In Ani’s Raw Food Essentials: Recipes and Techniques for Mastering the Art of Live Food, Ani Phyo guides readers through the fundamentals of raw food preparation in a simple and user-friendly manner.
Phyo has left no stone unturned when it comes to this collection of over 250 recipes. As in her previous book, Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen, she offers tips, cleaning product recipes and advice on how to be eco-friendly. Divided into three parts, Part 1 is the basics; it uncovers the mysteries of dehydrating, soaking and sprouting, fermentation and pickling. This section presents a few starter recipes: flatbreads and pickles, to be exact.
Phyo gets down to business in Part 2 where she showcases her talent of taking a basic recipe, using minimal ingredients and straightforward instructions, and creates variations. For example, her recipe for “Basic Nut Mylk” on page 41 transforms into “Vanilla Almond Mylk,” (p.41) “Chocolate Flurry Shake” (p. 42) or “Chilled Chai Frosty Shake” (p. 45). Another good example is the insanely, easy recipe for “Buckwheat Crispies” on page 63. The only ingredient is one pound of buckwheat groats and the recipe can be used as cereal in “Chocolate Crispies” (p. 63) or as “Basic Buckwheat Batter” (p. 115) for “fried” onion rings (p. 116) or as the base for “Buckwheat Pizza Crust” (p. 213).
Phyo offers effortless, quick, step-by-step instructions on the techniques of every raw culinary dish imagined. She leads with, a fruit smoothie (p. 31), and travels right along, from breakfast to desserts, with the likes of “Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Coconut Bacon Scramble” (p. 85) to Kimchi (p. 126), to “Vietnamese Pho Noodle Soup” (p. 232), to “Lucuma Ice Kream” --- and we haven’t even touched the chapter on feeding your raw dog.
Pay attention to the green and gray boxes interspersed throughout the book, they offer handy tips (“Dehydrating in Your Oven” p. 195) and bits of factoids (Is Sugar Vegan? Turbinado vs. Sucanat vs White Sugar” p. 57).
Part 3 is a resource guide to Phyo’s uncooking videos, metric conversions, movies to watch and advice on reducing your carbon footprint.
My one complaint of the book is not enough color photos. Fortunately, Phyo has the skill of descriptive writing that brings a dish to life, but the dowdy black-and- white photography doesn’t add anything to the book. Part of the appeal of living foods, especially in a cookbook, is experiencing the “life of the foods” through the vibrant colors and textures seen through the photography. The dozen or so colored photos in the book are definitely drool-worthy. I would gladly trade seeing photos of Phyo (although, she is quite beautiful) for a few more colored pictures of the food.
All-in-all, one of the most enticing aspects of “Ani’s Raw Food Essentials” is Phyo’s flair of providing “recipe” road maps to the gentle encouragement of creating your own culinary journeys in the kitchen. Which is how it should be.
My journey started with crepes.
Apple Crepes
Makes 4 wrappers
From Ani’s Raw Food Essentials page 69
1 cup cored and diced apple
½ cup flax meal
2 tablespoons agave syrup
½ cup water, or as needed
Place the apples in the bottom of a high-speed blender. Add the flax meal, agave, and water. Blend until smooth.
Spread the mixture evenly onto one lined 14-inch square Excalibur Dehydrator tray.
Dehydrate for 4 to 6 hours at 104 °F, or until completely dry. You can also flip the crepes, peel off the liner, and dehydrate for another couple of hours until dry.
Crepes with Herb Cream and Red Pepper Sauce
by The Daily Raw Café
1 Crepe recipe, making 8 small rounds
RED PEPPER SAUCE
Make 1 pint of sauce
2 red peppers, seeded, coarsely chopped
¼ cup sun-dried tomatoes, soaked, reserve ½ cup soaking water
¼ cup reserved sun-dried tomato water, or more as needed
1 clove garlic
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Combine ingredients in a blender until smooth, silky sauce. Adding enough of the soaking water to reach desired consistency.
FILLING
1 cup soaked cashews
¼ cup reserved sun-dried tomato water, or filtered water
2 tablespoons golden balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon chopped red onion
1 clove garlic, pressed
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
1 teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
Combine cashews, water, vinegar, onion and garlic in a blender; process until cashews break down into a creamy, yet slightly chunky crème. You want the consistency of a ricotta. Transfer to a mixing bowl.
Fold in parsley and basil, sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Assemble crepes
On a clean work surface, place 1-2 rounded tablespoons of filling in the center of each crepe, shiny side down. Roll up crepe.
Spoon red pepper sauce on a serving plate, arrange crepe on top. Serve immediately, crepes will become soggy if left on sauce too long.
Chocolate Crepes with Chocolate Cream
by The Daily Raw Blog
CHOCOLATE CREPE WRAPPERS
Add 2 tablespoons organic cocoa powder to the ingredients of the crepe wrapper recipe. Continue to make crepes as instructed.
CHOCOLATE CREAM
1 cup soaked cashews
½ cup water
½ cup raw agave nectar*
20 drops Cocoa Bean Extract**
2 tablespoons coconut oil (liquid)
Blend ingredients until you have a smooth, creamy texture.
CHOCOLATE SAUCE
½ cup cocoa powder
¼ cup raw agave nectar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ cup coconut oil (liquid)
Blend ingredients.
Note: If the sauce becomes cold, it will solidify, just place it in the dehydrator for an hour at 115 degrees to melt.
Assemble crepes
Place the crepe with the shiny side up. Put the cream in a line down the center of the crepe. Fold the right side just past the middle and then do the same with the left.
Drizzle chocolate sauce on top of the crepe and sprinkle with coconut “powder”
ANI’S SERVING SUGGESTION: Grind dried coconut into powder, and sprinkle over your crepes through a sieve to give a powdered sugar look. (p. 71)
* I used Xagave Raw Agave Nectar (review next week)
**I used NuNaturals (review next week)
IN THE LATE yet still note-worthy department. The Daily Raw Café was mentioned in last Wednesday’s Denver Post (June 9, 2010). You can read the write-up here.
My book is in the final, final, final stages of coming out. Self-publishing is a b*****! You are in charge of so ALL the aspects of development (editing, layout, design, cover art, author bio, yada yada, ya, ) on top of writing the little creature.
The buck stops with you all the way. So much pressure! I want the best book possible for the resources available to me. It’s a lot of hard, tedious work. Which makes me wonder why on earth am I doing it again very soon (yes, there will be another book out before the year is out!). Well, we all know the answer, I am a bit wacky in the brain and I loved the experience so much, I wanted to do it again right away. Don’t laugh, I’m serious ;).
WOW, now that’s a beet! This colossal-sized beet emerged from our garden. Man on the Raw and our daughter Avery planted it in mid-March. This root vegetable has an interesting backstory. Man on the Raw was working the compost when he spied a sliced beet top with dead stems and leaves attached.
Nothing out of the ordinary, until he notices one leaf thriving amongst the deceased foliage.
On a whim, he decided to plant it and see what happens. Several months later, on a rainy June weekend in Denver, the jolly red giant emerged with an amazing amount of greens. All of which made many quarts of beet and carrot juice.
