Raw Holiday
by Raw Chef Dan
The holidays are upon us. You know you want to eat food with all those amazing flavors, colors, and textures. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to celebrate with those awesome foods without the stomach ache, bloating, and weight gain?
We raw foodies know how to avoid all that misery with the right foods, but not many know how to get those holiday favorites into their creations. That’s where I come in.
Christmas & New Years calls for holiday foods, so let me help you figure out some of these treats for your holiday survival. Who knows? You may even turn some people on to a healthy dish or two.
First let’s look at a starter like soup. A few soups come to mind around this time of year, and most are based on a root or squash. Both roots and squashes are hard as nails, but also full of water.
If I were to use yams, sweet potatoes, or sun-chokes for instance, I would wash them well, but leave the skins on, then I would chop them up and put them into my Vita-Mix blender and blend with water, sea salt, and maybe a few walnuts or pecans. (If you don’t have a Vita-Mix it is high time you bought one. It is the only way to really puree this stuff).
So you have your base flavor of the root along with the nuts for bulking body and for flavor. Now, if you want to make it more creamy add some good old olive oil and or pine nuts. Both are very creamy and buttery and the pine nuts add to the overall body. A hint of lemon or apple cider vinegar can also cut any bitterness of the roots. You can also sweeten your soup with red or yellow bell pepper. You can also fill in the flavor with celery and sea salt. From there it’s up to you. Perhaps add some rosemary, sage, oregano, thyme or other spice and herbs you have a liking for. Play with it. Have fun. For candied yam, I blend my yam with pecans, olive oil, sea salt, and honey or agave and very little water; just enough to
make it fluffy and light but still edible with a fork. You will want a warmer flavor like walnut and pine nuts to use with butternut or acorn
To make any of these into a soup, add a hint of lemon juice or apple vinegar and water. You’ll also want to reinforce the flavors with a little more salt and maybe even some spices. Sometimes I juice the squash and make a soup by blending the juice with chunks of the vegetable and the nuts. Add a pinch of nutmeg, black pepper, and thyme.
For mash potatoes, simply blend cauliflower with pine nuts, cashews, or young coconut meat and salt to taste. Then add rosemary, sage, and black pepper.
For muffins, blend yam with dried coconut, dried apricots, vanilla, and salt in the food processor till it sticks together but is still somewhat dry and fluffy. This gives you the perfect muffin base. You can form it into little bon-bon like shapes and dehydrate them or you can add flavors first. Try adding lemon zest and ginger (it’s amazing!), banana and walnut bits, or apple chunk and cinnamon. Whatever you like will be great.
I recently have been having a great time making pumpkin and butternut loafs. There are so many ways to make them, with so many variations, there doesn’t seem to be any end to it.
Blend fresh pumpkin in your food processor
This is like a tasty nut loaf without an overload of nuts. You can use any hard squash, turnips, yams, or sweet potatoes to do this and mix a variety of nuts for different
flavors, change up the herbs and spices, and even play with the chopped veggies inside. You can also blend gravy or fruit glazes for topping. It really is endless and totally up to you.Tasty breads can be made in the same way. Just eliminate all the veggies, garlic, and herbs. Blend the pumpkin, coconut, and dried fruit like apricots, figs, or cherries. Form into a loaf and dehydrate for 2 or 3 hrs. Then slice it into thinner slices and dehydrate the slices till the outside of each slice is dry and almost crispy.
I like to throw in some pecans or walnuts for a real holiday feeling to the breads. Try apple, walnut, and cinnamon, lemon zest and ginger, or dried cherries. YUM!Dried fruits also make great creams when blended with water. Mix the cream with chopped or sliced fresh fruits to fill a pie. Blend dried cherries adding just enough water to create a cherry cream, mix with shredded apple, and fill your pie crust. How easy and totally amazing is that?
Just experiment and have fun.
Raw Chef Dan offers some of the best raw food cuisine recipes available at his website
www.rawchefdan.com. Some are free, others will cost you a dollar or two. Check out his website and his blog for recipes and lots of great information about raw foods.
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