Raw Review

Not so long ago I munched my way through Thermomix’s Rawlicious booklet. It was an amazing experience and I was introduced to loads of new foods as well as learning a lot about my own food preferences. It has been interesting to see what has stuck and which habits have dropped off along the way.

The biggest change I’ve noticed is that I now rarely cook corn, asparagus, zucchini or any of the other softer vegetables. A combination of these raw vegetables and some cooked or sprouted beans or sustainably fished tuna has become a dinner option alongside steamed veggies and stir fries.

I found that eating vegetables such as cauliflower, broccoli and carrot in their raw state were too hard on my gums and sometimes my jaw would lock up temporarily. So I’ve decided these vegetables need to be cooked while I’ll eat the softer ones raw.

My lunch-time salad made up mostly of vegies from my patio and home-grown sprouts continues with the softer vegetables providing more options for supplementing my meal.

My breakfast of a cooked grain, some chopped fruit along with LSA mix has remained the same. If I can’t have that option then I turbo some nuts, coconut, sultanas and a piece of fruit which provides a worthy raw alternative and was inspired by the CADA recipe in Thermomix’s Taste of Vegetarian cook book.

But the raw gourmet options haven’t survived. As much as I enjoy sweets, I rarely make the health balls that often included ingredients such as dates, almonds and carob powder.

I would have thought that I was past the point of sweets tempting me, but I failed the test recently. A hamper arrived at my door and I then had the pleasant job of consuming its contents. Chocolates lasted barely 24 hours which was no surprise. And then the salty crackers soon disappeared. What surprised me most was how easily I hoed into some really nice sweet biscuits!

Fortunately a recent article in the Courier Mail (original article from the Daily Mail) absolved me of all responsibility. I felt so much better after reading this: A study has shown the hunger hormone ghrelin - which the body produces when it feels peckish - encourages the brain to seek out high-calorie food, no matter how much one has eaten. Ghrelin acts on the brain to make certain foods more attractive… and has also been shown to intensify the pleasurable feelings animals get from cocaine or alcohol.

All of this has given me some food for thought (pardon the pun). Over the last couple of months I have found myself returning to predictable meal patterns and have noticed the resulting boredom creeping back in. I shouldn’t be surprised that I lapsed so easily with the arrival of the hamper and also during the Christmas/New Year celebrations.

I recently had some asparagus, zucchini and grapes sitting in my fridge. Half of it morphed into a lunch-time salad while the rest of it was destined to become coleslaw but instead was combined into a green juice after being processed at too high a speed. I actually enjoyed the mix as a green juice more than as the salad. It was much easier to drink it than munch it. Who would have thought that juiced vegies would be easier?

Around the same time I googled raw food options and found some interesting web sites with equally enticing recipes. I think it’s safe to say that I have renewed my interest in raw food...

Curry Sauce, Honey Soy Sesame Dressing, Fruit Nut Slice, Citrus Dressing and Raw Flax Crackers

This is catch up time. I’ve been checking through the list of recipes in the Rawlicious booklet and have noticed the Curry Sauce recipe from the Rawlicious booklet that I made a while back but haven’t yet mentioned in this blog. Fortunately I took a photo of it at the time.

I’m not sure why I didn’t post about it. I must have been a bit busy. But I certainly do remember cutting up the ginger, turmeric and galangal. The turmeric powder that I’ve used in the past seems to be a much deeper colour than the real thing, but that didn’t worry me as the combination of all three produced a very satisfying sauce that was all used up on my lunches over the next few days.

Yesterday I made the Honey Soy and Sesame Dressing recipe again from Rawlicious. This was easy to produce in just a few steps although I did vary it a bit by not including the raw chilli sauce because I finished that off a while back. I also didn’t include the rice bran oil as I didn’t have any on hand. Again today my lunch-time salad benefited from the lovely tangy taste. I even had some raw broad bean seeds on top which were a real treat.

I feel I’m on the downhill slide with only seven recipes remaining to try in the Rawlicious booklet. So I’ve been energetic late this afternoon and have tried two more recipes.

The Fruit and Nut Slice sounded appealing. I modified the recipe a little and just made a mix of soaked dates and almonds which were then rolled in sesame seeds. I really enjoyed this. I’ve found that I prefer simpler tastes and this isn’t too rich for me. Plus it was really easy to make. This is certainly a keeper.

Then dinner time came around and I started saying “yum” again just after the first spoonful. I made the Chilli Citrus Dressing although there was no raw chilli sauce for the same reason I gave a few paragraphs back – I finished it all some time back. However I faithfully used all the other ingredients and poured the dressing over some avocado, asparagus and zucchini. And the word “yum” just kept coming to mind. The only thing I’ll change next time – and there will be a next time – is to leave out the garlic. I’ve never really liked garlic and using it multiple times while toying with Rawlicious hasn’t changed my mind. I imagine there are lots of people who don’t agree with me but all I can say is “Vive la différence”.

So then I had five recipes left in the Rawlicious books and all of them require dehydration in some form. But as I looked at the instructions for each recipe, I realized that I had basically tried the Raw Flax (Linseed) Crackers as my earlier rendition used similar ingredients and was cooked at the temperature suggested in the recipe. So I consider that I now have four recipes to go.

The only problem is that I’m not ready to start playing with dehydration whether driven by electricity or solar. So I imagine I’ll hold off on the Buckwheat and Mushroom Quiche, the Ginger Pecan Cookies and the Muesli Bars until I’m ready. Now the remaining recipe is the Chocolate Mousse Tart which only needs some nuts to be soaked and then dehydrated. I reckon I’ll try it sooner rather than later and just not bother soaking/dehydrating the nuts

I’ve been marking off the recipes that I’ve completed from the Contents page on the inside cover of the Rawlicious booklet and would you believe the item I see placed on the inside back cover of this booklet? It is “Raw Recipes in other Thermomix Publications”. I already know that the Thermomix book “A Taste of Vegetarian” has some raw recipes but when I turn to the back cover I find 27 of them! The back cover also mentions that the Everyday Cooking along with the Gluten Free, Wheat Free Cooking books have raw recipes in them. This is all very helpful and I will appreciate it later on. I have said “yum” so many times. So I suspect that I’ll be back sooner rather than later as I want to compare any differences between the Rawlicious and Vegetarian recipes so I can work out which ones I’ll try. Plus I still need to prepare three meals a day and it is more fun trying new recipes. Wish me luck!

Raw Chocolate Mousse and Coconut Laksa

Ah, it’s dessert time again. I would say about time too except that I just made a repeat performance of the Beetroot and Chocolate Pudding a few days ago and my Mum was as much in raptures with the end result as I was even after eating it cold the next morning.

I’m normally not a lover of mousse but this rendition of it hit the spot. It had a rich decadent taste that was perfect for a Saturday afternoon. The recipe includes vanilla bean and the mousse had a familiar taste so I googled Kahlua and Tia Maria and found that they both contain vanilla bean. These liqueurs are favourites of mine so no wonder the mousse was so easy on my palate.

And then the pièce de résistance for the day, also a recipe from the Rawlicious booklet, was surprisingly not a dessert. The Coconut Laksa needed a baby coconut. I couldn’t find a baby one, well, to be really honest I didn’t realize how helpful it would be if I could find one so I found a coconut and I could hear the milk inside. By the time I pierced one of the holes there was precious little milk left. So my first lesson with coconuts is that the milk can dry up quickly.

I found lots of advice about how to open a coconut. Using the pointy end of a hammer (my words) hit the coconut in a circle around the top end of the coconut until the top separates. Well, the top never separated. Plan B. Hit the coconut along the raised seam that runs around the flat sides of the coconut (again my words). Suspect I didn’t have enough power in my hammer technique. Plan E or F was to take coconut next door to builder neighbour and his partner who would probably help me. But I was still in that stubborn stage believing that I could fix this. However the doubting Thomas part of me was amazed that I thought I could open up a coconut!

One of the first web sites I found on “opening coconuts” had tongue-in-cheek suggested flinging it against a wall or dropping it on a concrete floor with the added thought that this might end up breaking one or the other and only maybe the coconut. Fortunately for me, I didn’t read this web page too carefully. I found another web site that mentioned dropping the coconut on a marble kitchen floor a few times and thought the concrete floor in my garage would do the trick. I decided to drop it onto a brick sitting on the concrete to avoid creating fracture lines in the concrete and after dropping the coconut I can’t remember how many times – I was really getting into this new game - the coconut started to crack. And et viola, I had fresh coconut …

The “fun” bit was removing the white coconut flesh – sometimes I needed to trim off some coconut skin residue which didn’t worry me. I tasted a little bit and there were no surprises – it tasted exactly as it should – just like the shredded coconut we buy so easily except that it was fresh. I also noticed the oil left on my hands after handling it.

So once I had solved how to open the coconut I then became concerned that I had moved past the most exciting part of the coconut laksa recipe – until I tasted it! The photo I have taken of the coconut laksa over some capsicum, tomato and raw asparagus doesn’t do it justice.

Oh hang on… Have I mentioned that asparagus can be eaten raw? That’s what I’ve just found out on the Thermomix Forum so I tried cutting off the bottom third which is the woody end and all of the rest of the asparagus is really lovely just as it is. It’s not crunchy like cabbage or broccoli with a consistency more like capsicum and zucchini. This reminds me of the revelation I had when I ate corn niblets raw and found them to be nice just as they are. We do what we have always done because it’s been handed down to us or has worked for us for so many years. And then one day we find there is a different way that for some of us becomes a better way.

Eating this became an unreal taste sensation and it was gooooood… And after I finished the laksa over the chopped vegetables, I went back for the last of the laksa just on its own and it was still gooood….

Watermelon Tomato Gazpacho

Here is a lovely cool finish to a warm spring day. This Watermelon Tomato Gazpacho had such a delightful invigorating taste to it that I didn’t want it to end.

You won’t believe – or perhaps by now it won’t be a stretch at all – that I hadn’t ever bought a watermelon. Naturally I’ve eaten it as a popular addition on the fruit platter at functions. But I hadn’t ever bought a whole watermelon. And I still haven’t. Earlier today my fruit man had what looked like a sixth of a watermelon – all 1.4kg of it – which was more than enough for me.

Half of it has gone towards this delish dinner and the other half will disappear tomorrow morning. I shouldn’t really call this “dinner” as it feels and tastes more like a dessert, which suits me just fine. But the addition of tomato and other salad vegetables means that I can’t really call it that.

Never mind. The next time I have a sweets craving I know what I can do – this recipe from the Rawlicious booklet makes the perfect guilt free “Clayton’s meal”.

Carrot and Avo Mash

Sometimes I look at a recipe and am not quite sure whether I would enjoy it. I thought this about the Carrot and Avo Mash recipe in the Rawlicious booklet, but now that I’m eating it I can’t understand why it took me so long to try it. The mash has a lovely light flavour which blends in very well with its capsicum shell.

A few of the Rawlicious recipes including this one use Dulce leaves. I looked around for the leaves and the best that I could find was handpicked, organic sun dried flakes which sounded pretty good to me. The best part about using Dulce is that it is a sea vegetable which means that I’ve added another dimension to my cuisine and I’m looking forward to dabbling further with sea vegetables in the future.

I’m on a countdown as this is now 21 recipes that I’ve made out of the 32 in the Rawlicious booklet. I’m already thinking about what I’ll focus on next. There’s a course on tomorrow that I can’t attend on making sourdough bread as well as sauerkraut, korean kimchi, fruit and nut ferment and a batch of fruit wine. I have made sourdough bread and fruit wine before but would be interested in refreshing my memory on making the sourdough bread as well as getting the starter. I dabbled with fruit wine for a little while until I decided that I was starting to enjoy it too much. The other items on the list sound really interesting especially the sauerkraut.

I’d also like to try some more Japanese cuisine. I’ve already dabbled with it by making miso soup – well, I made ramen soup which included miso – and also like the idea of raw fish which fits perfectly in a raw food regime.

Ah, so many options to consider.

Cream of Cauliflower Soup

Sometimes I need to try a recipe twice … I made the Cream of Cauliflower Soup from a Rawlicious recipe a little while back and was undecided about it even after adding some alfalfa sprouts on top. I felt it hadn’t really worked for me as I hadn’t added enough water while processing it. So I sat on it – well, not the soup but the idea of including it in a post.

And then I tried it again, adding more water, some shoyu sauce and a dribble of honey along with some chopped shallots on top, and I really enjoyed it.

The soup was really easy to make and blends in well with any other variations I might think of or find, which is great because I’ve found a couple of other cauliflower soup recipes that I might decide to try in the future.

Yummy Live Tomato Soup

This is something different and lives up to its name of Yummy Live Tomato Soup. It is another of the recipes of the Rawlicious booklet and is indeed scrumptious. I think the fresh salsa base makes it work along with the condiments and herbs added to the tomato soup.

I don’t normally like tomato soup but have now become a convert. The crispness of the salsa works well with the tomato flavour.

I had some of the soup left over and finished it off, which turned out to be nice on its own as well. Now I can’t remember what I didn’t like about tomato soup. Or perhaps I just didn’t like canned tomato soup as this has a very pleasant taste.

'Tuna' Salad Mix

Ah, lunch time. I’ve made up the ‘Tuna’ Salad Mix recipe from the Rawlicious booklet using some soaked almonds, capsicum and greens from my patios, and have placed it on top of a bed of lettuce leaves and sprouts.

This both tastes and feels good to eat. I know the soaked almonds are beneficial as I’ve found a web site saying that “Nuts are easier to digest and their nutrients are more readily available if they are first soaked overnight” along with other comments.

I’m glad I made this and will remember it for the future, particularly when I want to add some nuts to my salad.

Tasty herb and cashew dip

I like cashews. They blend up with water into a very nice milk substitute. Plus they contribute easily to a dairy free icing. That’s even before considering how nice they taste just on their own.

So this dip recipe from the Rawlicious booklet was a pleasure to make and consume. Unfortunately the crackers are not raw which is an issue that I'm working on. The dip would suit almost any preferred addition to the cashews and herbs, and is a perfect treat for afternoon tea.

Chocolate banana smoothie

I felt like making a smoothie and the Chocolate Banana Thickshake recipe in the Rawlicious booklet provided some inspiration.

Again I used some cacao nibs as that’s what I have in the cupboard and ground them with some nuts and added frozen banana and other items and made up a lovely creamy smoothie.

Then the next day I made up the same mix with slightly different quantities but this time didn’t get a chance to freeze the banana which didn't seem to affect the taste or consistency at all.

This is so easy to make that all I really need to do is keep a few basic ingredients in the fridge for the next time I need a smoothie fix.

I've just worked out that this is the 16th recipe that I've tried from the Rawlicious booklet, which means that I've now reached the halfway mark. All Rawlicious posts so far can be found here. It's a great feeling and I'm looking forward to checking out the rest of the recipes in the near future.

Carrot Ginger Soup and Apricot Butter

I think I’m a sucker for a sweet taste. Perhaps every meal I eat should have some fruit in it – which would be bliss! Hang on, I think I’m doing that right now. Piece of fruit with a cooked grain for breakfast. Some mandarin or strawberry jam with my salad at lunch. And in the past month as I’ve played with raw food, a piece of fruit merged in with dinner.

And this Carrot Ginger Soup made from a Rawlicious recipe certainly fits the bill with the inclusion of a green apple to the obvious ingredients from its title. I added some water to give it a more familiar consistency and heated it to 37 degrees Celsius and my palate enjoyed it immensely.

Then it was dessert time the next day with Apricot Butter again from the Rawlicious recipe booklet, which went very well with both my breakfast and salad at lunch time.

Beet my nana smoothie

I’ve just made a “Beet my nana smoothie” from the Rawlicious recipe book. It’s the first time I’ve bought any silver beet, and this has been an excellent way to use it as the smoothie tastes sweet and I’m sure it’s healthy. The very ripe bananas probably contributed to the sweetness.

I have the impression that most people prefer to cook silver beet rather than eating it raw, so I googled the question and found the answer at Wiki: Fresh young chard can be used raw in salads. Mature chard leaves and stalks are typically cooked or sauteed; their bitterness fades with cooking…

Other sites suggest that silver beet can be shredded and added raw to salads. I haven’t noticed any bitter taste so the silver beet smoothie worked for me.

Cinnamon Bars, Pink Coconut Shake and Living Fudge

I have never really thought about where vanilla essence comes from. I needed one vanilla bean for the Cinnamon Bars and 4cm of a bean for the Pink Coconut Shake, both recipes from the Rawlicious booklet. So I looked for the beans in the herbs and spices aisle in the supermarket. No luck. I scoured the shelves at Flannery’s – again no luck. Then I found a bottle of them at Wray’s Organics at Newmarket.

They’re not what I expected. For some reason I thought they’d look like other dried beans such as pinto or kidney beans, but vanilla beans are the dried form of the pod with bean seeds still inside and are shown above next to the Cinnamon Bars. And they’re pricey – close to $20 for the bottle of what looks like 20 beans.

Jamie Oliver’s forum has a discussion about vanilla beans. As at January last year, they are grown in Australia and exported, and have been found in David Jones food hall in Sydney, delis and some supermarkets. Buying vanilla beans grown in Australia sounds great, but the ones that I’ve found have come from Mexico. After I use up the ones I have, I’ll be checking in my local David Jones to see if they stock Australian vanilla beans.

I’m sure it’s just me. I found there were too many distinct tastes all rolled up into the Cinnamon Bars. I think I mustn’t like anything that includes two or more dried fruits. But I had no such problem with the Pink Coconut Shake, which I finished right to the last drop… I’m beginning to understand what people see in smoothies.

I found a recipe for Living Fudge in “The Raw Food Gourmet” which I thought might work because it didn’t include any dried fruit. I rolled the fudge into little balls and then proceeded to really enjoy them… too much! I’d classify them as addictive but will make them again for sure!

Simple Fennel Salad

I love fennel, even though I’ve had nothing to do with the vegetable until now. But I am well acquainted with the essential oil.

Since the early 1990s, I’ve often dabbled with aromatherapy. I found a couple of books that gave me recipes for healing mouth ulcers, a persistent cough and tennis elbow, which both I and my friends happily took on board. My favourite book which I still use is "The Fragrant Pharmacy" by Valerie Ann Worwood. It is chock full of aromatherapy recipes for just about any condition or situation, even including an insect deterrent. The second book that I have sometimes found helpful is “Aromatherapy for Scentual Awareness” by Karen Downes and Judith White.

I dabbled so much with essential oils that I have a small collection of mostly out of date oils, including some fennel oil with a use by date of June 2003. It has a lovely aroma similar to aniseed when heated in an essential oil burner.

So to find this raw recipe based on fennel was a godsend, thanks to the Rawlicious booklet.

After blending for a few seconds, the fennel salad looked like mashed potato. It tasted fine, but I just knew it wouldn’t translate well in a photo on its own. Having watched as much of MasterChef as I could, I have become very aware of how I “plate up” my meals – particularly for this blog. So I added some ingredients and end results to my meal that just happened to be sitting in the fridge.

A smattering of coriander leaves circling home-grown tomato slices with a plump serving of fennel salad drizzled with raw curry sauce and some fig puree. A small dollop of the fennel salad tops off the meal. And it was delightful, if I can say so myself.

Fig Puree and Sunflower Herb Pate

My breakfast generally consists of a cooked grain such as brown rice or quinoa, with some LSAP mix (pumpkin seeds ground in the Thermomix with the standard LSA ingredients of linseeds, sunflower seeds and almonds), some soaked chia seeds and some fruit sliced on top. This is an adaption of the recipe "Breakfast Pudding" in the book "The Yeast Connection Cookbook".

I made some Fig Puree which has been a lovely addition to my breakfast. The puree includes dried figs soaked overnight in more liquid than I needed for the recipe. So I’ve ended up with a nice fruit drink as well.

The Sunflower Herb Pate was a real winner for me last night with its simple ingredients of soaked sunflower seeds, herbs and condiments. I was really impressed at how nice it tasted on some brown rice crackers – unfortunately not raw... As soon as I finished these, I promptly made another plateful that didn’t last long.

I’ve found that whenever I’ve attended a cooking class, I generally walk away with a few recipes that I continue to use into the future along with the many others that have been shown to us. And the same will be true for me with these recipes in the Rawlicious booklet. I can already see more than just a few that are keepers, which these two certainly are.

Almond Milk and Smoothie

Yum! The only thing I did wrong with both of these recipes was that I didn’t make enough.

I have long believed that I’m somewhat dairy intolerant. This hasn’t been proven in skin or blood tests, but I am very aware of a reaction I get when I eat cheese, cream or butter. Fortunately for me, it’s a very selective problem as I can have milk in the form of cappuccinos and small amounts of ice cream without too much of a reaction, but I’ve never tried to push this by drinking smoothies.

I have recently found a couple of organic food stores with an attached café that offer cappuccinos made from alternative milks. Rice milk cappuccinos are on the menu at Fundamental Food Store in Paddington, while Wray Organic in Newmarket offers rice, oat or almond milk cappuccinos. I really enjoy a guilt-free cappuccino while stocking up on organic food. I realize cappuccinos are not raw drinks, but fortunately they can be included in the 25% non-raw allowance.

Now that I own a Thermomix, I can also make my own milk and have made cashew milk cappuccinos occasionally. Working through the Rawlicious recipe book has encouraged me to trial almond milk (on the left) and an almond milk smoothie with papaw and pineapple added. I’ve been bowled over by both and I want more.

I strained the almond milk through muslin, another first for me and the reason that I didn’t get enough milk. I could have drunk the almond milk without straining it, but I’m really pleased I made the extra effort as it tasted lovely. Squeezing out the extra milk wrapped up in the muslin was an interesting feeling. Since I’m not likely to take on milking cows, this is the next best thing.

I haven’t yet worked out how I can use the almond pulp that is caught in the muslin, so the first batch went into the worm farm. I have some raw recipes that include the almond pulp in biscuits that are then dehydrated, so that’s an option once I work out how I’ll dehydrate foods.

Raw Chilli Sauce and Caribbean Pineapple Salsa

The Rawlicious recipe book had fallen open in my bag while I was buying some fruit and vegetables recently. The lady at the checkout blanched a little when she saw the title “Raw Chilli Sauce”. Perhaps that was a warning. While I have never really liked hot curries, always tending towards the milder ones in restaurants, this recipe was sure to test me.

And test me it did, along with the recipe Caribbean Pineapple Salsa.

Being a novice at buying chillies, I checked with the greengrocer to make sure that what I was selecting was mild. He mentioned that the green chillies were milder again than the red ones, but I decided to remain true to the recipe.

I also needed to buy some pineapple as it was included in both recipes. By good luck rather than design, I chose a golden pineapple and not all of the pineapple that I cut up ended in the sauce as it was so sweet. I rarely buy pineapples but am already rethinking this position.

The chilli sauce packed quite a punch but it turned out okay. I used a little on my salad along with some mandarin jam to help me acclimatize to the new taste sensation. It must have been okay because I happily finished off the last of the combined chilli and mandarin sauce at the end of the meal.

I used half a chilli in the salsa, and even then it still packed a punch but will go very nicely on my salads. Just for something different, last night I combined some of the salsa with some leftover ramen soup and I felt like I’d created a whole new dish.

Green Smoothie

Actually, the name of this recipe in Rawlicious is called Daily Green Smoothie, but I’m not sure that I’m ready for a daily juice.

The ingredient in this recipe that is new to me is a lime. This is the great part of working through recipes in a book. I’m being introduced to foods that I have avoided in the past. I’ve always found lemons and grapefruit too strong a taste for me, so I thought I’d feel the same way about limes. But that hasn’t happened. The taste of straight lime juice is strong, but the other ingredients in the smoothie seem to balance out the flavour.

Perhaps I could become a convert to green juices in the future.

Ramen Soup

I have just made some Ramen Soup. After googling Ramen Soup, I think that what I have made could be called Miso Shoyu Ramen Soup, as I have followed a recipe that requested brown miso (I used brown rice Genmai Spiral Miso) and nama shoyu (which means raw or unpasteurized shoyu – and I used Spiral organic Shoyu).

Unfortunately, I suspect that what I've made isn't raw. Nama shoyu is a type of shoyu not a brand name. I'm reading "The Raw Food Gourmet" by Gabrielle Chavez, and she mentions that the Nama Shoyu soy sauce from the Ohsawa company is the only brand she knows that is not re-pasteurised after fermenting (which qualifies it as a living food). Since Spiral Organic's sauce is called Shoyu rather than Nama Shoyu, it's probably a reasonable conclusion that it has been re-pasteurised.

I used a clove of garlic and some peeled ginger – and it’s the first time that I’ve used real garlic or real ginger rather than the ground versions. I was turned off garlic in my early adulthood when a member of my extended family regularly ate raw garlic. And even though I’ve known that ginger would be really good for me, it’s obviously taken me a long time to use real ginger as well.

But in the spirit of fully trying a raw diet – which many raw foodists recommend being somewhere between 50 to 75% raw - I decided this morning that I would try every recipe in a slim Thermomix recipe book called Rawlicious. Now I realize that picking a slim recipe book does make this easier for me, but as you can already tell, I am taking this personal challenge seriously by acquiring the exact ingredients mentioned in the recipes. And just to prove how serious I am, there are 31 recipes in Rawlicious, along with an entry for Almond Milk Smoothies with 12 variations. So I’m committing myself to trying 32 recipes which covers one of the Almond Milk Smoothies variations. And at least two of these recipes suggest the use of a dehydrator so I will be working out the best way for me to handle this, even if that means purchasing a dehydrator.

I really enjoyed making this soup – despite it being a cold soup. For a start, just the smell of the garlic and ginger shredded together was pleasant –obviously this is one experience I’ve been missing out on over the years. And as I added the miso, shoyu, and other ingredients, I just knew I was going to enjoy this.

And enjoy it I did. Since I made it from a raw recipe, there wasn’t any mention of heating the soup. However, I know that I can heat any soup I make to 37 degrees Celsius if I really want to – as this is equivalent to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the approximate maximum temperature that raw food can be heated to - either as a soup or in a dehydrator or electric/solar oven - and still be considered “raw”. So if I do manage to work out solar drying which is my preference, then I must remember not to attempt drying anything outside when the temperature is above 37 degrees Celsius. I suspect that if the outside temperature is in that range, I probably wouldn’t have the energy within me to be preparing something to be dried outside.

So I think the soup I’ve just made tastes pretty good. It is salty, so note to self against the recipe is to not add any additional salt. I have included a photo even though for me the appeal of this soup is more olfactory and gustatory than visual.

I will make this soup again, and it won’t be just because I have bought a 400gm pack of brown rice miso that I now need to use up. I genuinely enjoyed making and eating this soup.