Raw Food Real World; 100 recipes to get the Glow. Sarma Melngailis and Matthew Kenney
What a fantastic book. The recipes are wonderful. And ought to be; Sarma is a classically trained chef who switched to raw foods and has a New York raw restaurant Pure Food and Wine and two raw takeaways; One Lucky Duck. A raw takeaway? Oh I am in envy heaven... Can we move to New York? I asked my dh. Why? Er... well, you know, there's this great takeaway..... Yeah. You have to live in the middle of British Wilderness to get serious ideas about moving to New York for food. But this book is s delicious. I have only tried a couple of recipes and they are anything but hit and miss like my other raw food cookbooks can be. The reason, I think; those are written not by chef's. They are food enthusiasts for sure but not chefs. It makes a difference. Raw Food Real World is filled with top notch restaurant fare. But not tricky either to make yourself. I am raving about this book. I think it's my number one cookbook right now. There's another too by Sarma (yay) which I am envisioning coming my way (in a law of attraction, wishful thinking way).
This book has sections on: nut milks and shakes, salads, soups and starters, main dishes, desserts and sweets, breakfast and brunch, cheese, nuts, crackers and condiments, juices and cocktails. Phew, and yum.
I made the raw macaroons, candied pumpkin seeds and spicy brazil's.
All so good. And easy!
Tomorrow it's the chocolate ganache cake for a special girl.
I made the Filler Salad last night with a dressing that was only honey and lemon juice, oil and seasoning but lovely. Can't wait for more tester sessions: raw flat bread pizzas next I think...
8 comments:
Wow you've pretty much sold it to me! I have 1 raw food book but we dont eat raw and dh is *not* interested in starting :( i'm not sure i could be bothered to start making different things for me...hmm off to look it up on amazon anyway :)
Lucy x
Hmmmm, think I'll have a look at this book myself. I'm not really wanting to go completely raw; but I am interested eating more raw - particularly as the weather (or rather when..) warms up.
Ok, maybe I'm being a bit stupid here. But in one of the pictures it shows stuffed tortillas...and the tortillas are surely cooked? So does the book have combination recipes, mixtures of raw and cooked food? Sorry if this is a daft question!
The tortillas are dehydrated. That means they are not so much cooked as 'dryed out'. Very very slowly over about 12 hours or more at very low temps. Some people buy dehydrators esp for this. I use my bottom oven of the aga with the door ajar. This method of 'cooking' essentially preserves the nutritional qualities of the initial food without the devitalisation you get from regular high heat cooking - but you get a finished food that tatses kinda cookeed, like you could make 'crackers' this way.
inspiring post as always Mama xx
Ah! Thanks. I'm glad it wasn't a totally daft question.lol.
Being an ex-biologist I understand the whole preserving nutrient content by not heating and raw can be good, but as I understand it there are also some nutrients that are quite difficult to release and make available for humans to digest unless the plant cell walls are broken by processes such as heating(cos unlike animal herbivores we only have one stomach and don't eat our own poo lol). Does the book say much about this? I'd be interested to find out more.
Don't think I'd be converted as I still love cooked food - it's that wonderful aroma that comes out from the cooking process, gets those digestive juices working yum yum :)
Ok now I want it! Lol
just bought Kate Magics first two plus green for life and baby greens. Think I'll add this to my (ever growing) wishlist! Just tried my first rawchoc this week and I was in heaven - don't think I can eat "normal" chocolate again! X
Yes exactly, my reservations too, to some degree; Susun Weed talks about this in her books on herbs and preparation, that boiling is necessary to release and make available the potent constitutes of the actual plant material (which would otherwise be unavailable to the human digestion) . Some component of celery as I understand can be toxic raw and things like spinach and tougher leaves have tough cell walls which the digestive tract makes no headway on. I wonder if juicing and breaking those cell walls down (or blending with a super powerful blender) breaks these barriers down (Shazzie says so in her books) and is one way of getting past this issue and straight to more bio-availability.
It is true as far as I have read that cooked food in the body produces a response not dissimilar to a response by toxic invaders such as bacteria (to a lesser extent, but one that on a continuous basis forces the body to lessen the immune response as a whole through being overworked).
This book is a recipe book foremost, it does not go anywhere near dealing with any of these issues, it's certainly not a book on nutrition. I have found Kate Woods books not to deal with this either. Shazzies a bit more so, esp Evie's Kitchen. In fact I find KW books a bit over reliant on sweeteners and fructose.
I also wonder at the *unnaturalness* of breaking down food in juicing and power blending.
BUT the foods we eat generally (in a mainstream supermarket sense) are terribly unnatural too. Grossly so in most cases. So it's a toss up. I think I'd rather, on the whole, eat the more natural foods prepared in a unnatural way than say, eat shop bought bread.
Also re: meat (cooked, uncooked), we don't have fangs or claws and I think in that way resemble other primates in that surely our animal protein would have been mostly raw insect based and as best incredibly sporadic, raw organ/egg based. With our insoluble/soluble fibre being raw veg/greens. I wonder how far back fire and food go together - if one influenced the other in a time period of evolutionary significance (baring in mind a time frame of what 70-150 thousand years at least for genetic adaptation to a new influence).
Mostly I am not sure! Basically! Neither is anyone truly. I think everyone just assumes they are right or hopes (?).
But no, in a nut shell, this book covers none of that, it's pure gloss - recipes. But yummy ones :) (Assuming you have raw food prep equipment of dehydrator, blender, juicer, grinder etc)
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