Recipe: Raw Tuscan cabbage salad

Raw Tuscan cabbage salad

I eat a lot of salad. And when I say a lot, I mean A LOT. Whilst I love my trusty favourite, occasionally I stray into adventure-land and try something different.

Tuscan cabbage

I use a lot of Tuscan cabbage for my green juices, so thought I'd give it a run in a salad.  Tuscan cabbage, is known as Cavolo Nero in Italy and is also known as black cabbage or Tuscan kale.

Tuscan cabbage is actually a type of kale and has long, narrow, wrinkled leaves which are very firm. It has a rich and astringent, mild cabbage flavour and its amazing versatility makes it equally at home in a soup or in a salad such as ours.

With it's dark green leaves, it is full of antioxidants and are low in calories and high in fibre, which is great at preventing Western diseases such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer. We should eat (or drink) more green leafy veggies, and eating Tuscan cabbage raw in a salad is a perfect way of doing this whilst retaining all the fibre.

Ingredients

1/2 bunch Tuscan cabbage

2 cups peas, cooked

Handful of mint leaves, shredded

Olive oil

Aged balsamic (I used Pukara pomegranate balsamic)

Sale to taste

Method

Finely shred cabbage leaves and mint leaves. Cook peas and combine with cabbage and mint. Dress salad with balsamic or lemon and oil season to taste.

Recipe: Choc Chia Chomps

Choc chia chompsThis is another recipe in my quest to satisfy my seemingly never-ending quest for something sweet and something chocolatey, but not being evil. These little guys really fit the bill! Not only are they nutritious, but they're darned tasty as well and will answer most chocolate cravings.

Raw cashews supply healthy fats and numerous minerals. More than 70 percent of the fat in raw cashews is heart-healthy unsaturated fat. They also contain protein which is essential for the growth and repair of the body's tissues.

Dates are power houses nutrition that also satisfy a sweet tooth and provide natural sugar for this treat. Dates are loaded with fibre, both soluble and insoluble and are an excellent source of potassium and many other vitamins & minerals. 

Chia seeds contain the highest natural percentage of Omega-3 essential fatty acid known to man (60-64%). Not only that but chia are a powerful source of antioxidants and unlike most other sources of Omega-3, do not need to be refrigerated to maintain freshness. They're also high in protein and contain 3 times more iron than spinach. We can see why chia seeds are now becoming very popular, especially as they have very little flavour.

Ingredients 
1 cup cashews 
3 tablespoons creamed coconut 
5 tbsp raw cacao 
5 dates 
1 tsp cinnamon 
3 tbsp coconut nectar 
1/4 cup coconut oil 
2 tbsp chia seeds 
Method
Pulverize cashews in food processor until very finely ground (although a few small bits are fine). Add everything else except the chia. Mix in food processor until mixed through. 
Stir through chia. Squish and roll teaspoon-sized balls onto a tray and refrigerate. 
Store in the fridge. Makes 35 choc chia chomps.

Recipe: Stuffed 8 Ball Zucchini

Ingredients
1 cup quinoa
1.5-2 cups chicken stock
2-3 cloves garlic, minced or finely chopped
1 bunch spinach or Warrigal Greens
1 big fistful of cherry tomatoes
4 x 8 Ball Zucchini
butter or oil for frying
Salt & pepper to taste
Squeeze of lemon

Method
Heat oven to 180 degrees celcius.
Cook quinoa with chicken stock for around 20 minutes until tender. The stock should all absorb into the quinoa. Add water if necessary.
Cut a lid off the zucchini and scoop out the flesh into a bowl (a melon baller is apparently good for this but a spoon will do). Add halved cherry tomatoes and chopped spinach.
Heat butter or oil in a frypan and add minced/chopped garlic.

Add zucchini mix and sautee for several minutes until the flesh reduces. Add quinoa and mix flavours together. Cook until the liquid disappears. Add seasoning.

Stuff zucchini and place into oven for around 40 minutes or until cooked.

The best home made chocolate in the history of home made chocolate

That's possibly an overstatement, but here at ChocolateObsessed.com, we reckon we've tried and tested enough chocolate to know what's good and what goes straight in the wheelie bin.

This uses our raw vegan chocolate recipe as the base, but then simply adds a cup of chopped/ground almonds (whizzed in a food processor, but not too long, keep some chunks in there) and 1/2 cup sultanas or dates. 

That recipe again is:

1/2 cup coconut oil, melted on low heat on the stove
1 1/3 cups raw cacao, sifted and stirred into the melted coconut oil
4-6 tablespoons organic raw coconut nectar/syrup

Add the nuts and fried fruit; spread onto a baking tray; freeze for 5-10 minutes, cut into squares; freeze again for about 20 minutes or until hard. Pop into a container and keep in the fridge or freezer.

Fresh from the Snowy

Snowy Mountains Fresh

During the period when the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme was being built, an engineer identified that the base of the Blowering Dam would be an excellent site for a trout farm.  As the ice from the Snowy Mountains melts over summer, the dam releases huge volumes of water which are released into nearby trout farms.  

The water is pristine, clear and clean.  The key with excellent trout is the quality of the water: if the water is excellent, so are the trout. 

James from Snowy Mountains Fresh is a man from Snowy River himself.  Many members of his family, including the uncle he was named after, worked on the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme, so he has spent a lot of quality time in the area sourcing the very best trout. His trout is from a trout farm in Tumut and is hot wood smoked, the traditional way - which means that it is a subtle smoked flavour which keeps the fish incredibly moist.

If you haven't yet tried his smoked trout products - two words: YOU MUST!  His smoked trout dip, tomato based pasta sauce, whole smoked trout and deboned fillets are off the hook.  They're so good in fact that he keeps selling out at the markets, so get in early!

Snowy Moutains Fresh comes to the Bondi Junction Village Markets every Thursday 9am-1.30pm; and the Lane Cove Public School Food & Farmers' Markets every Sunday, 9am-1.30pm.

[Image source tastespotting.com]