Morning apple-flavoured millet

This is not really a recipe, just a little breakfast idea 😉

I had some organic unfiltered apple-apricot juice on hand, but you could definitely use just plain apple juice. I usually make my morning millet porridge just with water in a 1:3 ratio, but now I switched the water for above mentioned juice, keeping the same ratio. It was incredibly sweet and delicious, more a dessert than a breakfast porridge! 😀 And so creamy….

I topped the grain with toasted chopped almonds!

 

Polenta “potato salad”

This recipe comes from one of my favourite Czech macro cookbooks from Dagmar Lužná (Makrobiotické nedělní vaření, for those who read Czech :-D). It´s superyummy!! Just make sure that your polenta is not too thin, otherwise it will be a mess (mine kinda was :-D).

First boil polenta (cornmeal) flour with water in a 1:2,5 ratio. When I make it, I pour the polenta flour into cold water with a pinch of salt and then bring it slowly to boil and cook for at least half an hour, on a very low flame and under a heavy lid, no stirring. When the polenta is cooked, pour it into a large shallow baking dish and let cool, preferably in the fridge, once it´s not too hot amymore. The polenta must be stiff.

In the cookbook the next step is cutting up the polenta into cubes and frying them in some oil until crispy. I didn´t want to use too much fat in the salad, so I just made the cubes, brushed them lightly with oil and baked them in the oven on a tray until they got a bit of a crust. Baking the polenta cubes might make them soft again though, so I think next time I will just omit this step altogether – this needs still some experimenting! :-p

I used a bit different veggies than in the original recipe: I had celery root, parsley root, carrot and broccoli stem, which I steamed whole, until half-soft (they must not get mushy!) and then cut them into smaller cubes. I also diced an onion and boiled it for a couple of minutes in a mixture of 1 1/2 tbsp of apple cider vinegar, 1 1/2 tbsp of rice malt, a pinch of salt and enough water to cover the onion. Then I strained the liquid and added the onions into a big bowl where I placed the cut up polenta and vegetables. I mixed everything well with tofu mayo (add as much as you like, I like quite a good amount in “potato salad”!). The dish can be eaten chilled or room temperature depending on your liking and digestive system 😀

I served the salad with water-sauteed cabbage, broccoli and leek.

Festive birthday meal

A month ago we celebrated my boyfriend´s birthday, of course, also by having a special macro dinner! 🙂 So here goes another boyfriend approved menu…

For grain we had rice with sweet rice mixture, sprinkled with shiso powder.

I made deep-fried “chips” from very thinly sliced parsnip, fried until golden and crispy, which I used to garnish the rice. To digest the chips better, I grated some raw daikon and stirred in a bit of lemon juice and chopped spring onions.

The vegetable dish was leek, cabbage and Chinese cabbage, quick-sauteed on a small amount of water with a pinch of salt.

The main course (from a man´s perspective anyway :-D) was seitan tempura made by marinating chunks of seitan overnight in paprika powder, cumin, oregano, one tablespoon of shoyu and one tablespoon of mirin (cooking wine made from rice), then rolling them lightly in some wholewheat flour and deep-frying shortly so that the seitan doesn´t turn too dark. We dipped the tempura in natural sugarfree mustard, yummyyyy!

Polenta casserole with arame

Polenta is a very light summer-style dish if you prepare it just by cooking cornmeal in water on the stove. But you can also make polenta more winter-style if you bake it in a casserole dish. You can really play around with this versatile grain dish.

I first prepared standard polenta by cooking 1 cup cornmeal (or special polenta flour, but don´t use the instant one) with 3 cups of water and a pinch of salt. There are different ways to cook polenta, but I personally soak the flour and water overnight and the next day I just bring it slowly to boil and simmer on a low flame under a lid for about half an hour to 45 minutes, without any stirring or other interfering. Then  I let it rest with a flame off for 5-10 minutes, it also helps to unstick from the bottom of the pot.

While your polenta cooks, you can sautee veggies on some oil – I used sliced onion and leek, finely cut curly cabbage and finely diced carrot, with a pinch of salt of course to draw out the juices of the vegetables. I also added some arame seaweed which I soaked beforehand for about half an hour, discarding the soaking water. Season with more salt (the veggies will get mixed with polenta, so you need a stronger flavour), fresh or dried rosemary and some pressed garlic cloves.

When the polenta is cooked, stir in the vegetable/arame sautee and transfer content of the pot into a casserole dish and allow to cool.

Now – you can either pop the polenta into the oven to brown the surface a bit and make the polenta more warming (otherwise it has a more cooling overall effect) or you can just slice it up and eat as is (room temperature, might be nice on hot days), or you can even make slices and pan-fry them with some oil. That´s up to you! 😀

Soba noodles with curried pumpkin sauce and tempeh crumble

Aaaaah, my favourite soba noodles! I have them so seldom, because they are so expensive! 😀 While I believe that nothing compares to authentic Japanese soba ( buckwheat and wheat or pure 100% buckwheat noodles), here in the Czech Republic I choose to substitute them with the cheaper local buckwheat pasta. I´m actually happy we have such a great buckwheat-product brand, not every country is so lucky! But here I used my long-saved stack of real soba, bought during our stay in Slovenia..

I made a sauce of long cooked cubed hokkaido pumpkin and onions – nearly cover the cubes with water and boil on low flame until soft. I seasoned the sauce with black Indian vulcanic salt and a generous amount of curry powder. I blended the sauce in a blender for a perfectly creamy texture.

On a pan I sauteed on oil a bunch of green beans, cut into tiny pieces, along with crumbled up tempeh and a splash of shoyu soy sauce.

Layer the bean/tempeh mixture and the pumpkin curry sauce over the noodles 🙂