Category: Recipes


Apr
2019

Just a Simple Salad…

categories: Eating In, Food Allergy Tips, Gluten-Free Products, Recipes

Hello Courageous Gluten-Freedom Fighters!

Since coming to Europe, I’ve come to appreciate traditional European foods like sauer kraut (picked cabbage), potatoes, and… well, the rest of it doesn’t really apply to vegans and gluten-free people. 🙂 But let’s stick with the cabbage for now…

Cabbage, especially fermented red cabbage, is really healthful! In German, it’s called rot kohl and is ubiquitous in grocery stores! It’s one of the highest fiber foods you can eat while being very low in calories. In addition, red cabbage has a ton of post-biotics, which are amazing for gut health. It’s also high in Vitamin C and anti-oxidants! It’s easy to cook, keeps well, and has a mild flavour, so it kinda goes with everything! You can add it to just about any dish for some extra colour and nutrition!

So I thought I’d pop in today to share a beautiful-on-the-outside and beautiful-on-the-prep-side salad recipe that utilises red cabbage I’ve loved making for years!

Quick side note: Store-bought fermented red cabbage can be very high in sugar, so it’s better to make your own! I’m going to skip full fermentation and go with a semi-fermented recipe today.

A simple, filling red cabbage salad takes no time at all!
A simple, filling red cabbage salad takes no time at all!
Rot Kohl or Red Cabbage is super high in fiber and anti-oxidants!
Rot Kohl or Red Cabbage is super high in fiber and anti-oxidants!

Ingredients

  • Half a medium-sized head of red cabbage, cut finely. The thicker insides can be cooked or tossed, depending on your tastes. I eat them…
  • 2 tablespoons of organic apple cider vinegar (and some additional to boil)
  • 2 tablespoons of maple syrup (organic, Grade C)
  • 2 teaspoons of salt
  • 2 pinches of organic pumpkin seeds (or any seed, but pumpkin seeds give a nice colour contrast)
  • 1 pinch of cumin seeds (optional)
  • 1 tablespoon of hemp oil, to drizzle on top

Method

1. Put the cut red cabbage in a small pot together with a splash of apple cider vinegar and boil until the cabbage is somewhat soft. You can save the water for soups – all healthful stuff in there!

2. Drain the cabbage, and add the 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, maple syrup and salt. Mix! You’ll see a glorious colour!

3. Add the pumpkin seeds and the cumin.

4. Voila! Done! Drizzle with uber-healthful organic hemp oil.

Peace,

Daisy

 


Mar
2019

Cooking Invention Week: Crumble Bumbles! (7/7)

categories: Eating In, Recipes, Uncategorized

Gosh, what’s the point of cooking (or eating?!) if one never gets to dessert? Keine Ahnung (“no idea”) as they say in these German parts! Hello my beloved Gluten-Free peoples, Today’s recipe can be adapted to just about any fruit: perennial, tropical, whatevers! The secret is in the crumble. Everything tastes good with a little crunchy oatmeal! It’s super healthy (no sugar, no yuck!) and vegan. An all-round win!

A juicy cherry crumble to demonstrate this delicious Adapt-a-Recipe process...
A juicy cherry crumble to demonstrate this delicious Adapt-a-Recipe process…
A cherry version... Mmmmm...
Mmmmm… a spoonful of heaven…
A version with strawberries!
A version with strawberries!
A crunchy yet healthy topping...
A crunchy yet healthy topping…

Ingredients

  • 2 cups gluten-free oats (ideally not the processed kind or the quick-cooking kind – super important that it is certified gluten-free – as you know, oats milling has a high probability of cross-contamination with wheat milling)
  • 1/2 cup EVOO (you know it, extra virgin olive oil)
  • 1/2 cup of cashew milk or water
  • 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla powder
  • 1 teaspoon (or more! pile it on, baby!) of cinnamon powder (I even throw bits of cinna-stick in there)
  • A dash of grated nutmeg
  • 1/4 cup of maple syrup (Grade C only please – also optional!)
  • Any bakeable fruit of your liking. In this recipe, I used one over-ripe banana and 2 cups of frozen cherries. You may opt for pineapples, berries, mangoes, apples, oranges, kiwis, pears… honestly, whatever you have lying around that needs to be used up. Frozen or fresh works just as well. It doesn’t need to be in perfect condition either!
  • Topping: roasted nuts and cranberries, soy yoghurt
  • Also good with: vegan ice-cream
Close-up of the crumbly topping... you don't have to use a lot of oil!
Close-up of the crumbly topping… you don’t have to use a lot of oil!

Method

1. Lay the fruits of crumble at the bottom of a baking dish. I find small square ones work well for this recipe.

2. In a medium mixing bowl, add all the other ingredients. Start with the dry (oatmeal, vanilla, cinnamon) and then add the wet.

3. The mixture should form little clumps. Don’t mash them too well… just kind of sprinkle them on top of the fruit. Crumbles are often made the same way with castor sugar and room temperature butter. The mixture will form clumpy oatmeal lumps that you just sprinkle over the fruits, trying to cover as much of it as possible (so the fruit doesn’t burn). In this recipe, you won’t quite have the buttery crunchiness of a butter-containing granola, but you will have something just as delicious and way more healthy! If you don’t want to use a lot of oil, you can substitute even more (or all!) of the oil for water or nut milk. It will form a softer texture, not unlike cooked oatmeal.

4. Bake at 180 degrees Celcius for 15 minutes. Voila! Done! 🙂 Serve with a scoop of vegan yoghurt or sorbet or ice cream.

A side view of the stacked crumbly goodness...
A side view of the stacked crumbly goodness…

That’s it for Cooking Invention Week (err… Month!) 2019! Now go out there and experiment… make your own recipes and share them below if you’d like. 🙂

Peace,

Daisy