What do you eat every day?

Guess what: The question I get asked the most as a teaching raw food chef and culinary artist: "So... what do YOU actually eat every day?" The more I hear this question and the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that it's so worth sharing this knowledge besides inventing crazy new creations for my fancy dinner clubs and teaching the sometimes more difficult gourmet foods that are not necessarily usable on a daily basis. Now, here is a typical day from my life as a raw food chef :-)

Fruit Salad, Homemade probiotic coconut yoghurt
bee pollen, wild herbs and sprouted walnuts
Green Young Coconut Water (in the back)

The mornings, I like to start very light, mainly fruit based and foods that can be digested very easily and have a high net energy gain. Fruit have simple carbohydrates that give you immediate energy and good vitamins. They are digested in 20 minutes and therefore don't interrupt with your natural cleansing cycle. I also love young coconut water in the mornings, it's full of electrolytes and enzymes and tastes just delicious. Now for comfort and to get the feeling of fullness, something creamy nut based is nice from time to time and in order to make this work for the stomach, it's best to ferment your nuts into a healthy yoghurt. So, my breakfast of today was:

• young coconut water, blended with spirulina, chlorella, barley grass, wheatgrass, moringa olifeira and stingy nettle (all these greens add a lot of minerals and chlorophyll and help you get the day kicked off boosting your oxygen level)
• mixed fruit salad with homemade coconut yoghurt, local bee pollen, sprouted walnuts and fresh wild herbs
• cappuccino (YES, the real one! I can't give up this morning ritual, lived too long in Italy ;-)

Now this keeps me going on really high energy for the whole morning until lunch time comes, when I usually have a substantial salad. Today, the base was spinach, some mizuna and other Asian leafy greens, cucumber, radishes, red onion slices and a big handful of mixed wild herbs. Now, to make sure to make this salad substantial enough to power me through the afternoon, it's important to choose your add-ons wisely. I've become a huge fan of fermentation recently, due to the high power of probiotics for your digestive and therefore your immune system. So, I came up with this super delicious dressing, which has double probiotics (from the Sauerkraut and the yoghurt), plus healthy omega 3's and great amino acids from the hemp seeds (amino acids are the protein building blocks, for those of you who still think we need to take complex proteins to build our own ;-) . Note that there is no extra fat in this dressing from extracted oils. However, I am a big fan of olive oil and do use it extensively in my cuisine and for myself. For a little sweetener, I use local honey in my salad dressing. I am totally staying away from agave, since it reacts like high fructose corn sirup and can not be considered a healthy sweetener anymore. Honey on the other hand is a complete whole food, laden with good nutrients and microorganisms and if you buy it locally can help you cure allergies! Here is the recipe for this new dressing, that I am happy to share with you today:

Cucumber and leafy greens, wild herbs,
dressed in pink probiotic power

Pink Probiotic Power (PPP) Dressing

1 Tablespoon fermented Coconut Yoghurt
1 Tablespoon Hemp Seeds
2 Tablespoons red cabbage Sauerkraut
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon terragon (or other herb)
1/8 teaspoon ground pepper
1 little piece of red onion (1/8 of a whole one)
1/3 cup of water

To finally get some more substance onto the salad, I sprinkled it with some sprouted sunflower seeds and black sesame for extra calcium and added a few strips of dulse, since seaweeds are extremely high in minerals as well as good amino acids.

Sometimes, salads can look boring, but if you do it, like I do with this recipe, you can make your salad really exciting. Not only is this healthy to the max, but lining out the cucumbers like this, placing the dressed greens that shine pink from this beautiful color dressing in the middle and having the black sesame dots and the pink peppercorn, is just a fiest for the eyes!! It's important to plate your food nicely, also for yourself, you'll eat with so much more pleasure and therefore he happier and will digest it better!
Yummy, this salad was so delicous, I wish I had another one right now, while writing it :-)

And another few hours of work seem like nothing with all those nutrients in my system that don't put high stress on my digestion and therefore would make me lethargic or tired, which would be the case with a plate of wheat pasta for lunch.

After a full day of work and having eaten lightly during the day, in the evening I usually like something a bit more filling and substantial, some comfort food. Very often , I also stay raw in the evening, but I also do enjoy a healthy cooked meal and if I cook, I usually create healthy hybrids of cooked and raw, as I do with my preferred seasonal Spring vegetable: White Asparagus.

White Asparagus, local heirloom potatoes,
fresh picked wild herbs in salted raw milk butter

 This is a German delicacy and only available for about 2-3 months of the year, so I try to have it about twice a week if I can. It's so cleansing (you can smell it in your urine after eating it ;-) and tastes just divine. I do like asparagus raw as well, but cooked, they develop this very distinct taste that I love so much. Traditionally, Germans often have the asparagus cooked with young potatoes and a creamy buttery sauce hollandaise. Now here comes my healthy raw/cooked hybrid version of it: 500g steamed white asparagus, 3 local heirloom organic boiled potatoes, 1 Tablespoon of melted raw milk butter, a pinch of sea salt AND 2 BIG hands full of freshly picked wild herbs, chopped small and mixed with the butter and a little of the asparagus steam water. Put all on a plate and cover generously with the salted wild herb butter mixture. It's SO tasty and comforting!

For me, it's not always about being 100% raw, but about getting the maximum nutrition and feeling good and balanced! Take this day for example, it's not 100% raw, but the wild herbs, the greens, the fruit, the coconut water, the seeds and all that provided a lot of fantastic nutrients!!
Now if for me, to stay 100% raw on such a day would mean, instead of the cooked meal I had for dinner, to supplement with a bunch of dried fruit and nuts, and/or have other unbalanced raw foods, that might just be a worse choice. Or compare this: a green smoothie with 2/3 fruit, amongst which sugary bananas, and 1/3 just any greens from any health food store vs. my asparagus, the organic potatoes and heaps of nutrient dense wild herbs. I don't have an answer for which one is healthier and actually, there IS no answer to this! Psychology, body constitution, life situation, and so much more factors play a role in this, it's too complex to judge! The bottom line for me is a wholesome whole food diet, full of nutrients and using nothing processed or pre made and packaged or at least don't buy more than 10% of your ingredients that come covered in plastic foil and have more than 1 ingredient listed on it ;-) Psychology is a big factor in nutrition and you need to feel comfortable. Now for me, that's my morning cappuccino, the occasional ice cream, some cooked meals from time to time, and even fish or meat if it's offered to me and made with love. I am a foodie, curious, and love to eat and try new things, discover new flavors and textures. Important is, to always know your base and come back to it. If I eat an unhealthy dinner, which does occasionally happen, the next morning, I am craving a green drink or just a grapefruit and I am back to a massive salad for lunch :-)

b.balanced - b.creative - b.alive!

b.alive! Interview bei Claudi wird vegan

claudi wird vegan: b.alive!: Ich freue mich sehr darüber, dass Boris Lauser von b.alive sich bereit erklärt hat, mir Rede und Antwort zu stehen, über sich, b.alive und s...

Matthew Kenney Academy, Level 2, Weeks 1 and 2

Pappadams
tamarind glaced cherry tomatoes
avocado, coriander froth

After a great Thanksgiving Break that I got to spend with lovely old friends in Denver and San Francisco, I arrived back in Oklahoma City, full of energy and ready for all the exciting new things I would be learning during the Advanced Training at the Matthew Kenney Academy.

Among the many highlights, I would like to share with you in this blog post, my favorite new discovery is the “Sous-Vide”, a method to cook food under vacuum at low temperatures in a water bath. The first thing we prepared using this method was a red beet carpaccio with macadamia cheese and pistacchios. While this is a fabulous dish, the effect of the sous vide is maybe not the most convincing considering you can make really nice red beet carpaccio by simply marinating. 

Brussel Sprouts sous - vide

However, when we applied the technique to brussel sprouts, I was in bliss. I love this vegetable but so far, I rather have it steamed or cooked, because marinating and dehydrating normally ends up in a rather oily, and/or chewy dry brussel sprout. However, with the sous-vide technique, you get juicy, soft but still crunchy brussel sprouts with vivid colors and vibrant taste.

Portobello Piccata

The highlight of our sous-vide experiments was the portobello piccata, for which we cooked the portobello mushroom for a few hours in the sous-vide at 105 F, sliced it into thin strips and fanned them over some nice jicama mashed potatoes to finish it off with some beautiful walnut bread crumbs, herb oil and green olives. This was one of my favorite dishes of the Level 2 training.

Chef Shawn operating the smoking gun

Vietnamese Pho Broth with Smoked Coconut Tofu

You might think this is already exciting enough, but it didn’t end here. We were introduced to the use of the smoking gun to give a smoked flavor to many things such as soaked nuts, cheeses and vegetables. We used it to smoke our coconut based tofu which we served in a Vietnamese Pho Broth that was out of this world. 

King Oyster Calamari with Romesco and Tartar Sauce

Another super exciting dish were the Calamari, a fun bar food and fine dining hybrid. Made from King Oyster Mushrooms and breaded in herbs and ground flax, they resembled real calamari, as well as in look and texture. The cashew based tartar sauce and the tomato based romesco sauce both went really well with the crunchy rings.

Last but not least, I want to mention the papadams with tamarind glaced tomatoes, avocado tartar and coriander froth. I loved those papadams, they were perfectly thin and flaky, but not greasy like regular papadams and personally, I would prefer this dish with only the tamarind glaze made into a chutney or maybe have 2-3 chutneys to choose from, just like you get them traditionally served in an Indian restaurants as an Appetizer. I think it’s a beautiful dish and would give a light start to a more heavy Indian style raw meal. 

Macadamia goat style cheese on spring greens
white vine vinaigrette, candied hazelnuts

Those were my personal highlights of the Level 2 training. In the next blog post, I will present some pastry highlights that we got to during week 3 of the training. And there surely were some exciting ones :-)

Lime Banana Chocolate Cream Pie

After Matthew Kenney, Level 1 was finished, I hopped on the plane to route via Denver to San Francisco to visit friends and spend Thanksgiving with them. My friend Yelena is the co-owner of the Arizmendi Bakery and she organized a Thanksgiving Dinner for all the workers and friends, to which I was invited. Of course, the requirement was to make something raw, ideally a dessert, but all I had was a food processor, so I came up with a simple nice recipe for a lime banana chocolate cream pie that you can easily replicate at home with minimal equipment. Here is the recipe, I hope you enjoy it as much as the workers and friends of the Arizmendi Bakery :-)

Lime Banana Chocolate Cream Pie
(makes two normal size 9 inch pie pans)

Crust
3 cups walnuts
1 cup cacao nibs
½ t salt
2 t vanilla powder (or extract)
4 T coconut butter
10 to 15 medjol dates

In a food processor with the s-blade, food process first the walnuts, salt, vanilla and cacao nibs, so they are still chunky. Then one by one, add the dates and little by little the coconut butter, until the dough sticks together and can be pressed into a pie pan.

Banana cream filling
5 bananas
juice from 2 limes
zest from 1 lime
1 inch piece ginger, microplaned
1 pinch salt
1 t vanilla
2-3 T coconut butter

Process all ingredients in a food processor until smooth and creamy

Chocolate cream filling
2 avocados
1/3 – 1/2 cup water
1 cup cacao powder
2 T coconut butter
4 dates
2-3 T honey
1 t vanilla
1 pinch salt

Process all ingredients in a food processor until smooth and creamy

Assembly:

Pour the banana filling first and then add dollups of the chocolate cream filling. Use a chop stick or back of a spoon to swirl the chocolate filling into the banana filling. Don´t swirl too much to avoid the two from blending together completely.

Sprinkle with some dried shredded coconut, if you like and let set in the freezer for about 4 hours or in the fridge overnight before serving.

Matthew Kenney Academy Level 1 Finals

For the first 3 weeks of our training, we studied and replicated some exciting recipes, learned about ingredients that are commonly used in raw food cuisine and got to know all the basic equipment and tools that are used to combine those ingredients in the recipes into flavorful dishes that we learned to plate in many beautiful and appetizing ways. When week 4 came along, it was finally time to put all this newly acquired knowledge to practice and show off with our final projects.


Each student had to come up with an exclusive 3 course menu, from which we were to choose two dishes that we would execute for our final presentation.

With all the inspiration we got during our first 3 weeks and taking more inspiration from the library of high cuisine books in the Academy, all the students were able to come up with mouthwatering menus and I would seriously consider ordering almost all of them were they available in the restaurant. We all worked hard during this week and the outcome was absolutely amazing. So before I present my menu, just a few of the highlights of the other students in class:

My favorite dessert: Gaby's take on the traditional Austrian Plum Dumplings

My second favorite dessert: Barbarella's Cremeschnitte, she is Slovenia's #1 Raw Chef

Kibbie's Thanksgiving in a bite: Stuffed dumpling on a delish cranberry jam

Wendy's fancy take on the traditional Indian Malai Kofta, check out her blog

I could write and report so much more about everybody's dishes but it would exceed the space for a blog post, and I am very excited to share with you more about my ambitious menu:


The theme was fall and seasons. Inspired by this, my first two thoughts were root vegetables and Thanksgiving, which is exactly, what I turned into my final project:

Appetizer

Abstraction: Trio of Roots

Jerusalem Artichoke Nutmeg Flan – Red Beet Cumin Ice Cream – Carrot Coriander Foam

***

Main Course

Familiarity Decomposed: Autumn Comfort

Pecan Rosemary Brittle

Delicata Truffle Puree – Cranberry Mirror

Timbale of Portobello

Argan Braised Brussel Sprouts

Pomegranate Red Wine Reduction

The abstraction of root vegetables popped up as an inspiration of the colors of the fall. The colors of the fall are the most amazing of the year, the sun is lower and gives the leaves of the trees shimmers of orange, red, silver, brown and many more. This is what I wanted to put on my plate, applying some of the new techniques, we learned in class, like using the paco jet for making the most fluffy ice creams, or the immersion blender to make fancy foams.

For the main course, I was inspired by a Traditional Thanksgiving Meal, which I decomposed and rebuilt to make it a fine dining experience: Mashed potatoes turned into a delicata squash and truffle puree, cranberry relish turned into an iced cranberry mirror, Turkey and stuffing turned into a portobello stew on a pecan brittle and for the veggies I chose my favorite brussel sprouts that I gave a buttery flavor using argan oil and served them on a pomegranate red wine reduction to bring the taste of a fruity and dry wine onto the plate.

Now after telling you all this, your mouths are probably watering and you will want to do this for yourself. And here is my little Thanksgiving gift to you. You can, because I am sharing the recipes with you :)

Happy Thanksgiving to all my blog readers and here are the recipes for my final project:

Appetizer

Abstraction: Trio of Roots

Jerusalem Artichoke Hazelnut Flan

Ingredients:

¼ cup Irish Moss Paste
5/8 cups hazelnut milk (make milk from ½ cup hazelnuts and 1 cup water)
¾ cups jerusalem artichokes (peeled and diced)
½ t nutmeg
½ t salt
1 t balsam vinegar
¾ t agave
6 turns fresh ground black or white peppercorn
1 t nutritional yeast
2 T porcini crusted jerusalem artichoke chips (see recipe below)

blend all ingredients in a high speed blender until completely smooth. Line the molds of a muffin tin or individual flan cups with plastic wrap; the recipe should yield 3 flans. Pour the smooth flan batter into the molds and let set in fridge for 24 hours (or in freezer to speed up the process). If the flan turns out to be too thin after it set, place it in the freezer for about 1 hour before serving, so it can be served as a semifreddo.

Porcini Crusted Jerusalem Artichokes

2 Jerusalem artichokes, thinly sliced on a mandoline (no need to peel them)
¼ t salt
2 T porcini powder (make powder from dried porcini mushrooms in coffee grinder)
splash lemon juice
1 t olive oil

put the sliced Jerusalem Artichokes in a bowl, add the other ingredients and mix well so that all the artichoke slices are well covered. Transfer them to a dehydrator sheet and dehydrate at 105 F (42 C) for about 48 hours or until crispy. You can make a big batch of these and have them available as a healthy and delicious snack or finger food appetizer any time.


Red Beet Cumin Ice Cream

1 cup young coconut meat
½ cup of cashews
½ cup beet juice
½ cup coconut water or regular water
3/8 t cumin
½ t salt

blend all ingredients in a high speed blender until very smooth. Transfer to an ice cream maker and follow manufacturer’s manual to make ice cream.

For decoration: make a fine julienne from a little piece of red beet and coat it in a bowl with a splash of lime or lemon juice and a pinch of salt. Transfer them to a dehydrator sheet and dehydrate until crispy (about 24 hours)

Also: finely mandoline a few slices of red beet and marinate them overnight in a little bit of olive oil, a pinch of salt and if you like, 1/4 teaspoon of finely minced garlic. Massaging the marinade a little bit into the red beet carpaccio helps softening it up. You can also dehydrate the carpaccio slightly before serving (for about 1 hour).
Carrot Coriander Foam

¼ cup carrot juice
1/8 cup orange juice
2 T lime juice
½ t coriander powder
3 T grapeseed oil (or olive oil)
1 pinch turmeric
1 pinch salt
1 t sunflower lecithin

combine all ingredients in a deep bowl. Use an immersion blender to create a nice stable foam, by frothing along the surface.

Jerusalem Artichoke Flan, Porcini Crusted Jerusalem Artichoke Chips
Red Beet Cumin Ice Cream on Red Beet Carpaccio
Carrot Coriander Foam

Assembly: 

On one side of a rectangular plate, sprinkle a few crushed candied hazelnuts (or just plain dehydrated hazelnuts if you don't want to candy them), take one flan out of the mold by lifting up on the ends of the plastic wrap and carefully flip onto the bed of hazelnuts. Stick 3 jerusalem artichoke chips on top of the flan, so they create kind of a fan. On the other side of the plate, place a piece of the red beet carpaccio on the bottom of the plate. Taking two spoons, quenelle one scoop of the red beet ice cream on top of the carpaccio. Garnish with the crisp red beet julienne. 

Carefully spoon some carrot foam on the plate in between the red beet and the Jerusalem Artichoke flan. Garnish with black sesame seeds and black lava salt to taste.

Main Course

Familiarity Decomposed: Autumn Comfort

Pecan Brittle:

1/4 cup pecans, chopped in food processor to a coarse nut flour 1/4 cup almond flour (pulp leftover from making almond milk)
2 t maple sirup
1 T lemon juice
1 T ground flax
1/4 cup carrots, processed in food processor to fine minced consistency 1 T rosemary, finely chopped
1/2 clove garlic, grated on a microplane
zest of 1/2 orange (use microplane to zest)
6 turns of fresh ground black pepper
1/2 t nutritional yeast
1/4 t salt
1/2 cup water 

Portobello Stew

1 portobello mushroom, medium to large dice
1/2 celery root, small dice (discard the ends, the ratio of celery to portobello should be about 1:2 celery root : portobello mushroom)
1/4 cup pinenuts, chopped lightly
1/4 cup parsley leaves, chopped
1/4 - 1/2 t salt
10 turns of fresh ground black peppercorn
1/8 of a red onion, thinly sliced
1/4 cup of olive oil
1/4 cup of red wine
1/4 cup of celery juice
6 juniper berries
1/3 clove garlic
1 t fresh sage, chiffonade
3-4 sun dried tomatoes, sliced thinly

In a blender, blend red wine, celery juice, garlic and juniper berries. Place all other ingredients in a bowl, cover with the red wine celery juice blend, mix well and let marinate overnight. Place into dehydrator for about 2-3 hours before serving to soften and reduce the red wine and liquid.

Delicata Truffle Puree

1 cup delicata squash (or butternut squash or other soft pumpkin/squash)
1/3 cup cashews, soaked for 2 hours
1 T grapeseed oil
1/2 T water
1/2 t truffle oil
1/4 t salt
4 turns freshly ground black peppercorn
1/4 t ground nutmeg

Blend all ingredients in a Vitamix, using the plunger to create a smooth, creamy puree.

Cranberry Mirror

1 1/2 cups fresh cranberries
1/4 cup maple sirup

Blend in a high speed blender and then strain through a nutmilk bad or chinois. Place in a bowl in dehydrator and reduce for about 2 hours or until it is just thick enough to be poured onto a teflex sheet. Careful: don't let it thicken too much , otherwise you cannot pour it onto the teflex sheets without having it loose its "glass" / "mirror" like look. Pour abstract fragments or the cranberry sauce onto telex sheets and sprinke with black lava salt.
Dehydrate until the moisture is completely gone and the "mirrors" become brittle. This might take up to 1 week! Alternatively or additionally, you can freeze the fruit leathers and just put them onto the puree last thing when plating, so they stay crisp.

Pomegranate Red Wine Reduction

1 pomegranate
1/4 cup red wine
1 t rosemary
1/2 whole clove
1/4 t salt

Blend all ingredients in a high speed blender and put through a strainer. Dehydrate in a flat metal pan in the dehydrator until it has thickened up to a sirup like consistency (around 6 hours). If dehydrated too much, you can add a few drops of water to get to the desired consistency.

Argan Braised Brussel Sprouts

5 brussel sprouts, cut into thin rounds (about 1/4 inch thick)
1 T argan oil
1 T orange juice
1/2 t balsamic vinegar
1/2 t maple sirup
1/4 t black lava salt (or sea salt)
6 turns freshly ground black pepper
1/4 clove garlic (microplaned or minced finely)

Whisk all the ingredients for the marinade in a bowl and mix well with the brussel sprouts, so they are all well coated. Let marinade overnight and warm up in dehydrator for about 2 hours before serving to soften and get the flavors well infused.

Portobello Stew on Pecan Brittle

Delicata Truffle Puree, Cranberry Mirror

Argan Braised Brussel Sprouts on Pomegranate Red Wine Reduction

Assembly:

On a square plate, place one pecan brittle in one corner. Use the square mold to place the warm portobello stew on top of the brittle. On the other corner of the plate, use the square mold to place a portion of the delicata truffle puree. Draw a diagonal swirl of the pomegranate reduction on the front part of the plate and along the diagonal, line up 5-7 pieces of the braised brussel sprouts. At last, place a piece of the frozen cranberry mirror onto the truffle puree so it sticks out and sprinkle some sage powder around the portobello stew. Serve immediately, before the mirror starts to disintegrate.

Proud me with my graduation dish :-)

Graduation with the Instructors: Chef Britney, Chef Shawn, me, Chef Megan

The happiest class ever

Matthew Kenney Academy Level 1 - Week 3

Week 3 has been announced as the “heavy” week, full of pastry and sweets. And in some ways it lived up to the expectations. Monday started off right away with making chocolate chips, a pretty exciting recipe. I´ve been using raw cacao nibs for anything I needed chocolate chips so far, and frankly, I personally still prefer this due to health reasons, but from a culinary aspect, 

the chocolate chips that we piped on dehydrator sheets in order to let them dehydrate to get this chocolate chip consistency are much more refined and great for use in cookies, which we made later that week, as well as ice cream sundaes or as deco for many other desserts and cakes.

The chocolate chip cookies we made with them later that week are yummy, very gooey, chewy, soft on the inside and crunchy on the outside, a little sweet for my taste, cause they have a lot of maple sirup in them, so if I made them again, I would replace some of that with water and/or alternative sweeteners such as Lucuma, Maca or Yacon syrup, but the consistency and look was great.

Other sweet treats, we made that week were chocolate truffles, basically made from raw cacao powder and butter, agave, vanilla and salt and then we got to get creative in rolling them in different coatings, so I chose pistachio black salt, cacao nib coffee bean, maca chocolate coffee powder and goji bee pollen cacao nib and chipotle coatings. All turned out really nicely and look great on the plate.

We also got to make sweet crepes, made on a base of mangoes, bananas and flax with a fruit lemon filling. At home I then tried another filling, which I actually liked much better: almond butter, bananas, cacao nibs and a little splash of lime juice.

More excitingly for me, in the same week, we got all down into using probiotics and fermentation and coconut yoghurt parfait, nut cheeses as well as Kefir was on the menu. The yoghurt parfait was a simple blend of coconut meat, a few cashews and probiotics, fermented overnight to create a thick, rich and tart yoghurt cream, which we got to taste at the end of the week with our buckwheat granola, made from sprouted buckwheat, seeds, dried fruit, cacao nibs and maple syrup. The nut cheeses were prepared blending a thick nut paste with probiotics, which was then fermented in a strainer at room temperature for 48 hours. I have already blogged about my own nut cheese production previously and you can read about this here.

Fortunately, in order to lighten up this sweet and nut intensive week, our instructors sneaked some light lunch recipes in, in order to provide us with some balancing nutrition. Monday´s lunch was a pleasantly light zucchini pesto noodle dish, Tuesday, we made a delicious zucchini avocado radish and mint salad and my winner of the week was Thursday´s heirloom tomato gazpacho with a basil lemon sorbet, light, crisp, slightly spicy, this was a real refreshing soup full of flavor despite a sparing use of spices. 

Our creative spirits were summoned when we finally got to flavor our nut cheeses. This was probably the most exciting exercise of the week. Everyone loves cheese and the lookout for soon being able to taste “real cheese” made from nuts lifted everyone’s creativity to new heights and all students dished out amazing flavor profiles. There was star anise, raisin and honey cheese, chipotle maple and nutmeg (which reminded Twilla of McDonalds... ?? :o), jalapeno lemon zest and “goat cheese log” with a lavender, lemon, pepper black lava salted crust besides many other exciting combinations. Friday was the big cheese tasting day, when we artfully arranged our handmade cheeses with an amazing garlic bread we had prepared earlier that week, as well as fruit and veggies. I also prepared a little relish from pomegranate, pistacchio, black molasses, black pepper and balsam vinegar. After our big tasting we all went home with pleasantly filled cheese bellies ;)

Matthew Kenney Academy Week 2

Week 2 of the Level 1 Course of the Matthew Kenney Academy Chef Training turned out to be no less exciting than the first week of it. In fact, my excitement level and heartbeat spiked, when I came into the class room Monday morning and saw boxes full of young coconuts. Yey, my week was saved :) Young coconuts are my favorite food. Young coconut water turns out to be the most nutritious water on the planet. Full of electrolytes, this water is a natural isotonic beverage, great for when you work out a lot. When I am in Bali, working for my retreats, this is all I am drinking the entire day! Moreover, the water is so close to the human blood that it can be used for blood transfusions, when you don´t have your blood type available and therefore it is used a lot in 3^rd World countries. The meat of the young coconut is simply delicious. It contains coconut fat, which is a great fat for your body, containing enzymes to stimulate the fat burning mechanism. Now, each of us got to open a whole case of 9 coconuts of this wonder food. That week seemed to be promising :)

Of course, we got to make good use of the coconut meat right away and started our production with delicious cilantro coconut wraps, essentially it is the meat of the young coconut blended with cilantro and spinach juice and spread out thinly on dehydrator sheets to create paper thin wraps, which after dehydration can be used for delicious dumplings or as ravioli or tortellini wraps. 

I had made those in different variations before, but never with that filling, which we got to make the following day and which is absolutely delicious and one of my favorite dishes at the restaurant: Kimchee dumplings. 

For that we blended our now fermented Kimchee with some tahini, tamari, agave or coconut nectar, a bit of extra chilli for sipice, filled the dumplings and shaped them in little pyramids and topped it with some ginger sesame foam! Beautiful to look at, healthy, because full of good probiotics and really really tasty!

With the rest of our coconut meat, we got to make ice cream! YES, my favorite treat ever :) AND we got to make up our own flavors, starting from a yummy vanilla bean base, that consisted just of plain coconut meat, cashews, vanilla, agave and salt. 

Coconut Bliss is my favorite store bought ice cream here in the States and I have been dying to try one of their new flavors I saw on their website: Mocha Maca, just to find out that, because of a current shortage in coconuts, they are not producing that flavor at the moment. What a bummer. So, what else would I do then creating that flavor on my own :) I took the base, added a Tablespoon of Maca, a tablespoon or lucuma and a tablespoon of coffee extract and wow... Gabrielle made a mean chocolate coffee ice cream and when we tasted them together, we decided, we just made the ultimate ice cream flavor duo and our first ice company shall have the maca mocha choc swirl as the featured flavor :)

Now, one of the most exciting things in ice cream making was using the Paco Jet. This machine takes anything frozen whips and by whipping air under it, transforms it into a light and fluffy cream. If you have an extra 5000 $ to spare, this is the appliance to get for your ultimate ice cream experience.

During the rest of the week, we made two more very exciting dishes: Tacos and Pizza. The Tacos are my new favorite. A wrap, made from flax, corn, chipotle and a few other ingredients it filled with a slightly tart cole slaw, guacamole, pico de gallo and for spice, jalapeno peppers plated on a brush of a tart coconut and cashew sour cream garnished with black lava salt. This dish is refreshing, hearty with the right amount of good fats from avocado, coconut and flax seeds, as well as satisfying and so tasty. It is one of these dishes that are everyday comfort food and when plated the right way can be served in a fine dining environment. My winner of the week!

The pizzas were exciting as well. The crust was a given recipe from the academy recipe book, but we got to experiment with our own toppings. So, I made up a marinated spinach with orange juice, maple sirup, olive oil, pepper and salt, mixed in some pine nuts, capers and diced yellow squash and dehydrated it for a while to make it soft and give it a cooked texture. I also sliced some pear in thin ribbons and coated them in olive oil, black salt, pepper and porcini mushroom powder to get in that mushroom flavor without adding the actual mushroom. My base tomato sauce, I enhanced with some black kalamata olives, olive oil and figs. The result was a very tasty marinara pizza with wilted spinach and hints of porcini mushrooms. 

The week finally ended with mystery Friday. We didn´t really have more things in our recipe handouts to cover, but we actually made the delicious, fresh and nutritious seaweed salad we haven´t done in week 1. 

Coming back from lunch, we were given the challenge: A mystery basket, containing a selection of different veggies, 1 nut of choice, one acid of choice, 3 spices of choice and one oil of choice. Teaming up with a new partner, Gabriele and I came up with a red beet cacao and mesquite caviar served on zucchini linguini in a pistacchio pesto. A little risky of an approach, this dish did not win the competition, however, it was very fun to prepare and worth a try to end the week with some unusual combinations of flavors and textures.