Courgette Pasta with Basil Pesto

My first raw food post!

I was shown this recipe by two lovely ladies at a raw food workshop at the 2012 Green Man festival. Unfortunately I can't remember their names or contact details so can't credit them properly...but I hope they don't mind, this recipe is too good not to share!

I haven't experimented much with raw food (beyond like, salads) but this dish inspires me to try more. I recently helped teach a raw food workshop with the Hearty Squirrel Food Co-operative in Edinburgh and this recipe was a big success.

Serves 1 as a main dish or 2 as side dish

Ingredients:

1 medium or large courgette

50g soaked almonds (just soak almonds in cold water for a few hours before use)

50-75g or 2 big handfuls of fresh herbs (basil is most popular, though you can use coriander too)

1 clove of garlic

1 tbsp nutritional yeast (available at most health food shops, I've always bought Marigold Engevita)

2 tbsp olive oil

Lemon juice, salt, and pepper to taste

Quick Method:

(Using blender and spiralizer)

1. To make the pesto, put the almonds, basil, garlic, nutritional yeast and olive oil in a blender and mix until at desired consistency.

2. Put the courgette through the spiralizer to make the pasta.

3. Mix the pesto with the courgette pasta. Add salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste.

Manual method:

1. Grind the almonds using a pestle and mortar until they have reached the consistency you like.

2. Chop the basil and garlic and add to the almonds along with nutritional yeast and olive oil. Grind it all together to form a paste, adding more olive oil if necessary.

3. Shave strips off the courgette using a vegetable peeler to make the pasta.

4. Mix the pesto with the courgette pasta. Add salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste.

 - My method, using a blender for the pesto and veg peeler for the pasta. Yes it's served with cooked 

food, I only had one courgette and was cooking for two!

 

Notes/tips: 

- the nutritional yeast is used to add that 'cheesy' flavor typical to pesto, it's not essential though if you can't find it, in fact when I forgot to bring it to the workshop I just added more garlic for a flavor boost and no-one noticed anything missing! 

- traditional pine nuts can of course be used but I recommend almonds as they're MUCH cheaper and still taste great

Falafel!

A vegetarian staple. I'm so pleased to have found so many take-aways in Edinburgh that sell it! Having chips as the only veggie option in the kebab house gets real old real quick...But of course, it's much cheaper and healthier to just make it at home, and surprisingly quite easy.

My recipe is adapted from Rose Elliot's in 'The Complete Vegetarian' (my favourite cook book, I seriously recommend it!). I've doubled it (believe me you'll want a lot of them), reduced the salt (she puts too much salt in, even for me) and changed the cooking method (she recommends deep frying them but I choose to bake). Of course if you want to halve it back to the original recipe go for it, but I like to make extras to use in lunches throughout the week :)

Makes 24 small patties.

Ingredients:

2 x 400g tins of chickpeas, drained and rinsed (or 500g dried chickpeas, soaked in cold water for 24hrs)

1 bunch of parsley

1 large or 2 small onions

4 garlic cloves

3tsp cumin (seeds or ground, I prefer seeds but make sure you briefly toast them first)

3tsp ground coriander

pinch of chilli powder

1tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp salt

ground black pepper to taste

oil, for greasing

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 200C/400F/Gas Mark 6

2. Whizz up the parsley in a food processor. If you have a big enough food processor then empty the parsley and put on a plate to the side. If you're like me and have a ridiculously tiny one (see picture. what is the point of it? came free with our flat though so not complaining..) just leave it be for now.

3. If you're working with a big food processor then put in the chickpeas, chopped onion and garlic, cumin, coriander, chilli powder, baking powder, salt and pepper without cleaning it so any parsley stuck on the sides can be mixed in. Whizz up until the mixture is smooth and holds together well. I don't have a big food processor so I just put everything in a bowl and use my trusty hand-held whizzy...thing...to mix it up. You could probably just mash it if you had neither, though the onions would have to be very finely chopped.

4. Rose recommends you now leave the mixture to stand for 30 minutes, but it isn't essential. Mix in the parsley by hand, apparently adding it at this stage makes the falafel lighter (and not like those HORRIBLE dense 'Cauldron' falafels you can buy from supermarkets, sorry Cauldron, I love your sausages but you need to sort out your falafel). 

5. Form into small patties and lay out on a lightly oiled baking tray. Again it's recommended but not essential to leave them to rest for another 15 minutes.

6. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes. 

7. Serve! I had some of my latest batch in a tortilla wrap with salsa, kale and sour cream, NOM. Store any extras in the fridge, they can be eaten cold too and are a great sandwich/wrap/pitta filler!

#nomstagram September/October

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First of all, apologies for the lack of updates! The past two weeks have been pretty busy, with friends coming to visit, the usual job applications, job interviews aaaaaaand finally getting a job! Woo! So now things have settled down a bit I can finally begin my latest feature, #nomstagram.

Basically it’s a monthly round up of things I’ve cooked and eaten that I’ve posted to instagram. My instragram has personal photos as well as food so instead of putting a live feed widget on the side I thought I’d dedicate monthly posts to share all my super-hipster, super-yummy snaps! I'll write a description for each image too, if you want to know any more about a certain dish just comment :)

1. Pancakes with butter and golden syrup
2. Herby polenta slices with lentil and kale curry
3. Bread
4. Falafal, cous cous, roasted tomato and kale
5. Packed lunch -  cous cous, roasted tomato and kale
6. Falafal, pea quacamole and roasted parsnip wrap
7. Chocolate truffle and caramel birthday cake for Alex
8. Apple and brie sanwich and salad
9. Sprouted adzuki beans
10. Ramen
11. Porridge with sultanas and cinnamon
12. Garlic-y mushroom and kale sandwich
13. Falafal
14. Tofu, egg and vegetable stir fry
15. Ginger brownie

Some may be future recipe posts...stay tuned!