Tag Archives: orange

dressings, raw, salads

The Solar Salad

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This salad came up after googling for a new dressing and feeling inspired by the apricot, ginger orange one. It turned out so deliciously orange that my hands unconsciously started weaving around the colors of the Sun: more orange, more red and yellow.

This is how I started peeling carrots and squash, adding some beautiful local tomatoes, cauliflower rice, red peppers and sweet corn. I balanced everything with fresh lettuce leaves and sprinkled sesame and hemp seeds.
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If you want to save the looks of this salad, keep some carrot slices away from the dressing and add it right before serving (something that I haven’t done here 🙂 Same for the lettuce! Everything gets super juicy with the apricots

list of ingredients

  • carrot & squash tagliatelle
  • cauliflower rice
  • tomatoes
  • red peppers
  • sweet corn
  • olive oil
  • orange juice
  • apricots
  • fresh ginger
  • seeds (hemp, sesame, sunflower, etc)
deserts, raw, spreads/creams/patés

10 minutes Deserts

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When it comes to raw sweets, things can be either superfancy or superfast. It’s up to you. So unless you dream of a three layered cake that needs to stay in the freezer for a while, have a look at these deserts ideas:

– cashews are the best: they’re fat&creamy and need no more than 4hrs to soak. in the photo above they stand as the base for a cinnamon cacao desert (with star fruit on top)

– dates too! i love dates not only for their perfect sweetness, but also because of their texture – they give just about the right firmness to the composition

P1010426here i used cashews + dates + frozen berries + hibiscus & fruit tea + grated coconut + orange peel

– in case you don’t have any of these two, you can improvise with oats or other grains (it won’t be raw though). just soak them for a bit, then add honey/dried fruits, tahina, grated coconut and of course, your favorite flavors. drop any high expectations about the looks – it’s basically porridge style

IMG_8656list of ingredients

  • cashews/ any nuts
  • dates / any dried fruits
  • grated coconut (also coconut cream)
  • flavors: cinnamon, cacao, orange, etc

plan B

  • oats/ bulgur/ quinoa/ etc
  • tahina
  • honey
  • flavors

optional

  • bananas
  • dried fruits
  • sesame/ sunflower seeds
deserts, drinks, raw

Energy Drink

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There’s one drink that can make your mornings resemble the kind of treat you’d get in a fancy cafe. Except it doesn’t have any caffeine or milk. Yet everybody flips out as if they were drinking cappuccino or milkshake. I think that’s why I’ve ended up calling it energy drink.

To begin with, you have to prepare the nut milk – it can be made from almonds, walnuts, cashews and so on. Use sesame seeds as one third of the whole nut quantity, so you can add up to the calcium intake for the day. After soaking the nuts, rinse them well and drop them into the blender with fresh water. When they start turning into a watery cream, strain it by pouring the entire composition through a nut milk bag. If necessary, fold in more water.  You’ll be left with the milk and the leftover pulp, suitable to use in further deserts. Why not prepare 1-1,5l of nut milk, store it in the fridge and have it at your disposal over the next few days?

Once you get the milk done, start adding into the blender one or more of the following ingredients:

  • bananas
  • dates/ raisins/ figs or honey
  • coconut cream
  • rose water / orange blossom water
  • fruits tea or masala chai
  • carob / cacao
  • ground cinnamon / vanilla/ cloves, etc
  • any kind of berries (fresh or frozen) – in this case better not mix it with banana or dried fruits
  • ground flax or hemp seeds

You’ll get a pretty thick consistency, but you can always dilute it to your taste.

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With this kind of quantity you’ll enjoy full energy until lunchtime or even later!

deserts, raw

Energy Balls

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There’s one great thing about this desert: you can make it from whatever comes handy. All you need to have is some presoaked nuts and dried fruits, the rest is just improvisation!

I gathered some of my favorite ingredients along with a few tips of how to mix it:

– if you are in a bit of a rush and you don’t have any  presoaked nuts, go for those that require less hydrating time (cashews – 4h; sunflower seeds – 2-3h) instead of the ‘time consuming’ ones (almonds or walnuts – roughly 8h)

– if you’ve just made nut milk, you can use the leftover pulp

– extra fat is not necessary, but welcomed; especially when you’re using just the pulp (which is already fat depleted) instead of the whole nuts. go for a bit of coconut oil, cream or butter or, if you fancy chocolate, cacao butter. even tahini works out pretty well.

– dates or figs are the best to go with, but you can also use raisins, dried cranberries or plums. don’t forget to take out the pits 🙂 soak them for half an hour and strain;  if you have a high power food processor, you might not need to do this, but consider rinsing simply to have them safe and hygienic

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– mix these two base ingredients in the food processor – you should have more nuts than dried fruits or else the composition will turn out too sweet

– grated coconut is necessary as you’ll need something to eat up all the water from the soaked ingredients. otherwise the composition will be too sloppy and you won’t be able to mold it into balls. alternatively, you can use psyllium husks, a good source of dietary fiber which helps in providing a good transit, or plain oats

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– now you have to decide on the flavor: you can have choco mint balls or lemony balls, rose water balls or cardamom cinnamon balls, black or white, pink or orange, and so on. just use your imagination!

– always take into consideration that whatever ingredient you might add, the final texture should be doughy enough for you to shape the balls.

– you can make it crunchy by rolling the energy balls over a combination of grated coconut and sesame or poppy seeds. moreover, you can save some roasted nuts and add them either into the mixture or on the surface

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list of ingredients

1. base

  • presoaked walnuts/ cashews/ almonds/ sunflower seeds, etc
  • slightly soaked dates/ figs/ raisins/ plums/ cranberries, etc
  • coconut oil, butter or cream/ cacao butter/ tahini, etc

2. texture

  • grated coconut, psyllium husks, oats
  • poppy/ sesame seeds or roasted nuts

3. flavor

  • cacao powder/ carob
  • grated lemon/ orange peel
  • rose/ orange blossom water
  • ground cardamom/ cinnamon/ nutmeg, etc

 

raw, salads

Seasoned Lentils & Carrot Salad

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This salad is perfect when you expect more-than-just-veggies in your healthy bowl. Power to the carbs!

The main trick is not to overboil the green lentils as you would do it in a cooked dish. Test them with a fork – if they get easily squashed after being put off the fire, you’d better turn it into a soup 🙂 or try them: they shouldn’t taste like raw beans, but still keep a firm ‘al dente’ texture.

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Until the lentils get cold, you can prepare the dressing by mixing in a bowl cold pressed sunflower oil, soya sauce, lemon, grated ginger and thyme. If you love spices as much as I do, then this is the time to add some cardamom or cinnamon powder and some raisins.

The only thing left to do is to bring all ingredients together in your salad bowl. I usually use more carrots than lentils, but it goes different with each taste. I also prefer adding the onions at the very end so they don’t become too dominant.

If you’re not having the salad right away, don’t forget to check before serving how much dressing it still has – both lentils and carrots are great ‘suckers’. And to sprinkle with grated orange peel and sesame seeds!

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list of ingredients

  • green lentils – soaked overnight & lightly boiled
  • carrots
  • grated ginger
  • lemon juice
  • soya sauce
  • cold pressed sunflower oil
  • thyme (dry or fresh)
  • red or green onions
  • optional: cardamom, cinnamon, grated orange peel, raisins (or similar dried fruits), sesame seeds, sunflower sprouts

 

 

dressings, raw

Summer Salad

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IMG_8497Summer is the best season for tomatoes. Actually, the only one! I’ve always preferred to avoid the out of season tomatoes, as I never know what kind of fake substitutes I’ll get in the supermarkets. I wait instead for the rich tasty ones of august and the crooked sunburnt ones of late september (grown directly in the fields). So delicious!

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I usually chop it directly into any kind of salad, but I do enjoy a lot to prepare a tomato based dressing – some might call it a soup 🙂 I mix it in the blender with some of the following: olive oil, mustard, tahina, garlic, fresh basil, thyme or melissa. You can even incorporate hydrated nuts (sunflower seeds, walnuts, almonds, etc). The result is a rich dense dressing ready to be poured over a fresh greens salad or to be scooped with cucumber, squash or carrot sticks.

 

 

 

Here the beet root surprised me with its heart shaped stems 🙂

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You can add zatar or grated orange peel into the greens salad for an even more fresh taste.

 

list of ingredients

  • ‘real’ tomatoes
  • olive oil
  • mustard / tahina
  • fresh basil, thyme or melissa
  • nuts (sunflower, walnut, almonds, etc) – previously soaked overnight