Cauliflower with creamy almond-dill sauce

Being macro I sometimes miss rich creamy white sauces…but there´s no reason to be sad, because you can quite easily make a sauce that comes pretty close, using almond flour and non-dairy milk 🙂

First shortly sautee minced garlic on a tiny bit of olive oil, then add finely diced onion, and when the onion softens, add finely cut leek. Each time accompany the vegetable with a few grains of sea salt to release more liquid and sweetness. Mix in approximately 6 heaping tbsp of almond flour and then gradually pour in one litre of non-dairy milk (I had rice milk). Stir well (preferably with a whisk) to avoid lumps. Mix in a teaspoon (or more) of diluted white miso and bring the liquid to a boil. Cook uncovered on a moderate flame, stirring every now and then, until a substantial part of the liquid evaporates and you get a preferred consistency of the sauce. Season with ume plum vinegar and/or salt as needed (the sauce can be on the sweet side because of the condensed milk, but I actually liked that), you can also add some cracked black pepper. Towards the end mix in chopped fresh dill – I used a lot to get an intense flavour reminding me of the traditional Czech creamy dill sauce 😀

I served the sauce over blanched cauliflower and with red rice and gomasio.

31.10.

The nice yellow soup in the picture is pumpkin soup – cooked up hokkaido pumpkin, blended in a blender with added shiro miso (white, shortly fermented miso) and some ginger juice to taste – I personally think pumpkin soup just needs ginger in it! 😀

For grain I had brown calasparra rice mixed with red thai cargo rice and quinoa – all pressure cooked togethe for 45 minutes, served with a sprinkle of gomasio. I got a bit addicted to mixing different grains together, makes cooking much more interesting. But I must admit that I am not so fond of pressure cooking the quinoa with the rest – normally I cook quinoa without pressure for just about 15 minutes, a longer cooking time makes it too slimy and tasteless 😦

I sauteed pointed cabbage with green beans together with some mirin and ume plum vinegar – pointed cabbage rules!! So tender, compared to round cabbage.

And the beans are black hokkaido beans – first rubbed in a wet kitchen towel (instead of washing, so that their skin doesn´t “fly off” during roasting), then dry roasted for a few minutes until their skin cracks and becomes a bit golden, then pressure cooked with a double amount of water, for 45 minutes. When they´re done I added some kuzu to their leftover cooking water to make a sort of thick sauce (and a nice glaze on the beans), tamari (instead of salt) and rice malt – lovely combination!

11.10.

Yesterday night I remembered to soak my grain, as it induces a germination process, and the result is even more nutrients in your grain! Plus reduced cooking time, yay! So I soaked a mix of the dutch brown “zilvervliesrijst” with red thai cargo rice, beautiful colours when you put those together…

We had the grain with a smoked mackerel with a black pepper coating (courtesy of the Albert Heijn supermarket! :-D), it was quite tasty and MSC quality (sustainable fishery), but next time I´d prefer non-smoked fish, I like the fresh version of fish better…

I also made nishime from daikon, carrot and onion (see one of my previous posts for how to make nishime), seasoned with tamari. I quickly blanched the rapini and mizuna – so far the best way how to prepare them, better than steaming or eating them raw as I did before. You just bring a little pot of water with a grain of salt (or two, or three…)to boil, place the greens inside, turn off immediately, let sit for a minute and take the greens out, simple! And I made a few chunks of lightly fermented cucumber – just sprinkle some salt over the chunks, let sit for a while and then rinse the salt off. It does wonders to the taste of the cucumber and it makes it more digestable! Overall, a great dish today, I think.

Wok-wok

I really like wok dishes. And my boyfriend´s friend lent us a magnificent huge cast iron wok for our stay in Amsterdam, so I wok pretty often!

I like that you can wok almost any combination of vegetables – here I used (as far as I remember) rings of onion, chunks of carrots, snap peas, celery stalks, Chinese cabbage  and thin slices of red cabbage. I fry quickly on high heat using sesame oil and towards the end I add a bit of tamari, some water (otherwise the tamari might get stuck on the pan and burn a bit) and little pieces of fresh ginger. My partner wasn´t fond of the ginger – you definitely have to be careful with it! :-p

The wok veggies were served with red Thai cargo rice (first time I had it, and it´s tasty AND wholegrain!) with some roasted sesame seeds on top.