The Complete Book of Raw Food (10 page)

When you attempt to un-cook a delicious meal, make sure that all five tastes are present in the final flavor and that not one is missing. Each of the five tastes
doesn’t have to be strong, but just enough for a particular dish. For example, the strongest tastes in a garden burger should be sweet, spicy, and salty with only a touch of sour and bitter, but all five need to be present. Otherwise, the garden burger will taste bland.

After several months of eating raw food, you will start to notice that more and more often you prefer to eat whole food rather than prepared. In fact, all whole foods, if they are ripe, already naturally have the most balanced bouquet of flavors. However, the taste of natural food is so delicate that unfortunately, after many years of consuming cooked food packed with chemicals, our taste buds can no longer enjoy natural flavors. That is why we need a transition time.

The following is a list of suggested ingredients for the five taste groups. This is only a fraction of what is available on planet Earth. Many plants possess different flavors but have one or two that are more dominant. You have to apply common sense and not add vanilla to the soup or garlic to the candy. Please be creative: these are just ideas for you.

apple cider vinegar

cranberries

lemon grass

lemons

nut or seed yogurt

rejuvelac

rhubarb

sorrel

sour grass

apple juice

dry fruit such as figs, dates, prunes, raisins

fresh fruits such as ripe banana, mango, peach, pear

fresh stevia leaves

orange juice

raw honey

cayenne pepper

garlic leaves or cloves

ginger

herbs, fresh or dry, such as basil, dill, cilantro, rosemary, or peppermint

spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, or vanilla

horseradish

mustard greens or seeds

onion leaves or bulbs

radish

seaweed

wasabi

celery

cilantro, dill, parsley

sea vegetables such as dulse, kelp, nori, aramé, or Celtic sea salt

celery tops

dandelion leaves

endive

garlic

onion

parsley

poultry seasoning

sage

Your raw dishes should not only taste, but
look
delicious. As always, presentation is important because it makes delicious food even more appealing. Here are some of chef Jinjee Talifero’s favorite ways to garnish food.

• Place fruit and/or vegetable slices around the edges of the plate in a circle.
  

• Create an artistic flourish or arrangement of garnishing using colors and shapes.
  

• Place the food on a bed of red or green leaf lettuce.
  

• Cut garnishes into pretty or interesting shapes.
  

• Banana slices, kiwi slices, strawberries, strawberry slices, dried coconut sprinkles, and almonds make the prettiest garnishes for fruit dishes.
  

• Red onion rings, lettuce, carrot slices, thin curly carrot strips, different colored bell peppers, cucumber slices, different colored cabbage cut in curly strips, jicama wedges, and asparagus tops make nice garnishing for vegetable dishes.
  

• As a general rule, review your array of ingredients before you decide which to reserve for garnish. For instance, if a recipe calls for walnut halves, set aside the nicest looking 7 or 8 for decoration.
  

Above all, be creative! Have fun and experiment with new ways to present the foods you love to eat.

The ingredients you will use in your delicious raw recipes range from the ordinary to the exotic. As you learn to experiment with their natural flavors, some questions are bound to arise. What is the best way to open a Thai coconut? How can you keep your guacamole fresh? To answer these and other questions, read on. Our experienced chefs offer you their insider tips here on how to make the most of nature’s ingredients.

When cutting an avocado, first remove the hard stem. Otherwise, it may end up in your recipe.

—Matt Amsden

If you’re making guacamole a few hours in advance, add the juice of a lemon to the ingredients before blending and place the avocado pits in the middle of the guacamole. Though it may just be an old wives’ tale, some say the added pits will keep it fresher.

—
Shazzie

To make the most of your avocados when making guacamole, purée 2 stalks of celery with 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a food processor for
every
avocado you will be using. Mix it all together with seasonings. It will be so green and creamy, no one will suspect that it’s not all avocado. It’s also a great way to get kids to eat celery.

—Elaina Love

Cut celery into 1-inch pieces so that you don’t end up with long strings that will get stuck in your teeth.

—Rhio

Use a celery stalk as your spatula to keep things moving in the blender.

—Elaina Love

Salt is vital to the body’s functioning, and needs to be replaced every day through foods or condiments. Some chefs and nutritionists, raw and otherwise, believe that a healthy human diet requires no
added
salt. They point to high blood pressure and other ailments being triggered by too much salt. But as anyone who has climbed a mountain on a hot day knows, it’s possible to experience very unpleasant
side effects from too little salt—leg cramps, hyperventilation and exhaustion. So where’s the happy medium? Celery, cilantro, dill, and sea vegetables provide natural sources of salt. If you do add salt, make sure it’s pure and clean, not chemically processed. That’s why you’ll see references to Celtic sea salt in so many recipes. Nama shoyu or raw tamari are also good sources of salty flavor. So, like you always should, taste before you shake, and remember not to over-salt food that’s to be dehydrated. If, in your opinion, a recipe seems to call for too much salt, add gradually and taste as you go. If in doubt, leave it out.

Raw food chefs use Celtic sea salt because it dissolves in water. It can break down and dissolve in your system, unlike normal table salt, which should be avoided at all costs! Like honey, Celtic sea salt is very healthful, as long as it is used in moderation. Otherwise, it can be damaging.

—Jinjee Talifero

For sunflower pâtés, after soaking, allow the sunflower seeds to sit out on the counter for 2 to 4 hours, but no longer. If the seeds sprout for more than 4 hours, the result will be a bitter tasting pâté. You will not see a “tail” at this stage.

After sprouting, rinse thoroughly, removing as many as possible of the fine inner husks that float to the surface. Drain well. The sunflower seeds are now ready to use in the recipe. If you are not able to make the recipe at this time, refrigerate the seeds until you are ready.

If you are blending garlic in a Vita-Mix blender, it is not necessary to completely remove it from its papery husk. This husk is safe to eat and this powerful machine will blend the husk completely.

—
Matt Amsden

To peel a clove of garlic, place it under the flat side of a knife blade and strike it carefully with the side of your hand.

—Matt Amsden

When blending fresh ginger, peeling it first will decrease its bitterness.

—Matt Amsden

Wilted lettuce? Revive it by wrapping it in a wet towel and placing it in the refrigerator.

—Matt Amsden

Limes

Placing limes on a sunny windowsill for a few months will dry them. Once ground, these sun-dried limes make an excellent spice for Thai and other ethnic dishes.

—Matt Amsden

Nut Meal

To make nut meal, blend nuts in food processor or blender or coffee grinder until they turn to powder.

—Jinjee Talifero

Cleaning the Coffee Grinder

1. Reserve one grinder just for coffee, if you drink it.
   

2. Buy another grinder for your raw kitchen and clean it between products by grinding ½ tablespoon flax seeds. Toss when done.
   

Keep mushrooms fresh by storing them in a paper bag in the refrigerator.

—Matt Amsden

When buying okra, pick the smallest ones. They are less gelatinous.

—Matt Amsden

To open a young Thai coconut, hold it upright and insert a sharp knife at a 45-degree angle about two inches from the top. Work the knife carefully all the way around the coconut and then pop off the “lid,” keeping the coconut upright to avoid spilling the water. To remove the water first, punch out three holes near the top where you can feel three indentations. Pour out the water or drink it with a straw. Yum!

—Vern Curtis

When scraping the flesh from a Thai coconut, turn the spoon upside down so that the convex side is up. This makes it easier to remove the flesh from the shell in one piece.

—Matt Amsden

Vanilla powder is simply ground vanilla bean: cut 3 dried vanilla beans into small pieces and grind them as fine as possible in a nut or coffee grinder. Store in a small glass jar in the refrigerator. The vanilla powder keeps for months. If it develops an off smell, throw it away; but I’ve never seen this happen. The alternative to making vanilla powder would be to just cut a small piece of vanilla from the pod and blend into the recipe. Depending on the quality of your equipment, it may or may not break down completely. If your vanilla bean is too moist and doesn’t powder up in the nut mill, then leave the vanilla bean out at room temperature for a couple of days so that it dries a bit. Do not put the vanilla bean in a food dehydrator, because it will lose all its flavor. You can grind a moist vanilla bean, but it will come out the texture of ground tobacco, instead of as a powder. This has just as much flavor and works just as well in the recipes. Store it in the refrigerator.

—Rhio

Commercial vanilla extract usually contains alcohol and may be extracted with solvents. Solvents have no place in a healthy diet.

—Rhio

Apart from the soaking that’s done to kick off a sprouting process (discussed in
Chapter 4
), you may often use soaking as a means of improving foods. Soaking nuts and seeds for a few hours releases the enzyme (growth) inhibitors and makes them “live” even if you don’t go on to sprouting them. But not all soak water should be retained. Here’s a quick list:

Almonds—
soak for a few hours to release the tannin; drain and toss the soak water.

Cashews—
soaking for as little as 20 minutes makes them soft and ready to spin with honey and lemon for a wonderful frosting. Here you want to keep the soak water.