Julie and the Chocolate Factory

Happy Holidays to you all! I am going to share with you all of the hard work I put into Christmas gifts for family and friends this year.

I refuse to take it easy and do one thing at a time, so amongst all of the other holiday madness, designing two new menus for my place of work and doing multiple other design projects, I decided to open a temporary chocolate factory in my ant-sized kitchen. What fun!



I will admit that I started designing the labels back in November. So smart. I went to Calgary to Mona Lisa art store and got some pretty fun semi-transparent velum paper and some craft/postal parcel paper. Went to Nu-Roots in Canmore and got chocolate foils and all of my raw chocolate ingredients (cocoa butter, cocoa powder, cashews, essential oils, chocolate molds, etc.) and to a new artisan grocer across the road called Feast to get lovely vanilla beans.

I decided on the 4 flavours:
2 white - Lemon and Blueberry Rooibos
2 Dark - Cinnamon Chipotle and Orange Coffee

I love old movies (and some modern movies too) so I gave each bar a special movie theme name. I guess I started with the Lemon White Chocolate- I wanted to call it "Jack Lemon" (like the actor) and the other bars followed suit. I sent the wrapper files up to the printing company in town and got them to print on the special velum paper.

After writing down who was to get the chocolates and how many, I was suddenly seeing 60-80 bars in my future! Did I mention that my freezer is smaller than any normal freezer and can only fit two three-bar molds at a time? No big deal.

Happily making chocolate, I realized I would need more cocoa butter from Canmore. I drove in, only to find out that Nu-Roots was totally out, as was Nutters, and there would likely be some coming in AFTER Christmas! Oh crap! Chocolate factory halted.

The week before Christmas I happened to call my friend Brooke who was going to Nu-Roots and asked her to keep an eye out for cocoa butter. By some Christmas miracle they had just received a new order of cocoa butter and it wasn't even on the shelves yet! (insert that sound the heavens make when they part and the sun bursts through). Chocolate factory commence.
Part 1: Melt + mix ingredients, pour into molds, freeze, pop out of molds, put back in freezer with like-flavoured bars.
Part 2: Foil wrap each bar, craft paper wrap each bar, label each bar, seal each bar with wax. The only downfall of the process was that I had to use scotch tape to seal the craft paper - how amateur.




This is the final product, after many hours of hard work, blood, sweat and sealing wax. (No blood or sweat contaminated the chocolate, but the odd cat hair may have).

Jack Lemon


Some Like it Hot

Orange Mocha Frappuccino!


Blue Suede Brew

(upside down on foil)





Julie's Chocolate Factory is temporarily closed for a two week vacation in Costa Rica!

Caesar was a Jerk with Great Taste Buds

I've been watching a few movies over the last couple of months concerning the fall of Rome. My those Roman's were a passionate and brutal bunch! I have been inspired to make a raw vegan Caesar salad (the orgies and disemboweling really made me hungry).

At the place I work we have a fantastic pink peppercorn based Caesar dressing and I wanted to replicate that minus the eggs, anchovies and garlic. Sounds lame doesn't it? Well... it's not!

Pink Peppercorn Caesar

The Dressing:
1 cup cashews
1 tbsp dulse, packed (to replicate anchovy flavour)
1/6 onion
1/8 cup olive oil
juice from 2 lemons, more than ¼ cup, less than ½ cup (ghetto measurements)
3 teaspoons hemp seeds (to add creaminess and an egg-ish taste)
6 wild pepper peppercorns
½ cup water
1 teaspoon pink peppercorns
1 teaspoon mild brown rice miso

Blend all in vitamix until smooth and creamy. I'm not going to lie, I did add about 1/6th of a clove of garlic. The Roman's are a bad influence on me, but with such a small amount of garlic I didn't really have a reaction.

The Salad:
romaine hearts, torn into bite sizes pieces
capers
preserved lemon slices (if you preserve your own lemons - see earlier post somewhere on this blog - take about 1/3 of a preserved lemon, gut it and rinse the rind under water. Thinly slice the rind.
fresh pepper
pea shoots for garnish (optional)
pumpkin seed parmesan (if you have any)

Toss the romaine in a generous amount of dressing and place in bowl or on plate. Top with remaining ingredients. Indulge...

Would the Roman's be proud?


REVISION
I have made more sprouted lentil gnocchi and revised the recipe. I like this one better:
1.5 cups sprouted and dried lentils
6 teaspoons chia seeds
6 whole little wild peppercorns
½ teaspoon sea salt or more
-blend above in dry vita mix container to turn into flour
then transfer to mixing bowl
add approx 1 cup but start with half cup (add as needed) sun dried tomato soaking water (water, handful of sun dried toms, soak for an hour or more. Do something else with the tomatoes, you just want the flavoured water here)
¼ cup olive oil + a few tbsp maybe (not exact measurement, obviously)
fresh minced basil

Mix all together. This time, you want the dough to be wetter but still pretty easy to roll. It will be stickier but can be in the dehydrator for longer to warm up and not get dry. The sticky nature also means it won't hold those fun gnocchi fork tine marks but if you must have the marks, you can add them after they have been in the dehydrator for about 10 mins. Enjoy!

Winter BBQ

It started snowing yesterday and there is tons of snow on the ground, so I did the most logical thing I could think of: I made raw BBQ flavoured crackers with sun dried tomatoes.
Actually, I made them for my friends Kat & Cail who have to take a time traveling flight adventure to Australia on Wednesday. They will actually only fly for 14 hours, but they will never get to enjoy Thursday, November 18th. I hope these crackers make up for skipped time.

Instructions have been taken off for now..

BBQ Onion + Sun Tom Crackers





But the pictures are still pretty!

Mustard Mushrooms in Movember

Hi all! Sorry it has been so long. I see you have your Movember mustaches on, so I made a perfectly manly snack to get caught in those whiskers. Lets cut right to the chase.

Mustard Mushroom Bits (Spicy Mustard Crimini Mushrooms w. Raw Sesame Crust)

The Mustard: (adapted from Sarma Melngailis' book 'Living Raw Food')

1/2 cup brown mustard seeds
3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/8 cup pinot gris (shop local if you can, I chose Sandhill from B.C.)
1/2 tbsp pink sea salt (or more to taste)
1/4 - 1/2 cup raw honey (yes, I'm aware that honey is not vegan... use agave if you want)

Soak the mustard seeds in water for an hour or more to take away some of the heat (but this didn't help me all that much, the mustard is still killer hot)
Rinse and drain seeds and put in blender with the remaining ingredients. Blend until smooth. If you taste the mustard at this point you will find it bitter and gross. Pour into dish/bowl and let sit in fridge for a few hours or overnight to get rid of the bitterness and allow the flavours to blend. Should last 1-2 weeks in fridge.

The Mushrooms:
2 6oz (170gr.) packages of organic mini crimini mushrooms, washed and sliced in half

Now for the unmeasured part:
a few tbsp, maybe ½ cup mustard from recipe above
a few tbsp olive oil
½ or ¼ red onion, chopped small

Put the mushrooms and onions in a large bowl. In a separate bowl put the mustard and olive oil. Mix with a spoon to combine well and pour over mushrooms and onions. Allow to marinate for a few hours.

Take a mixture of raw white and raw black sesame seeds (maybe 1/4 cup of each, maybe a bit more) and put them into a food processor or blender (I used the vita mix dry blade container) and blend for a very short time until fluffy and broken up (I think if you blend for too long you might end up with sesame butter). Pour into a separate bowl.
Add some sea salt to taste and mix.

One by one, add mushrooms to sesame seed crumbs and dab or carefully roll to cover in seeds. Try and make sure to have some onion bits on each mushroom for extra flavour before adding to sesame seeds. Place on teflex lined dehydrator sheet and dehydrate at 105 for about 8-16 hours (until fully dry inside). If you are planning to eat them right away then you don't have to wait until they are fully dry, there is a bit more flavour if they aren't totally crispy.

I considered spraying them with oil after they were coated for that deep fried feel, but I didn't. Might be good though. I also might add some pepper or herbs to the outside crust next time for some added flavour, but overall these are a fun little snack. Dip them in mustard for extra zing (you will have lots of mustard left over).




I went out last night to a bar for a friend's snowboard video premier. After one too many tequila waters I found myself at home devouring the whole lot of mustard mushrooms... guess I'll have to make some more...

Lemon Curd

Do you have a food in your life that when you eat it, it is usually by the spoonful and you can't stop and you keep going back for more and more? That is my relationship with lemon curd (or used to be when I ate dairy and eggs). I think most people feel this way about peanut butter as well.

My friend Brooke and I were talking about lemon curd and our love for it, so I decided to create a raw vegan version.

Lemon Curd:
1 cup young thai coconut meat (preferably not too thick so it breaks down fully in the blender and becomes very smooth)
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon fresh squeezed lemon juice (I include the pulpy bits from juicing because hey, why not?)
2 tablespoons fresh lemon zest
3 drops plain liquid stevia (optional, you can just add more agave)
3 teaspoons agave (or more to taste if you like things quite sweet)
2 tablespoons coconut oil




Blend all in vita mix or high speed blender until totally smooth but be careful not to heat up the mixture too much. Those high powered blenders have a tendency to cook food if you are not careful.

You can add about 1/16 or 1/8 tsp of tumeric for colour, but be careful not to get the flavour - start out with small amounts. I will get some fresh tumeric from Calgary next time I go in and see how that plays with the colour and flavour. As you can see, I did not add any colouring to mine today.

Oh my gosh I love lemon curd!

The Gnocchi Process

So the reason I sprouted lentils, dried them and turned them into a flour in the first place (see last post) is because I had an idea to make raw sprouted lentil gnocchi. Cool huh? I think Gnocchi translated to layman's terms means "lots of work" - cooked or raw, it seems to be a lengthy process.

I made four different batches, testing, adding, taking away. I didn't come up with a final "This is it!" recipe, and I'm yet to master the texture, but they are pretty fun and very easy to make (if you have the time to sprout, dehydrate and grind - see previous post for instructions).

Here is my lab work:

Juice one onion
Juice a few stalks of celery

ALL GNOCCHI
¼ cup lentil flour
1/8 tsp powdered sea salt (grind sea salt to a powder in a coffee grinder)
a few grinds of pepper
1 tbsp ground chia seeds

variation #1
3 tsp onion juice
½ tsp water
1/8 tsp olive oil
2 pinches each: dried oregano, fresh parsley, dill + cilantro

* this recipe was a bit dry and had a strong onion flavour but quite fluffy inside

variation #2
1.5 tsp onion juice
2 tsp water
1 tsp olive oil
fresh herbs

variation #3
3 tsp celery juice
½ tsp onion juice
1 tsp water
1 tsp or less olive oil
chopped fresh sage

* this variation was good, more olive oil was a nice flavour, but too much will make it more tough. Sage was tasty but I prefer the other fresh herbs such as cilantro, parsley, dill and basil.

Mix ingredients well in a bowl with a spoon.
Roll into small balls and press with a fork to get tine marks
Place in dehydrator for 10-20 mins to warm



I think the trick here is to add some water to make them more fluffy. Celery juice was really nice as well. If you are going to try this at home make a few variations as I did and see what one you like the best. If you don't want them to have a hard outside from the dehydrator coat them in olive oil first. If you come up with a better recipe let me know!

I made two different sauces for these little guys. First was a raw orange tomato vinaigrette and the second was a fresh sage cashew cream sauce w. truffle oil. Both were good but the tomato sauce cut the strong flavour of the lentils nicely. Sprouted lentil flour tastes like fresh peas kind of.

Raw Tomato Vinaigrette
2 medium organic orange tomatoes
about 1/6-1/4 cup raw cider vinegar
1-2 tbsp agave, or to taste
a few pinches of salt
1/2 clove of garlic if u must…
¼ cup olive oil

blitz all but oil in high speed blender. Then whisk in oil. You can also just add the oil to the blender and emulsify, that's what I did.



For the sage cream I soaked and blended raw cashews with lemon juice, fresh sage, sea salt, pepper, water, some celery juice... gosh I can't remember what else, some olive oil perhaps...
Pretty much just follow my recipe for dill cream sauce from the "Peas Out of the Pod" post from August but leave the dill out and replace it with a few leaves of sage and maybe a touch of fresh parsley. Add some celery juice and taste for goodness. Top it all with truffle oil. God I love that stuff.

Happy experimenting!

Red Raw... Red Raw

Harvest Season!
I have been taking advantage of the tomato harvest in B.C. over the past couple of weeks. The fruit truck delivers cases of beautiful organic B.C. Roma tomatoes on Wednesdays and the dehydrator at my house has been running non-stop making me "sun dried" tomatoes. I think I'm going to end up with about 8 liters or more!

I also got the largest leek in the history of leeks last Wednesday. I wish I took a picture of it because you would all be impressed... but then again I did grab it out of the bin bearing the sign "miracle vegetables: curing world hunger".

I thought... what am I going to do with a miracle leek and one ton of tomatoes? What would Wonder Woman do? Make a garam masala curry of course!

So late one night I chopped up 2 dehydrator trays worth of quartered roma tomatoes, the miracle leek and threw them together in two large bowls. I generously coated them in garam masala powder, olive oil, pink sea salt, a touch of pepper and a splash or two of raw apple cider vinegar. Then I spread them out onto two dehydrator trays and wilted them overnight at 105 degrees.

Before:

After:


The Dish: Red Garam Masala Coconut Curry w. Parsnip Apple Rice, Crispy Leeks + Sprouted Lentil Papadum

I did not measure anything, just kept adding and tasting, adding and tasting until it was just right. Below is the general idea.

Red Garam Masala Coconut Curry Sauce:

A few handfuls of the partially dehydrated toms + leeks, but less leeks. Some fresh onion, about ¼ of a small one. Fresh ginger (about 1 tbsp or more), one fresh roma tomato, 2 tsp whole coriander, some cumin, coconut milk made at home*, sea salt, chili flakes, cayenne, soaked dried pepper (I used dried pasilla pepper, soaked in water to re-hydrate), garam masala as needed, coconut oil, warmed to liquefy (about 1 tbsp).
All blended in a vita mix

*Coconut Milk:
Either use fresh young coconuts blended with coconut water OR 2 cups raw dried coconut flakes blended with 4 cups of water and strained through a nut milk bag. I used the later for this recipe. I kept adding it to the tomato mixture until I reached my desired consistency.

Tomatoes can be quite gelatinous. I believe this is due to the high pectin content. The more coconut milk I added, and the more I blended, the less gelatinous the sauce became and even if your sauce starts to congeal, a quick whisk usually solves the problem. You can also try whisking in more melted coconut oil or olive oil.

Every curry needs rice!

Parsnip Apple Rice:
3 med/large parsnips
¾ - 1 med apple
¼ cup cashews
sea salt
2-3 tbsp miso/coconut oil blend, or just a couple tbsp coconut oil and 1 tbsp white miso
2 green onions minced

pulse parsnips a few times first then add rest (except green onion) and pulse more until grain of rice size. Transfer to a bowl and stir in green onions. Cover and place in dehydrator to warm until ready to use.

Slice 1 zucchini thin and coat with sea salt and olive oil. Dehydrate for a couple of hours at 105-115 degrees.

Smoked Pepper Sprouted Lentil Papadum

I spent a few days sprouting lentils on my counter. 1 night soaking, 2 days sprouting, until they had nice little 1/2 inch long tails. I then dehydrated them until they were crispy dry (about 8 hours).

THEN, using my smaller dry blade vita mix container, I tuned them into fine lentil flour. NOW we are ready to make raw papadums!


This recipe is also vague, but as long as you use about 4-5 tbsp water for every 1/4 cup of lentil flour, it is hard to screw up.

Approx. 1/2 or 1 tsp of smoked black pepper (or regular pepper)
1/4 cup lentil flour
4-5 tsp water
sea salt
A bit of olive oil (1 tsp or less)
Form into balls and flatten with spoon, very thin!

Wet spoon for ease of spread. I tried to use parchment paper and a rolling pin and it worked ok, but still had to smooth with spoon after, and the paste stuck to the parchment. Dehydrate these at 105-115 until they are very hard and crispy, about 8 hours, transferring to mesh screen half way through.



When everything is done, place some rice in a bowl, top with sauce, garnish with zucchini, masala coated crispy leeks, a masala coated partially dried tomato, fresh cilantro and a papadum.



Sounds like a lot of work, but when you don't plan things, sometimes they just come together (I had already sprouted and dried lentils a few days earlier to make sprouted lentil gnocchi - which was pretty fun - I may post that next).

Enjoy the harvest!