Cajun-Spiced Portabellas

CAJUN-SPICED PORTABELLAS

Yesterday’s mushroom dish was based on Kristen Suzanne’s “Cajun Portabellas With Wild Rice” recipe from her Easy Raw Entrees. Although I usually like to make a recipe according to the original the first time around, except perhaps for making a smaller quantity for just the two of us, but in this case I nervously cut way way down on the amount of oil required for the recipe – and ran into a bit of a problem. I corrected it another way, but neglected to write down the exact amounts of ingredients, changes in procedure, etc. (I’m naming the dish slightly differently since I took liberties with the recipe.)

A small problem with raw recipes is that most raw chefs use a lot of oil and/or nuts and seeds, and as you know I don't usually do that. I have tried the recipes at first with a little of the oil, to get the 'right' taste, but generally find away around that afterwards for successive 'repeats' of the dish. I just don't see the need for all that fat as well as all those calories - but that's just me.

Anyway, here goes:

CAJUN-SPICED PORTABELLAS (Raw - but don't run away!)

Okay, here’s a rough idea of what this dish was about:

Portabella mushrooms cut into strips, salted and left to marinate in olive oil for a while. Chopped tomatoes. A mix of spices, onion powder, garlic powder, and various herbs. After tossing the drained mushrooms with the spice mixture, they were placed on dehydrator sheets for about an hour and a half, at which time I deviated yet again from the recipe and added the tomatoes, mixing them in with the mushroom slices, and dehydrated for about another half hour. A squeeze of lime finished it off. I doubt that they are like what Ms Suzanne intended, but they were very very good and I will make these again and write down exactly how I did it for this blog.

With the Cajun-Spiced Portabellas we had some old faves: Avocado and Strawberry Salad plus a side dish of thinly sliced (raw) green beans with red bell peppers and a little green onion - all very tender and delish. We finished up with berries - strawberry and blueberry. I can never get enough berries.

Thanks for listening! ;-)

About My Raw Adventure

Above: OLIVE-STUFFED PORTOBELLO MUSHROOMS (RAW)

I have been neglecting this blog while sending all kinds of results of my raw adventures to my Rawly Vegan blog on Wordpress - and I'm sorry. Perhaps I should publish some of the results here, but I'd now have to go back quite a way to catch up on that :( But you can click into the title of the photo above for its recipe if you like and of course I can offer you more and more raw recipes, if anyone's interested, in future. (Previous recipes are, as I say, on my Rawly Vegan blog.

The thing is, I hadn't expected to be keeping on with this rawfood lark. I thought that I'd like it for a while - as an excuse, perhaps, to eat lots and lots of lovely fresh fruit while it was in season, but that I'd quickly tire of eating raw instead of the delicious cooked meals I used to concoct each day. I do so like to cook! Well, I still 'cook' or, I should day, prepare food, and I am absolutely loving it. There are some great recipes out there, including some wonderful recipe books (I have only a handful), and I'm just not prepared to stop eating raw for a while yet!

Now I don't mean that I'm 100 per cent raw. We still choose to eat non-raw food for around 10 to 15 per cent of our daily calories on the occasional day, and my condiments, herbs and spices are not yet all raw. But the experiment, as I used to call it, has worked out find and for the time being, at least, I have no intention of going back to the way I used to eat - nor, I should add, has my husband, who delights in preparing some of our dishes himself (and this after his thinking, like myself, that it would be boring old salads all the time).

Some raw dishes are worth knowing about whether you're raw or not: Some raw soups are much better than their cooked counterparts if they even have cooked counterparts and can be served to anyone at any time that, say, a chilled soup would be appropriate. They're so very quick to make that it makes me wonder why I ever fussed with soup pots etc. And raw crackers? Fantastic. I have a (new) dehydrator, and if anyone has access to one raw Flax Crackers, Hummus Crackers, and Dulse Crackers are all easy to make and soooooo delicious. I keep a couple of containers full of them all the time now.

So prowl through my other blog, if you will, and see if there is anything there to tempt you. Not all the photos have recipes attached, but that's fairly easily remedied, since I'm developing my own variations on other people's recipes all the time now. Such fun!

And did I say how bright and alert and energized I feel since eating high raw? Fantastic pay off! Now that absolutely stunned me!

Okay, back again later with more - and some recipes. Cheers, everyone.

CABBAGE SALAD ROLLS

Cabbage Salad Rolls

Today I was going to make a cabbage salad for part of our lunch, but once I got out the ingredients the thought was boring for once (we love cabbage salad, so this was distinctly odd!). As a result I ended up fiddling around with the makings for the salad but somewhat reconstructing it and changing the flavourings a little (it was chilly out, so I wanted something warmish).

Ingredients:

Six leaves of savoy cabbage, with the little V-shaped stem bit cut out of the base of each

The Stuffing:

2 carrots
1 oz sunflower seeds
1-1/2 tsp white miso
2 slices onion
3 cloves garlic
1 red apple
1 stick celery
1/3 of a thai chili (but make this to your own taste - thai chilies are hot!) - or use cayenne to taste
zest of half a lime
juice of half a lime
Tbsp raw cider vinegar
ground cummin to taste
salt and peppeer if needed

Garnish: I used a handful of alfalfa sprouts, but you could use anything you like :)

Put all ingredients except for the cabbage leaves and whatever garnish you're using into the food processor and chop to a fine texture. Mix well and taste for seasoning. You may need to add salt, pepper, lime juice or vinegar, whatever.

Put a couple of Tbsp of the stuffing onto the centre of each cabbage leaf, fold up the bottom and each side and roll away from you, snugly, until the cabbage forms a package for the filling. If it oozes out you have either not rolled tightly enough or you have used two much filling, so try again :)

Secure each roll with a toothpick if needed (I needed) and place seam-side down on a platter.

Garnish and serve. Eat with knife and fork or with fingers (like a wrap).

Here it is cut on my plate - but I'm so sorry the pic is so blurry. I'd have tried another photo, but there were no more models to pose for it!



We pronounced it a success! And of course it's raw :)

And now here's the apple blossom I immortalized on Saturday!



And those dear little baby maple leaves are so welcome when so many trees are still bare.

RAW BEET SALAD

Here I am, gnawing and crunching away at raw fruits and vegetables - and loving it. I had recently bought a kilogramme of beets ('beetroot' to any of you in the UK and what I used to call them until recently), which we usually cook for salads, soups, other dishes. But I ran across a recipe that suggested one could grate them raw with apple for a salad, then use a raw vegan almond 'mayonnaise' to dress it and sprinkle it with sesame seeds. Simple :) Being me, absolutely determined to pervert the course of true cuisine, however, I went in a slightly different direction:

RAW BEET SALAD

3 Tbsp wakame seaweed, soaked and finely chopped
1/2 kg beets, peeled and grated (I used a food processor attachment to my wand blender to do mine)
1/2 kg apples, peeled and grated
1 Tbsp white miso
1 Tbsp Bragg's Liquid Aminos / All-Purpose Liquid Soy Seasoning (instead of Tamari, which I'm sure would taste fine)
handful of Italian parsley
good pinch of cayenne
ginger root (your choice how much), finely chopped
squeeze or two of lemon (optional)
salt and peppe (if needed) to taste
GARNISH: sesame seeds (optional - but they look pretty against the colours of the

Throw all into your blender, except for the garnish. Chill and serve with those sesame seeds if you like. Good food.

NOTE: the dressing (everything except the first three ingredients and the garnish) is entirely up to you. We love to use seaweeds in salads and soups and anything else we can stick them into - or much them on our own, but if you don't care for them (have you TRIED them all? Wunnerful!), then by all means skip.

SUNSET SOUP (Raw)

This soup I invented because I didn't want to serve even the very delicious Raw Tomato Soup twice in a row. I had seen in Brigitte Mars' book Rawsome! a recipe for Carrot-Ginger Soup which needed carrots, some left chopped, not pureed, white miso, grated ginger, garlic and water. I figured I could branch off from that and brought out a few more ingredients (and skipped the garlic for this one), fiddled with proportions, kept tasting and came up with:

SUNSET SOUP (Raw)

1 orange
1 cup chopped raw carrots
1 cup chopped raw butternut squash
3/4 cup raw cranberries (ok, I'd frozen mine from a while ago, but they were still raw)
1 Tbsp grated ginger root
1-1/2 to 2 cups water (This is approximate. Fiddle around until it's the right consistency for you.)
1 Tbsp white miso
1 Tbsp Braggs amino/all-purpose seasoning
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
salt (if needed) to taste

Zest the orange, remove the white pith with a sharp knife and discard, slice and chop the orange flesh, removing seeds as you go.
Put all ingredients (including the orange zest, unless you want to reserve a few strands for garnish) into your blender and puree, adding more water if needed to get to the right consistency for you.

Garnish if you like with some of the orange zest - and a few dried cranberries would be pretty, I think.

Enjoy!

Stuffed Avocado

This recipe has been adapted from one in Kate Wood's Eat Smart Eat Raw and it's definitely a keeper for our house, although I'll probably continue to tweak it a bit :)

STUFFED AVOCADO

For each avocado:
1/2 oz sunflower seeds
1/2 oz pumpkin seeds
1/2 medium carrot, chopped
4 sundried tomatoes, rehydrated
1 tsp white miso
1 Tbsp nutritional yeast flakes
1 slice onion
1/4 thai chili (you might want to adjust this down a bit - we like it hot!)
a shake or two of dried basil (or use fresh - I didn't have any)
juice of half a lime
Garnish: handful of alfalfa sprouts, slice or quarter of lime, few strands of lime zest

Puree all ingredients except for the avocado and the alfalfa sprouts. halve the avocado, remove seed. Fill the hollow in each half with the mixture and then spread it across the avocado. Garnish with the alfalfa sprouts, top with the lime zest and add the lime to the plate for squeezing.

NOTE: You may have some of the stuffing left over - just refrigerate and use it for dip or sandwich spread or whatever in the next day. Delish.

Raw Kale Salad

This recipe is an adaptation of an adaptation of a cookbook recipe, the variation from which I worked being found here:
http://www.care2.com/c2c/groups/disc.html?gpp=10159&pst=588393
- although you'll have to scroll down a bit and look for it under the title of Cavolo Nero from my friend Linda.

The recipe was meant to be Raw Food, but I'm nowhere near raw yet so I have no qualms about using condiments that have seen heat. Additionally, I have now made this recipe on three separate occasions and each time I found I was out of one or the other ingredients, I omit oil from salad dressings, and of course I tend to throw in a bit of something extra now and then. That said, there's only so much you can do with a salad that is going to be different.

RAW KALE SALAD

1 bunch kale, washed, leaves stripped off the stalks and torn into bite-sized pieces
1 bell pepper, chopped (the coloured ones look prettier than the green)
1/4 red onion, chopped
1/3 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
3 or 4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 medium tomato, chopped (optional - it adds a pretty colour if you need more 'red')
1/2 cup dried cranberries
organic shoyu or tamari, to taste (or use a little Bragg's amino or, if you only do raw, sea salt)
raw apple cider vinegar, to taste (I have also done a mix with a little rice vinegar)
raw agave syrup, to taste
pinch cayenne pepper :)
a small handful raw pepitas or raw sunflower seeds

Put the bite-sized pieces of kale (save the stems for soup or stock or whatever another day) in a bowl and get your hands in there to rub and knead it until the leaves turn a darkish green - the way it looks when cooked. This should take a few minutes at most - and it's neat to do! This wilts it and softens it nicely.

Add the other vegetables plus the cranberries.

Mix the liquid ingredients for a dressing and toss with the salad.

Sprinkle with the pepitas or sunflower seeds and serve as a first course or with other salads and/or raw foods. Lovely!

And below you see it in another variation. Always delicious - and so tender!