Carrot and red beet stewed in apple juice

Who would have thought – mixing root vegetables and apple juice in one meal?! Well, don´t say yuck until you try it 😀

It´s very very easy – slice 2 big or 4 medium carrots and one smaller red beet into thicker diagonal slices. Put them inside a pot with a pinch of salt and about 3/4 cup of unfiltered organic apple juice. The veggies should be covered by the liquid, add some more water if needed. Cover pot with a lid, bring to boil and then simmer the veggies on a low flame until soft. Thicken the remaining juice with a tablespoon of kuzu or arrowroot starch diluted in a tiny bit of water, and cook for five more minutes.

I served the veggies with brown rice/ sweet rice mixture and some deep-fried kombu pieces (just dip the seaweed into a pot with deep-frying oil for a couple seconds until the kombu puffs up and “opens” like a flower 😀 ).

Middle Eastern Lentil Soup

First of all I have to say – sorry for the picture! It´s very hard to take pretty pictures of soup unless you have a good camera and good surroundings/lighting – I have none of that! 😀

Better move on to the recipe!

First sautee half of a bigger onion, chopped into half moons, on some olive oil, with a pinch of salt to bring out juices and sweetness. Then add cubed carrot (one bigger carrot should be enough for two people I am guessing) and sautee for a bit longer. Add half a teaspoon of ground coriander, half a teaspoon of ground cumin and some more salt, stir for a minute. Rinse half a cup of red lentils (I also first soak mine for a couple of hours and discard the soaking water) and add to the pot with vegetables. Cover with water and bring to a boil. Simmer the soup until the lentils are soft, usually red lentils totally desintegrate! 😀 Towards the end I added three cloves of garlic, pressed in  a garlic press, and simmered only shortly so that the garlic flavour is distinct, but if you like milder garlic flavour, add the garlic already at the beginning, use less of it or cook it longer at the end…  Blend the soup with an immersion blender or regular blender to get a creamy smooth consistency. Serve drizzled with a little bit of olive oil.

Very simple meal with mustard sauteed veggies

This meal is so simple that it might not even be worth mentioning, yet maybe somebody needs just that little bit of inspiration…

I grated three different root vegetables – celery root, carrot and parsley root, and sauteed them on some pumpkinseed oil, on a low flame for quite some time, towards the end adding tamari and a spoonful of organic mustard (the kind where apple cider vinegar is used).

On the side I blanched some cabbage and sprinkled it with ume plum vinegar. As a grain I had creamy teff.

Angela´s Carrot apple ginger soup

Here goes another lovely recipe from Angela of Oh she glows – the Carrot apple ginger soup!

I made about half the amount the recipe calls for, and made some slight changes, so I used:

1/2 tbsp olive oil

1 small onion, diced

half of a green garlic head (approximately 1 standard clove)

1 tbsp grated ginger

1 smaller apple, cut into cubes

300 g carrot, cut into cubes

2 cups water (instead of broth)

a pinch of nutmeg

sea salt and black pepper to taste

 

First I sauteed the diced onion on olive oil until it became golden, then I added grated ginger and minced garlic, sauteeing for a bit more, adding some water as needed. Then I tossed in cubes of apple and carrot, sauteeing on a low flame for a couple more minutes. I poured in two cups of water, covered the pot with a lid and simmered gently for about 20 minutes. I divided the soup in two halves and blended each half separarely in a blender until smooth (be careful, the blender must be just about half full, otherwise it will explode!). I thinned the soup with a bit of water (it was really thick!), added some salt, nutmeg and freshly cracked black pepper. The soup was like nothing I ever tasted, very creamy and carroty, with a subtle apple undertone. Next time I would use less ginger though, for me personally it was a bit overpowering 😀

 

 

 

Soba noodles with carrot-tofu sauce

Another supersimple sauce for your pasta is here, this time starring tofu and carrot!

It has exactly FOUR ingredients: tofu, carrot, ume plum vinegar and barley miso. First steam a chunk of tofu (about 50 g per person should suffice) and a small handful of carrot chunks in a steaming basket, about 20 minutes, or until the carrot gets soft enough to be easily prickled by a fork. Then transfer to blender, adding 1/2 tsp barley miso, about 2 tsp ume plum vinegar and warm water from the steaming (amount depends on desired consistency). Serve over noodles (mine were buckwheat noodles – soba) and garnish with cut up nori strips.

Carrot butter

This recipe comes from Kristina Turner´s “The self-healing cookbook”, which contains quite many awesome recipes, unfortunately not so many oil-free ones for my current diet 😀 This one has a bit of tahini, so it´s not completely oil-free, but it´s just one spoon 😉 And you can also definitely pass on the tahini!

My boyfriend recently succeeded in his sourdough project and created a wonderful homemade sourdough bread which was calling for some sort of spread. The carrot butter is very easy to make and more sweet than savoury.

Steam 3 or 4 cups of carrots cut into thick rounds of smaller chunks, for about 20-30 minutes until very tender. Then blend in a blender with about half a cup of water (I used water from the steaming, which had a bit of a carrot aroma) and a pinch of salt. Transfer to a pot, heat up, add 1 tablespoon of kuzu (diluted in two tablespoons of cold water), whisk vigorously to avoid lumps, and bring to boil. Simmer for a few minutes while stirring. For a more creamy consistency add one (or two) tablespoons of tahini. Store in a jar in the fridge.