I am so excited about superfoods in the kitchen.
I am a fervent believer that superfoods are not just for smoothies. These are FOODS, not supplements, and if you want to include them on a daily basis, I believe it is wise to integrate them into your existing menus rather than try and add new things in, which can cause confusion to your routine and overload your body. A sustainable healthy diet is one that is low in sugars, so I have invented tons of recipes to get your superfoods into your savory dishes. There are enough recipes here that you could eat chocolate every day without having any sugars at all! On the other hand, I have also included an abundance of sweet treats too. There are cakes, sweets and puddings galore, many of which contain more nutrition than the average square meal. This is not just healthy food, this is the best food ever! This food is so good, it is off the scale, in a class of its own. You can indulge yourself in the yummiest things you have ever eaten, you will not feel an ounce of suffering or denial, and you will have more energy and enthusiasm for life than you have ever had! Grand claims? Try it for yourself—what have you got to lose? A few pounds, an annoying boyfriend, a job you don’t like? This is the food of the revolution, food that will change your life, to give you the joy and vitality to make all your dreams come true. You might be saying, “Oh, I like my life, I am happy the way I am.” Well, that’s even more exciting. I liked my life before I started eating superfoods, I was really happy the way I was, I liked myself, my family, my friends, my work. But you know what? Since I started eating these foods daily, my world has shifted into a whole new orbit. Everything is possible, because I am the creator of my own reality, and the reality I am creating is so good. Eating superfoods helps us be the very best we can be, and every day just gets better. Life is an infinite and abundant path of reflection, inspiration, motivation, positive action, and integration. Ecstatic bliss becomes the norm. Shall I repeat that? Existence is ecstasy. Our natural state of being is to be as free as the birds, as wise as the horses, as rooted as the trees, as expansive as the mountains, and when we clear our lives of the clutter and debris which cloud our bodies and minds, we tune in to the majesty and beauty of the earth and reclaim the magic which is our birthright.
Every recipe in this book has been invented and tested and retested many, many times. So they definitely work! What’s even better for you is that as this is the second edition of this book, we have had time to refine and improve on many of the recipes.
Buckwheaties
We use buckwheat a lot, in cereal, mixed into chocolate, and ground into flour for crusts and cakes. 300 g (2 cups buckwheat) makes 450 g (3 cups) buckwheaties. Put your buckwheat in a large bowl, cover it with water, and give it a good swish around. Drain it, then cover it in water again and leave it soaking for five hours, no more than eight hours max. Drain, and rinse once more. Leave it in the bowl to sprout for two or three days, giving it a rinse and a swish once a day. Once it’s sprouted, with tails about the same size as the seed, no longer, spread it over drying trays (if you’re using 300 g buckwheat this should spread over three trays). Dry for 12 hours. Stored in an airtight container, it will keep for a couple of months. My company, Raw Living, sells ready-made Buckwheaties, if you don’t have the time or the resources to make your own.
Cacao Powder
Also known as chocolate powder, this is the cacao powder pressed direct from the bean, that hasn’t been roasted or toasted. Conventional cocoa powders are always roasted and toasted.
Melting Butters
A lot of the recipes call for melted cacao butter and/or coconut oil. We’ve found the easiest way to do it is with a double boiler that heats food to controlled temperatures. If you don’t have one, boil some water in a kettle or a pan. Then stand the butter in its jar in the pan, or transfer just what you need to a bowl, and stand that in the pan. Don’t keep the water boiling, turn it off, or the butter will overheat. In warmer weather, you don’t need to melt the coconut oil, it will be runny enough to use straight from the cupboard. If it’s really hot, you don’t need to melt the cacao butter either.
Salt
Crystal salt refers to any type of rock salt: sea salt, Himalayan salt, or any other natural mineral salt. When I travel, I like to pick up local interesting salts, such as Icelandic geothermal salt, Hawaiian red salt, or Indian black salt. Some of the recipes include tamari or miso as salt substitutes. I generally put a pinch of Himalayan crystal salt in everything I make, sweet or savory—it brings out the flavors and aids with the absorption of the minerals. Celtic sea salt is good too. I haven’t put it in the recipes, but keep some on hand, because life is always best when taken with a pinch of salt.
Adding Water Gradually
When blending, it’s vital to add the water gradually. If you pour it all in at the beginning of the recipe with all the other ingredients, it will not get amalgamated properly and the end result will be runny. Add the water slowly, a little by little: if you’re using a cup of water (250 ml), add it a quarter of a cup at a time, blending as you go, and then your finished recipe will be the right thickness.
Weighing Avocados
An average avocado weighs 250 g, including the skin and stones, not just the flesh. Avocados vary a lot in size, so when a recipe calls for one or two, you may want to weigh them first to check how much you need. When a recipe uses a lot of avocado, it’s usually safer going by weight than by counting avocados.
Etheriums
Where a recipe calls for one of the monatomic trace elements, this is for its energetic properties only and does not affect the taste. If you want to leave them out or substitute one for another, it’s not going to affect the recipe working in the slightest, only the alchemical effects. The same goes for suma.
Sweeteners
In the book you’ll find my preferred sweeteners. They are lucuma, mesquite, agave nectar, and xylitol. Lucuma is a powder made from a Peruvian fruit similar to a mango. It has a beautiful biscuitty flavor. Mesquite is another powder, made from a pod similar to carob. It has a sweeter, more caramelly flavor than carob. Agave nectar is a syrup made from the same cactus plant that tequila is extracted from. There has been some controversy surrounding agave nectar in recent years. I believe it’s fine if you source it from a reputable manufacturer, and only use it in small amounts. Xylitol is made from fermented birch bark, and it’s a low-glycemic, healthy alternative to sugar. Some people are suspicious of it because it looks quite processed, but I have found a few spoonfuls in recipes is a great way to increase the sweetness without adding too much bulk. Not all brands of xylitol are raw, so check with the manufacturer if you want to be sure. Since I first wrote Raw Magic, coconut palm sugar has become another popular raw sweetener. Most brands are not raw; to my knowledge the Coconut Secrets brand is the only one that is. You can substitute xylitol for coconut sugar in any of my recipes, if you prefer.
Vegans
Strict vegans avoid the use of bee products. All the recipes in this book are vegan apart from those that include honey or bee pollen. Where honey is used, vegans can substitute agave nectar.
A Note on Superfoods
Since I wrote the first edition of this book in 2006, I have discovered many more “superfoods.” I have come to feel that the term Superfoods is just a new way to describe what we have always known as herbal medicine. We are connecting to the natural healing power of plants, and I am confident that it’s a journey that will never end, as we discover more and more about the magical way plants can interact with the human body. Some of the plants that I have discovered since the first edition of the book, I mention in the recipes: mushroom extracts such as reishi, Ayurvedic herbs such as ashwagandha, or one of my new favorite superfruits, baobab. Space does not permit me to go into detail on all of them here, or else this would turn into more of an apothecary handbook than a recipe book! But if this area of study interests you, please take time to keep up to date with our new discoveries by following my work online.
There are a few basic pieces of equipment that I use time and time again for my recipes. If you have all of these in your kitchen, you’ll be able to recreate everything in this book.
Blender
A really good blender is going to make all the difference to your ability to turn out fine raw cuisine. The Vitamix is the raw connoisseur’s blender of choice; it’s not cheap, but it does do everything—blend to within an inch of your life, and grind nuts and seeds to fine powders. If you haven’t got a high-power blender, you need to be a bit inventive with a combination of a hand-held blender, a coffee grinder or spice mill attachment which comes with most blenders, and a food processor. And you still need a blender.
Dehydrator
If you’re a raw-fooder, it’s pretty likely that you’ll have one of these already. They make raw crackers, biscuits, cookies and breads so good you’ll never miss the cooked versions. If you don’t have one, you can try using your oven on the lowest possible setting—the results aren’t quite the same, but they’re passable.
Double Boiler
We use this for melting coconut oil and cacao butter. If you don’t have one you can use a saucepan and a Pyrex bowl that fits neatly inside it.
Cake Tins
Silicon molds are my preferred kitchen equipment for setting cakes, sweets, and chocolate. Not only does everything turn out easily, with a professional finish, everything sets quicker in silicon as well as it is a conductor of heat. If you don’t have silicon molds, you can use a normal cake tin or baking tray, just line it with aluminum foil or baking parchment. You want a standard-sized tin or mold, somewhere between 7.5" (20 cm) – 9.5" (24 cm) in diameter. When you’re making sweets, where I state medium-sized, the optimum is about 15 cm (6") square, and a large tray needs to be about half as big again (about 15 cm × 23 cm or 6" × 9".)
Cutlery
You need a couple of good tablespoons that you can always find when you need them, a heap of teaspoons, and a good ceramic chopping knife. Forks come in handy for digging coconut oil out of the jars and ground cacao nibs out of the bottom of the blender.
Measuring Cups
Apart from raw chocolate making, I measure just about everything using measuring cups. They are an essential element of your raw kitchen toolkit, alongside a ceramic knife, a nut milk bag, and a good selection of silicon molds. One cup is equivalent to 250 ml; weight-wise it varies according to what exactly you are measuring, e.g. one cup of almonds weighs more than one cup of coconut flakes.
The definition of a tablespoon differs depending what country you are in. In this book
One tablespoon = 3 teaspoons = 15 ml = ⅛ cup.
Big Fridge
Hell yeah. Preferably pink. Or silver. If it’s white you need to cover it in stickers, magnets, and postcards.