Basil and Eggplant

Basil is one of those herbs that makes me want to keep on living. The scent is amazing and the taste is incredible, especially when mixed with the right flavors. Pesto is one of the main ways basil is used in our house. Throwing the large leaves in my personal blender does not fair well for a smooth pesto sauce, so I find that the chiffonade style of cutting herbs works quite splendidly. To chiffonade, simply stack clean leaves on top of one another and roll together tightly. Then take a knife and cut across the roll to produce thin strips.

Toss into a blender with a splash of olive oil, some salt, and minced garlic. This is my recipe for pesto. Traditionally there is a nut (pine nuts usually) and parmesan cheese added as well. Pesto is delicious used as a sandwich spread, tossed with hot pasta, or as a base sauce for a pizza.

Raw Eggplant Pesto Pizza is one of my favorite summertime recipes. This recipe calls for a dehydrator, which really helps soften up the eggplant. Alternatively you can put these in the oven and bake them for a bit. I've never tried baking them, but it would be equally delicious.

Raw Eggplant Pesto Pizza

1 good sized eggplant

salt

prepared pesto

3 -4 mushrooms sliced (baby portobellos are good)

olive oil

tamari or soy sauce

fine chopped onion

sliced cherry tomatoes or tomato fine diced

First slice the eggplant into thin but not to thin rounds. You can leave the skin on or cut it off, as it is a bit tougher to chew. If baking, leaving the skin on should be fine. Salt both sides of the eggplant rounds and lay in a colander to drain in the sink. Leave them there for 10 - 30 minutes. This helps soften the eggplant as well as remove some of the bitterness.

Take the sliced mushrooms and put them in a bowl. Drizzle some olive oil on them, about 2 Tablespoons or more if needed. Pour in 1 tablespoon or more tamari and toss together. Set mushrooms aside to marinate for at least 10 minutes or more.

Once the eggplant has softened, rinse the rounds with water and pat with a clean dish towel or paper towel to dry. Spread a layer of pesto on each round and then top with marinated mushrooms (you can drain the marinade off, or just carefully dish out the mushrooms watching to not add to much liquid to the pizzas), tomatoes and onions.

Place these on a lined dehydrator try and dehydrate for 1 - 4 hours at 104 degrees F. The longer they dehydrate the softer they get and the more the flavors meld. Alternatively place on a lined baking sheet in the oven for 15 to 20 min or at 375 degrees F.

Here is a before and after shot of the dehydrating. The eggplant really softens up and the olive oil in the pesto sinks in to make it really amazing.

Here is another quick and easy dinner option using eggplant and basil. Salt and drain peeled eggplant rounds the same as described in the recipe above. Place on a oiled or lined baking sheet and roast for 20 to 25 minutes or until softened at 425 degrees F. Place them in a baking dish and top with tomato slices and basil strips. Then add some salt and pepper and minced garlic. Take some bread and toss into a food processor with olive oil, basil strips, salt, and some more minced garlic. Top the dish with the breadcrumbs and bake in the oven for 25 min at 425 degrees F. You can cover with some foil for the first 15 minutes to keep the breadcrumbs from burning. Enjoy!

Sorry there are not any pictures of the finished dish. I had some store bought breadcrumbs at the time so used those and it did not make for a very pretty plate of food, although it was very tasty. Day old sourdough bread would be perfect to turn into breadcrumbs for this dish.

Blueberry Pie and Other Delights!

Sadly, I missed blueberry picking season this year, but have been picking up pints at the farmers markets and it has been wonderful to have fresh blueberries around. They are definitely my favorite berry next to the strawberry. One of the amazing things about blueberries is the gelatin like substance it creates when blended and set. This first recipe takes full advantage of this phenomenon. One of my amazing friends made this pie for me and shared the recipe, so when there were enough blueberries in the fridge, I had to try it. This is a no cook, no bake pie, so it is perfect for those hot summer days.

Fresh Blueberry Pie

crust:

2 cups raw almonds or 1 3/4 cups almond meal

1/2 cup dates, seeds removed

pinch sea salt

Grind almonds in a food processor until fine. Add the dates and salt and process again until you have a mixture that sticks together when you press it with your fingers. Dump into a glass pie plate and press to form a crust covering the bottom and the sides.

filling:

4 cups fresh blueberries (I used 2 pints and had enough)

2 average size bananas

1 1/2 Tbls raw honey

Set aside a little over a half of a cup of blueberries. In a food processor place remaining blueberries along with the bananas and honey and process until smooth. In a bowl or in the food processor container after taking out the blade, stir in the whole blueberries setting aside a small handful. Pour into pie crust and garish with remaining handful of blueberries. The filling will be runny, but it will gel up in the fridge. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours and serve.

There was a pint of blueberries left and some of the almond crust mixture, so I decided to create a breakfast cracker. My kitchen was overflowing with leftover almond crust because I had soaked the 2 cups of almonds which caused them to swell. As a result there was more crust than needed and it also was not sticking together well because it was so wet. Soaking raw almonds overnight removes the enzyme inhibitors in the skins so that they are easier to digest. When using almonds in raw food recipes it is recommended to soak them and then dehydrate them until crunchy. It really does make the almond taste better in my opinion.

For the breakfast crackers I used raw buckwheat, ground up into flour and then mixed with water to create a batter. The blueberries were put in the food processor with one banana and a handful of dates and processed until smooth but a bit chunky. The blueberries were incorporated into the buckwheat batter along with a half a cup or so of the almond mixture and spread it onto dehydrator sheets lined with parchment paper.

I dehydrated them for about 12 - 18 hours at 104 degrees F until crunchy and then broke them into pieces and put them in a covered container in the refrigerator. They don't taste that sweet by themselves, but Matt and I have come up with a couple ways to enjoy them.

Matt prefers spreading organic strawberry all fruit jam on top. I prefer a raw chocolate spread. Love Street Living Foods makes an amazing chocolate coconut spread. It is delicious topped with some sliced bananas and makes a great light breakfast.

Experiments will be continued with this breakfast cracker recipe. Sprouted buckwheat would make it more nutritious, so I would like to try sprouting and dehydrating the buckwheat before grinding and mixing it up into a batter. Hopefully there will be a perfected recipe for you all in the near future.

How do you love to use blueberries? I would love to hear from you!

Thai Coconut Curry

Last night I made curry for dinner. I've been wanting to start adding more fresh, raw meals to my weeks as I feel that I have gotten into a cooked food rut lately. Not that I don't love cooked food, I just know that foods in their raw state work well with the human body and would like to consume them more often. A while back I downloaded a recipe booklet from Jonsi and Alex's website. The Thai Coconut Curry recipe looked really amazing, so I decided that it was time to make it.

Blending water with dried coconut was the first step. I found that the sauce ended up being a bit to watery, so next time I would add less water then the recipe calls for. It could be that my blender just was not strong enough to incorporate more of the coconut. Anyway, the coconut kind of solidifies on the top, with a coconut oil like resemblance.

Then you strain the coconut out and add the rest of the ingredients to the blender, along with the coconut water. Much to my dismay, I was out of both turmeric and curry powder, so my curry does not have that lovely yellow hue. I added garam masala to the sauce instead.

I poured the sauce over a mound of zucchini, cucumber, red pepper, and tomato, all cut into thin noodle like slices. I used a vegetable peeler to make "noodles" out of the zucchini and cucumber. Someday I would love to own a spiralizer, so that my vegetable noodles can look more like noodles.

The curry turned out to be really good. The flavor of the sauce was delicious, and it mixed well with the vegetable noodles. I definitely would make this dish again. Check out the rest of Jonsi and Alex's recipes linked above and download the recipe booklet. My kitchen experience was also greatly enhanced by listening to Jonsi's new album go. Here is a little taste!