Yellow Courgette Spaghetti and Is Raw Food That Good for Everyone?

Take one courgette....

 

Make it into spaghetti with a julienne peeler....

Add runner bean and tomato salad....

Grate some Gran Padano on top (god I love this cheese)...

Et voila, a nearly raw dish!

When I was reading about different people's recipes involving courgette spaghetti, I was surprised that no one cooked it. I mean obviously the raw foodies weren't going to, but...no one? And they were all saying how it was JUST LIKE NOODLES, just as good if not better! YAY!

Well, I didn't personally agree. It felt healthy, and crunchy crispy vegetabley, but not that satisfying. And most importantly, it wasn't bendy enough to twizzle around a fork in a satisfying way!

So I remade this recipe, or one similar, but a cooked version:

I fried up an onion.
I added some runner beans and cooked them for a couple of minutes.
I added some fresh tomatoes from the greenhouse. Big ugly ones.
I let this accept the fact it was going to soon be a pasta sauce (only about 5-7 minutes).
I made another courgette into spaghetti with my julienne peeler.
I added the spaghetti on top of the sauce, put a lid on and let it steam for a few minutes.
I then mixed it up a bit, topped it with some medallions of mozzarella and grilled it.

It was divine. Although not as photogenic. I felt full, and like I'd gained some energy.

I'm coming to a place of reevaluation. Recently I've been getting into raw and unprocessed foods, and getting very excited about them, and reading up on the wonderful natural benefits foods contain. I've been having Earthsprout's Greenylicious Smoothie for breakfast, tasty salads for lunch and eating Sarah B's Life Changing Loaf of Bread in my lunches. I've been cutting out white flour and sugar as much as I can and trying to eat nuts and pulses instead of meat.

And I've lost weight. Which I know a lot of people would be happy with but I'm pretty skinny and I didn't want to and it doesn't look good. The thing about eating like this is that it reduces my appetite, but also doesn't make me feel particularly satisfied (but the thoughts of all the vitamins, minerals, omega 3s etc are very satisfying!). And it's made me remember what I knew before I got so into it - that different diets are right for different bodies.

Some people look voluptuous and healthy on a vegan diet. Some people look gaunt and awful on a vegan diet and their bodies could use some animal protein. Some people feel much better on raw food. I think I need a decent amount of cooked food and I need good amounts of CAARBS! With a decent helping of some sort of protein and fat to keep my blood sugar on an even keel. The way I feel after a big load of (gluten free) spaghetti with lentil Bolognese is amazing! I have so much energy and my brain works faster. They have the opposite effect on lots of people - a friend of mine says lots of them make him feel sleepy and lethargic.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not giving up on raw food and soaking nuts and making smoothies - I've just accepted that it can't be the only stuff I eat.

...Although I suppose if in decades to come I need to shed some pounds, I'll know what to do!

Blackcurrant Frangipane Tart

 
My mum is amazing! I came home to this - blackcurrant frangipane tart. She even did gluten free pastry.

It looks pretty and summery and it tastes like pure comfort food.

 
Recipe:

• Pastry - see Coconut Cream Pie recipe 
• 125g blackcurrants, washed, topped and tailed
•  1 egg
• 1 egg white
•  170g sugar
• 100g ground almonds
• 70g butter, room temperature
• A pinch of salt
• 170ml milk

1. Oven to 190°C. Butter a 24cm (9½in) round ovenproof dish.

2. Make the pastry case.

3. Blind bake it.

4. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy

5. Add the almonds, egg and egg white and mix

6. Stick mixture into the pastry case

7. Scatter blackcurrants on top

8. Bake for 40 minutes until golden and firm.

It is divine with some sort of creamy yoghurt, Rachel's Gooseberry Yoghurt was perfect.

Yes that is another home-grown runner bean salad...

Homemade Summer Food Things

We had a sun-drenched barbeque and I thought it the perfect excuse to make a couple of things I've wanted to for ages. Get them under my belt. The first, PESTO.

I made the classic pine nut and basil version, but I ended up making the vegan version as I didn't have any parmesan.

3 handfuls washed basil leaves
1 handful pine nuts, lightly toasted
1 clove garlic
squeeze of lemon juice

1. Whizz up in food processor.
2. Add as much olive oil to get it to be a smooth paste.
3. Stir in plenty of sea salt, and some black pepper.

Tasty on fresh bread. I also made some salad dressing with it. More lemon juice, more garlic, more oil, more salt and peper. Was alright.

That flower you can see is from my one and only lupin plant that I managed to grow from seed and keep alive for a year and a half! I snapped it's lovely flower spike off when bumbling past it, and decided not to get very annoyed by this but to admire it in the kitchen - turns out they're excellent cut flowers, it's lasting for ages. I think I must be appreciating it much more now than if it was still in the garden. Hooray. Right anyway next food thing:

 

The cover girl cake! The cake on the cover of my new favourite baking recipe book: Honeybuns Gluten Free Baking, by Emma Goss Custard. That book is amazing. This cake - the raspberry and white chocolate cake - has no flour and intriguingly, no butter in it. It's made mostly out of ground hazelnuts. And you roast the raspberries in honey and cinnamon sugar. Everyone loved it.

 

Lastly, I did an impromptu elderflower cooler type drink. I only had a handful of elderflowers (they've only just started blooming round here), and not much time, so I boiled up a saucepan of water with some golden caster sugar, quite a lot really, not sure how much, peeled the rind off a lemon in strips, and added the flowers, lemon peel and hot sugar water to a big bowl and let it sit and think about things for a couple of hours, then added it to a big jug of icy water last minute. I didn't strain it, a. because everyone had turned up and it would take too long to find something resembling a muslin cloth and b. because I thought it looked quite exciting with all the flowers suspended in the mysterious murk. I provided a tea strained for people to pour it through instead. It was quite a hit.

Coconut Cream Pie

I made my first ever coconut cream pie! Pete, Mum and I were dreaming about them so much I had to make one for us to eat.

 

Gluten-free, naturally. It was great! I have no pictures of the inside as it got eaten so quickly, but basically it's a pastry base, sweet coconut goo middle, and squidgey airy meringue on top. I read recipes for ones with whipped cream on top and I thought that sounded like the meringue version's rubbish cousin, but mine was so ridiculously sweet I can see why that would work.
 
Here's the recipe:
 
Turn the oven to 180C. Grease a 9 inch pastry tin.
 
GLUTEN FREE PASTRY:

• 225g/2 cups gluten free plain flour
• pinch salt
• 110g/ 1/2 cup cold unsalted butter, cubed
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 egg

Rub the butter into the flour and salt until it looks like breadcrumbs.
 
Mix in the sugar, then the egg. Try and make a ball of dough with it. Add a tablespoon of water if it won't stick together. And as many as you need until it does. You don't want it too sticky though. You just want it to come together.
 
Roll it out on some foil. Gluten free pastry should be seen and not heard so you want it quite thin - 4-5mm.
 
Line your tin. You can't do it all in one unless you're a superhuman. I consider myself to have done well if I've managed to get a piece to cover most of the botton of the tin and construct the sides on seperately.
 
Blind bake for 15-20 minutes, or until it's looking dry and before it gets brown.

COCONUT GOO FILLING:

• 2 1/4 cups cream
• 3/4 cup sugar, plus 1/4 cup for the egg whites
• 3 eggs, separated
• 1/4 cup cornflour
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 3/4 cups dessicated coconut

1a. Put the coconut onto a baking tray and bake it in the oven for a few minutes, until it goes brown. This toasting gives it a better flavour.

1.  Put the cream and 3/4 cup sugar in a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Meanwhile mix up the egg yolks in a jug.

2. Pour the hot cream into the the egg yolks, slowly at first, stirring lots. If you stick it all in at once you'll get blobs of cooked egg. Leave a residue of cream in the saucepan.

3. Put the cornflour into the cream dregs in the saucepan and stir into a paste. Stir lumps out. Add the cream and egg mixture back into it, a teeny bit at a time, stirring to combine. When you've added enough that it's turning back into a liquid, add the rest of the cream and stir in.

4. Bring to the boil and reduce to a simmer. Cook it like this, stirring constantly, until it thickens, 4-6 minutes.

5. Take off the heat and stir in the toasted coconut and vanilla extract. Pour into your precooked pastry case and leave to cool completely.

MERINGUE TOPPING:

6. Oven to 150C. Whip up the egg whites with the remaining sugar to form stiff peaks. Spread over the pie, right to the edges, and bake until it's going lightly brown on the top, about 30 -40 minutes. You can bake it at a higher temperature for less time. The aga's on low at the moment so I just stuck it in there.

It's so sweet you need to drink a gallon of water after a slice and you feel a bit funny. I have plans for the next one - I think I'll make it as above, but whip up some double cream and somehow inject it under the surface of the meringue....like people inject jam into doughnuts.