Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN

PER ITALIANO

Hello everyone,

Hummus is one of the essential foods in a plant based kitchen for its versatility. We can prepare many different variations of it by using different legumes and various vegetables and spices.

I published a more traditional Hummus recipe which was also compatible with whole food plant based diet. Today, I will be sharing our delicious Roasted Red Pepper Hummus recipe.

You can either grill or roast your peppers, I roasted mine. They lose liquid during cooking obviously so make sure that you use minimum 600 - 700 g of fresh peppers.

Ingredients:
750 g cooked chickpeas
250 g roasted and then peeled sweet red capia or bell pepper
75 g chickpea cooking water
60 g whole sesame tahini
40 g freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 cloves of pressed garlic
2 TBSP nutritional yeast

1 tsp smoked paprika

Optional, little salt

Preparation:

Cashew Mayonnaise

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Hello everyone,

Today I'd like to share with you a great recipe that you can use in your Whole Food Plant Based kitchen: Cashew Mayonnaise.

As you can guess already from the title its main ingredients are cashew nuts. When you blend raw cashews with some water in a high powered blender, they melt and turn into a very beautiful smooth cream. Raw cashews have a very mild flavour, that's why they are often used to prepare plant based creams, cheeses and milk.

You can use this recipe not only as a mayo alternative but also as a cream to dress your pasta with or a cheesy spread on your slice of bread. You can thin it with a bit of plant milk when you use as pasta sauce. You can add nutritional yeast to give it a cheesy flavour.

I wanted this mayo to have a mild taste so I've limited my use of spices for this time not to create a strong flavoured mayonnaise. You can make any additions as you'd like. You can create distinctive flavours by adding fresh or dried herbs like dill, basil, thyme or spices like turmeric, curry, smoked pepper etc.

For those who don't like mustard, Dijon is a mild tasting mustard and adding 1 teaspoon into your mixture won't make your mayonnaise taste like mustard. So I'd say, don't be discouraged by the use of mustard in the recipe, it is up to you of course.

Yes, Cashew Mayonnaise is a healthier alternative to the classic one buy let's also remember that it is high in calories as well as nutrients. Even though our mayo has no refined oil but healthy fat, it is always wise to consume such nut containing calorie dense creams in small amounts.

About measuring cups and spoons I use in my recipes... I have a set that I bought from Amazon. As a person who likes trying new recipes I am a bit of perfectionist so I need to measure my ingredients with precision. They make my work so much easier. I have different sets of cutlery at home but none of them is the same in size. Besides, if you are copying recipes from cookbooks they almost always have such sets.  Owning one would give you consistency and piece of mind. They could be easily bought in many stores or online.

Ingredients:
300 g raw unsalted cashews
180 g water
2 TBSP fresh lemon juice
1 tsp Dijon Mustard
1/2 tsp salt*
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder

Notes:

1. If you don't want to compromise from Whole Food Plant Based diet leave the salt out.
2. If you'd like your mayo to have stronger flavors, you can increase the amount of lemon juice, mustard and spices up to your taste. You can even prepare different flavored mayos by adding different herbs like dill, oregano, different spices like turmeric, smoked pepper, nutritional yeast or squeezed fresh garlic etc.
3. If you are using Thermomix or the container bowl of your Blender is as large as Thermomix's one (2 liters), you'd better to use minimum 300 g of cashews. Such large container blenders don't work well enough with small amount of ingredients and it is hard to obtain a smooth cream. Instead, if your Blender has a small container bowl you can reduce the amount that you plan to prepare.
4. I prepared a thick mayonnaise. If you'd like to have a thinner one add a little water up to your preference.
5. If you let it rest in the fridge for a couple of hours it will taste even more flavorsome.

Preparation:

Almond Butter

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Hello everyone,

Today's leading actor is again almonds. A few days back we made a plant based milk with them and now it is time for butter.

If you have a high speed blender or Thermomix you can make your own nut butters. Not only will you easily prepare delicious and healthy nut butters at home, but you will also save on the kitchen budget.

You can prepare you butter with raw or lightly toasted almonds. I often use half raw and half toasted.

All you need for this recipe is your almonds and a bit of patience. In the beginning they will look more like a crumbly mess than a creamy butter but given enough time your butter will eventually become very creamy as you can see in the photos.

Ingredients:
500 g raw or lightly toasted almonds

Preparation:

Tofu Arrabbiata Sauce

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Hello everyone,

Today I'd like to share with you the recipe of one of our essential tomato based sauces which goes with almost anything.

I've got the inspiration from an Italian classic: arrabbiata sauce. There is not tofu in the original recipe obviously.

If you are looking for a recipe to use your leftover almond pulp after making your almond milk, add Tofu Arrabbiata Sauce into the list.

I prefer to prepare a good amount of this sauce and store it in the freezer. I'd recommend you all to do so for its practicality.

You can use this sauce with many vegetable dishes besides pasta. It goes great with legumes such as beans, chickpeas and lentils. If you have some precooked legumes in your fridge or a can in your pantry, you can have a very delicious and healthy meal in a short amount of time by simply mixing them with the sauce and warm it for several minutes. Do you also have some precooked grains? Add them into the mixture too! This could save you a lot of time and energy and present you the chance to eat well after a exhausting working day.

Today I used my sauce with gnocchi, another italian classic. Gnocchi is a type of fresh pasta made of mainly with potatoes. I am planning to share the recipe for a whole food plant based version of it in future.

Ingredients:
100 g onion
50 g garlic
Red pepper flakes to taste (optional)
80 g parsley leaves
400 g organic natural tofu
4 cans diced tomatoes ( 1 can = 400 g)
Little or no salt, black pepper to taste (optional)
600 g water

Notes:

1. In the blog I mainly prepare whole food plant based recipes so I don't use oil in the recipe. If you prefer to use oil, you can add some extra virgin olive oil while sauteing onions.
2. I couldn't get used to "zero salt" policy in WFPB recipes. I still add a little.
3. If you'd like to make this sauce without tofu, reduce the amount of water by half. Add more in case it's needed.
4. If you have some leftover almond pulp, you can add it into the mixture together with diced tomatoes.

Preparation:

Roasted Winter Squash Sauce

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Hello again everyone.. It's been a while...

Today I'll write about a delicious sauce which we love and prepare very often this period of the year.

I've got the inspiration from Gaz Oakley's yummy Cheesy Stuffed Squash recipe. After many trials and several changes I've managed to come up with a very delicious and versatile sauce. Don't get me wrong, the origial recipe also is just good as it is. My intention was to create a sauce which would be as tasty and good for a whole food plant based diet.

You'll have a good amount of sauce with this recipe which is very helpful to have something ready in the fridge. You can always freeze the excess amount if there is any left.

You can use our Roasted Winter Squash Sauce in many different ways and serve very beautifully stuffed in the halved / emptied squashes.

Within the next days I'll share some of the dishes I prepared with this sauce so that I can give you some ideas and inspiration.

These days in the supermarkets and farmer markets you can see a wide range of winter squashes that come in many different types, colours and sizes. The ones I come across more often are Butternut Squash and red or green squashes (They are all just called winter squash so I don't know the exact type of the squash but judging from the look I believe they are kabochas, mantovana, delica.. etc)

When I buy squashes to make our Roasted Squash Sauce I try to pick smaller ones. Because, as I use the flesh of the squashes for the sauce, I use the halved and emptied squashes as a bowl to serve meal and they look just gorgeous.

I don't mind much about the exact weight of the ingredients in this recipe. There are different varieties of squashes and even the ones from the very same variety come in different sizes. In today's recipe I used 2 butternut squashes and 1 green winter squash. I try to find squashes that weigh between 1 kg  - 1 kg 250 g. Of course you can use bigger sized ones as well, however, if you'd like to use them as serving bowl per portion, I'd recommend you not to go over 1.5 kg.

I use 3 winter squashes for this recipe and 2 of them are always butternut squashes.

Here come the ingredients...


Ingredients:
2 butternut squashes (1 kg each)
1 green winter squash (1 kg 300 g)

700 g leek
10 - 15 fresh sage leaves (20 - 25)
4 Tbsp nutritional yeast
10 g freshly squeezed lemon juice

Spices, Optional;*(1)
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp garlic powder

Bechamel sauce:
1 L organic soy milk
100 g organic brown rice flour*(2)
50 g organic whole sesame tahini
1/2 - 1 tsp salt
10 g freshly squeezed lemon juice*(3)

*(1) I don't always use the spices, sometimes I leave the garlic powder out. It is up to your preference.

*(2) I use a variety of flours depending on what I have in the kitchen. To give you an example, in my previous bechamel I used 40 g of tapioca flour, 40 g of whole buckwheat flour and 20 g of chickpea flour.

*(3) In a whole food plant based diet the consumption of salt is discouraged. Even though I've reduced our use of salt a lot I couldn't manage to go entirely salt-free. You can leave the salt out or try to use the least amount possible.

Preparation:

Hummus

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Hummus is one of the essentials in our plant based kitchen as it offers such wide range of use.

You can spread it on your wholegrain bread slices, or in your sandwiches.

You can dip your vegetables or your wholewheat crackers. You can use it as salsa with your falafels or other plant based patties.

One of our absolute favourites is to spread a generous amount of hummus in our wholegrain piadina or tortillas, add some artichoke hearts, dried tomatoes and arugula and wrap it. So delicious!

It is possible to prepare hummus with different types of legumes and spices.

Today I'd like to share with you our basic recipe. They include also extra virgin olive oil in traditional recipes but, as a member of whole food plant based / nutritarian kitchen, we don't. Besides, tahini contains enough fat.

We use "whole sesame tahini" or "unhulled tahini" our kitchen. Whole sesame tahini, as you could understand from its name, is made with unhulled sesame seeds. Most of the products in the market are made with hulled sesame seeds. Tahini with hulled sesame seeds deliver a smoother product whereas unhulled tahini results less smooth and a bit bitter. However, hulling process removes many of the benefits of tahini since it discards the bran of the sesame seeds, where many of the nutrients are stored. (See: Source) That is why I always read the ingredients on the packaging and make sure it is written unhulled sesame seeds. Another thing I pay attention in tahini is to be made of 100% of sesame seeds. Some products may contain oil as ingredient.

Here comes our basic hummus recipe..

Ingredients:
500 g cooked chickpeas
120 g chickpea boiling water
60 g fresh lemon juice
30 g unhulled tahini or whole sesame tahini
2 cloves of garlic, pressed
Little salt


Preparation: