Guacamole rice with sauteed vegetables

Ever thought of mixing guacamole through rice? Maybe it´s a bit odd, but it sure is tasty and goes well together! Or at least I think so 😀

I made the guacamole by mashing together one avocado, a dash of cumin, salt and black pepper, tiny cubes of a small red onion and finely minced garlic (which I let infuse in a splash of ume plum vinegar for a while to make them more digestible), lemon juice and chopped cilantro leaves. You can either mash it all with a fork or using a blender to get a more smooth texture.

I stirred it into cooked leftover brown rice and made a side of water-sauteed veggies (as you can see, I used sliced leek and fresh green peas). I also served it with some lovely sundried black olives!

Summer rice salad

This rice salad can be served warm or cool to your liking. Feel free to play with the seasonings, vegetables…salad is playful by nature! 😀

I mixed together: cooked brown rice, little squares of nori sheets (you can cut stripes with scissors and then make small squares), shortly blanched vegetables (young summer cabbage, celery root, parsley root, red radish and kohlrabi), black pepper freshly crushed, mustard, hemp seeds, wild garlic, lemon and pumpkin seed oil.

 

Creamy white rice risotto with shiitake mushrooms

I love brown rice, I really do. It IS possible to make a brown rice risotto, there are recipes in macro cookbooks, and I even have one here on the blog. Nevertheless, there is something about a traditional creamy white rice risotto…..so I gave it a try and here it is, we loved it!!

Since I was making a vegan risotto, I didn´t use a chicken broth, which you can find in many recipes. Instead I prepared a stock using some leftover water from blanching vegetables, in which I soaked 4 shiitake mushrooms, for a couple of hours. The shiitakes give a wonderful earthy rich flavour to the broth as they soak. After taking out the shiitakes, I added one tablespoon of rice miso diluted in a little bit of water and I brought the broth to boil.

After completing this step I sauteed a large sliced onion on olive oil with a pinch of salt. When the onion softened I added one and a half cup of white risotto rice, stirred to coat with the oil and added a splash of mirin (that is instead of white wine which is required in several recipes). After the mirin soaked into the rice, I started adding the warm broth (you can leave the broth gently simmering with a lid off on your lowest flame to keep it warm during cooking). I added always only half a cup of the broth at a time and kept stirring continuously, watching for the liquid to soak in. You should not let the risotto get completely dry and without liquid, but also don´t add more liquid before the previous one is at least mostly absorbed. Risotto requires your constant attention and stirring, so don´t leave it just sitting there 😀 Don´t worry, the result is worth the effort!!

Meanwhile (or before you start making the rice) sautee your soaked and thinly sliced shiitake mushrooms in some olive oil until they become very fragrant and shrink considerably, they can almost start caramelizing. Set them aside, it´s ok if they cool down.

I put six cups of broth into my risotto (different recipes call for different ratios of rice and broth). The point is: the rice should get soft, but not overcooked, it should still have a bite, while being very creamy. This should take about half an hour. At the end I mixed in the sauteed mushrooms, some nutritional yeast for extra cheesy flavour (totally optional) and some extra salt and pepper.

I served the risotto with black olives, fresh chopped parsley and some steamed savoy cabbage.

Poppy seed millet with sauteed brussel sprouts

Ever tried pairing poppy seeds and millet? Poppy seeds are a big thing in this country (we used to be pretty famous for their production), but they´re mostly used as a sugary filling in all kinds of baked goods or as a sprinkle on top of savoury buns and bread rolls. In Czech macro desserts they are often used paired with millet and stewed fruit or some other sweet stuff. This time I wanted to mix them with millet just to make a usual grain sidedish and I must say I like it even though it might need some getting used to! 😀 The poppy seeds do lend a very distinct flavour, which I happen to love..

I mixed millet and poppy seeds in a 1:1 ratio and just boiled them together in a pot of water with a pinch of salt (grain to water was 1:3), for about 20-30 minutes.

As a vegetable dish I first blanched brussel sprouts halves – very shortly, maybe 30 seconds, just until they got bright green. Then I transferred them onto a pan with heated oil and sauteed them, stirring often and with the addition of some black Indian vulcanic salt, until they got a bit of a golden surface. I seasoned them with freshly cracked black pepper. I also blanched a few large chunks of daikon, longer than the sprouts, to bring out the daikon´s sweetness. Delightful simple dish 🙂

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.

Fish flavoured millet croquettes

This is another brilliant recipe from the Czech cookbook from Dagmar Lužná.  I made some small adjustments only. It´s pretty much a usual deep-fried millet croquette, yet the subtle fish flavour coming from the bonito flakes gives it a special exotic touch. I didn´t see bonito flakes (dried flakes of a fish from the tuna family) anywhere here in CZ, I am still using my old ones from Amsterdam. But perhaps they sell them in some Asian specialty shops, who knows…

First you need to cook millet (about 3/4 cup for two people is more than enough) for about half an hour in a 1: 2,5 ratio of grain to water, with a small pinch of salt. I always presoak my grain and then rinse it, but it is not necessary. Meanwhile you can finely grate one large or two smaller carrots, finely mince one smaller onion and one (or two) garlic cloves. When the cooked millet cools down, mix in the grated carrot and minced onion and garlic. Add 2  tablespoons of dried bonito flakes, 1/2 tsp of ground nutmeg and 1/2 tsp of salt. If the mixture is too thin, you could add some oat flakes to thicken it. Otherwise just make small round balls with your hands and roll them in breadcrumbs (I used glutenfree corn crumbs) and deep-fry your millet croquettes until golden and crispy. Spray them with some shoyu or tamari soy sauce immediately after taking them out of the oil ( I do that with a slotted spoon or special tempura strainer). Keeping soy sauce in a spray bottle is very very handy 😀

I served the millet balls with some pickles and raw green daikon.

Miso risotto with mushrooms and celery root

I love to make creamy risotto-style rice. With brown rice it´s a bit difficult to make a real Italian risotto, which requires stirring in small amounts of liquid at a time, which means a lot of time spent standing above the pot…not such a task with quick cooking white rice, but quite a job when you´re using slow cooking short-grain brown rice! 😀 This is a bit of a compromise, but the flavour is very rich and surprisingly similar to an authentic risotto!

I pressure cooked my regular brown rice with water and rice milk, in a 1:1 ratio. After the pressure came down, I took the lid off, placed the pot again on a low flame and stirred in some rice miso diluted with a little bit of water and let the rice absorb the liquid while stirring with a wooden spoon, for maybe five minutes. The whole point is to get the rice creamy, that´s all…

While pressure cooking, I sauteed some sliced onion with a pinch of salt, on a bit of olive oil, and when it got translucent, I added chopped mushrooms and thin strips of celery root and proceeded to cook until all got soft and caramelized. I seasoned the vegetables with tamari soy sauce and caraway seeds. When the rice got creamy, I stirred in the veggies. The risotto was served with a side of freshly blanched curly (savoy) cabbage.

Glutenfree and yeastfree pizza dough that works!

This time I´m gonna do something I don´t normally do: just link to an awesome recipe from another blog. I really like Solveig´s glutenfree and vegan recipe blog, and I already tried out many of her entries, which usually turned out great. Long have I looked for a yummy glutenfree pizza dough which would not contain yeast either, and well, here it is! It´s even oilfree, beat that!

I followed it to a T except that I also added a teaspoon of salt and I didn´t use the nutritional yeast, which was listed as an optional ingredient anyway…

On top I spread some not-so-macro but traditional pizza ingredients: tomato puree, Italian herbs and black pepper, organic corn from a jar, green bell pepper, onion and fresh champignon mushrooms.

Here is the link.