Wild salmon and vegetable salad

I´keep it short and just tell you what I mixed all together:

-canned wild salmon (please please do avoid farmed salmon contaminated with antibiotics, colouring agents and pesticides)

-rucola leaves

-blanched kohlrabi slices

-blanched chinese cabbage slices

-blanched diagonals of parsley root

-raw baby carrot slices

-chopped chives

-whole black olives

-fresh green peas

-raw fennel bulb, leaves and stems both, finely chopped

And a dressing of olive oil, salt and balsamico vinegar

Served with boiled sweet potatoes

Boiled vegetable salad with nori

This recipe is included more because I really like the look of it 😀 But otherwise it´s super simple and hardly worth posting, I guess 😀

Just cut up any veggies you´d like to eat in your meal into bite sized pieces, blanche them separately (or in groups with approximately the same blanching time, like I do) in a pot of slightly salted boiling water, assemble together in a bowl and season according to your tastes and needs.

I used: yellow string beans, leek, curly cabbage, young carrot, broccoli, daikon, kohlrabi, parsley root. Then I added fresh rucola and lettuce leaves, some chopped up green olives, a touch of olive oil and apple cider vinegar and a special addition – torn up pieces of half a nori sheet! 🙂 I like the accent nori gives to salads…

I served the salad with some leftover amaranth sprinkled with nori flakes and shiso leaf condiment…

Roasted cauliflower with thyme and garlic

Roasted cauliflower is something very simple which you absolutely don´t expect to come out so divine! It sounds really…boring. But trust me and give it a try, it´s not as plain as it sounds. Especially if you do what I did and toss the cauliflower florets with some olive oil to coat,  salt, 1 or 2 finely minced garlic cloves and a generous sprinkle of dried thyme, oregano and basil, and let it sit in a bowl in the fridge overnight (or 24 hours, like in my case… :-D). The smell is quite overpowering, but worth the final effect. Roast the cauliflower on a baking tray lined with baking paper (or a silicone mat), for about half an hour on 180°C, turning the florets mid-way.

Served with quinoa mixed with chopped fresh parsley leaves and gomasio, and a salad of shredded leaf lettuce, iceberg lettuce and diced carrot, with a simple dressing of olive oil and ume plum vinegar.

Grain&Tempeh Casserole and a Salad

One of my last ovendishes…before the heat struck! 😀 Now I truly don´t bake ANYTHING!!

This one was made by combining cooked leftover rice and hato mugi mixture with some sauteed veggies and pan-fried tempeh. For the veggies water or oil-sautee  some cut up leek, green beans, celery stalk and kohlrabi (I used stems), just very shortly, so they are not raw, and season with tamari, thyme and black pepper. Mix with raw grated carrot. Pan-fry tempeh in a moderate amount of oil until golden and spray lightly with some tamari. Mix all ingredients through, move into a baking form and bake on about 200 °C until crispy.

Casseroles go well with salads, which bring more light uplifting energy – mine is made from lollo rosso lettuce, chinese cabbage and cucumber, with added olives, roasted pumpkin seeds and a vinaigrette of 2 tsp apple cider vinegar, 2 tsp flaxseed oil, a pinch of salt and half a clove of finely minced garlic.

Mediterranean bulghur with broccoli and cauliflower

Lately I´m quite in love with bulghur – it´s very quick cooking, has a very pleasant texture and it seems easy on digestion, even though it´s gluten, probably because it´s sprouted before it´s dried.

I just cook it for 15-20 minutes in a double amount of water, with a pinch of salt.

In a separate pot I heated 2 tsp of olive oil and sauteed minced garlic ( 1 or 2 cloves – I´m doing more garlic right now) for maybe 2 minutes, then added fresh cracked pepper and a blend of Italian herbs (oregano, basil, rosemary, thyme… any will do) and then a bunch of florets of cauliflower and broccoli. I added some water (maybe 2 cm), covered the pot with a lid and let simmer for some 15 minutes or so. When the veggies got soft, I mixed them into the cooked bulghur.

Served with a lettuce and rucola salad with a dressing of 2 tsp flaxseed oil, 2 tsp apple cider vinegar, a small pinch of salt and finely chopped fresh dill. And for the man I made a little side of seitan cooked under a lid with some maple syrup, shoyu, mirin and lemon juice 🙂

Boiled salad with pumpkinseed dressing

This time I tried a recipe out of my most favourite macro book – Jessica Porter´s Hip Chick´s Guide to Macrobiotics. This boiled salad uses a slightly different method than the other boiled salad I posted about – you don´t really blanche the veggies, you just dip them into boiling water and immediately turn off the gas, leaving them in the water until they get a bit more bright, about one or two minutes. They stay very crunchy and taste almost like raw (well, except for the leafy greens perhaps, which get wilted very fast). This is a positive feature of this salad, and at the same time it can be a disadvantage if you have more troubled digestion, as I do – I think I prefer a “real” boiled salad, where the veggies actually boil for a couple of minutes. But I´m sure this will be great once the weather is hot and once my digestion improves so that I can process more raw food 😀

I “boiled” red radishes, curly cabbage, pointed cabbage, spring onion, parsnips, parsley root, green and yellow kohlrabi, green beans, and also (very briefly) some rucola, dandelion greens and corn salad greens. I topped the salad with a dressing coming from the same book. It doesn´t look too pretty, but it tastes very nice! Just roast half a cup of pumpkin seeds (which you washed and drained beforehand) until they start popping and turning more brown, then either process them in a blender, or (as I did) grind them in a suribachi until they are mostly crushed (depends what consistency you are aiming for). Then add half a tablespoon of umepaste and a bit of water, to your liking, mine came out quite chunky.

More sour spring meals

I´d like to share some more spring/summer meals from Wieke´s cookbook that I tested a couple of days ago 😀

One of them is Daikon takuan lemon salad: in a small pot mix together daikon cut into matchsticks (about 10 cm chunk) with a tablespoon of mirin and a tablespoon of lemon juice and a pinch of salt, simmer for a few minutes under a lid, stirring from time to time. When it´s done (and still a bit crispy), mix with 5 cm of takuan pickle cut into thin slices. Takuan is a daikon radish pickled for a long time in rice bran (nuka), a very nourishing type of pickle.

The second dish is very similar – put a tablespoon of mirin, a tablespoon of water and a tablespoon of lemon juice into a small pot. Then place a couple of thin slices of hokkaido pumpkin on the bottom of the pot so that all the slices are in contact with the liquid, sprinkle lightly with a pinch of salt. Simmer under a lid without stirring, but keep watching that the slices don´t burn – use a low flame. You can garnish the meal with toasted sesame seeds.

I had these refreshing sour vegetable meals with nishime and a brown rice/sweet rice mixture.

Quinoa pilaf with carrot-apple-sauerkraut salad

Pilaf is something I make when I want a light, easy, quick, one-pot meal. I like to also make it from lighter quick-cooking grains such as quinoa.

Sautee onion with salt on a bit of water until translucent and then add matchsticks of carrot, sautee for a bit more. Add thoroughly washed and drained quinoa and water (for one cup of grain use two cups of water), cook for 15-30 minutes on a low flame under a lid until water is absorbed. At the end mix in chopped fresh parsley, wild garlic, spring onion and a teaspoon (or more) of ume plum vinegar.

The salad is also very simple: mix equal amounts of grated sour apple, grated carrot (both were finely grated) and sauerkraut, mix well.