The nice thing about this recipe is that it is mostly good for you: chickpeas and peanut butter are the basis for the cookie, and it is fairly minimally sweetened.
Continue readingMystery Cookies from the Internet: Chickpea-Peanut Butter
Fresh Salad with Green Beans, Chickpeas, and Macadamia Cheeses
This salad turned out wonderful thanks to its high-quality components: mixed supergreens, pea shoots, cucumber, radish, chickpeas, lightly steamed green beans, and some of the macadamia cheese from a few days ago. Simply dressed with a few drops of balsamic vinegar, it tasted like something you’d expect to find at a French bistro.
Enjoy!
Rosewater-Cherry Mini-Pie
This is a healthier, nut-based version of a rosewater pudding. Unless you enjoy a slightly alcoholic taste in your cakes, opt for rosewater made only of distilled water and rose petals.
Continue readingCitrus-Lavender Raw Mini-Pies
Our friend Adi stayed with us for a few days, and I decided to treat him to a special breakfast pie but I didn’t have all the ingredients on hand, so I improvised. The outcome was stunningly delicious, not too sweet, and fragrant with herbal aroma.
Continue readingFlavored Macadamia Cheeses
You guys, I am beside myself with enthusiasm about Noa Shalev’s vegan cheese course. If you’re a Hebrew speaker, cough up the 350 NIS and join the course. It’s so worthwhile. Noa is a fountain of knowledge about fermentation and culturing and about nutrition in general, and her recipes rock!
I’m amidst the process of making hard cheeses, which Noa advises to make from macadamia nuts. I made two kinds: cheeses that I hope to age in the dehydrator and then in the fridge, so that they develop “body” and a rind, and slightly softer cheese balls rolled in spices.
I hesitate to reproduce the recipe, because I really want you all to take this course, but I’ll just mention that Noa ages her cheese with probiotic capsules, which is a convenient method, especially if you don’t have it in you to make rejuvelac or squeeze sauerkraut juices.
This bleu cheese is made with spirulina, and one of the things I’ve learned is that a little spirulina goes a very long way. That’s not a tiny cheese, and I put half a teaspoon of spirulina in it. It brings a bit of that moldy taste into the cheese and looks like the original. I’m quite thrilled with it!
This cheese is my effort at a yellow hue, which I achieved with turmeric. I also threw in some cumin and coriander, because I really like that combination. Next time I’ll do this with jalapeño bits, I think.
Once these cheeses harden in the fridge, I’ll put them in a dehydrator for 24-48 hours, and then I’ll age them further in the fridge. Delayed gratification.
These ones we can eat right away: cheese balls with all kinds of spices and flavorings. Here are my combinations:
ras-el-hanout
za’atar
zchug
chimichurri
nigella seeds-onion
oregano-garlic
sumac-cumin-coriander
Butternut Squash Muffins with Spelt and Teff
Whenever we get butternut squash in our CSA box, I try to bake it right away and store the puree in the fridge. I can then use it in a variety of recipes, and today I decided to bake squash muffins. They came out incredibly fluffy, probably because I replaced almost half the flour with teff. I made a few other adjustments to Isa’s recipe, and it turned out great. Here’s my version:
Dry Ingredients:
1 cup spelt flour
3/4 cup teff
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground or freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
Wet Ingredients:
1 cup pureed pumpkin
1/2 cup almond milk (I used my turmeric-goldenberry milk, so you might need to add a bit more maple syrup if yours is unsweetened.)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup maple syrup
3 chopped dates
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Mix dry ingredients and wet ingredients separately. Then, gradually add dry ingredients to wet ingredient bowl. Mix until just combined. Pour into a dozen muffin molds and bake for about 20 minutes or until knife comes out dry.
Cashew “White Cheese”
Many Israelis’ childhoods include a classic culinary staple: gvinah levanah (“white cheese”), a soft and light cheese to spread over bread or eat with vegetables. It typically came in 5% and 10% fat variations, and there were numerous versions with herbs and spices.
With the help of Noa Shalev’s wonderful nondairy cheeses and milks course, I produced a cheese yesterday that tastes even better than the original. The key is to use probiotic capsules for the fermentation. I used two capsules (approximately 30 million microorganisms) for about a cup of soaked and blended cashews. I flavored the resulting cheese with salt, orange juice, nutritional yeast, and fresh marjoram.
Homemade Almond Milks
This month I’m happily taking Noa Shalev‘s terrific vegan cheese course. Just from the ingredient list I could tell that I’d learn a lot. And indeed, it’s a fantastic course, chock-full of nutritional knowledge and kitchen tricks, and of course marvelous recipes.
I won’t reveal the recipes themselves, because I want you to take the full course and learn for yourselves, but I did want to offer a sneak peak into the world of homemade almond milks. Noa recommends adding a bit of vegan lechitin to the blender, because lechitin binds both with the water and with the fat in the almonds. On the left: turmeric-goldenberry milk. On the right: hibiscus-vanilla milk. Both flavors are fantastic and unusual.
The organizers of a big potluck party I’m attending tonight divided the food assignments by birth month, and I was bummed out for half a second that the November people got beverages, as I love to cook (could you guess that? :D). But then I decided to bring creative, made-from-scratch drinks, and I hope people will dig these. The hibiscus flavor is especially delectable.
Pineapple-Oat Cookies
These cookies turned out quite fantastic: chewy and full of fruit. The basic recipe is at Natural Sweet Recipes, but I modified it because I didn’t have all the ingredients at hand. Turned out great,
Continue readingWhite Bean and Hemp Herbed Burgers
This post doesn’t have a photo, and not because the food was ugly; it was really pretty. But it got eaten so fast that I didn’t make it with the camera!
I had about a cup and a half of white beans in the fridge, and with some herbs and other delicious things the whole thing was transformed into beautiful green burgers, reminiscent of falafel, which were delicious with hummus and vegetables. Here goes:
1 1/2 cup white beans
2 tbsp each: dill, parsley, cilantro
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp coriander
1 tsp Mrs. Dash
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
2 tbsp polenta
4 tbsp hemp seeds
Heat up oven to 375. Place all ingredients in food processor and pulse until well combined. If too wet, add polenta and hemp seeds. Form four burgers and place on a baking sheet with a silpat mat or waxed paper. Bake for about 20 minutes and serve hot.