Veganbul

I am delighted to announce that my cookery book  "Dolce Vegan", about vegan sweets and desserts, has finally seen the light! It is written in Turkish, so right now only Turkish speakers would be able to read it. Hopefully it will soon be published in other languages :)

The book presents almost hundred sweet vegan recipes, explaining also how to make basic ingredients (like vegetable milk, cream, butter, and so on) that are also required for the recipes in the book.

It talks about the importance of food, and about the necessity we have to assume the responsibility for what we eat, as eating can be a political act throw what we can start a non-violent revolution, in order to built a better and more just world for all.

Gluten Free Millet and Oat Pudding

As I wrote here in the previous post, I started to eat in a different way, because of a health issue.

In the book I mentioned last week (Period Repair Manual but Lara Briden) the author assesses that in order to have a healthy period and a healthy body as consequence, there is some food that you preferably shouldn’t eat. Some of this food I was already not eating in my regular diet, but I had to slightly change my habits in order to avoid some extra things.

In particular Lara Briden says to avoid:

Sugars – she says that any kind of sugar is good for our body, including things like fruit juices. Conversely all kind of fruits is good. If you need to use sugar she suggest to use some natural sweetener like xylitol, and I personally believe that grape molasses in not bad neither.

Alcohol.

Diary, (but she sais butter is fine!).

Gluten.

Vegetable refined oils (but of course cold press olive oil is fine, among with some other cold press oils).

In my normal diet I am already avoiding diary, vegetable refined oils, alcohol, I try to avoid sugar even if it is quite difficult for me, but I was eating gluten. So now I will try to abstain from it, too.

Today I prepare a light desert: it is made with millet and with oat flakes so it must be gluten free.

I add very few sweetener (maybe 1 spoon of grape molasses and 1 spoon of xylitol) and some dried fruits. I write below the recipe.

 Ingredients (for 5 puddings)

Time required: 1 hour for the preparation, plus some time to let it cool down.

 -75 gr of millet -65 gr of oat flakes (choose the one with no gluten) -600 ml water -5 dried fugues cut in small pieces -1 handful of dried grape -½ teaspoon of vanilla extract -1 pinch of salt -Grape molasses or any other sweetener, to taste -Some carob powder to decorate.

 Directions

Wash the millet and put it in a capacious pot. Add the oat flakes, the water, 1 tablespoon of grape molasses (you can add more later), the fugues cut into pieces, and the salt. Put the pot over low heat, and cook for about an hour.

After this, taste it, add the vanilla, some more molasses (if you feel like) and blend it for a while.

The easiest strawberries ice cream ever, plus some reflections about food

Food is such an important thing. We really need to realize it. And the great thing about food is that it is relevant at any level: 

it can make a huge difference in your body health, 

it can help you realize what is important for you in life (how? You may ask. Well, I would say, when you start to create day by day the diet that fits perfectly for your body mind an soul, that makes you feel good, beautiful and happy, instead of following a given diet that is suggested from your family, your country’s tradition, or from your family doctor, then you can start to realize also what is important for you in life), 

it is also fundamental in the environmental aspect of your foot print on the planet.

 Those are some of the question that you may need to answer, and you need to find out why they are so compelling, too.

Do you eating meet? Do you know the foot print of a meat eater comparison to a vegan or a vegetarian? Are you consuming biological or natural food? Why is that necessary? Have you ever heard about seeds and about Monsanto? Do you mind where the food that is on your daily dinner table comes form? Are you aware of the power of the food and pharmacology holdings, and of their profit that comes directly form the food you consume, or the medicine you need to take after eating it, when you are sick?

 The list of questions can go on and on like this, for hours.

I am writing about this topic because lately I am facing with a health problem, and guess where is a great deal of the solution for it? In the diet, of course.

My health issue regards my endometrium, which is a inner mucosal membrane in the uterus of women and of mammals in general. I draw a pic of it:

I had some polypus there, in the endometrium’s side, they look like small balls attach to the wall of it, my monthly cycle become so heavy I couldn’t go out from the house the first two days of menstrual period.

I have been operated and I had those two polypus removed, twice.

They don’t know what are the causes of it, why polypus grow, but generally their growth is connected with a hormonal unbalance, which I happened to have.

So, I started to read a lot about those kind of issues and I found out that they are not that uncommon as you may think: many women suffer from hormonal unbalance and connected pathologies.

I came across a book that I would suggest to ANY woman. The author, Lara Briden, is a natural doctor with more that twenty years of experience on the health of female hormonal issues, the book is called ‘Period Manual Repair: Natural Treatment for Better Hormones and Better Periods ’. 

In this book she sustains that your period is your monthly card report about your general health, and we should regard to it as lucky aspect of being women. 

In addition she says that your period:

 shouldn’t be painful 

should’ be longer than seven days 

you should’T lose more that 80 ml of menstrual fluid

you should’t suffer of PMS. 

Any of those symptoms mean something. For me this is such a imperative knowledge to have as woman, we need to be educated about our menstrual cycle, we need to be empowered about it.

 So, this said (and read the book!) I will write about the strawberries ice cream.

 Being able to make those ice-creams is such a gift for me. There is no sugar and no milk: just fruits. I did it with bananas of course, and I tried with strawberries: it was delicious.

You can add other ingredients, if you like. For example, you can add some extra natural sweetener like xylitol, or a squirt of lemon, some drops of vanilla extract…you choose! But I assure it is very satisfying also just as it is.

 Ingredients (ice cream for two)

Time required: freezing time of the strawberries (about four hours, but I put them in the refrigerator for a night), 10 minutes for making the ice cream.

One big cup of fresh beautiful strawberries

Water, as needed

(plus you can add some drops of lemon, a little bit of natural sweetener, vanilla extract, as you wish, it is your ice cream after all!)

 Directions

 Wash the strawberries very well in water with a drop of apple vinegar. Dry them and remove the stalk.

Slice them, put in a container and refrigerate completely (strawberries need to be hard)

Put them in a beaker, add very few water (start with 3 table spoons, then later you can add more, if needed) and blend them until you reach the consistency of an ice cream.

Put the ice cream in two cups and eat it with love and peace in your heart!

Cacao oat milk: the easiest one!

How long does it take to make this vegetable milk? Maximum fifteen minutes!

Yes! It has been a revelation also for me, I did it with cacao but you can choose to make it without it, and taste it as simple and nice as it is. 

Plus, if you do it without sugar you can use it for savoury preparations (béchamel, savoury cakes and creams).

I found this recipe in the Italian blog ‘Naturalmente Stefy’ (here), the blogger is an Italian lady who lives like a real radical home maker in the countryside of north Italy, and she is doing many amazing things an writes books, this is the link to her blog: http://www.naturalmentestefy.it

I added cacao in my recipe and I used grape molasses instead of cane sugar because it is the easier natural sweetener that I can find in Turkey, plus it is very a healthy one.

Ingredients, for 800 ml of cacao milk:

 50 gr of oat flakes

20 gr unsweetened cacao powder (2 table spoons)

800 ml of water

80 gr of grape molasses or any natural sweetener you prefer

 Directions

>In a bowl, mix the water and the oat flakes, blend them for few minutes.

>Filter the liquid with a fine mash strainer, keep the oat okara aside (you can use it in different preparations: cakes, biscuit, filling, soups) then add the cacao and the molasses to the liquid.

>Blend again and put in a glass bottle.

New goal in life and No sugar Mint Syrup recipe

Our new goal

My girlfriend and I have been around for a little while last weeks, in the Aegean cost of Turkey, because we are looking for a place to move. My girlfriend recently quitted her job, and now we are looking for a simpler life, in a smaller place than Istanbul, possibly near the seaside and with beautiful nature all around.

So this is our new goal now: find our new place to live!

In our first trip we could’t find our new place. Now we are back in Istanbul, we will do some research from here about where to go, and we will keep living our life as simple as we can, even in a mess like the city of Istanbul. Our income is low now, and we need to spend as few as we can.

Nevertheless we need to keep eating, so my blog will continue for sure :)

Plus, spring is such a beautiful season to be in Istanbul, the weather is not too hot yet and there are some beautiful sunny and windy days. Personally, I adore wind. And yesterday, for instance, while I was crossing the Bosporus, I was watching the sky of the radiant day it was: I never saw such beautiful clouds!

 Back to the mint syrup:

The mint is plant with refreshing properties, so I would suggest you to prepare this syrup for the summer. Mint can also helps in the digestion process: you can keep this in mind and drink it whenever you feel to have a help after a heavy meal.

In addition, the menthol that is contained in the mint piperita can be useful for the PMS symptoms, headache, insomnia and nausea.

What we need is two bunches of mint, lemon, water and grape molasses.

Ingredients for about 2 liter of syrups

Time required: 2 days for soaking, 40 minutes for making the syrup and put it into jars.

2 bunches of mint leaves

2 liter of water

Juice of ½ lemon

Grape molasses to taste (you choose how much sweet you want it, I used 250 ml of it)

 Some jars to store it, use preferably small ones.

 Directions

 Wash very well the mint with water.

Put it in a big pot, let leaves and stem macerate for 2 days.

 After this, turn on the fire and boil leaves and water of 5 minutes. Then filter the water, and put in the pot again.

 Add the grape molasses and boil for other 5 minutes.

 Put in small and very clean jars (since we don’t use sugar, it is better to use  small jars so you can conserve the syrup longer).

 Close the jars with their caps when the liquid is still very hot, turn them upside down and wait until the vacuum effect is formed on the cap. If the vacuum doesn’t happen it is better to sterilize the jars as you would do for jam (boil the filled and close jars in water for thirty minutes, and let them cool).

 Now, how can you use the syrup!?

 Well, I will probably make a post about it, but you can simply use it adding some water to it, ice and lemon and drink in a hot day. Or you can do mint ice-lolly, or use it on watermelon :)

Store the jars with the syrup in the fridge, since it is better to consume it very fresh. Plus you can conserve it better.

By the way the color of the syrup will not be bright green: that is the color of the mint syrup you can buy and the bright color  is done with artificial colourants. The color will mostly be brownish :) like you can see from my pics, plus adding molasses it will definitely become brown, similar to tea color.

Kiwi Coco Milk Smoothie

Again! I am writing about a new delicious drink. Those days I am trying not to eat much during daytime, I wanna let my stomach resting from food some how, so I am drinking powerful & delicious stuff.

There was a similar recipe form the web site Raw and Young 

I modified this recipe because still it is not the right time for the strawberry but kiwis are ready to be picked and eaten!

I’ve used coconut milk for it, but you can use any vegetable milk you prefer.

 Ingredients

Serves two.  Time: 10 minutes, plus soaking time of cashews (5 hours)

 1/3 cup of cashews soaked for 5 hours

Juice of ½ lemon

2 dates, pitted

2 spoons of grape molasses or any other natural sweetener 

2 ripe and soft kiwis, pealed and cut into small pieces

1 1/2 cup of coconut milk

1 cup of water

 Directions

Blend everything together, except for the kiwis.

Put aside half glass of this cream

Add the kiwis into the rest, blend together and serve in two glasses.

Top each glass with the white cream you kept aside.

Banana Cream & Chia Healthy Snack

Now I will give you a recipe for a great healthy snack, and you can make and eat it also as breakfast if you like the idea. Personally I would love to!

Ok, now I know those ingredients I will write down are not very cheep here in Istanbul, but once in a while it’s ok to buy them, at least it is OK for me. I don’t buy coconut milk very often, also for environmental reasons, but since I like it both for deserts and curry sometimes I do (once every two month or something).

I read this recipe from a web site called Young and raw, you can check it there too, there are tons of very interesting raw recipes like smoothies, juices, and other nice raw meals, that I also would like to try.

So, the recipe is pretty easy, here it is. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did this very afternoon.

Ingredients

Serve 1  - Time: 10 minutes

2/3 cup of coconut milk

3 or 4 tablespoon of chia seeds

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

2 bananas, smashed

Top with dried mulberries and red berries

 Directions

Let the chia seed in the coconut milk for 10 minutes

Then add the smashed banana, the vanilla and mix well.

Top with mulberry and red berries.

 Pretty easy hu!

Rice pudding and backed cauliflower

Last weekend I met with my friend M. and she taught me how to make rice pudding.

My girlfriend had a cold and M. told me that in Japan they prepare this dish when people are feeling sick. This is because rice pudding is very easy to digest, and it is made with some ingredients (like ginger and umeboshi prune) that help in the digestion process, too.

When we are sick it is better to eat little food (or even to fast if we are not feeling hungry) not to overload our stomach, so our body can fight better the cold, without being busy with the food digestion.

That day when we got home my girlfriend was already feeling better, so I didn’t cook this pudding for her that time (actually I did, but it was a different one, since we were out of rice and I cooked the same thing with whole oat -not the rolled one-, and the pudding was not creamy at all).

But I tried to make it again with whole rice yesterday for lunch, and I really enjoyed it. It becomes so wonderfully creamy, and all the ingredients go along perfectly together.

I cooked it and enjoyed together with backed cauliflower, which was perfect match to me.

  Why ginger is good when we have flue?

Ginger is very good for digestion, and eating it help our digestive system especially with carbohydrates and protein, plus it reduce the intestinal gas.

Ginger also can balance the bacterial flora of our intestine and counteracts the effects of colitis, diarrhea, constipation, and inflammation of the gastric mucosa. It also has antioxidant properties, and is often used as a tea against colds and flu.

  Why umeboshi is good when we have flue?

The special Japanese fermented salt plumes umeboshi have antipyretic and astringent properties, and they bring benefits to the whole body.

Also the umeboshi plumes, like ginger, promote digestion and they are used for stomach and intestinal problems, as well as for cold and fever.

They help clean the liver and kidneys.

They have alkalizing blood proprieties.

***I know that umeboshi are not easy to be found in Turkey. I am sorry for this. What I can suggest is to buy them whenever you will go abroad in a country where you can find them easily (and the best place is, of course,  Japan). In this recipe you can just avoid them if you don’t have them at home.

   Ingredients

(Serves 2 people, time required: 40 minutes)

 For the rice pudding

2 handful of whole rice

3 or 4 cups of water

1 green onion

1 umeboshi prune

1 piece of ginger

2 Tablespoons of soy sauce

 For cauliflower

½ cauliflower

2 teaspoons of rosemary

Extra virgin olive oil for oiling the tray

Sea salt to taste

Other spice that you like

 Process

Wash the rice, put it in a pot with the water. Cook it over law heat until it becomes very creamy while adding some water if it necessary.

Wash the cauliflower and cut it is in bite size pieces. Distribute it on a backing tray, oil it, and add salt, rosemary and all the other spices you like. Shake the tray from left to right in order to distribute all the ingredients over the cauliflower pieces. Bake it in the oven for 30 minutes, in 180-degree heat.

In the meanwhile wash the green onion and chop it into tiny slices. Peal the ginger and mince it. Cut the umeboshi into very small pieces too.

When the rice is creamy enough, divide it into two bowls, add the ginger, the green onion, the umeboshi, and mix well. You can add one or two spoons of soy sauce if you like.

Spaghetti with sauté spinaches and bull’s horn pepper sauce

This recipe is not a difficult one, but it is a lifesaver when you are super hungry and you don’t have much in the fridge.

This was the situation when I prepared this dish, and I am not sure if it because I was with empty stomach, or because it was really good, but it tasted great to me.

So I am sharing it here with you.

The pepper sauce was already ready in the fridge; I had it prepared few days before cooking this dish and I am planning to write the recipe of it soon, in a separate post.

Of course, you can use tomato sauce instead of pepper one, or any other sauce you have available and you want to try with spinaches.

 Ingredients for the pasta

Serves 2 people, time 30 minutes 

200 gr whole grain spaghetti

2 cloves of garlic, pealed and smashed

2 table spoons of olive oil

2 spoons of soy sauce

1 oak leave

1 bunch of spinach, washed very well

2 handfuls of black olives

2/3 tablespoons of bull’s horn pepper sauce

3 walnuts, smashed

Natural yeast, to taste

The juice of half of a lemon

Black pepper, sea salt to taste.

 Process

Start putting a pot of cold water on the fire, add salt (this will serve to cook the spaghetti).

Wash the spinach very well, take the leaves from the stem, and cut them roughly.

In a pan put the oil, the smashed garlic, the oak leave, and let it warm a bit.

Then add the cut spinaches, the olives, and the soy sauce: cook them until spinaches become soft and turned into dark green color. Then turn off the fire.

When the water boils, put the spaghetti into boiling water and dry when they are cooked (circa 8 minutes, read the cooking time on the spaghetti pack).

Put then the spaghetti in the pan with the spinaches, cook them a bit, and turn off the fire.

Distribute the spaghetti in the dishes; garnish each plate with pepper sauce, smashed walnuts, natural yeast, pepper and salt if needed. Squeeze then some lemon juice on each dish and serve.

Three ingredients + three minutes avocado mousse au chocolat

Sometimes I really crave for sweets and desserts, but I (almost always) refuse to eat the packed ones, since they contain white sugar (which is an horrible thing!) among other chemical ingredients, and they are not good for my (ours) body at all.

Plus, recently, when I ate some packed processed dessert, I felt very happy for the first three minutes, but them my stomach start to ache very badly for hours.

For this, I try to eat healthy sweets whenever I feel like. I am eating things like dried apricot, beautiful super-good dates, bananas smoothies, cold press juice made with apple, carrot ginger and some green leaves…I try my best to eat delicious healthy good sweet food.

Few days ago I wanted to eat a sweet snack, I had nothing at home but one small very ripe beautiful avocado, so I decided to make this famous chocolate avocado mousse, that I heard a lot about but never tried.

Avocado is very good for the skin, and for the health in general. I used raw cacao for this mousse, which is super rich in antioxidants, and minerals like magnesium (great for bones and teeth), maganese, iron and also B and C vitamins, omega 6, and serotonin (a molecule that is good for the perfect happy mood)

So, here is the recipe I made, I hope you can enjoy it too!

Ingredients

Serves 1 person, time: 5 minutes

 1 small ripe avocado

2 teaspoons of raw cacao

3 table spoons of maple syrup (or any other natural sweetener you like or have at home)

 Process

Wash and the peal the avocado.

Take its pulp with a table spoon and put in the mortar (or in the blender).

Smash or blend the avocado with the cacao. 

Add the maple syrup according to your taste and mix well

Roasted Broccoli and Carrots with Spinaches Lupine Quiche

Lately here in Istanbul is very cold, it snows a bit every day even if the snow doesn’t last.

I am not eating a lot of cooked food in the daytime, but for dinner I really crave for one warm nice dish as comfort food, that can also heat my stomach, my body and my heart.

I cooked this dish yesterday night and it was really delicious. This morning, while I am writing this article, I am still eating a piece of it as breakfast (even though normally I don’t eat breakfast, today I could’ t resist!).

The dish is basically a simple dough filled with cooked spinach and baked in the oven. While you bake it, you can also prepare at the same time the carrots and the broccoli, they need almost the same time to be ready and you will save energy. Then you can serve them together: it is a very tasty mix!

Sooo, here there is the recipe.

Ingredients

Serve 4

Time 1 hour and half

 For the dough

150 gr wholemeal flour

2 table spoons of wheat germ

1 teaspoon of cumin

1 teaspoon of turmeric

2 tablespoons cold press olive oil

Water as needed

Salt, pepper

 For the filling of the cake

2 bunch of spinaches, cleaned

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

2 tablespoons of cold press olive oil

2 table spoons of soy sauce

200 gr of lupine cheese *** (see the recipe here)

Salt if needed

 To bake

Some broccoli and three carrots

Olive oil

Fennel, chopped

Salt, Pepper

 Process

Start with the dough.

In a bowl sift the flour with a wide mesh strainer (we don’t want to lose the bran!).

Add the salt, the pepper, the turmeric, the cumin, the wheat germ and the olive oil. Slowly add some warm water and start to mix with a spoon. When the consistency of the dough is denser, you can start knead it with your hands. If needed add more water or flour, you need to fell it.

The result must be a very supple dough. Let it aside.

 Now prepare the filling.

Clean the spinach washing them very well. Cut them.

Crush two cloves of garlic.

In a pan put the olive oil, let it warm a bit, add the garlic and let it cook few minutes. Then add the spinaches, the soy sauce and let them cooking until they are soft and they look dark green.

When the spinaches are ready mix them with the lupine cheese***.

I also add to the mix some left over rice, so if you have it you can add it too.

Roll the dough into a thin sheet, put it on a grass skilled. Fill it with the spinach-lupine mix, and cover the filling on itself folding the dough that comes out of the pan.

 Then prepare the vegetable to bake.

Wash the broccoli, the carrots and slice them lengthwise. Chop some fennel.

Add everything to a grease pan, mix all the vegetable very well, add some salt and pepper as needed.

Put the two pans in the oven, and cook at 180° for 30 minutes.

When they are ready serve them together, placing the roasted vegetables over every slice of quiche.

Vegan-bul Over Night Oats, and talking about the healthy breakfasts :)))

Usually I don’t have a breakfast routine and I tend not to eat right after when I wake up.  What I do is to drink a glass of warm water with the juice of half lemon when I wake up, and then I wait to eat the breakfast until I go to the bathroom :) :)  so my intestine can finish to clean itself and then I can start eating again (if I am hungry).

This is because I’ve learned that when we wake up our body is still in her purifying mood, it is cleaning herself (this is what she does during the night when we sleep), so if we eat just right away when we woke up, we stop the cleaning process and this is not a good thing to do.

So, when I am ready to eat (after bathroom business) I usually drink a fresh juice or a banana smoothie. 

The important thing is not to mix acid fruits and vegetable with sweet ones, you can learn about some of them here: http://www.imraw.me/fruit-list-acid-sub-acid-sweet.html . This is because our stomach cannot digest them using the same enzymes, so mixing acid and sweet fruits and vegetable complicates our digestion process.

Here there is a recipe that I found very good for breakfast, I tried just once (today :) )and I really loved it. It is good any time but I suppose that in summer can be really great since it is quite fresh. The oat flakes are not cooked but they become soft because gently soaked over night. You can add any fruits to it, better to use the seasonal fruits, of course. I took the basic recipe from the blog  OH She Glows! And then I changed it according to my taste and what it is easier for me to do. So here it is the recipe:

Vegan-bul Overnight Oat

 Ingredients

Breakfast for one person

1/3 cup of oat flakes

10 almonds, soaked for 4 hours if it is possible and then crashed in a mortar

1 cup of water

2 teaspoons of chia seeds

2 Turkish small bananas, pealed and smashed

2 dried figs, chopped in smal pieces

a handful of died mulberry

2 spoons of maple syrup or grape molasses

Process

Mix all the ingredients together an put in the fridge overnight.

I am at home in Italy, and here I don’t cook much ...so... I don’t have any recipe to suggest for Xmas, still I hope all of you will have a nice happy time, for Xmas and in general, for life :)

Ravioli, good idea for Christmas dinner

Last Sunday the weather was very beautiful but cold, so my girlfriend and I enjoyed spending time at home while making ravioli :)

It didn’t take long time actually, in one hour and half our ravioli where hot and ready on the dinner table, and yes, they were really delicious.

I will give here the instruction to make the dough and I can tell you what did I put inside too, but actually you can fill them with whatever you want.

Plus, this is a great dish for Christmas dinner, and it is fun to make (if you are not alone for sure! And you shouldn’t be alone: ravioli is a social preparation :D)

Ingredients for 43 ravioli, enough for 3 people (time required circa 1 hour and half)

 Dough:

300 gr semolina flour*

150 ml of water

1 teaspoon of sea salt

½ teaspoon of curcuma

 *I bought semolina flour in Italy and then brought here. Here in Turkey you cannot find easily in the supermarkets (why???), but you can buy it form the Internet. Or you can use regular flour instead.

 Filling:

½ kg of spinach

Five of six fresh big mushrooms

2 cloves of garlic

1 hot pepper

Aci bakla (lupine) cheese **

Salt, black pepper

A little bit of cumin (optional)

**For the lupine cheese see the recipe here. But if you don’t have the lupines it’s ok, you can use something else (you can blend some cashew nuts, for instance, or any other nut) but you can also deice to not replace it at all, it doesn’t matter that much.

 Process

Prepare the dough: in a bowl mix the flour, the salt, and the curcuma. Then add the water. Mix well and knead with your hands for five minutes, form a ball and wrap it in transparent paper. Let it rest in the fridge for something like thirty minutes.

Prepare the filling: clean and wash the spinach, and then chop them. Clean the mushrooms, too. Cut the garlic, add it in a pan with some oil and the hot pepper, when it is lightly frying add the spinach and the mushrooms, let them cook until they are soft. Then blend them with the acı bakla (or with the nuts of your choice).

Prepare the ravioli: roll the dough on a floured surface (use a rolling pin). Make it as thin as possible.

Then cut the ravioli with a glass.

Fill them with the filling, moisten the edges of the dough with some water, and close them. Seal the edges with a fork.

To cook them: cook them in boiling salted water until they come to the surface of the water (which means they are ready!)

Fermented Spinach and the benefits of fermented vegetables

Hello :)

As I promise in this post I will give the recipe of my fermented spinach, plus I will talk a bit about fermented vegetables in general.

 The fermented food has been disappeared since years from the diet of many people, although I believe that Turkey is an exception because in any lunch or dinner you can eat turşu, pickled vegetables that you can buy anywhere (like from local markets, or from shops that are specialized to make them) and you can also make them.

Last year I started to become passionate about fermenting things, I did many experiments, with both fruits (yes fruits...I tried to make Thailand’s fermented fruits, which appear to be a great remedy for basically anything, but I failed!) and vegetables.

This is because I like them a lot, of course, and also I learnt that fermented food is in exceptional thing for gain and maintain the general health of our body. 

We need to consume just few fermented food every day and this would be enough.

The fermentation process enriches the food of enzymes, vitamins (of the group B and C) antioxidants, acid lactic and lactobacillus. 

Those substances have a great effect of the flora of our stomach, they make it stronger and more vital, plus they put under control the rotting of food and the proliferation of bad bacteria in our stomach.

The fermented vegetables are:

Disinfectant

Digestive

Detoxifing

The have positive effect on the micro circulation of the body

They help curing some skin disease

And they can be useful in case of allergy, inflammation, fungus and candida.

Not bad I guess!

Ok here there is the recipe, I hope you will like it :

I took the recipe form this book : ‘Fermented Vegetables: Creative Recipes for Fermenting 64 Vegetables & Herbs in Krauts, Kimchis, Brined Pickles, Chutneys, Relishes & Pastes’ by K. and C. Shockey, which I really love and I suggest to read, in case you are interested in becoming a ‘fermentista’, as thy defined themselves in the book (yes, they are really pro about fermentation!!).

Virginia

 Ingredients, to make two medium jars of fermented spinach

Time required: 30 minutes to prepare them, 4 to 10 day to ferment them.

 1 kg of spinach

3 small onions

2 tablespoons of unrefined sea salt

1 tablespoon of dried oregano

2 tablespoon of lemon juice

Process

Take the leaves of the spinach, wash them and then chop them.

Slice the onions

In a big bowl (it should contain all the ingredients) put the sliced onion, the oregano, the lemon juice, and 1 tablespoon of salt, work everything with your hands like if you are making the pizza dough :)

Some onion juice is starting to come. Add the spinach and some more salt. Work more with your hands for ten minutes, and some water from the spinach is coming, too.   

Push now everything in the jars , cover the top side of the spinach with backing sheet (see pic number 3), and then push down the spinach with a smaller jar full of water (see pic number 4): the spinach should be covered in their own brine  (see pic number number 5). Don’t let them show up form the brine: you need to check it every day.

Now is time for the to ferment: find a cool place without direct sun light. Check every day if they are under the brine, you can start to taste them after the 4th day. 

Raw Carob Flour and Banana Custard

Lately I started to be into raw cooking. I read a lot about it and I am now almost  convinced that eating raw fruits, vegetable along with some nuts, sprout seeds and beens would be the best diet (for me).

Still I am in the learning process, plus I cannot change my diet into a total raw one from a day to another, I am not this kind of person, and to adjust my diet into a almost raw one I will need some time.

In addition I will continue learning how to ferment different vegetables, since I believe that fermented food (especially vegetable for instance) it’s one of the most healthy thing that you can actually eat (I will actually start fermenting Spinach today and if the recipe will be goo I will publish it here in my blog :) ).

So here I will propose the recipe of a raw carob custard, I found the recipe from one web site called Ricette Crudiste, and they called this recipe the ‘Budino Crudista’. 

I slightly arrange the ingredients so it is a little bit different from the Ricette Crudiste’s recipe (beaches I used local Turkish bananas), and it is most like a cream than a solid desert, like in their version.

Ingredients for two desserts

Time : 10 minutes

For the custard

1 Persimmon

2 Turkish Bananas (they are slightly smaller than normal ones, here they are called yerly muz and they come form south Turkey, so they are less bad for the environment that the other ones)

2 table spoons of carob flour

 For the date sauce

3 dates

Water as needed

 Process

Blend the persimmon, the bananas and the carob flour together till they become a cream. Put the cream into two different cups or moulds. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

To make the sauce: blend the dates with the water (5 table spoons maybe) and try to reach a creamy-liquid consistency (or the consistency that you prefer). Then if you want you can filter it.

Pickled cauliflower

I found this recipe in a magazine while I was spending a nice time in Sicily. The journal is called ‘Terra Nuova’, but unfortunately I am not sure which one in particular (number, etc.). 

Why yo make them? Well, fermented vegetable are very healthy (they are richer in enzymes, vitamins, antioxidants,lactobacillus and they have great benefit on our body, I will write a post about that maybe) and they are delicious, plus they don’t require much work to do.

About the images>>> all of them are taken before the fermentation, except of the last one, which has been taken after 8 days of fermentation.

So here there is the recipe for making pickled cauliflower.

Ingredients

Doses for three jars, the ones you see in the pics.

1 cauliflower (let’s say 2 kg)

2 l water

70 gr salt

Red pepper, black pepper in grains, garlic, and laurel oak tree leaves...

1 or 2 dry chickpeas per jar (they facilitate the fermentation to happen

Three or four jars

 Process

Wash the cauliflower and cut the flowers branches. Put them in very clean jars (clean the jars with boiling water before starting)

Dissolve the salt in the water (and if it doesn’t dissolve, you can warm the water a bit).

Add the water in the jars, then add all the aromas you prefer (red and black pepper, garlic, and anything else you would like). Add the chickpeas in each jar. Cover the jars with a clean cotton rag and stop it with elastic.

Let the cauliflower fermenting for 8 days at a temperature of 20-22 °C. You need to oxygenate it every two days (How? Ok, you can turn the jars after closing them with a cap, moving the water, or you can just move the jars letting the bubbles of fermentation moving up).

After 8 days the cauliflower must be fermented. Taste it (hopefully it tastes nice :) )You can then store the jars in a fresh place (fridge) and start eating it, in salads for example or just with a splash of olive oil.

 Pay attention to the following things:

 The vegetable must always be covered with brine, so check this everyday while fermenting;