Carrot leaf tempura!

The main meal is not actually something that I would necessarily need to share with you in this blog (though it was really tasty): I made a rice/amaranth mixture sprinkled with dulse seaweed flakes and an ovendish of long baked red onions, cauliflower and seaweed-flavoured tofu (conveniently premade by our local macro company). All marinated for a couple of hours in olive oil with salt, minced garlic and dried thyme.

But the extraordinary thing was the carrot leaf tempura! Carrot leaves can have quite a strong flavour and tough texture so sometimes I´m not sure how to use them properly, but this definitely is a winner 😀 I used a tempura batter of white rice flour, a pinch of aluminum-free baking powder, pinch of salt and enough water to make a runny but still sticky batter (mine was too thin :-p), and then I deep-fried the little “branches” of carrot greens until crispy. Another nice idea is deep-fried daikon greens, I just made a few (without the batter) as a decoration 🙂 I definitely recommend eating your greens quickly blanched, steamed or sauteed 90% of the time, but this is sure a nice treat!

Purple basil-sunflower pesto

I like to play with different types of pesto, some time ago I had the purple variety of basil which made for a slightly different taste (if you´re a pesto snob you will notice, I guess :-D), but mostly colour. I admit, the colour is not the most appealing colour you could imagine and green basil makes for a prettier pesto, in my opinion 😀

Anyway…first I roasted one cup of sunflower seeds, then I blended them with a bunch of purple basil and enough water and olive oil to make the blender work (you could use oil only, or water only, or a bit of both, depending on your personal preference). I seasoned the pesto with black pepper, black vulcanic salt (from India), ume plum vinegar, lemon juice and garlic.

For a veggie side I sauteed some onion on olive oil with a pinch of salt, until translucent. Then I added bite-sized green beans and as the last item a large bunch of roughly chopped swiss chard (mangold). I cooked the veggies until the green beans were soft and the chard wilted. I served the pesto and vegetables on top of corn pasta.

Root stew with white miso and cilantro

The main part of this meal was a root vegetable stew:  first I sauteed sliced onion with a pinch of salt on some pumpkin seed oil, then added medium-sized chunks of carrot, parsley root, red beet, celery root and daikon radish and stirred for a while to coat with oil, adding dried thyme as well. Then I covered the veggies with diluted white miso, there should be enough water so that the vegetables are at least partially submerged. I cooked them until soft on a low flame (the water shouldn´t evaporate totally, but also the stew should not be watery) and at the end garnished them with a generous amount of fresh chopped cilantro.

The other parts of the meal were: chickpeas with pumpkin (pumpkin chunks cooked until soft and then add cooked chickpeas and tamari to season), carrot tops fried until crispy on a bit of pumpkin seed oil with salt, and rice/amaranth mixture sprinkled with roasted dulse seaweed. I used dulse flakes, which are really convenient and roast very quickly – just be careful not to burn them, so keep the flame low 😀

Macro Borshch

This is a twist on the traditional Russian soup called “borshch” which is usually heavy on cream and meat and potatoes, but here you have a lighter macro version which still comes quite close and is very satisfying on a cold autumn day 🙂

Sautee some diced onion and finely chopped garlic on a bit of oil with a pinch of salt, until soft. Add similar-sized cubes of carrot, parsnip, parsley root, celery root and red beet and sautee for a while longer until the veggies get shiny. Then add hot water according to how many bowls you will need in the end. Sprinkle in some dried marjoram, caraway seeds, smoked paprika powder and add also a bayleaf or two. Cook the soup until the red beet is soft enough – it´s the vegetable that will take longest. Adjust taste using tamari and/or salt for saltiness and lemon juice and/or vinegar of choice (I had apple cider vinegar) for a sour taste.

I had the soup with some vegetable pancakes but I can imagine it would taste great with a big slice of sourdough bread!

“Guacammus”

Ever tried creating a cross breed between hummus and guacamole?? Well I did and the result was pretty delicious!!

All you need to do is blend cooked chickpeas (I even used the kombu they were cooking with) with avocado. Season with black pepper, garlic and ume plum vinegar to your liking 🙂 Great as a dip for crackers.

 

Baked pears stuffed with tahini-miso filling

This dessert is so amazing!! And prepared so quickly at the same time! If you like baked apples or pears, you will surely appreciate it…

Just cut a pear in half, scoop out the intestines  😀 and create “holes” big and deep enough to put some filling inside. Place the pears with the peel down into a baking dish with maybe half a cup of water in it, to prevent burning.

Mix one teaspoon of tahini with one teaspoon of rice malt and half a teaspoon of sweet white miso. Spoon the filling into the prepared holes. You can cover them with some of the scooped out pear flesh so that less of the filling spills during baking.

Cover the dish with tin foil and bake covered for 30 minutes on 190°C and then 15 minutes uncovered on just 175°C. The pears should be very soft, with a melt in your mouth quality 🙂 It might be a little bit messy with the filling, but I actually like a bit of a messy dessert 😀

Fish tempura with onions and raisins

I think that I found my favourite fish dish!  It takes some time to prepare and is very rich, but worth the time and effort.
I had a fillet of black pollock which I cut into bite-sized pieces and dipped them in a glutenfree tempura batter: white rice flour (you could use brown rice flour, but this makes for a much lighter batter), some arrowroot starch, salt, water and a pinch of aluminum-free baking powder. I used about half half of the starch and flour and added enough water to make a batter that is not too thick but also doesn´t slide easily from the fish chunks – you really have to experiment with this one to get the right consistency. I deep-fried the coated chunks until light golden and let them drip excess oil on a paper towel.

Then I sauteed a large onion cut into big rings on some olive oil with a pinch of salt until soft and shiny. At that point I added a handful of raisins and some water and covered the pan with a lid to allow the raisins to absorb some water. When the raisins soaked up the liquid, I added a good splash of mirin and continued to cook for a while under the lid, on a low flame. The mirin makes anything cook really fast!

I arranged the fried fish chunks in a baking dish and covered each with a slice of organic lemon, peel included. Then I spooned on top the onion/raisin mixture and baked the dish in an oven on about 170°C, some 10-15 minutes, just until the lemons shrink and the onion starts to caramelize. The raisins should not get burnt!

The meal was served with a dip of tamari soy sauce, water, lemon juice and wasabi powder, with some blanched greens and with steamed rice sprouts.