Posts Tagged “recipe”

Two weeks ago, we were at the Downtown Salt lake City Farmer’s Market in Pioneer park, doing our usual sampling, but never buying of the local salsas. However after three years of free loading, we finally decided that this time, we would put out the six bucks for a salsa base mix.

We purchased our base mix from Miracle Salsa. A local Salsa company. The base of all of their salsas, is  Apple Cider Vinegar, Raw Utah Honey, and Garlic. The base mix we purchased, is made of these three base ingredients, plus Rosemary, Cayenne, ginger and salt.

Sara made salsa right away. She used fresh heirloom tomatoes from the student garden at City Academy; a local charter school. She added onions, garlic, cilantro, and Serrano Chillies. The salsa was of course, delicious, but being raw foodists, we had no chips for it. We could have run to the local Mexican Market and gotten chips, but then we would have done the ultimate raw food sin (eat crap, that tastes like crap, because we were so damned impatient.)

Sara kept eating the salsa by the spoon full, she was practically shoving it in by the heal of her hand. She had no chips but would not stop.  “It’s sooo good” she would exclaim.

I think it looks disgusting when people just eat condiments, like eating spoonfuls of ketchup.

I knew I had to make my most delicious chips, so as to continue loving my wife.

To make my Flaxxy Corn Chips you need:

1 1/2 cups Golden Flax Seeds

2 1/2 cups filtered, spring, or well water

1/2 Cup Carrot pulp (leftover from juicing)

1 Ear fresh Sweet Corn

2 Tbsp. Nama Shoyu (unpasteurized Soy sauce)

2 Tbsp. Raw Honey

2 Tbsp. Fresh chopped Onion

1 Clove Garlic

1 1/2 tsp. Indian Red Chilli

1/2 tsp. Cayenne

1/2 tsp. Garam Masala

Method:

The night before, pour the water over the flax seeds, let them stand on the counter. By morning they’ll look like a boogery gloop (it’s okay, this gloop is what holds your chips together.) Put everything in the food processor, in whichever order makes you feel more powerful and full of yourself. process it until its a nice homogenized glop. There will still be loads of unchopped flax seeds, you worry too much, its unimportant. Move to next step.

Transfer the glop onto several nonstick dehydrator sheets (or plastic wrap if you are cheap.)  Spread it out to about an 1/8 of an inch thick. Dehydrate the gluey goop for however long it needs, in order to become crisp. Set your dehydrator as hot as your particular sect of Raw Food Religion will allow. When they are dry enough, transfer them onto the standard tray and do away with the non-stick sheets. Oh, and you can also do this in the sun at no cost to you.

Taste them, they’re delicious! Dip them in salsa, glue them to your walls, make crafts out of them. Hell you could put them in your underwear, to ward of evil spirits. Enjoy!

My wife and I are always trying to find ways to improve our cooking. We make things and as soon as we start eating them we start criticizing them. Even when our guests are saying “no, this is the best slop we’ve ever had,” we continue to criticize. What we are trying to do is improve even the best of recipes.

For instance, I’ve been on a kick trying to discover the perfect bread recipe. My favorite bread was my mother’s. It was a white/wheat mix bread that was the most delicious.

I started with her recipe, but decided I would make it whole wheat for more nutrition and flavor. The bread was good, but it didn’t rise worth a bag of zombies.

Naturally my amazing powers of cooking intuition told me to add a bunch more yeast. While this seemed to work in the rising, my bread fell flat on its ass in the oven. So I switched out the brown sugar for honey, thinking this would be like glue (I’m not saying that this is an accurate guess). The bread held together and it didn’t fall while baking, but the flavor wasn’t as dynamic, it also lost some of it’s rise height.

First I addressed flavor by switching the sweetener to a half honey/half molasses mix.

I addressed the rise in two ways, first was to add baking soda to counteract the acidity of the honey, and I switched half the water for Kefir; kefir is a fermented dairy product similar to yogurt, only twice as runny, and a hell of a lot more sour, Kefir is also naturally carbonated (which I hoped would help with the rising). The Kefir had the added benefit of adding just the slightest amount of sourness to the dough, which made it much tastier.

In an effort to soften the end product, I added a pan of water to the bottom of the oven, to increase humidity while baking. Take it out of the oven, butter the tops, and voila the best 100% whole wheat bread you will ever eat!

Recipe:

2 C. Raw Kefir

2 C. Water

1/4 C. Coconut oil

1/3 C. Honey

1/3 C. Molasses

4 tsp. Yeast

3/4 tsp. Baking Soda

1 T. Unrefined Sea Salt (fine)

7 C. Whole Wheat Flour (approx) …and for Christ sake! Grind your own flour!

Method: Add kefir to hot water, if mixture is less then 90 degrees bring up to temperature slowly on the stove (Do not over heat!). Mix in sweetener and add yeast. Once yeast is proofed (5 mins or so), add oil, baking soda and salt. Begin mixing in flour, once it can be kneaded transfer to a kneading surface, and add flour while you knead. Knead the bread till it feels like your ass before you got in shape, but only slightly tacky. (this is way easier if you have a kitchenaid mixer) if using a kitchenaide, knead for 4 minutes after dough stops sticking.

Transfer to a buttered glass bowl (use only butter for all greasing). Let rise in a warm spot until double in bulk. Punch down. Let rise again till two to three times the bulk. Split into two equal portions and roll out lightly on floured surface. Roll up and place in loaf buttered loaf pan. Repeat for second loaf. Let rise till double in bulk.

You can create a variation by spreading honey and or molasses and sprinkling cinnamon on the dough before rolling it up to place in the loaf pans.

Place in 350 degree preheated oven on middle rack (with pan of water on bottom of oven). Bake for 45 minutes. Remove from pan immediately and place on cooling rack. Cut and enjoy!

yields 2 loaves.