#mostlyclean

here's a selection of things i've made lately. i've been doing a good job cooking clean, less of a good job of eating clean. sometimes chinese food with coworkers is just so salty and delicious and irresistible. not to mention one week breakfast at MAL was KFC pastries. they actually make a lillian bakery style egg tart. i'll just try to black out that it even happened. from now on, i'm bringing breakfast on tuesday. this is not MAL LA with the breakfast buffet. 

perfectly cooked quinoa with mushrooms + arugula 

this is from it's all good. as you should know by now, i'm a huge gwyneth fan. she still continues not to steer me wrong. apparently last week she rode around santa monica on a pistachio colored vespa. she's so baller. basically, make the quinoa, which i make all the time, and toss it with sautéed mushrooms and raw arugula. you have to like arugula or you will think the taste is overwhelming. 

homemade hummus + chopped veggies 

i made hummus from raw garbanzo beans. bridget said that when you have enough time to do the whole process from the raw, hardened beans instead of canned, you need to make more friends. this is probably true ;) so, for any hard beans, you need to soak them overnight, and then you cook them for like 45 minutes, adding a little salt and then you have what you would get out of a can. i know, labor intensive. i did it with black beans too and i froze them. after making the garbanzo beans, i loosely followed this recipe for the hummus. mine was not perfectly smooth. i don't think i used enough olive oil. i have this problem where i don't add the amount of olive oil that the recipe calls for. i need to get over it. 

raw-co salad 

this is an amazingly good salad. meat lovers, i dare you to try it for meatless monday. i know its really weird, to make 'walnut meat' as a replacement for taco meat and cashew sour cream, but i LOVED it, and i think other people will. some things, i'm more hesitant to recommend. and it is surprisingly easy to make with a powerful blender. the fauxamix is a total life changer. this is the recipe that i loosely followed. i like adding black beans. i would make it again and again and again. 

roasted nut butter 

this stuff is like magical crack. i've made it twice. roast almonds, walnuts and cashews for about 10 minutes. you can do more or less depending on how much of a 'roasted' flavor you want the nut butter to have. once mine was more 'roasty' than my current batch. both amazeballs. once the nuts have cooled off, put them in the fauxamix with 5-6 dates, 3 tablespoons of coconut oil and as much cinnamon as you would like. i mean, don't go overboard. or you can just follow the recipe. you may have to do this in batches depending on how powerful your food processor / blender is. last night i thought i broke the fauxamix with it. not okay. but i just had to reset the circuit, and then i finished making it in three batches. good for smoothies, putting on bananas / apples, or for any recipe that calls for nut butter. 

steel cut oatmeal cookies 

i've made these twice. i just like eating the dough. they're really, really good. i like making cookies with all of the different wet indgredients + dry ingredients i can find in the pantry. i particularly like these because of the steel cut oatmeal. i keep telling myself that i will make steel cut oats for breakfast, not just for cookies, because it's so good, but i haven't yet. it's super easy to make, put half a cup of steel cut oats in a small saucepan with a cup of water. bring to a boil, let it simmer for 10 minutes. (like making quinoa). add a lot of raisins. as many as you want. let it it sit. then, combine your wet ingredients and dry ingredients. for wet i like to use a variety of: bananas, honey, maple syrup, vanilla, almond milk, flax-eggs. for dry i like to use: almond meal, coconut flour, cinnamon, coconut flakes, baking soda, baking powder (it's good to use both they give them a more cookie-like consistency). i do it based on whatever i have / whatever i feel like. you end up with three bowls: steel cut oats + raisins, wet ingredients + dry ingredients. i then add the wet ingredients to the dry ingrdients alternating with the steel cut oats in six phases. 1. wet ingredients. 2. steel cut oats. 3. wet ingredients. 4. steel cut oats. 5 wet ingredients. 6. steel cut oats. this is probably unnecessary, but it's what i'm used to from baking cookies with sugar and eggs and flour. at this point, add whatever you feel like. chocolate chips (i like chocolate dream which are both gluten free and dairy free) walnuts, i even added mangoes once. go wild. i also brought them to many non-healthy co-workers who enjoyed them throughly, so feel free to feed them to whomever. 

almond milk + assorted smoothies

in one of the packages i sent to myself in new york, i got a nut milk bag, because i've been dying to try making my own nut milk. turns out that it is ridiculously easy. which is fantastic because i now have a ton of nuts from my costco trip and almond milk is crazy expensive here and i can only find it at cityshop. soak 1 cup of almonds overnight, or for up to 48 hours. if you're soaking for 48 hours, change the water once or twice. put soaked almonds in the blender with four cups of filtered water (extremely important if you live in china where the water is made with arsenic). blend, it blends quite quickly. now you can add: cinnamon, honey, maple syrup, agave, vanilla, anything that floats your boat. i added a bit of cinnamon, vanilla and honey, blended again. now, the fun part. take your nut milk bag and place it in a large bowl. pour the blended nut milk into the bag, it catches the nut pulp. squeeze to get all the milk out and voila! 

peach galette 

when i was home, i also did some not so clean cooking + baking with my mom. i've been wanting to make a galete for years. galette crust is ridiculously easy to make, there are only 5 ingredients. and that's if you're counting ice water as an ingredient. the recipe i followed was similar to this, and i made two disks of dough. basically combine 2.5 cups of flour, 1 cup of sugar a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of salt in a food processor. i used my mom's food processor and didn't try using the fauxamix, so i'm not sure how this would work in a powerful blender. cut the 2 sticks of butter into 16 small pieces and pulse to combine with the dry ingredients. the butter should become the size of small blueberries. pour the mix out on plastic wrap, knead to combine, split into two, form disks and chill for at least an hour. a little before you're ready to use the dough, cut up the peaches or whatever fruit you're using, this literally works with anything, and combine with a teeny bit of sugar. i don't even think you need to do this, but to each their own. put a little flour on the counter and roll out the dough. place the fruit in the center, and roll up the edges. a galette is supposed to be shabby chic, so don't worry if it's not perfect. if you seek perfection, make a lattice pie and let me know how it works out. 

zucchini pasta with pesto + roasted tomatoes 

so i've been using my new tools i got in new york. as you know, one was a nut milk bag, and the other was a vegetable spiralizer to make noodles out of vegetables. i told my cousin stacey about how i'd be making vegetable pasta and her response was, 'so it tastes like pasta ?' well, not quite, but this was so good that i ate it too fast to take a picture. next time, i promise! basically, you cut a zucchini in half (width-wise to make it shorter) and stick it in the spiralizer and it becomes long think noodles, like parpadelle. i need to figure out how to do the spaghetti shape, i think you need to cut the zucchini more. i then sautéed the 'noodles' with a bit of chopped garlic and olive oil, while simultaneously roasting tomatoes. the tomatoes are really good in china, i love roasting yellow and red grape tomatoes with salt, pepper and a bit of olive oil. i also made the best pesto in the fauxamix. it is possible to make incredible pesto without cheese. mine had: arugula, basil, walnuts, pine nuts and olive oil. i guesstimated the amounts, combined everything and added olive oil at the end. it's so good. i put this on the sautéed noodles along with the roasted tomatoes. yummy italian dinner. i'd say its a pasta 'concept' stace. 

zucchini hummus a la cafe gratitude

my dad sent me alan richman, of GQ's 50 best dishes in america, which i had already read, but he reminded me that the cafe gratitude hummus was on this list. (along with the deviled eggs from the whelk in my hometown of westport, ct. westporters, if you haven't been to the whelk, go, immediately). anyway, alan is a cafe gratitude lover after his transformative experience with kelp noodles back in july. for all of you that think kelp noodles sound disgusting, i can promise you that if alan abramson liked them, you will like them. so the next time you find yourself at cafe gratitude, give them a try. on to the hummus. it's really easy to make. and it's raw, if you're into that kind of thing. i loosely followed this recipe from the cafe gratitude blog and have been enjoying it with chopped veggies and with my assorted salads that i like to bring for lunch. i skipped the cilantro because i didn't have it. it doesn't need it. so if you're cilantro averse, i know that people are, particularly caleb nickel, don't use it. and if you don't know who caleb nickel is, you should probably look it up before continuing to read this blog.

banana, coconut, chocolate chip pancakes 

sometimes, you just want to eat pancakes. in particular, chocolate chip pancakes. i had leftover flax egg from a strange experience making 'baked/fried' zucchini last night, so i looked for some recipes. and came across these pancakes. i had both the dough and the pancakes for breakfast / lunch and they were delicious. thats the thing about vegan cooking / baking, you feel no guilt for eating the dough, because there are no raw eggs. these were super easy, as always, i loosely followed the recipe. i used coconut oil and coconut flour, so mine had a distincly coconut flavor. sometimes, i wonder, just because something is vegan, gluten and refined sugar free, is it actually healthy? these didn't taste healthy. and i totally doused them in maple syrup. whatever. it's better than ihop. or mr. pancake house, which is basically chinese ihop. 

i've also made some things that are not at all fab. i wouldn't want you all to think i'm like this culinary genius and everything i try is making gold. i tried these sweet potato brownies, and i used purple sweet potatoes instead of orange sweet potatoes, so maybe that's the problem. but i cannot eat them. i have so many in my refrigerator, and they do not hit the sweet spot. even when i cover them in walnuts. i won't make these again. 

i also tried making fried / baked zucchini with the leftover almond meat from the almond milk. i don't think that i got all of the moisture out of the pulp, so when i made the 'breadcrumb' mixture with the almond pulp, nutritional yeast + salt, it was too moist and wouldn't stick to the zucchini. i still think my concept on these was good, so i'd give another try. i like the idea of rolling the vegetable in a flax egg and then coating in a nut-based breadcrumb consistency a la eggplant parmigiana. i'll keep you posted on my future success. 

the not so creamy hummus + veggies 

the steel cut oatmeal cookies. i said i wasn't going to make all of them so i could make them later in the week. instead i just ate the dough. 

raw-co salad. i know it doesn't look like much. but this one has guacamole, 'taco' meat and 'sour cream'. try it. it won't let you down! 

peach galette pre baking.

and post baking. i added berries to one of them. i recommend serving warm with vanilla ice cream.