Coconut Cashew Cream

This lovely coconut cashew cream is an adaptation of Amy Crawford's recipe (http://theholisticingredient.com/2013/09/16/coconut-cashew-chia-cream/), and went really well both with a chocolate cake and with a walnut-banana-chocolate chip cake made with gluten-free flour. There's such little flax seed meal in it that it does not really affect the colour of the cream; it's still nice and white.

150 grams of cashews
4 dl refrigerated coconut milk
2 tablespoons of ground flax seeds
3 tablespoons of honey
the seeds of one vanilla bean
a pinch of ground sea salt

1. Let the cashews soak in water for two hours, rinse and drain.
2. Place all the ingredients in a bowl and blend with a hand blender until smooth.
3. Place the mixture in the fridge for the night for it to get thick and creamy.
4. Serve cold with a cake of your choice.

Minty Chocolate Icing/Mousse

I made this minty, creamy chocolate icing for a chocolate cake but it would also work well on its own as a chocolate mousse. I went a bit crazy with the mint because you couldn't really taste it very well until the ingredients had had some time to set in the fridge. Oh, and I've got to say that the vanilla flavour was overpowered by the mint flavour, so you might want to omit the vanilla altogether - at least if you use as many as 4 sprigs of mint.

2 smallish avocados
2 tablespoons of melted coconut oil
6 tablespoons of raw cocoa powder
5 tablespoons of honey (or to taste)
the leaves of 4 sprigs of mint (maybe half of that if you want a less intense flavour)
(the seeds of one vanilla bean)

1. Chop the mint leaves.
2. Put all the ingredients in a bowl and blend until smooth and creamy.
3. Place in the fridge for a couple of hours; this will allow the flavour of the mint to really seep into the icing.
4. Enjoy!

Annika

Sweet Temptation - Casserole with Sweet Potatoes and Anchovies

Dear Readers,

This post marks a couple of important changes in the direction of this blog. First, my friend Michael, who used to coauthor this blog, has gone on to set up his own, all-vegan blog (http://hififood.blogspot.co.uk/ - check it out!), where you will also find his old recipes. Second, this blog will no longer only contain all-vegan and all-vegetarian recipes. What it will contain is gluten- and sugar-free recipes made of organic or locally sourced seasonal ingredients - whenever those options are available. Many of the recipes will also continue to be vegan, vegetarian, dairy-free, lactose-free, egg-free and grain-free. As before, all the recipes will be tagged with the appropriate labels, so that you can quickly and easily find the recipes that suit your individual needs.

To start off the new era, I am posting a recipe inspired by a traditional Swedish dish called Janssons frestelse (Jansson's temptation). I decided to name it "Sweet Temptation" because, instead of potatoes, I am using sweet potatoes and carrots to make it.

SWEET TEMPTATION

a large orange sweet potato
two small carrots
a smallish onion (or 1/2 of a large onion)
2-3 cloves of garlic
about 40 grams of anchovy fillets in olive oil (with the oil, the total weight should be about 80 grams)
a small bunch of fresh parsley
freshly ground pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Cut the sweet potato in half. Slice the sweet potato and the carrots thinly. 
3. Cut the onion into rings.
4. Finely chop the garlic and the parsley.
5. Place the ingredients in layers in an all-metal pot, starting from a layer of sweet potato slices.
6. Add a little bit of water (about a fourth or a third of the dish's height) into the pot. You might also want to add in a little bit of the olive oil from the anchovy package. Beware, though - it is very salty! Oh, and please do not add any salt to this dish; the salt in the anchovies will be enough. In fact, you might even want to rinse some of the anchovies in water to make them less salty.
7. Place the pot on the stove, and bring the water to a boil. 
8. When the water starts boiling, place the dish into the oven.
9. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until the potatoes and carrots are cooked.
10. Enjoy!

Annika

P.S. Step 7 is optional. I only do it to speed up the cooking process a bit. If you skip Step 7, you can use a glass or a ceramic oven dish instead of an all-metal pot.

Applying the A Formula

For the past six months or so, I have been cooking a lot using the so-called "A Formula" ("A" obviously stands for "Annika"). It's a fast way of cooking that I use, for instance, to prepare something for lunch at work. The dishes are either based on brown rice or quinoa and, for two reasons, the cooking time is basically the same as the cooking time of those grains: 1) the rest of the ingredients are washed, chopped etc. while the grains are already cooking and 2) the rest of the ingredients are either left uncooked or steamed in the same pot with the grains (towards the end of the cooking time of the grains). The A Formula can be used to prepare an amazing variety of vegan/vegetarian dishes, and most of those dishes are delicious either warm or cold.

Most of the time I just improvise and apply the A Formula to whatever I have in my fridge and my spice cupboard. The below dish is a delightful example of one of those improvised dishes cooked using the A Formula. It was delicious (although I had feared that it would turn out horrible because of the radishes) and I'm going to try to recreate it one of these days to double-check that the amounts of the ingredients in the below recipe are OK.

APPLYING THE A FORMULA

0.5 dl white quinoa
1 dl water
a clove of garlic
a large carrot
5-6 radishes
1-2 tablespoons of chopped fresh coriander
leek
about 1 teaspoon of curcuma powder
a pinch of chili powder
1.5 tablespoons of extra virgin coconut oil
the juice of a quarter of a lemon
sea salt

1. Rinse the quinoa well.
2. Add the water and the salt in the pot and bring to a boil under a lid.
3. Add the quinoa, the curcuma powder and the chili powder.
4. Peel the garlic and chop it finely.
5. Peel and wash the carrot and cut it into very thin, round slices.
6. Wash the radishes and cut them into very thin slices.
7. Wash the coriander and chop it finely.
8. Wash the leek and cut about 1 cm of it finely.
9. When 5-10 minutes of the cooking time of the quinoa remain, add the garlic into the pot (5 minutes if you want a stronger garlic taste).
10. When 2-3 minutes of the cooking time remain, add the chopped coriander and the carrot slices.
11. When the quinoa is ready, switch the heat off, add the radishes, the leek, the coconut oil and the lemon juice, and mix the ingredients well.
12. Serve straight away, or let the dish cool down (like I did), and enjoy!

Annika

Ssssh! - Chewy Chocolate Biscuits

If your sweet tooth is aching and you need to do something about it fast, you might want to try these Super Sweet, Super Sticky gluten-free biscuits that are going to quiet your cravings right down (Ssssh!). They are a sugar-free adaptation of this recipe: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/flourless-fudge-cookies-recipe, and the sweetness comes from a generous amount of honey... I won't make any claims about that being much better for you than white sugar, though.

SSSSH!

1 1/3 dl of unsweetened gluten-free cocoa powder (e.g. Van Houten)
250 g of honey
2 egg whites
3 tablespoons of pine nuts (other kinds of nuts should work just as well)
a pinch of salt

1. Heat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius.
2. Line the baking tray with baking paper.
3. Put all the ingredients in a blender and mix until smooth. The resulting batter is pretty liquidy.
4. Form the biscuits by pouring heaped tablespoons of the batter on the baking tray. If you do that slowly and carefully enough, the batter will spread into nice, round biscuits (or pools of batter, rather). On my baking tray, there was enough space for 12 biscuits, and the remaining batter would probably have been enough for 3 more. I used it to quiet an upset family member down.
5. Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes.
6. Let the biscuits cool down for a bit on the baking tray, and use a sharp knife (e.g. a vegetable knife with a thin blade) to get the biscuits off the baking paper in one piece.
7. Enjoy the gooey sweetness!

Annika

Cung-Fe Rolls - Cumin and Fennel Rolls

I'm on a roll! After more and more successful experiments with bean-based biscuits (more recipes and updates on the current recipes will be online soon), I thought it's time to expand to bean-based savoury baking. This was my first experiment with bean-based rolls, and I was quite happy with the results the first time round. The rolls stay a bit moist inside but I don't think that you can really expect anything else with these ingredients. Sorry for the afwul picture; I still haven't replaced my broken camera.

If you're not a big fan of cumin and/or fennel, just try leaving it out or replacing it with some other spice.

CUNG-FE ROLLS

3 dl cooked white beans (about 1.5 dl unsoaked beans)
1 dl soaked millet grains (about 0.5 dl  unsoaked millet grains)
1.5 dl blended steamed courgette
5 tablespoons ground flax seeds
0.5 tablespoon cumin seeds
0.5 tablespoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 teaspoons gluten-free baking powder

0. Soak the beans and the millet grains overnight.

1. Drain the millet grains well. Do not cook them.

2. Cook the beans until soft and drain them well.

3. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius, and line a baking tray with baking paper.
4. Wash a largish courgette, cut it in small pieces, steam until soft and blend until smooth.
5. Mix 1.5 dl of blended courgette, the ground flax seeds, the cumin seeds, the fennel seeds, the salt and the lemon juice, and let the mixture stand for a while.

6. Blend the beans, the millet grains and the wet mixture until smooth.
7. Add the baking powder and fold.
8. Use a tablespoon and a teaspoon to form eight round rolls: both spoons to get the batter onto the lined baking tray, and the teaspoon dipped in water to shape the rolls.

9. Bake for about 50 minutes, until the rolls start browning. Turn the baking tray around halfway through. If you don't bake the rolls long enough, they will stay sticky inside. This also means that the rolls will and should get nice and crusty on the outside. You can use two different ways to test if the rolls are ready (it's best to use both, just to be sure): 1) stick a toothpick in the middle of a roll; if it comes out clean, the roll is ready 2) knock the bottom of a roll with your finger; if the sound is hollow, the roll is ready. If you keep the rolls under a tea towel after they have cooled down, the crusty outside will get softer.

10. Place the rolls on a cooling rack, and let them cool down.

11. Enjoy.

Nuts for Ginger - Gluten-Free Ginger Nuts

I never had a major sweet tooth in my glutenous past. The only two types of biscuits that I've ever really, really liked are ginger nuts and oat biscuits. This is my attempt at recreating ginger nuts without gluten. My ginger nuts are not brittle like glutenous ginger nuts but soft and more bread-like. I love their taste but I do miss the crispiness of glutenous ginger nuts. I am currently trying to develop a second ginger nut recipe that would result in a similar taste but a crispier texture. I reckon you could also make these biscuits a bit crispier by forming smaller/thinner biscuits, and by lowering the temperature to 170-180 degrees and keeping the biscuits in the oven a bit longer. I will try that next time I make this dough.

NUTS FOR GINGER

2 dl cooked white beans

3 tablespoons coconut oil
0.5. dl honey

0.5 dl boiled and blended sweet potatoes

5 tablespoons ground flax seeds

1.5 tablespoons ground ginger
1 heaped teaspoon ground cinnamon
0.5-1 teaspoon ground cloves (or 10-20 crushed clove buds)

a couple of pinches of sea salt

0. Soak the beans overnight, then cook and drain them.

1. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius.
2. Peel a sweet potato, cut it in small pieces, steam until soft and blend until smooth.
3. Mix the honey, 0.5 dl of blended sweet potato, 1 tablespoon of coconut oil, the ground flax seeds, the ginger, the cinnamon, the cloves and the sea salt, and let the mixture stand.
4. Line a baking tray with baking paper.

5. Blend the beans and two tablespoons of coconut oil until smooth.
6. Add the spice mixture and blend. The dough will be quite solid.
7. Use two teaspoons to form seven biscuits: both spoons to get the batter onto the lined baking tray, and one teaspoon dipped in water to shape and flatten the biscuits.

8. Bake for about 15 minutes until the biscuits start browning.

9. Place the biscuits on a cooling rack, and let them cool down.

10. Enjoy.