The Fresh Network Blog

Day 1 of Global Juice Feast: A recipe

This is my current favourite juice. Just can't get enough! SO refreshing : )

The proportions are a moveable (juice) feast so don't pay tooooo much attention to what I have put here:

Carrot, celery, lemon, parsley and ginger juice

• 3 large carrots
• 4 sticks celery
• 2 lemons
• big handful parsley
• 1cm piece root ginger

Juice all ingredients except lemons together. Lemons need to be done separately in a citrus juicer. Stir lemon juice into main mixture, insert straw and prepare to feel all zingy and zowie. 

If you are one of the superheroes doing the Global Juice Feast, try doubling, tripling or even quadrupling the above quantities - when you're doing five litres of the liquid magic a day you can't be messing around with single portions! ; )      

SubLime Green Mousse

Ever since I first made this a few weeks ago I can't get by without my daily fix. So creamy, so tangy, so cheesecakey!

(Serves two normal people or one lime lover)

• 2 small avocadoes
• 1-2 limes, freshly juiced
• 1-2 tbsps agave nectar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp Celtic sea salt

1. Scoop the flesh out of the avocadoes and place in a Vita-Mix or other high-speed blender.

2. Add the lime juice, agave nectar, vanilla extract and sea salt and blend. You may need to add a little water to get to the requisite smooth, whipped-cream-like texture.

3. Place in bowls (or a bowl) and enjoy.

Vanilla ice

Have you tried raw vanilla beans? I bought the hugest bag of them in Sedona and I'm already wondering why I didn't buy more! The addition of vanilla elevates so many raw recipes to another level altogether; mainly sweet ones but selected savoury ones too, if you know what you're doing ;) To my mind the real deal (i.e. the whole bean, raw) is so much better than vanilla essence, which almost always comes distilled in alcohol, so that the subtle flavours of this heavenly fruit come with a not-so-subtle 'liqueur' effect. The best alternative to raw beans is sundried vanilla powder, like this one sold by Living Tree Community. Around a fortnight ago I posted this recipe, for a frozen banana pecan shake. Update: I discovered today that it is at least twice as lovely with a whole vanilla bean added before blending. If you're making it in a Vita Mix, no need to scoop out the inside; it will handle the whole bean no problemo and soon all you'll see are those tiny black flecks of delectability. Well, it's Friday night and I'm about to go out but I just had to share this first :)

A not very autumnal recipe!

I somehow invented this yesterday. This is how all my best recipes come into being...quite by accident. Although it is not exactly seasonal eating (or rather drinking) it's SO good that I had to share it anyway!

It's for a heavenly frozen banana pecan shake.

I wanted to make almond milk but rather serendipitously had no almonds so I made pecan milk instead. Why have I never made this before, I thought to myself. It's beyond delicious. Earlier on in the same burst of kitchen activity I'd made my son raw banana ice cream, but I'd made too much for him. Well, what's a girl to do? As I was tucking in it occurred to me that it would make a delicious 'thick shake' with the ice cream blended in. A stroke of genius, even if I do say so myself...

I made this recipe using a Vita Mix blender and a Cuisinart food processor. If you have just the Vita Mix, or any other high-speed blender, you can easily make this - it will just take a little longer to process the banana. If you have a regular blender and a food processor or a homogenizing juicer you can also get by. Both the processor and the juicer will quickly turn frozen bananas and other fruit into delicious ice cream. My juicer makes it come out like a long snake whereas the food processor whips it up so it actually looks like ice cream. When you're blending it into a drink it doesn't matter, but bear this in mind if you're considering investing in a piece of equipment that will make ice cream and you want the end result to look the part. A regular blender won't handle frozen fruit; you'll just wear out the motor trying. So...the technical bit out of the way, here's the recipe:

Frozen banana pecan shake

• 50g pecans, soaked overnight, rinsed and drained
• 1 large frozen banana (or 2 small), slightly thawed (for about 10-15 minutes)
• 1 cup filtered water
• If desired, 1 tsp agave nectar

To make the milk, blend the pecans with the water and then strain through a nut milk bag or fine mesh sieve.

To make the banana ice cream, process the banana in a food processor until it achieves a creamy consistency. This will take a couple of minutes. It can be hard to do with just one banana so you may have more success doubling up on the quantities for this recipe.

Place milk and ice cream (plus agave or other sweetener, if desired) in blender and whiz into a thick shake.

Put on an extra cardigan and enjoy!

Sublime salad dressings

Although more and more packaged raw foods are becoming available, and these foods are great when you're on the go or as a treat, there is no substitute for fresh fruits and vegetables.

And although most of us would rather eat a big bag of cherries than a plate of greens, your body really needs those greens!

Raw gourmet cuisine has been elevated to an art form and raw food advocates can often be heard saying that people should not think of salad when they think of raw food. I see what they're getting at, but my experience tells me that to be healthy and happy on high raw you need to love eating salad and choose it often!

If you're the kind of person for whom a 'salad' is a few leaves on the side of the plate; if you find it hard to munch through a mountain of the green stuff, you simply need to discover DRESSINGS. A great salad dressing can transform a boring plate of leaves into a gastronomic delight.

Try not to rely on the bottled dressings available in stores as they are usually made of low-quality heated oils and often loaded with salt, vinegar and other unhealthy ingredients. It is much better to make your own fresh dressings and the added benefit is that they will be tastier (as well as healthier) than anything you can find in your local health store or supermarket.   

Below are the recipes for four easy yet delicious dressings. All of the ingredients are raw, though raw recipe books often include condiments which are not. If you are a strict 100% raw fooder and happily succeeding on this diet of course you'll want to stay away from such things as maple syrup and nutritional yeast. For the rest of us they are a compromise well worth making. In my experience the people who won't have a pinch of mustard powder in their salad because it's "not raw" are usually eating pizza and ice cream again before too long! If it is your goal to be high raw or all raw, the best advice I can give you is: make it easy as possible for yourself and don't sweat the small stuff!

That said, there is one salad ingredient that should always be raw: the oil.

The easiest ice creams and sorbets

Did you know how easy it is to make tasty, refreshing and healthy ice creams and sorbets using just fresh fruits and nuts? It can take as little as two minutes as long as you have the right machine for the job: the Cuisinart food processor, a kitchen gadget raw food fans rave about.

Cut your chosen fruit into chunks and place in plastic bags in the freezer. Once the fruit is frozen you just place it in the Cuisinart, switch the machine on and watch it work its magic. Within a few minutes you'll have a delicious yet guilt-free dessert. You'll need a top-quality food processor such as this one for the recipes below and for many other raw food recipes. Such a machine will be capable of things cheaper machines cannot achieve so it really is worth the investment.

The great thing about using the Cuisinart for these particular recipes, as opposed to the blank screen of a homogenizing juicer, is that it automatically looks as well as tastes just like ice cream, which is hard to achieve when using a juicer.

Of course, the ice cream you make will only be as good as the fruit you use so make sure it is fully ripe to get the best flavour. Many of the recipes below use bananas as a base; if you've never tried this before you will see why once you do! As a guide, use two large bananas or three small bananas per person. In the unlikely event that you make more than you can eat in one go you can always freeze the remainder. You'll just need to remember to take it out around half an hour before you want to eat it.

Golden mango pudding...plus musings on the psychology of food shopping!

Although we live in an age when most fresh produce is available year round, there are still a few select fruits and vegetables that only make a brief, seasonal appearance in shops and markets. One example well worth knowing about is the Indian mango, also known as the Alphonso mango. It is in season from April for just two months – whatever you do, don't miss it!

If you haven't yet tasted one, head to your nearest Asian market or supermarket now. If you don't see them under either of the above names, they are sometimes called golden mangoes and you'll recognize them by the distinctive colour of their skin and their compact size.

The only down side is that once you taste this aromatic and ambrosial variety of mango, no other will ever quite pass muster! They are delicious consumed just as they come but I've developed a recipe that I believe improves on nature – if I may be so bold as to make such a claim! For the last couple of weeks I've been heading to the kitchen to whip up one of these mid morning, when hunger first strikes. The ingredients are as follows:

• 2 Indian mangoes (3 if feeling particularly hungry and/or decadent), peeled and removed from the stone
• Half a medium-sized banana
• One quarter of a medium-sized avocado

Simply place the above into a blender and whizz up into a golden cream. As is always the case, a high-speed blender such as a Vita-Mix will give the smoothest consistency, but if you don't have one, you can make a version of this with any blender and you won't be disappointed with the results.

The beauty of this recipe is that all you taste is the mango. You don't taste the avocado at all; that's just there to give it the delightfully creamy texture that somehow brings out the flavour of the mango even more. You don't taste the banana either and I haven't quite worked out what its role is, but I've tried making this without and it's not as good.   

Something for the weekend...

Have you ever had one of those days when only chocolate will do? Although I adore 'the food of the gods' as much as the next person, I don't often crave it these days. But this morning, recovering from a very late night, feeling ever so slightly fragile, and with piles of work to get through, I found myself scratching my head and wondering what I could eat that would transform my day. And funnily enough, the usual juices, fruits and salads didn't quite cut it! ;)

As fortune would have it, (a) I remembered a rather special recipe my good friend Karen Knowler has shared with the world on more than one occasion and (b) my kitchen is stocked with yummy gourmet raw ingredients so I was able to make it! The recipe was actually for chocolate ice cream, but as this was one of those times when only an instant fix will do, it became chocolate pudding.

Karen uses dates but I sweetened with raw agave today. I can't remember the quantities Karen recommends, but I'm one of those 'cooks' who judges quantities as I go along rather than measuring them out, so it didn't matter. Anyway, these simple ingredients are so great together that it would be challenging indeed to marry them and end up with anything less than heavenly. The below recipe is enough to make one large serving – too large even for this self-confessed chocophile to finish!

My Current Favourite Green Smoothie

FROM RUSSELL: I love green smoothies! They're so easy to make and such a great way to get lots of greens into your diet.  Usually I have a few ingredients in mind and throw them into the Vita-Mix to see what happens. As long as you've got a few dates to hand, you can't go wrong.

I've just made what I think is a particularly tasty recipe, so much so that it needs to be shared with the world! I've used a whole bag of organic spinach in the recipe but you can hardly taste  the greens so there's plenty of room for more greens in there if you so desire. 

Read on for the recipe...

Tomato & Macadamia Mozzarella Linguine

From Russell: I've just posted this recipe on my blog so I thought I'd share it here too!  This is a great recipe (if I say so myself) that tastes like it's taken you ages to prepare. Note: It does take ages if you have to do it for 30 people, unless you have a handy helper called Emma to peel and spiralize for you!

Here we go...