the coconut which is used in Tom Kha. So if you are looking for a fat-free version just leave it out and perhaps add extra tomato for a Tom Yum version.

Tom Kha
Ingredients

Stock

• 1 Stalk of Lemongrass
  
• 1 Lime Leaf
  
• 1 cm Piece of Ginger
  
• 1 cm Piece of Galangal
  
• 2 Stalks of Celery
  
• 1 Cup Dried Coconut
  
• 2 Cups of Spring Water
  
• 1 Tomato
  
• 2 Tbsp Lemon Juice
  
• 1 Tbsp Miso Paste
  
• 1/4 Tsp Cayenne Pepper
  

Fillings

1. Choose from a variety of fresh raw shredded or spiralised vegetables like cucumber or zucchini noodles, carrot, mung bean sprouts, snow pea greens, cabbage, tomatoes, turnips or anything else that you have. In the picture above I used snow pea greens and cucumber sliced into wide noodles with a vegetable peeler and a few slivers of avocado.

Preparation

1. Place the lemongrass, lime leaf, ginger, galangal, celery, coconut and water into a blender and process until well mixed. Strain through a nutmilk bag or a fine sieve.


2. Pour the liquid back into the blender and add the remaining ingredients. Blend well.


3. You may like to gently warm the stock to a low temperature before pouring over the vegetables, but it does just fine as a cold soup as well.


4. Place your vegetables of choice into a bowl and pour the stock over the top.
   

Black Pepper Celeriac Risotto

Courtesy of Kitchen Dispensary http://thekitchendispensary.wordpress.com/

It’s mid-winter here in New Zealand and the organic supermarket is full of celeriac and fennel, two vegetables that go well together in a kind of rustic French way. Celeriac is one of those underrated but highly versatile vegetables that often gets shunned for it’s rather unelegant apperance. It’s not the root of celery as it’s name suggests but kind of like a cousin, similar in flavour but a little more nutty. With the fennel, lemon and celeriac, this whole dish is very high in vitamin C. Mother Nature sure knows how to look after us by providing produce that’s high in flu-fighting properties during the winter. It’s also pretty high in magnesium, phosphorus and vitamin K. Make sure to use the zest of the lemon as well as the juice to give the risotto that wonderfully fragrant flavour. Yum.

Serves one

Ingredients

• 1 medium celeriac root juice
• zest of 1 small lemon
• 1 tbsp finely chopped celery leaves
• 1/2 cup finely shaved fennel bulb
• 1 tsp unpasteurised miso
• 1/4 cup soaked sunflower seeds
• 1/4 cup pure water
• 1/2 tsp cracked black pepper
• 1/4 tsp sea salt

Preparation

1. Trim off the outer layer of the celeriac root to remove all the dirt filled crevices, dice into cubes and pulse in a high speed blender or food processor with the lemon juice until fine. It should be about the size of rice or a little smaller in order to release more of the flavoursome juices. Adding the lemon juice at this point prevents the celeriac from discolouring as it oxidises.
2. Set the celeriac aside and process the sunflower seeds, miso paste and water until fairly smooth but still with a little texture.
3. Combine the sunflower mixture with the celeriac and the remaining ingredients.
4. Season with extra black pepper, sea salt and a little cold pressed olive oil if desired.
5. Serve in a bowl garnished with chopped celery leaves and lemon zest, scoop up with flax crackers or even wrap in romaine leaves with some fresh alfalfa sprouts and your favourite greens.