Homemade almond milk

Who would have thought it´s so easy (and much cheaper) to make your own homemade almond milk to use in recipes! No more store-bought dairy-free milks for me, as long as I have a minute free to make this beverage. Of course, you do need to own a blender 😀

For this batch, which is roughly one liter of milk, I used half a cup of almonds (which I soaked overnight, I believe that is an essential step to get them well blended, besides enhancing the nutrient absorption), two cups of warm water, a pinch of salt and a pinch of vanilla powder, that´s all. I blended all this on high speed in my blender until there were no chunks left. You might need to stop at whiles so the blender can have some rest, but it shouldn´t take long. Then I took a clean cotton handkerchief (you could use any thin cloth), placed it in a fine sieve and strained the liquid, at the end squeezing the whole cloth to get the last drops out. The nut mash can be used later in baking, cooking etc.

For a more intense almond flavour or thicker consistency, just use more almonds and play with the ratios…

The milk stores well in a glass bottle in the frige for up to a week.

Hiziki seaweed with roasted walnuts and vegetables

Somehow I think not many people pair seaweed with nuts, but I must say that it´s one of my favourite ways to prepare seaweed dishes! It adds richness and crunchiness to this otherwise “clean” tasting vegetable, which can be a bit bland and/or fishy for some people 😀

I usually also sautee some vegetables on oil as a base – here I used my most common pair of onion and carrot and I also added in parsley stems (don´t  throw away those guys!). Then I tossed in the hiziki (first soaked for at least half an hour in water, then drained and rinsed), poured  in water to nearly cover the veggies and simmered it all for about 30-45 minutes under a lid on a low flame. Near the end I added a handful of roasted walnuts and seasoned the dish with some salt, shoyu soy sauce and apple cider vinegar.

I served the seaweed with rice pressure cooked with chestnuts (dried ones, so I first had to soak them overnight) and some plain black beans, cooked only with salt.

Kohlrabi sautee with mustard and Spicy sweet potato fries

Just a tiny inspirational post…

Coarsely grated giant kohlrabi sauteed together with sliced onion on some pumpkinseed oil, with a pinch of salt and mustard mixed in at the end

Sweet potato cut into fries, drizzled with oil, salt and cumin, baked in the oven until crispy, turning at times

Rice pressure cooked with amaranth and sprinkled with gomasio

Store-bought seasoned tempeh baked together with the fries

🙂

Baked vegetables with mediterranean herbs

Don´t you just love the smell of vegetables roasting in the oven after being infused with a marinade containing fragrant mediterranean herbs? I certainly adore that smell…

Here I cut up onion, pumpkin, carrot and red beet and marinated them for a couple hours in olive oil (just enough to coat), some sea salt and a generous amount of dried oregano, basil, thyme and rosemary. Then I baked them in the oven until they got cooked through and browned a bit, stirring at times to allow them to bake evenly.

I had also some lentils cooked with bayleaf and salt and the grain was a rice/amaranth mixture with nori flakes to top.

Carrot and onion with whole cumin seeds

This is really almost not worth posting, but it was droolworthy in its utter simplicity:

Brown rice

Green peas cooked until creamy with some salt and apple cider vinegar

Sliced caramelized onion, sauteed on oil and whole cumin seeds, then added carrot slices and sauteed some more

The whole cumin seeds add a wonderful fragrant touch I wouldn´t expect and it´s very different than ground cumin 🙂 Anyway, it´s one of my favourite spices!

Marinated tempeh and mustard “sandwiches”

Tempeh is great for two things: marinating it and frying it. I like to connect both. But you can do it in several ways and you can decide whether you first want to make your tempeh crispy and then marinade it, or first marinade it, and then fry it up… Well, this time I first lightly pan-fried  my tempeh slices in some oil until golden and then I let them sit for several hours in a bowl with a solution of water, tamari soy sauce and apple cider vinegar (the ratios were 2:1:1 – I used 50:25:25 ml to be exact). After a good soak, I took the slices out, made little “sandwiches” by connecting the tempeh slices using a thin layer or organic mustard, and then just heated them up for a few minutes under a lid on a pan on a low flame.

I made a sauerkraut sidedish by first sauteeing onion on oil with a pinch of salt and caraway seeds, then adding the sauerkraut and some water to nearly cover and letting it cook under a lid for maybe fifteen minutes. At the end I mixed through about a teaspoon of organic corn starch diluted in a splash of cold water and let it come to boil and thicken.

The two dishes were served with a rice/amaranth mixture with gomasio and some steamed carrot diagonals.

Parsnip french fries and buckwheat with cabbage

Missing potato french fries? Well, just make them from parsnip as I did, you´ll be surprised how similar the taste and texture are 🙂 I deep-fried mine until crispy and then gently sprinkled them with sea salt (something I don´t normally do, salt is better absorbed in the body when cooked into meals).

I had the fries with buckwheat which I cooked with some tamari soy sauce and oregano, for about 15 minutes in a double amount of water, under a lid and on a low flame. About five minutes before the end of the cooking time, I placed some cut up curly cabbage leaves on top of the grain so it can steam through.

I also had some raw green daikon to better digest the fried food.

One-pot rice and black bean dish

One-pot meals are my big love – so soothing, warming, easy to prepare, and so little to clean up afterwards! Oh and a great way to use up any leftovers and odd pieces of vegetables sitting for a long time in the fridge, not to forget that!

Here I tossed into one pot: leftover pressure cooked rice with chestnuts (I was using dried chestnuts, so they were first soaked overnight and then cooked with the rice the usual way), leftover cooked black beans, chunks of carrot and parsley root and hokkaido pumpkin. I seasoned the dish with some nutmeg and ground cumin, and probably some extra salt found its way there too…

Rice casserole with tofu cream cheese

Anybody missing a hearty casserole with creamy melted cheese on top? Well, try this one, it´s not exactly the same, but it is equally good, I dare say!

I had some cooked rice which I mixed with oil-sauteed leek, mushrooms and carrot slices. For the cheese I purchased a block of smoked tofu which I pureed in the blender with water, lemon juice, salt and black pepper, until I got the consistency of cream cheese. I spread the “cheese” on top of the rice/vegetable mixture, in a deep casserole dish, and baked in the oven for about 20 minutes until the “cheese” became light golden.