Almond Cheese!

When I went to the Prana Cafe the other day, I had some nut cheese there. It was the first time I'd actually eaten it but I had heard about it before many times. Now if you're being really strict about it, it wouldn't truly constitute a cheese because it doesn't undergo the formal fermentation and separation process(though I have heard of a company in NYC that does make true nut cheeses, they are expensive as hell though). However, I did ferment this cheese for a day to make the flavor a bit more full bodied and complex tasting. The texture is much like a ricotta cheese and the taste, though not like cheese, is quite good and unique. I would recommend giving it a shot for anybody who (occasionally) misses the nice, rich cheese often used in things like ravioli. The basic gist of how to do it:

- Take 1 cup of raw almonds and soak them for at least twelve hours in water at room temperature. This should start them sprouting, which makes the proteins more easy to digest and nutritious. Take the almonds and pinch them to pop off their skin. If the skins won't come off easily and the almonds aren't fairly engorged, then allow them to soak for a longer time until it's easy to pop the skin off.
- Put all the skinned almonds in a blender, they should fill to around the two cup mark. Add water up to the 3.5-4 cup area, and blend the almonds for at least five minutes on high speed(use ice crush in the beginning to chop all the almonds up initially, your blender will thank you). Pour this mixture into a bowl and cover it with a towel or cheesecloth and let it ferment for twelve hours.
- Using either a sprouting sack or cheesecloth, separate the cheese curd from the whey. Let it continue to drain for another twelve hours. It is optional at this point to put the cheese in the fridge; try the curd and see if you like the flavor. If you want it to be a bit more flavorful and sour, let it sit out at room temperature at this point(if it's hot where you are, I would recommend putting it in the fridge regardless. It's be quite sad if it went bad).

That's all. Take the curd off the cheese cloth or out of the sack and eat is however you wish. I've been using it as a spread in wraps, though it is commonly used as a fake cheese in raw pizzas and would be excellent on crackers with fruit. Watch out for how much you eat at one time though, as it is very rich and it could make you feel ill if you eat more than around a quarter cup at a time. It should hold for around five days in the fridge.

As for the whey, it is commonly used in salad dressings or to add a flavor to raw soups. I unfortunately did not know what to do with it and let it it out considerably longer and threw it out due to fear that it went bad. I vow that I will find some tasty use for it though, it seems promising.

This can also be done with other nuts, especially cashews and macadamia nuts due to their high fat contents. I believe you follow the same procedure for cashews but you skip the soaking process for the macadamia nuts; I've heard soaking gives them an odd flavor. You'd want to double check that elsewhere though. Happy Experimenting!

Prana Raw Cafe

This cafe easily made my weekend. It's a Raw Food Cafe located in Newton Center, Massachusetts(around six or so miles outside of Boston) and due to various parts of the Raw Foodist philosophy, they are completely corn free. It has to do with the fact that most corn needs to actually be cooked before it's eaten and it's viewed as a micro-toxin, therefore being unappealing as well.

Anyway, while this cafe is a bit pricier than the average college student place to go, it's well worth it. The total meal cost me around twenty bucks but I got warm Pizza Du Jour with a carrot-beet-apple-ginger juice. My friend got some raw tortillas that were quite excellent as well. While I don't have any pictures(my camera officially died a while ago), there are a few comments:
-Raw Food's version of cheese(all raw food is completely vegan) is by far the best fake cheese I've ever had. It has a fairly high fat content due to it's making out of tree nuts, an excellent creaminess, and the consistency is proper. In other words, it maintains all the pleasant elements of actual cheese without the whole animal product-ness or the weird rubberyness that most vegan cheeses do.
- Their version of bread is still fairly unusual to me, but it's not bad. Raw Foodists don't eat any grains because they require cooking for proper digestion, so their breads are usually dehydrated vegetables of some kind. It gives more variety than one would initially thinks and works excellent for things such as tortillas.
-They have a nut ice cream and a plethora of desserts and while it was my initial intention to get some of these as a fairly belated Birthday treat to myself, I didn't feel like spending quite all the cash I had on me. However, it does give me an excuse to go back :).

The restaurant's website:
www.pranaraw.com

Yellow Split Pea Soup

Split peas are basically lentils bigger brother that really isn't spoken of much. If you really want to make a soup or the like that requires lentils, split peas will substitute in fine and have a large amount of protein and iron as well. However, the only place I really see or have heard of them being used is in Split Pea soup, which I always imagined as a kind of being made of green garden peas and therefore pretty gross sounding. Once again, my conception was terribly off base(I mainly subsided on Northern Eurpean/Irish food as a kid, so I didn't know about all these things) and the soup is actually delicious. The recipes I found were fairly sparse in flavorings though, so I mixed the ones I found with Vegan Dad's tarka dahl recipe, keeping the parts of each that I preferred. My composite:

Yellow Split Pea Soup

1 cup split peas, rinsed
2 cups water
1" ginger, minced
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
1 large onion, cut into crescents
2 tbsp oil
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 tsp red chili flakes, or two large whole dried chilis
1/4-1/2 tsp salt, to taste mainly

1/4-1/2 tsp ground mustard, optional

Cook the onion, ginger, and garlic in a pot with the oil until the onions are translucent. Add in all of the other ingredients and cook until the split peas are very soft(they will basically disintegrate) and serve hot. Make sure not to undercook the split peas, I did that one time and it ends poorly.

Hummus, Tabouli, and Baba Ganoush

Never buy hummus. It's terribly overpriced and extremely easy to make yourself. That is, if you have a food processor. You can do it in a blender or by hand as well but it's a considerably larger pain to do so(but still much more cost effective). Tabouli is also quite easy to make, though it does take some more ingredients you may not have on hand and a bit more time. Still, it's a much better choice than buying it greatly overpriced. Baba Ganoush is much more work compared to the other two but still worth doing yourself(especially for us corn-allergics who dislike buying such things).

Hummus

Can of Garbanzo Beans(15 or 19 ounces)
Fresh Juice of 1 Large Lemon
3 Tablespoon of Tahini(sesame seed paste, often found with Indian or Southeast Asian foods in the store)
3 Tablespoons Olive Oil(I always use more than this to get the proper consistency. The more you put in, the smoother it will get, to a point. Too much and you'll have some freakish oily soup.)
4-5 Cloves of Fresh Garlic, Minced
A Pinch of Sea Salt.

You can put just about anything you want in hummus to be honest, here are a few other recommendations: green olives, marinated artichokes, pine nuts, or parsley.

Put everything in the food processor together and blend until smooth. It should hold quite a long time in the fridge if you use fresh garlic, as it is an anti-fungal and anti-bacterial all in one.

Tabouli

1 cup Bulgar Wheat, presoaked
1.5 cups Parsley, finely minced
2 tablespoons Mint, finely chopped
1.5 Green onions, finely chopped
1/8 teaspoon Ground Pepper
1/8 teaspoon Ground Cumin
1/4 teaspoon Sea Salt, extra fine
1 Medium tomato, seeded and diced(I recommend something fleshy, like a Roma)
1.5 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 medium cucumber, or 1 small one, peeled and sliced
1/2 head Romaine lettuce
1.5 tablespoons olive oil

Soak the Bulgar in 2 cups of water for one hour. After one hour, drain(it won't soak all the water up, don't worry). Mix all the ingredients excluding the lemon juice, oil, cucumber, and romaine lettuce leaves. Add the lemon juice, toss, and chill for one hour. Mix in the olive oil by tossing and serve upon the lettuce leaves arranged in a spoke fashion. Sprinkle on the cucumber on the top. Serves 3-4. It will last a few days in the fridge.
Note: I swiped this from Bob's Red Mill, though their product is by no means necessary. I haven't made my own in quite a while so I cannot verify the safety of that brand's product either.

Baba Ganoush
Adapted from David Lebovitz

3 medium-sized eggplants
1/2 cup tahini (roasted sesame paste)
1 1/4 teaspoons coarse salt
3 tablespoons freshly-squeezed lemon juice
3 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
1/8 teaspoon chile powder
a pinch or two of cummin
1 tablespoon olive oil
a half bunch picked flat-leaf parsley or cilantro leaves

Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 375F.
- Prick each eggplant a few times, then char the outside of the eggplants by placing them directly on the flame of a gas burner and as the skin chars, turn them until the eggplants are uniformly-charred on the outside. (If you don’t have a gas stove, you can char them under the broiler. If not, skip to the next step.)
- Place the eggplants on a baking sheet and roast in the oven for 20 to 30 minutes, until they’re completely soft; you should be able to easily poke a paring knife into them and meet no resistance.
- Remove from oven and let cool.
- Split the eggplant and scrape out the pulp. Puree the pulp in a blender or food processor with the other ingredients until smooth.
- Taste, and season with additional salt and lemon juice, if necessary. Chill for a few hours before serving. Serve with crackers, veggies or toasted pita chips.

Storage: Baba Ganoush can be made and refrigerated for up to five days prior to serving.

Warming Chickpea Soup

I was looking at the variety of dried beans and grains sold at the Whole Foods the other day and one of them had a recipe for "Velvety Chickpea Soup", which looked nice. However, being the thrifty man I am, I decided to buy the chickpeas in bulk just from whole foods as it as about half the price. But since I'm also a somewhat absent-minded man, I did not write down the recipe. I had some dried chickpeas though and a yearning for some chickpea soup now though; so, I'd be damned if I wasn't getting some soup. So I winged it with a variety of spices and it turned out very well in my opinion. (Sorry for the lame name though, I'm not terribly creative at the moment.)

Warming Chickpea Soup

1.5 cups dried chickpeas
5 cups water

6-8 cups vegetable broth

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, cut into crescents
1 inch cube of ginger, minced
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1.5 teaspoons garam masala
1/2 teaspoons ground cumin

1/2 teaspoons ground cayenne
1/2 teaspoons spanish paprika
Juice of 1/2 large lemon

A bunch of sweet carrots, with their greens.

The night before, put the chickpeas in a pot with the water, cover, and let sit at least eight hours. They should just about double in size. Drain and put into a pot again with water with a teaspoon of baking soda added and let them sit for a half hour. That step is optional but helps clean them. Drain and rinse afterwards.

Put the onion in a large soup pot with the oil and fry until soft and getting translucent. Add in the coriander, garam masala, cumin, garlic, and ginger and fry until fragrant(around 30-60 seconds). Add in the vegetable broth and the chickpeas and let them cook for three hours, stirring occasionally. Once the chickpeas are soft, stir in the cayenne, paprika, and lemon juice. Put this mixture in the food processor and puree until it is smooth. Cook for another ten minutes and serve hot.

Shred the carrots and add a generous portion of them as a garnish along with some of their chopped greens.

Notes about the soup are:
1) This is very hearty and filling, so don't let it deceive you when it comes to the amount to dish out for a meal.
2) You can basically change any amounts of the spices in the recipe, since I winged just about everything.
3) I just had carrots sitting around but you could garnish it with whatever you want. I think the carrots add a nice crunch and sweetness to the dish.
4) I think if you added in some olive oil(a few tablespoons) into the soup when you add the cayenne it would help make the soup richer. It's not uncommon to do so with chickpea soup so it's probably a good idea.

Herbal Remedies

I recently messed up my food perpetrating Shenanigans that, in retrospect, were not so wise. But then again, so are most shenanigans. However, due to corn being in the vast majority of medicines I can't really take any of them(this is true for all of us corn-allergists). So I've been slowly moving into the land of herbs/spices to help cure or at least stymie my ailments enough to make them manageable. Here are a few that I've been using recently:

White Willow Bark- This is the natural equivalent to aspirin and in my personal opinion, quite the godsend. I took this constantly while I had pleurisy and it helped relieve the swelling and pain a bit. It's more expensive than aspirin but even people who aren't allergic to corn have told me that it's much more effective than aspirin is, so it's worth it. The only corn-free version I can find isn't vegan and it's basically the only place I'll make an exception to my veganism.

Turmeric- Turmeric is most commonly known as a flavoring in middle eastern/indian dishes or as a coloring. However, turmeric is also an antiseptic and an anti-inflammatory. If you want it as an antiseptic, merely make a paste out of it with water, apply to the cut area, and cover it with a band-aid or the like. As an anti-inflammatory, take around 1 tsp of the ground turmeric with around 2-3 tsp of raw honey orally. It will taste fairly unpleasant but it will help.

Bromelain- This is a "sulfur-containing proteolytic digestive enzyme that is extracted from the stem and the fruit of the pineapple plant" according the National Institute of Health. Now Foods makes a Quercetin with Bromelain pill they say is corn-free and I think it's trustworthy. Anyway, Bromelain can function as an anti-histamine and an anti-inflammatory. Considering how bloody hard it is to get an anti-histamine that is corn-free and doesn't make you really groggy, this is useful to have around.

Peppermint- Peppermint is at once calming and energizing. The methanol will help clear up your respiratory system, allowing ease of breathing and a slight comfort when ill. It is also said, along with wintergreen and other forms of mint, to help with increasing appetite. One's stomach and bowl can also be calmed by peppermint, making the tea excellent to have during a bout of indigestion. It's essential oil(once properly diluted, naturally), can also help with headaches when applied to the temples.

Honey - Once again, I'm one of those dirty vegans who will still eat honey. That being said, I very rarely use it in cooking because I prefer Maple Syrup(as it stays a liquid at room temperature, while raw honey does not). Honey, besides being delicious, has many useful properties though. It is an anti-fungal and anti-bacterial. Put some on the pad of a bandage and put it over a wound and it'll keep it nice and clean for quite a long time. It is also an excellent thing to pick-me-up in herbal teas(especially peppermint) and makes the aforementioned turmeric palatable(or at least able to put down). I've also been told that regularly eating raw honey can help with pollen allergies if you eat honey that was produced off of the same kind of things you're allergic to; it must be raw honey though.. As a side, but important, note, never give an infant under 1 1/2-2 years old honey; there is a possible risk of dormant bacteria being in the honey and their immature immune and digestive systems cannot handle it(they can get Botulism, which is a very serious and possibly fatal illness). Avoid processed honey as well, as it could be artificially sweetened or have some corn-derived processing.

Lavender- Lavender is actually another useful plant within the mint family. It is also excellent for its calming and soothing effect. Lavender is often used to fill small bed pillows to add a pleasant smell to the beds as well as help in making the restful mindset. It's essential oil, when diluted, can also be applied to the skin as an anti-inflammatory and does wonders for aroma-therapy. It's not an herb I use terribly often but I wouldn't want to be without it, either.

Garlic- Garlic is one of the loves of my life. The flavor that garlic gives to food, cooked or raw, is amazing and surpassed by very little in my mind. It also has a plethora of medicinal uses: it's an anti-fungal and anti-bacterial, lowers cholesterol, and will help keep away insects and ticks. My brothers regularly eat it raw when ill, though it may be a bit harsh for some people in that form. I've also read that if one eats a combination of the raw and cooked garlic on a frequent basis, it have anti-carcinogenic effects. It's also rumored to help control and lower blood sugar levels but that's somewhat up in the air. The only downside of garlic consumption is, if one eats enough of it, it causes halitosis, a fancy word meaning one exudes a somewhat unpleasant, garlic-y smell. Seeing its many benefits makes it worth in my opinion, though.

Ginger- Ginger, in the form tea usually, is known to help with indigestion and motion sickness(also vomiting due to pregnancy). It is also used for colds, coughing, and other like illnesses throughout southeast asia. Other uses haven't really been studied much and have a great variety of claims.