Adventures in Raw Food

Category: Sauces & Dressings

  • Deep Dark Delicious Raw Chocolate Sauce

    This delicious raw chocolate sauce is a riff on a recipe from Shazzie and David Wolfe’s incredible book, Naked Chocolate.

    It’s incredibly easy, amazing delicious (and so good for you), and tastes great on 5-minute raspberry sorbet! This is as true a dark chocolate sauce as you could want.

    Deep Dark Delicious Chocolate Sauce

    2 T raw cacao powder, either ground from raw cacao nibs or purchased as powder
    2 T raw agave syrup
    1/2 t coconut oil or other organic raw nut oil OR 1/2 t filtered water (trust me, add this, even if it seems inconsquential)

    Mix the agave syrup and the oil or water together.

    Slowly whisk the raw cacao powder into the agave syrup mixture, mixing it in until well-blended into a smooth sauce. The amount suggested here is a rough guideline. How much cacao powder you will ultimately use depends on the consistency you want.

    Do not use a food processor or Vitamix for this recipe. Use a bowl and a whisk or a paddle (or spoon).

    Note: Most raw food recipes call for coconut oil in recipes like this. So do I, but if you don’t, experiment! You may like the coconut oil, or you may prefer some other raw, cold pressed nut oil. You can even forego the oil altogether, but it does impart a nice consistency and mouthfeel to the chocolate sauce.

    Deep Dark Delicious Raw Chocolate Sauce is delicious over 5-Minute Raspberry Sorbet.

    raw-chocolate-sauce

  • Annie’s Raw Spicy Peanut Sauce (Raw Dan Dan Sauce)

    This recipe for raw spicy peanut sauce (Dan Dan sauce) is amazing, and very forgiving!

    This recipe requires raw peanut butter from raw peanuts. You can either use the recipe for raw peanut butter from here, or look for it online or in a health food store (although I have never been able to find it easily, and why not make your own?)

    Annie’s Raw Spicy Peanut Sauce

    1/2 cup raw peanut butter
    1-2 teaspoons Chinese hot chili oil with red pepper flakes
    2-3 teaspoons Nama Shoyu or organic soy sauce
    1 clove minced garlic
    Udo’s Oil or organic peanut or canola oil as needed

    In a food processor combine everything except the oil until well blended. Add the oil just until the sauce is of the consistency you like. Adjust shoyu and chili to taste.

    This sauce is so fantastic, and if you let it sit a bit, it gets even better.

    I serve it over summer squash noodles made from summer squash with my Benriner spiral slicer. In this case I use summer squash because it is a bit blander, and a bit sturdier, than zucchini and so works perfectly with the spicy peanut sauce.

    You can get Udo’s Oil here (click on picture for more information):

    Udos Choice Oil Blend, 32 oz

  • On Making Raw Peanut Butter from Raw Peanuts

    I really wanted to experiment with making raw peanut butter from raw peanuts. So when they had raw peanuts in the bulk section at Whole Foods, I jumped on them.

    Then I took a look at the recipe for raw peanut butter in my Vita Mix “Whole Food machine” “recipes and instructions” book that came with my Vita Mix.

    The Vitamix recipe for raw peanut butter from raw peanuts calls for:

    4 1/2 cups raw peanuts
    3 Tablespoons canola or olive oil

    I didn’t want to make that much, and I wanted to use Udo’s Oil. So I didn’t, and I did, respectively.

    For my raw peanut butter from raw peanuts I used:

    1 cup raw peanuts
    1 tablespoon (plus more) Udo’s Oil

    Put the oil in the bottom of your Vita Mix, and then put the peanuts on top. Process at “hi” until peanuts are all ground. You will need to stop every so often and push the peanut grindings from the sides into the center of the Vita Mix, to the blades.

    When the peanuts are all ground, slowly add more oil until the peanut butter emulsifies and gets to the consistency you want.

    When it’s done you can add salt to taste if you like.

    Vita Mix warns that once the peanut butter is done, if you continue to process it for more than a minute, you may overheat the machine (then it will automatically shut off until it’s cooled down).

    Now, I have to tell you that I didn’t really like the flavour of raw peanut butter. To me, it tasted to – well – raw. However you may like it.

    BUT! I then took this peanut butter and made a fantastic spicy peanut sauce which I not only liked, but I adored. You too may adore Annie’s Spicy Peanut Sauce .

    Here are organic raw peanuts (click on the picture for more information):

    Nature's First Law Raw Organic Health Wild Jungle Peanuts

    Here is Udo’s Oil (click on the picture for more information):

    Udos Choice Oil Blend, 32 oz

  • Mole Mole Sauce

    This is a recipe for raw mole sauce which I created when one day I was wondering what I might do with my new bag of raw cacao nibs (ohmygosh, they are divine), and I suddenly had a hankering for mole!

    This should absolutely be tweaked and adjusted for your own taste and whatever ingredients you have on hand:

    3 T raw tahini
    3 T raw almond butter
    3 t raw cacao nibs
    3 t ground raw cacao powder

    Place the above in a strong blender or a food processor and blend together until relatively smooth.

    Then add:

    1 large tomato
    1 small avocado
    1/2 small onion
    1 handful of raw pumpkin seeds
    1 handful of raisins
    1 t minced garlic
    1 t Udo’s oil or olive oil
    1/2 t cayenne pepper
    1/2 t black peppercorns
    1/2 t cinnamon
    1/4 t ground cloves
    salt to taste

    Blend well. Use immediately or store in fridge and let the flavours blend together a bit.

    We serve it over mushrooms (mushroom mole), although there may be something over which it would be even better!

  • 1:1:1:1 Dressing

    This dressing is so delicious on a salad or veggies! In fact, it’s so good that I can eat a big bowl of nothing but lettuce with this dressing and love it!

    And it’s so easy to make, and so good for you!

    For enough dressing to lightly dress a small-to-medium salad:

    1 Tablespoon raw tahini
    1 Tablespoon Udo’s oil
    1 Tablespoon lemon juice
    1 Tablespon Nama Shoyu

    (Now you see why I call it 1:1:1:1 dressing!)

    Mix very well (I use one of those salad dressing shakers), and pour onto salad and toss.

    Note that a little of this dressing goes a long way, and it’s thick. So you will need to scrape down the sides of your shaker or bowl, and scrape it all onto your salad. Then toss, or even better, massage your salad until everything is all evenly coated with a thin layer of yummy dressing goodness.

    Yum!