Hot summer and zucchini harvest

Gosh, what a hot summer we had. It's so hot it's hard to keep the spirit up. Yesterday I was home with headache propably caused by the heat, sun and too little to drink. It's very important to drink and to eat something sweet and salty.

The positive thing though is that the veggies that thrive in this heat are giving lots of fruits, like zucchinis. I need to be inventive now. Zucchini can be boring, but the neutral taste gives you a wide range of flavours to combine it with. Today I made a frittata with basil sauce. Here's the recipe. Oh by the way. In this recipe you can gladly use those zucchinis that has grown too big.

Zucchini Frittata with basil sauce

Frittata

2 large zucchinis

1 onion

4 eggs

1 hand full of sundried tomatoes

50 g of feta cheese

seasoning

Put the sundried tomatoes in a glass of water to soak (I took my home made tomatoes and those are hard). Grate the zucchinis and onion and put in a colander. Pour over some salt and toss around. Whisk the eggs in a bowl and season with your favourite spices. Chop the feta cheese and the drained sundried tomatoes in fine bits. Squeeze the juice out of the zucchini mix to get rid of some water and mix everything in the egg bowl. Fry in a pan on low heat with butter or oil, put on a lid for a while to cook the top of the frittata.

Basil sauce

3 dl of sour cream

1 hand full of fresh basil leaves

1 garlic clove

salt and white pepper

Mix all the ingredients in a blender until you get a smooth light green liquid. This sauce works excellent with a salad or with roast beef, if you like. 

Raw Valentine dessert: Mini chocolate and carob tartelettes and Vanilla pudding with cherry topping

It's Valentines day!! Of course we should give our loved ones some care all the year around, but I think it's good to celebrate a day like this by giving some extra love. 
I wanted to make something special, a not too sweet treat with those ingredients that is conected with love; chocolate and cherries.

This little tartelette is so deliscious. I wanted the crust to have a caramel taste by adding dates.

Crust for the tartelette, ingredients:
5 dates
0,5 dl oat
1 dle almond flour
1 tbsp raw coconut oil
0,5 dl sunflower seeds
Mix all ingredients to a sticky paste, make sure that the dates are fully dispersed, I used a mortar to this step. Adjust the thickness of the crust by adding the almond flour to perfect stickyness.

Fill two small mini pie forms and push the dough against the walls. Put the forms in the freezer. If you have leftovers from this step, you can fill dates with the paste or roll balls in carob or cocoa powder.

Caramel and chocolate is a perfect match. If you don't have any cacao butter you can use only coconut oil, but that will give the tartelette a very strong coconut flavour.

Filling:
20 g of Cacao butter
1 tblsp of raw Coconut oil
1 tblsp of Almond milk
0,5 tsp Honey
1,5 tsp Carob
2 tsp Cacao
a pinch of seasalt
The almond milk will make the filling a bit softer. Melt the butter and oil along with milk and honey on low heat. Pull the mixture of the heat and add carob and cacao and stir well. Add the pinch of seasalt. Oddly the seasalt makes the filling sweeter and enhance the chokolate taste.

Fill the crusts with the filling and put them back in the freezer to set. After half an hour put them in the fridge until serving. 

Chia seeds are perfect to get that perfect pudding like thickness of a liquid. It looks weird but the non existing taste of the seeds makes them perfect for adding any flavour  you like.

Vanilla pudding
1 tsp of honey
1,5 dl Almond milk
2 tblsp chia seeds
 a pinch of vanilla powder
Whisk everything together and whisk every 5th minute three to four times. Then pour the blend into your serving cup and store in the fridge until serving

Cherry topping 
2 dl Seedless Cherries (sour)
1 tsp honey
pinch of vanilla powder
Mix all the ingredients to a runny jam and stor in the fridge until serving

When serving the pudding you can choose to pour the cherry jam over the pudding, or in small glasses and serve at the side.

Note that each serve contains only 2,5 dates and 1tsp of honey, that's not much sugar if you compare what an ordinary dessert of this kind would contain. 
Have a lovely Valentines day <3

Vegan and gluten free cookies

This is a nice treat made of almond pulp and yellow pea flour. 

350 ml almond pulp

150 ml pea flour

1 tsp baking powder

mix these ingredients toghether in a bowl

carefully melt

100 gr coconut oil

add a large tbsp of honey to the melted coconut oil. And pour the mixture in the bowl and blend thouroughly to a soft dough. Add some chopped dried apricots. 

Take a tbsp of dough and roll balls, put them on parchment paper and press them down. Bake the cookies in a owen preheated to 175 degrees C for 15 minutes. If the cookies feels moist. Lower the temperature and let them dry for another 15-20  minutes.

Weird looking porridge

Chia seeds looks so weird, they reminds of small insects eggs with a grey brown crackled surface, and they taste nothing.

If we think a little positive about this; the benefit of something that tastes nothing is that you can combine with ingredients that taste lovely as they are.

If you put them in water, the chia seeds swells and form a clear gel around the seeds. That makes them look even spookier. The benefits of this seed is that it contains lots of omega 3 oils and is high in proteins and lots of other nutrients.

To get a tasty porridge I top it (hide the weird seeds) with sliced bananas, coconut flakes and pumkinseeds, yum.

Easy peasy porridge

2 Tbsp of chia seeds

100 ml water

mix it in your porridge bowl and keep it in the fridge over night. In the morning the porridge is ready to eat. Just add a little salt to it if you like and serve with different toppings

Buck wheat crunch

I know, it's strange I tend to post a lot of breakfast recipes. I'm such a novis in this raw food thing and haven't found out any dinner recipes yet, well nothing to write about, or take pictures of. 

These crunchies are perfect for a little heavier breakfast, served with light almondmilk or just as little energy snacks. I have a jar with these to snack on at my office table. 

The perfect thing with this recipe is that you reuse your waste, from almond milk and your juicer.

Buck weat crunch

2 dl of apple pulp from the juicer (this is the pulp that you get when making applejuice, the pulp is without the seed house)

2 dl pulp from almond milk (see picture below)

10 organic dried apricots, soaked in water over night

1,5 dl buchwheat, soaked in water over night (eventually dried in the oven or dehydrator)

 1 hand full of grated coconut 

1 hand full of sunflower seeds

1 hand full of pumpkin seeds

1 Tbsp of raw coconut oil.

Mix the apricots with a little of the soaking water. Pour it into a mixing bowl and add all the other ingredients. Mix all ingredients carefully until fully blended. You can also use a dough blender in this step.

Pour the mix over a baking sheet (teflex) and dry it in the oven under 50 degrees Celsius. Use the fan in the oven and open the oven door even now and then to let the moist out. Stir around a little. It will take 8-10 hours depending how wet it is and the oven. Store the crunch in a paperbag.

If you don't have time to use the pulp immediately you can store it in the freezer.

Raw crisp bread

I have made my first try to make a raw crisp bread. As inspiration I googled about how to make them and then made my own recipe. They taste so nice with mashed avocado on top. You can also brake them to smaller pieces and get crackers.

Raw crisp bread "Knäckebröd"

1 dl Sundried tomatoes

1 dl Sunflower seeds

1 dl Pumpkin seeds

1 dl Sesame seeds

1 dl Oat groats (not the flakes)

1 dl Psyllium seeds

2 dl Flax seeds

1 Tbs Nutritional yeast

1 Tbs vegetable broth

Soak the sundried tomatoes in a cup of water. Mix all the other dry ingredients in a bowl and soak in water. The amount of fresh water is not more than to cover the seeds. Let it soak for 3-4 hours. Chop the tomatoes and blend in the seed mixture.

After soaking, pour the mix on a baking sheet and flatten it out with a spoon. It will be flat enough to be homogenic without any holes. Put your owen on lowest temperature maximum 50 degrees C. Dry the bread in the owen by opening a gap even now and then. When the upside feels dry it's proper to turn the bread upside down. Be careful so you don't brake or drop it. 

When the bread is completely dried, store it in an airtight holder.

Gluten free bread

As I need to cut down on gluten I searched the internet for a nice bread to bake. I used this recipe as an inspiration but changed it a bit. I removed the sweet stuff and dairy products.

300 ml oat groats

300 ml gluten free flour ( I used Lailas gluten free flour)
150 ml of mashed almonds remnants from the almond milk 

100 ml pumpkin seeds

1,5 tsp baking powder

0,5 tsp himalayan salt

a pinch of cinnamon

350 ml almond milk (see last post)

Preheat the owen to 175 degrees C. Blend all the dry ingredients and pour the almond milk in the dry blend. Take a rectangular bread form and line it with raw coconut oil and sprinkle some gluten free flour over. Pour the dough in the bread form and bake the bread for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Store the bread in the fridge in a box or bag.

I think this bread would taste a bit better if you add some sweets like a Tbs of honey or molass. It works fine to slice, toast and serve with sliced avocado and a pinch of fleur de sel.

The green dots comes from the pumpkin seeds. I think pumpkin seeds could be a good alternative for pistachio, for those who are allergic.