COntinuing with our Taco Week, here’s a quick and easy (and delicious) salsa recipe. You can really have a lot of fun with salsa, and can get highly experimental if you like. Almost anything tastes great in salsa. This one is fairly basic, so feel free to spruce it up with some of your favorite ingredients. Let us know in the comments section some of your favorite variations so you may inspire others!

Raw Salsa Recipe

• 4 med tomatoes, chopped
• 1 Tbsp. lemon juice
• 1/2 cup lightly packed fresh cilantro
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
• 2 scallions
• optional: fresh garlic, onion, chilis, cayenne, etc.

Pulse in food processor until “meaty” consistency is obtained. Set aside in a serving bowl for the taco dinner!

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You’re in for a treat with this recipe. Our Guest Raw Chef this week is Shivie Kaur, half of “The Cook and Butler” duo of TeamRaw. Wendi shot this video a few weeks back in San Francisco during Pure Jeevan’s recent cross-country tour! While there, Shivie and her partner Cemaaj created and served a delicious gourmet meal for Wendi and KDcat. The blog post from that visit was here. So, here’s Shivie sharing with you how to make an easy and delicious raw salad dressing!

Orange Asian Pear Ginger Salad Dressing

• 1/2 cup of orange juice
• flesh of 1/2 orange
• 1/4 cup raw cashews
• 1 asian pear
• 1 Tbsp. gresh ginger
• splash apple cider vinegar (optional)
• 1 Tbsp. agave nectar (or other raw sweetener)

Process in a high-speed blender until smooth and creamy.  Enjoy!

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Hi everyone. Did you miss me on Friday? Was your entire day absolutely hinging on evaluating the quality of the raw salad dressing recipe that you very rightly expected to see demonstrated right here? … and then I posted nothing at all! Well, missing one day isn’t so bad, really. I think it’s the first one I’ve missed since Wendi stepped away from the blog temporarily. Anyone want to guess what happened? … Yep, a nasty case of the flu took me down! 

O, my raw friends, I thought I was a goner Friday — thought for sure I had th’ deadly swine. But, being the resilient, nearly infallible raw foodie that I am, I totally kicked it’s porcine rear end, and am now supercharged and ready to rock and roll once again here on Pure Jeevan’s blog!

It occurs to me that I owe you another salad dressing recipe! After all, how can I claim to have featured an entire week of delicious 100% rawsome salad dressings when, in fact, I only featured four? 

Thinking ahead to a visit to family in St. Louis this coming week, I’m inspired to offer you something a little different. You see, we have an extremely tempermental member of the family who lives in St. Louis. She’s never liked me much. Quite often, in fact, our meetings turn off rather poorly, not infrequently involving actual bloodshed! (My blood, just for clarification.)

Lucy, you see, is a very troubled Siamese. Her raison d’être, if you will, seems to be “seek human flesh.” Now, my sister Jeanne will defend her cat to the bitter end — and I’ll admit that Lucy can be fun to play with if you have one of those cat-teaser toys — but man, Lucy has some real deep-seated anger issues and probably needs some kitty therapy.

But maybe not… Maybe if I came up with a recipe to pay homage to her Siamese heritage, she would change her opinion of me, and maybe not single out one of my hands to scratch or bite open! So, here’s number five in Pure Jeevan’s raw salad dressing series — and, in my opinion, the tastiest one I’ve created! Let’s hope Lucy approves!

I’m serious… That is the Best. Dressing. Ever! Give it a try and let me know how it turns out for you!! Here’s the recipe again:

Thai Coconut Curry Salad Dressing

• 1 young Thai coconut (flesh and water)
• 1/2 red sweet bell pepper
• 1/4 cup fresh basil
• 1/2 clove garlic (or more to taste)
• 1 Tbsp. lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp. curry powder
• 1 tsp. lemon grass
• cayenne pepper to taste
• salt to taste (1/2 tsp. plus)

Pulse in food processor until it’s got a salad-dressing consistency. (It’ll be rather watery because of all of the coconut water.) Pour liberally on your salad, garnishing with thin strips of sweet red pepper and chiffonaded basil. (To chiffonade, stack basil leaves, roll them tightly, and then cut across the roll to produce long thin strips of basil leaves! Of course, you could also just “chop” them. But this wouldn’t be as fun, nor would it sound half as cool, as chiffonading!)

Soooooo delicious!  I used a lot of cayenne, so our mouths were pleantly on fire afterward. I might, for this reason, also suggest that you have a small sweet dessert prepared for just after your salad.

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Isn’t it amazing how many different, stunningly delicious salad dressings there are in the world?! It’s mind-boggling! There could easily be an entire blog devoted to nothing but raw salad dressings — and I bet, in the right hands, such a blog could go on 5 days / week for literally years before truly exhausting the subject.

The world simply abounds with good recipe ideas — and “abundance” is really the mentality you need to embrace when you’re doing anything in the culinary world, raw or otherwise. The other side of the spectrum is the “scarcity” perspective, which is when you think, “Oh, I’d love to write a cookboook or create a recipe, but there are already millions of them out there and all of the great culinary creations have been done already.”

Well, that’s just crazy talk. Sure, there are millions of cookbooks (or uncook-books) out there. And there will be millions more! So, just get into your kitchen and start whipping things together. Don’t worry about whether anyone’s “done it before.”  I’m sure, for example, that others have come up with creamy garlic dressings before. But, instead of researching it, we decided to approach the topic fresh. We said, “How would we accomplish a creamy garlic dressing?” The following video shows the delicious result!

Here’s the final recipe:

Raw Creamy Garlic Salad Dressing

(serves 2)

• 1/3 cup Brazil nuts
• 2 good sized cloves of garlic
• 1 Tbsp. lemon juice
• 1/4+ cup water
• salt to taste

Process until creamy. Then add whole 1/2 tsp. peppercorns and process again until the peppercorns are well broken up.

Day 5 of raw salad dressing week is coming up tomorrow! What do you think… Should we repeat “raw salad dressing week” again sometime? Please let me know, as I’m not sure how excited most people get about salad dressing.  In the raw food world, we tend to get a little over-excited about things. Must be all of the high-energy we feel 24/7, eh?!

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Welcome to Day 3 of Raw Salad Dressing Week here on Pure Jeevan. As you’ll see, I “got a little creative” once again — and again got lucky! I’ll let you watch the video for the backstory on this one, but I’m happy to report that a nice, hearty, sweet, holiday-appropriate salad dressing was created. So, check out the video, and then I’ll make a few closing comments.

Not bad, eh?  Here’s the recipe:

Gogi-Spearmint Thanksgiving Dressing

• 1/4 cup gogi berry pulp
• 1/4 cup spearmint
• 3 honey dates
• 4 frozen strawberries
• 1/2 pound red grapes
• 1 tsp. lemon juice
• 1 Tbsp. ground cacao nibs
• 1/3 cup dried coconut
• 1/4 cup water

And now for the pièce de résistance…  While I liked it as is, Wendi said she’d probably add a pinch of salt to the recipe, as well as a pinch of cayenne. Both grand suggestions, I think. So, go fot it.

Also, in addition to my suggestion of adding some bing cherries to the final salad, we were also thinking that adding some walnuts to the salad would also go spectacularly with this rather “fall-oriented” dressing.

So, there you have Day 3. Tune back tomorrow for the thrilling continuation of Raw Salad Dressing Week! Thanks to everyone who has sent in suggestions. I wish I could get to them all.

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Welcome to Day 2 of Pure Jeevan’s “Salad Dressing Week”!  Today we take a trip across the Pacific to the land of the “Rawsing Sun.”  I’ve yet to meet any raw vegans from Japan, but would be highly interested in hearing about what it’s like to be raw vegan there. 

Today’s video not only shows a tasty salad dressing recipe, but it’s really a testament to bold improvisation in your raw kitchen. In order to create something new, you really have to be willing to experiment. Sometimes you simply fail!  But, more often than not, a recipe that you have not quite perfected just needs some tweaking.

So, this video gives you some insight into that process. You’ll see how this dressing evolved from an admittedly mediocre idea to a fairly tantalizing realization (thanks to some super suggestions from Wendi while filming).

Here’s the video, followed by the final recipe, below:

Rawsing Sun Carrot Ginger Dressing

• 3 small carrots
• 1/2 smll cuke
• 1.25 inch piece ginger
• 2″ piece of a vanilla bean
• 2 honey dates, pitted
• 1 Tbsp. lemon juice
• 1/4 cup sesame seeds
• 1.5 Tbsp. Nama shoyu
• 3/4 cup water
• 1 sm. clove garlic
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. oil
• cayenne pepper to taste

Hmmm, I wonder what tomorrow’s raw salad dressing recipe will be!!

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Welcome to Day One of “Dressings Week” here on Pure Jeevan. After finding out that KDcat took it upon herself to film a segment of “Makin’ It Monday, Guest Raw Chef Edition,” I decided that we should probably spend an entire *week* focusing on salad dressings.

Let’s face it; raw foodists really do eat a LOT of salads! I suspect that, especially early on in most people’s raw journey, the dressing is critical. For example, while transitioning, I *always* needed a salad dressing — even if it was just vinegar and oil. Over time, I scaled my dressing preference down to just a little fresh lemon juice. And nowadays, I rarely use any kind of dressing at all. But back then, a nice gourmet dressing was a real treat — and hey, I still love nice salad dressings from time to time (again, usually as a special treat).

So, let’s take a look at KDcat’s culinary creation:

Orange Pepper Cilantro Dressing

• 1.5 yellow peppers
• 1 orange, peeled
• 1 handful fresh cilantro
• agave nectar (abt. 3 tsp.)
• cayenne pepper, to taste
• 1/2 lemon

Pulse all ingredients in a food processor until a thick dressing consistency is created. If desired, finish with a little Nama shoyu or some salt. Delicious!

[ Just wanted to note for any eagle-eyed viewers out there. The supplements you see in the background of KDcat's video are Fish Oil capsules. They're for our dog, Julia. ]

This should be a fun week. I think I’ll do videos each night, even though it’ll be tough to choose just four more salad dressings to highlight. I suspect we’ll have to make Salad Dressing Week an occasional feature, as the possibilities are limitless!  As always, we’d love to feature YOU on a Makin’ It Monday Guest Raw Chef Edition. For details on that, click here.

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In some wonderfully literary sense, there must be some kind of unique metaphor that could be constructed around the process by which cabbage turns to kimchi. Personal growth is not always easy, as any success technologist will surely tell you;  there’s a lot of doubt and oozing and off-gassing involved — and yet, the final product is surprisingly pleasing to the palate.

Yes, it’s time for us to update you on our first-ever kimchi experiment. If you want the short version:  I believe we have been successful! For those of you with a few more minutes, I’ll share some of the lurid details. Highlights of our experiment included:

Oozing. Apparently, all of the fermentation activity going on within a kimchi pot or jar calls for several inches of room at the top to accommodate bubbling and so forth. Our first mistake was to fill the jar too much — I think we left only an inch or two – as we soon noticed liquid oozing from the top. This is quite impressive, actually, as we were fermenting our veggies in an airtight container (the kind of jar with a lock-down lid). I would imagine that quite a bit of pressure had to build up to actually force liquid through that seal.  I wonder if having too tight of a lid could result in an explosive kimchi disaster? Anyone care to share any horror stories?

Anticipation.  Back in 1971, recording artist Carly Simon came out with an album entitled “Anticipation.” The title track was famously used as a kind of theme song by the Heinz ketchup company throughout the 1970s. You’d think that, being from Pittsburgh (home of the Heinz company), we’d know all about being patient. However, the process seemed to take much longer than we had … um … anticipated. Most likely, this related to the drop in temperatures here, lately. (I should note, of course, that our good friend Dave Sokulski has told us of kimchi recipes that take more than a decade. So, perhaps we have more to learn about being patient with cabbage.)

Off-gassing.  Upon opening the jar for the first time, we weren’t sure if we’d done something wrong. Is it just us, or is there a rather foul smell atop a freshly opened kimchi jar?  Honestly, I initially thought we’d dome something wrong. However, once the funky “old cabbage” smell dissipated, I noticed that it didn’t smell that bad any longer. So, we adopted our best Fear Factor attitudes and bravely went in for a taste — and it tasted pretty much like normal kimchi!

We’ve simply assumed that all of the above items are normal, valid kimchi observations. We’ve been eating the kimchi, and enjoying it here and there with various other foods. It tastes pretty good, although not quite perfect in terms of the amounts of spices we used. I should note that, as far as I can tell, I’m actually still alive and typing this (so, nothing disastrous has happened to us, nor have we become ill in the slightest). So, I can only assume that what we have produced is safe and “okay.” However, I’m not yet an expert, so can’t officially recommend that you follow what we did the other day in the video. (If anyone cares to chime in with advice, please don’t hesitate to comment!).

*      *      *

We did, by the way, absolutely stumble across the most delicious recipe ever as a result of our kimchi experimentation! We’ll be sharing that soon with the Pure Jeevan family via email. (If you’re already signed up with us, you know that we email out occasional recipes! If not, definitely hit that link, as you won’t want to miss this unusual yet super-tasty recipe.)

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Back when we ate cooked foods (especially way back when our menu was not exclusively vegan), parmesan cheese seemed to be a staple of our existence (especially for Jim). We’d sprinkle it liberally on pasta dishes, salads, soups, and more.

As is typical for many raw foodies, you often realize after going raw that it was not always necessarily the food itself that you craved (no matter what it was); often it was simply the texture, the spices, the various flavors and tastes, etc. And that realization leads raw chefs to wonder whether the same experience can be recreated using only raw ingredients.

The good news for parmesan cheese lovers is that, yes, you can pretty much make your own raw vegan parmesan cheese that tastes comparable to store-bought traditional cheese. Now, it may not taste and “behave” the same as freshly grated parmesan (you know, the kind that cost about $15/pound from the deli section). But, it definitely tastes and behaves exactly the same as that wonderful “pizza shop” parmesan.

You know the kind we mean, right?  Here in the northeastern U.S., many pizza restaurants have those little cheese shakers right there on the counter. Or, if you’ve ever bought the canned parmesan cheeses, such as the Kraft brand, that’s what we mean.

Anyway, the recipe is so ridiculously simple, you won’t believe it:

>> Blend up some raw Brazil nuts in your Vitamix. <<

Yep, that’s about it!  That’s all that’s pictured above!  You can also spice things up a little bit for a fancier blend and a more authentic parmesan taste. To do this, just add some garlic powder, salt, and some Italian seasoning as you blend it.

Either way, be sure to use a dry container when you begin. Also, keep in mind that you may have to stop the Vitamix every so often and insert a spatula to scrape the nuts from the sides during the process.  It’ll usually “cake up” in there as it’s going. But, it’s easily removed with your spatula and naturally returns to a crumbly parmesan consistency. 

Brazil Nut Nutrition

One of the amazing things about this is that, unlike real parmesan cheese, this topping is actually VERY healthy!  Here’s a snippet from the Wiki page on Brazils:

Brazil nuts are 18% protein, 13% carbohydrates, and 69% fat. The fat breakdown is roughly 25% saturated, 41% monounsaturated, and 34% polyunsaturated. The saturated content of Brazil nuts is among the highest of all nuts, surpassing macadamia nuts, which are primarily monounsaturated fat, and the nuts are pressed for their oil. Because of the resulting rich taste, Brazil nuts can often substitute for macadamia nuts or even coconut in recipes. Also due to their high polyunsaturated fat content, primarily omega-6, shelled Brazil nuts soon become rancid. [*Pure Jeevan note: So, store them in your refridgerator!]  … Nutritionally, Brazil nuts are a good source of magnesium and thiamine, and are perhaps the richest dietary source of selenium, containing as much as 1180% of the USRDA.

Sourcing Truly Raw Brazils

Sourcing truly raw Brazil nuts can be a little tricky. Our local co-op had Brazils, but we didn’t think they were truly raw. So, we began sourcing them online. You can find them at Natural Zing for about $9/pound on sale. See:

http://tinyurl.com/RawBrazil  (Incidentally, the text describing Brazil nuts over at Natural Zing is extremely interesting. There, you can read how Brazils are “one the few positive bottom-line economic examples where the density of a renewable natural resource other than timber is sufficient to justify the existence of large forested areas against unsustainable uses such as cattle ranching.”)

If you’re making a salad for your family, you can usually get enough parmesan out of just a small handful of Brazil nuts. Or, do as we did and blend up a half-cup or so and keep in the refridgerator for handy, quick access. Jim used this recently, btw, to sprinkle atop some delicious raw pizza that Wendi made. (We took pics, but didn’t post them yet!)

That’s it for today. Tune back in tomorrow for an update on our first-ever batch of kimchi!  (Secretly, we tasted it already. But, we’ll wait until tomorrow to reveal the results.)

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Today we welcome Leela Mata from the Peaceful Valley Ashram (www.LeelaMata.com) for another episode of Pure Jeevan’s Makin’ It Monday “Guest Raw Chef” edition. In this episode, Leela demonstrates how to make a delicious summertime chutney.

Since Marigolds are seasonal, and likely available only in certain areas, please consider them optional. Perhaps substitute another edible flower of your choice (and let us know if you do!). Aside from making this tasty recipe (which we later enjoyed on a salad), Leela also makes some important points about intuitive eating and intuitive recipe creation. Here’s the vid:

Mint Marigold Chutney

• 1 cup fresh mint, packed
• 3/4 – 1 cup water
• 3/4 cup spring onions and chives
• ~1 Tablespoon olive oil
• 1/4 cup walnuts
• 1 lemon, flesh with rind removed
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon paprika
• 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds
• Marigold flowers (optional)

Blend all ingredients in a blender, as shown. Then, sprinkle additional marigold flowers on top as a decorative element.

If you’re new to this blog, you might want to check out the other posts we’ve done featuring the Peaceful Valley Ashram!

Want to Host a “Guest Raw Chef” Edition of Makin’ It Monday? 
  
We’d love to have you do so! Just see this earlier post for the guidelines. We’d love to feature you here on our blog, even if this is your first time wearing a raw chef hat!

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For today’s Makin’ It Monday feature, we’d like to present “Salsa Campechano.” We’ll have to admit, though, that we do not speak Spanish. So, we have to give some credit to Google’s online language translator. When we went to name this recipe, Wendi suggested that this is a “manly” dish (since I created it). However, we didn’t find the perfect Spanish word to fit the recipe. Then, considering the walnuts in the recipe, Wendi suggested that perhaps “hearty” was a better adjective. Google returned the Spanish word campechano for this, and we immediately thought: Yes!, that sounds just perfect!  So, here’s an amazing recipe for you. It’s a hearty salsa recipe, but I actually like to eat it as a soup.

This is an easy recipe. To get started, all you’ll need are:

• two tomatoes
• one peach
• 1/4 cup of walnuts
• a small chunk of onion (see pic for approx. size)
• garlic (not shown, but one clove — or you could use garlic powder)
• cilantro (handful, fresh)
• salt (to taste)
• coriander powder (teaspoon or so)
• cayenne (to taste)
• tamari or Nama Shoyu (optional, to taste – 1+ tsp. for me)

Just toss everything into a food processor and pulse many times until the desired consistency is reached. It’s important to pulse rather than to just hit the “on” button and wait. Pulsing leaves a chunkier texture and also seems to allow more control as you process your food.  Below is a picture of how my Salsa Campechano turned out today.

As you can see, it turned out rather thick (which is fine). I think it was thicker because my tomatoes were more firm than other times I’ve made this. Either way (thicker, or soupier) is delicioso.  As I said, this can be served either as a salsa / condiment  or as a highly refreshing soup.  (I prefer it as a soup, and promptly enjoyed the entire bowl!) Enjoy!

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