Snacks & Slavery

Do you think that to gift is to enslave? Sometimes I think that this is true, and maybe that is why I prefer to gift- I sure do love me them slaves. No wait, that's not true. I just love giving. Makes me feel good and all that.

Ummm, I'll just skip to the point and tell you about the tasty gifts that I made for some special people in my life.


Best Savoury Snack Mix (Good for Gifting)

"W" SAUCE MAC NUTS & SUN TOMS

1/2 cup Hawaiian mac nuts (slice nuts down the natural center crease)
1/2 cup dry sundried tomato slices
W SAUCE (rough recipe)
Vegan Worcestershire sauce found at Asian markets or health stores or (make your own if you have a good recipe)
A bit of chipotle powder
A bit of olive oil
A few slices of green onion
A bit of cumin powder
A bit of smoked paprika
Blend W sauce with a hand blender and pour over mac nuts and sun toms and soak for at least an hour. Make sure the tomatoes soak up the sauce and get soft.


OLIVE OIL KALE CHIPS

In a separate bowl:
1-2 bunches of curly kale or baby kale, or heck, any kale, washed, de-stemmed, torn into pieces and tossed with sea salt, black pepper & good extra virgin olive oil

PIRI PIRI NORI

In a separate bowl:
4-6 raw nori sheets, coated in a mixture of homemade piri piri (recipe a few posts down), garlic ferment brine & a dash of water (basically make a thick mixture of blended hot peppers, garlic, a dash of cider vinegar & salt and coat the nori sheets, if you don't have piri piri and garlic brine)

SMOKEY ONION RINGS

In a separate bowl:
Make a mixture of raw honey and a dash of water (enough to make the honey a bit more liquid but not too runny)
In a spice grinder bust up lapsang souchong tea into a powder. Empty into a bowl.
In a spice grinder bust up almonds into almond flour. Empty into the bowl with the tea powder.
Add sea salt to taste. I didn't measure the amounts of tea-to-almonds but don't over-do the tea, it's strong.
Thinly slice 1 red onion into rings and coat in the honey-water mixture, then coat in the almond tea mixture.


Place each component of the snack mix on a teflx sheet and dry overnight or perhaps longer for the onions. When dry, break the nori sheets into pieces relative to the size of the rest of the snack mix goodies.



If giving this as a gift, layer in a clear jar with instructions to toss together in a bowl before digging in.




Homemade gifts are the best, don't you think? Someone took a lot of time out of their busy schedule to think about you and tailor a gift to cater to your personality and tastes - so you better like it and you better be indebted to that thoughtful, wonderful person.

Save It For Every Day

Ok, I have a really simple one for you today. Easier than pie. Even easier than thinking about making pie. Today we are preserving lemons!

I was making a caesar salad the other day and realized there were no preserved lemons in house. Oh boy. Think quick... ... ... these things can take 3 months to fully cure, which is the exact opposite of quick.

So I zested a few lemons.
I put the zest in a jar.
I juiced those same lemons and strained the juice into the jar.
Himalayan salt was added in a generous amount, to that very jar.
The lid was placed on the jar.
The counter held the jar. For 24 hours.

Hold on a second. Did I just make preserved lemon zest in 24 hours?! Yesssss.

Well well, if this isn't a food-altering moment... (yes, pun intended).

Put them in the fridge after 24 hours. They will stay nice and bright.

As you can see, the ones that are more brown were probably left out a little bit too long (about a week) and they also have a bit of organic cane sugar in them. When they get this colour they are still edible but not as nice or fresh tasting. I've come to prefer the ones without sugar, as per the vague recipe above.

Put these zests on everything. They make everything better, every day.

Unbaking Unbaked Things

Remember unbaked cheesecake? The 80's brainchild of Kraft, Jello, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Cool Whip & diabetes? It had a graham crumb crust, lots of white sugar, Cool Whip and cream cheese in the middle and canned cherry or blueberry pie filling on top. My mom usually made it for special occasions and I loved it. Growing up, baked cheesecakes were unheard of and unbaked cheesecakes were #1. How predictable.

It's interesting when you crave food from your childhood but there is no way you can eat it now... that is what I love about experimenting with raw food - you usually CAN eat it now, you just have to be creative. It's like working your way through an algebra equation and you feel really smart when you solve it.


Mom’s Classic Unbaked Cheesecake – Truly Unbaked

GRAHAM CRUST:
2 cups almond flour (bust up almonds in a small coffee grinder)
¼ cup melted coconut oil
¼ cup coconut sugar (this stuff smells like graham crumbs - perfect!)

Mix together in a bowl and press into a 9” baking dish that has been coated with coconut oil
place in fridge to set

CREAM CHEESE:
1 cup raw cashews, soaked & drained (be sure your cashews are truly raw, otherwise they will taste earthy. I get mine from realrawfood.com in B.C.)
water- about ¼ cup
1 tsp probiotic powder (break open 8 capsules)
Blend on high till smooth and leave on counter in a covered bowl overnight or longer. When it smells fermented, mix with about 1/6 cup nutritional yeast flakes and sea salt. The consistency should be somewhat runny, about halfway between runny and firm. Place in fridge until ready to use.

CREAM CHEESE FILLING:
1 cup medium-runny consistency cashew cream cheese
1 cup blended young Thai coconut meat (add 1-3 pieces of lemon zest if you want)
1/8 cup clear agave
¼ cup melted coconut oil
½ tsp plus a dash of raw cider vinegar

Blend all on high until smooth. Pour onto crust and place in fridge to firm.

BLUEBERRY TOPPING:
Frozen blueberries, thawed (about 3 cups)
¼ cup or more mild raw honey

Method:
Reserve 1 cup blueberries
Place 2 cups blueberries and honey in blender and add a pinch of vanilla bean powder
Blend for a couple seconds on high
Transfer back into bowl with whole blueberries

Place in a shallow dish, uncovered, in dehydrator at 105 degrees for many hours until desired thickness. Cool and pour over cream cheese.

Two negatives = a positive.
This truly unbaked cheesecake beat the pants off of the classic unbaked cheesecake, in my humble opinion. Thanks for the inspiration, Mom!

Experimental Celebrations

Are you like me? What I mean is, do you ever decide to create something off the top of your head for a special occasion and then freak out part way through because it's not going the way you might have hoped, and you've already used lots of precious ingredients... and you knew this was a very real risk, but your enthusiasm to be inventive clouded the part of your brain that might tell you to be sensible and make something tried and true?

And my god, why would you think that it would be a good idea to create something new (and raw, and vegan) for someones (a carnivores) birthday and deprive them (and everyone else) of a regular menu item such as creme brulee or pumpkin pound cake with candied bacon ice cream?

This is exactly what I did for my friend's birthday last week. We were all having dinner at my place of work and I thought it would be extra special to make her a cake. Everyone deserves a birthday cake! My friend loves Mexico, Mexicans, Mexican food, margaritas and tequila. Excellent, I thought, I'll make her a Mexican inspired birthday cake! One catch... one of the guests (my very pregnant boss) is deathly allergic to nuts. Since I use nuts for everything, especially raw vegan desserts, this was a super challenge. Often people accommodate me when it comes to food so I thought I should do the same (and spend many paranoid hours in the kitchen dodging nuts).

So I threw some stuff together and came up with this. The sponge worked out better than I expected. It was dense, like a thin pound cake, moist and durable. The flavour was subtle, but I think if it was flavoured with lemon zest, raspberries, chocolate or something equally powerful it would really add some depth.

Mango Margarita Cake

Mango Sponge:
10 dried mango slices, soaked
1 cup frozen (thawed) mango chunks or fresh mango
1 cup coconut meat from a young Thai coconut
1/3 cup coconut water or more as needed
1 tsp fresh lime juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
¼ cup melted coconut butter (not oil, the butter)
¼ - ½ cup raw honey
blend in vita mix until smooth

In a bowl mix:
2 cups sifted fine coconut flour
½ cup psyllium husks
¼ cup raw honey (or to taste)
1 tsp vanilla extract
pinch of fine Himalayan salt
½ cup or more coconut water as needed

Combine both blender and bowl ingredients in a food processor until fully combined (scraping edges, stop-start…) you might only be able to do half of the mixture at once. It is kind of tricky and you might want to transfer it all to a bowl and knead with your hands to ensure it’s fully combined in the end.

Spread on one teflex sheet and dehydrate for 2-4 hours (about 1/2 inch thick) at 105 degrees. Flip and dry the underside for a shot time, maybe just a half hour.

Cut circles with 2 inch ring mold. You can stack these in a sealed container and keep in the fridge for a day or two if you want to make them ahead of time.

White Chocolate Lime Cream:
2 cups raw cocoa butter, shaved
1 cup coconut oil
Melt the oils together in dehydrator or double boiler
Transfer to fridge in metal bowl to firm. Once mostly firm but not too stiff, take out and using an electric egg beater, beat until white and fluffy, then with beaters running, add rest of the ingredients below:
Zest of one lime
6-10 drops lime essential oil
1 tsp or more vanilla extract
Agave to taste (about ¼ cup)

To Assemble:
Place ring mold on parchment paper
Put one of the sponge circles on the bottom
Follow with a layer of white chocolate lime cream
Top with another mango sponge circle
Lightly hold down the top sponge as you pull the ring mold off
Cover the top and sides with white chocolate lime cream

Ok so here is where things seemed perfect, and then my fancy-cake world crumbled before my eyes (literally). When I iced the cakes and put them in the fridge the cream/icing hardened so much that when I tested a piece of cake, the cream completely separated from the sponge when forked. NOOOOO!!

The icing was so firm that I ended up being able to strip it off each individual cake and put it all in a bowl to re-evaluate (I had less than 2 hours before dinner).

To fix it, I re-whipped the icing (it didn't whip very well, no time to melt-chill) and added Cointreau, water, more vanilla extract and liquid sunflower lecithin. It was tasty and a decent texture so I stopped there and re-iced the cakes. I DID NOT put them back in the fridge.

If I was to do it again, I would add a bunch of young coconut meat, Cointreau, coconut milk and lecithin from the beginning, and not put it in the fridge (make the icing close to the time of consumption).

I could have skipped writing about all of the drama, but since this blog is about experimentation, I think it's a good idea that you learn from my mistakes.

To Serve:
The cakes were quite rich, so I cut them in half and served them on top of a dried mango slice (held in place with raw honey) topped with Mango Tequila Sauce, Salted/Candied Lime Zest and a side of coarse grey sea salt.

Mango Tequila Sauce:
Dried mango flakes
Gold tequila
Agave Nectar
Blend with a hand blender until fully combined

Salted & Candied Lime Zest:
Zest one lime in long strips
Coat zest with a touch of fresh lime juice, fine Himalayan salt and coarse xylitol (natural sweetener derived from birch)
Dehydrate until dry

I also served this with Matthew Kenney's Milk Chocolate Fudge, but instead of almond milk I made coconut milk (shredded dried raw coconut flakes & water, blended on high and strained) and added ground cinnamon and cayenne.

No one died and no one knew they were missing bacon ice cream, so I say...
SUCCESS!

Ooh ooh ooh I'm on Fire

This heated post is brought to you by the capsicums habanero, cherry bomb, bell, jalapeno & random red chili and the age old method of preservation - fermentation.

Now that the formalities are out of the way, a warm welcome to you.

There is a deep level of satisfaction one gets from learning a new skill and applying it in various creative (or standard) ways. A fermentation class in Calgary at The Light Cellar (great place) has led me down a path of playing mad scientist this fall in the world of lacto-ferments.

Vegetables mixing with herbs, associating with teas, mingling with spices and rubbing with salts. Sounds like dinner at grandma's house doesn't it? Probably because the Art of Fermentation is the first known method of food preservation, going back thousands of years. I'm sure most grandmas are familiar with the process, or at least great-grandmas. Pretty much every culture has their 'culture'. The Koreans with Kim Chee, Japanese with pickled ginger & vegetables, miso and sake, Germans with Kraut, various European countries with cheeses & meats, etc.

Why fermentation over pickling? Because fermentation is raw and probiotic and pickling (usually with heat to can) uses ingredients that may harm precious stomach bacteria (such as most vinegars, especially white vinegar).

Here is a small list of reasons to ferment or eat fermented foods:
- aids digestion
- lots of probiotics
- create B & K vitamins in digestive tract
- assists with mental health
- balances moods
- immune boosting
- liver cleansing
- make nutrients more bio-available and removes anti-nutrients and toxins

It seems up in the air as to which people first made hot sauce, but there is some evidence that it may have been the Aztecs. Mexicans are cool, let's give them credit, I'm sure they'd be stoked.
Ok class, enough lecture for today, let's get to the fun part.

I've made several hot sauces this fall. My favourite so far is probably the piri piri, but I have a feeling this new chipotle one I made today is going to rival it.

Cherry Bomb peppers used for piri piri. Didn't wear gloves when chopping and seeding. Big mistake. Luckily the peppers mellowed out considerably after the ferment.

Piri Piri and Med-Hot Pepper Mango sauces fermenting

Red jalapeno & other red chilies with sea salt soaked chipotle peppers & garlic. I thought I could get away glove-less with these ones...oops. Do I remind you of Bart Simpson in the episode where Lisa rigs a cupcake to give him electric shocks and he keeps going for it? Ouch...ouch...ouch...

This hot sauce stuff is so simple... there isn't even a recipe, just ingredients.
Basically, I stem, chop and mostly seed peppers of one or several kinds. I place them in the food processor with about 1-2 tbsp of fine Himalayan salt (use any sea salt, just not table salt) and usually a clove or two of garlic. Process until they are pureed and spoon into mason jars. Cover tightly with a lid for about 3 days, then release any built-up gasses on the following days so your jar doesn't explode. You should ferment for about a week but depending on the warmth of your house and the amount of salt used, you may have to ferment longer. Taste and when you like it, fridge it!

Molds and yeasts that are white may form on the top layer, and that is ok. Spoon off the layer and everything under it is totally fine. If your mold is other than white, ditch it.

With my habanero ferment, after one week I put it in the blender with some raw apple cider vinegar (one of the only vinegars that doesn't harm gut flora) and then strained it through a nut milk bag. Yes, my hands were on fire. But I did wear gloves for the initial chopping.

Habanero sauce final product, smooth and deadly. Seriously, I can't eat this shit.

Inspired by a Mexican joint on my recent travels (and my obsession with hot stuff) I dabbled in chipotle-habanero vodka infusion. If I ever get into self-torture I might liberally apply the above habanero sauce to my dinner and wash it down with this.

I highly recommend this book if you want to get your ferment on. It is, for lack of better words, the bible of fermentation... but really it's The Art of Fermentation.

Wear gloves.
J

Convenience Camping

Raw camping, what? Are you thinking "oh my gosh, like, why wouldn't you take advantage of campfire cooking, s'mores are totally the best"?

As I told my dear outdoor adventure companion - "I'm a convenience camper". Take that however you will, but at this exact moment, I'm referring to food.

Preparing your raw meals beforehand is the best idea ever. When you are in the woods it allows for this: Relax. Open container, eat. Relax. Repeat.

If you pack everything in glass containers with lids then you can also use the containers as eating vessels and eliminate extra dishes. Washing dishes cuts into the relax time slot, obviously.

Here are a couple of very simple dishes I made before our recent woodland expedition.

Dinner/Lunch:

Creamy Serrano Corn Salad

The Salad:
3 fresh organic ears of corn, kernels cut off
a handful of fresh green beans, chopped
a few fresh cherry tomatoes, whole (so they don't make a mess of the dish)
a handful of fresh cilantro leaves
a few leaves of fresh basil, sliced
some chopped spring onion or onion of your choice
Place all ingredients in a sealed container.

The Serrano Chili Sauce:
about 1.5-2 cups of raw cashews
a splash of cider vinegar
a touch of water, enough to blend (maybe 1/4 cup or so?)
a fresh serrano chili, chopped, seeds optional
lots of sea salt (to taste)
Blend until smooth. Taste for deliciousness.

Keep the salad ingredients and the sauce in separate containers until you are ready to eat. When it's feeding time, pour the sauce over the vegetables and toss well. Drizzle with hot sauce or chili oil.

Chili Oil:
a mixture of dried peppers (about 8-12 peppers)
olive oil or avocado oil
a few dried onion slices or 1/2 tsp of onion powder
a handful of raw almonds
a handful of raw pecans
sea salt
Place the peppers and nuts in a bowl and pour enough olive oil on them to almost float them, but not quite. Add the rest of the ingredients and allow to marinate on the counter for a few hours or place in dehydrator to warm for about an hour (not sure this step is necessary). Blend all in a vita mix until smooth.

Breakfast:

Coconut Yogurt w/ Vanilla Fruit

The Yogurt:
approx 2 cups of young Thai coconut meat
about 1 tbsp of lemon juice
a few small pieces of lemon zest (maybe 2 thumbnail sized pieces)
water or coconut water to get the blender going
a pinch of sea salt
2 probiotic capsules
Blend everything except the probiotics until smooth. Transfer to a glass bowl and stir in the probiotic powder (open the pills). Let sit on the counter for about 8 hours, then transfer to the fridge.

The Fruit:
Whatever seasonal fruit you have on hand. Pictured here are peaches, strawberries, blueberries, cherries and apricots.
Toss in a bit of fine lemon zest, a few tbsp of lemon juice, fresh vanilla bean or a bit of vanilla extract. Place in a container.

Keep the yogurt and fruit separate until ready to eat. Also top with goji berries or incan/golden berries.

Relax.