Beetroot and avocado wrap

Serving suggestion with red currants

4 ingredients:

·         The Wraps
·         Beetroot spread
·         Avocado
·         Mix leaves salad

 The only prep needed is peeling and cutting the avocado length ways and about 2cm width.

Ingredients

Beet spread - Has chilli in it

To make the beet spread see the recipe on one of the previous posts here

This is there just because I like it!

Excellent for lazy afternoon snacks, just using left overs... the beet spread is really hot as in chilli hot and the current overly acidic... The Avocado here almost play the roll of a plain natural yogurt as a calming agent on my assaulted tastes buds.

Lovely!

Cassava, coconut cream, Veggies parcels

Ingredients for 4

• 1 large leek
• 100ml Oat milk
• 25g coconut cream
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 small shallot
• Rapeseed oil
• 50g courgette
• ½ of a Green, a yellow and a green pepper
• 12 whole green beans
• 250g Handmade Devon Tofu
• 100 Gary flour – made out of cassava same origin as Tapioca

Method:

The only difficulty in this dish is to make the parcels…Got kids? Let them do the parcels!

The Parcels: Start by prepping the vegetable. Cut the green, red and yellow peppers length ways and about 1cm width.

First veggies parcel

Use the length of the pepper to cut the courgette and the leek. Before cutting the leek, gently remove the outer layer, rinse and set aside. As the outer layer of the leek is harder and more stringy, it will be used as a rope to tie the vegetable parcels.

For each parcel use: 1 piece of courgette, 1 green pepper, 1 red pepper, 1 yellow

pepper, 1 piece of leek then 3 green beans. Tie all that together as on the picture and repeat until all 4 parcels are done. Set those aside.

Raw tofu

The Tofu: I used the handmade Devon tofu because they absorb the flavours more than the usual industrial one which has the consistency of an egg white. This one is very easy to use and doesn’t break easily. I really recommend it as it is the best I have found yet.

Fired tofu

So, cut the tofu as you want and season it with salt and black pepper. Press the tofu a bit so that it absorbs the seasoning, then, deep fry in really hot oil a bit like you would chips. What this deep frying will do is strengthen further the tofu and make it look golden.

Once is it all fried, remove from oil and place on absorbing paper as you would with your chips. Leave it one side.

Cooking the parcels:

Parcels in coconut sauce

Dice about 25g of the left over leek, the shallot and the garlic cloves. Then fry all in 2 table spoons of rapeseed oil. Stir fry for 2 minutes. Add the oats milk and the vegetables parcels, salt, pepper and the coconut cream. Cover the pan for 2 minutes, then base the veggies parcels as you would a roast. Now, add the golden tofu pieces and cover them with the sauce. Now cover the pan again and leave the contents to simmer for 2 to 3 minutes the time for the tofu absorb all the flavours.

Raw Gary

The Gary: This is made out of cassava and it is the less pretty sister of the Tapioca pearls. This is very widely used in South America, Africa and Asia… It can be found in you ethnic shops.

So, to make those lovely doughs you can see on my plate, place the Gary in a deep bowl that has a lid.

Boil 200ml of water then pour it over the Gary, stir and very very quickly pour away the excess water with the tiny pieces of cassava strings that have risen to the surface.

Gary dough balls

Cover the bowl and leave it on the corner for 5 minutes. There is no need to add salt on this as cassava has a very subtle natural acidity.

After the 5 minutes, form some dough balls using a ladle or a big soon.

Serve as suggested with the coconut sauce and veggies parcels.

Enjoy!

2 tones banana cake Chilli -choco and ginger

So, yesterday my colleague left earlier because she wasn't feeling well then she sent me a message letting me know that she’d gone home, but that I could take the banana on her desk. Which I did. I didn’t fancy eating it there and then and by the time I got home it was slightly mushy. I didn’t want to throw it a way and that’s how I decided to bake this treat.

Most ingredients for this dessert where already in my larder so I didn’t need to go shopping.

All the ingredients

Ingredients for the cake:

·         1 ripe banana (about 100g)

·         100g flour

·         75g dairy free butter

·         25g sugar

·         A pinch of salt

·         1 teaspoon chilli flakes

·         1 teaspoon of dark coco powder

·         1/2teaspoon baking powder

·         75ml of water (or rice milk)

·         4 ramekins

Ingredients for the syrup:

·         25g fresh ginger

·         50g sugar

Method

Preheat the oven at 200C before starting.

In a blender, place the peeled banana and melted butter, salt, sugar and 75ml water. Blend. Transfer all into a mixing bowl. Sieve in the flour and baking powder. Mix well until you obtain a lump less batter.

Ramekin ready for the oven

Now, split the batter in two bowls. In one half, incorporate the chilli flakes and in the other, add the coco powder. Now you’ve got a chilli banana batter and a coco banana cake.

Butter the ramekins that you are going to use for the baking. On the bottom of each ramekin, pour the chocolate cake mix, then on the top gently place the chilli mix. By doing this gently, the cake mixes will remain separated in the ramekin.

Now place the ramekin on the tray on the centre of the oven and leave to bake for 25 minutes at 200C.

Meanwhile, peel chop and blend the ginger with 25ml water. Sieve the mix in a sieve lined with paper towel to obtain a clear ginger essence.

The syrup... still bubbling

Do not throw away what you have recuperated in the paper towel as it could be used in

soups or stir fries.

Those are chilli flakes

Back to our syrup. In a milk pan, melt 50g of sugar until it look clear and golden. This should take 2 minutes. Now add the ginger essence in the pan slowly stir and try now to burn yourself. The content of the pan will froth very much. Just keep an eye on it and pull it away from the stove from time to time. Slowly stir the content of the pan until the water has evaporated and all that is left is a ginger flavoured syrup. This should take 5 minutes in total from the moment you add the ginger essence onto the sugar. Remove the syrup from the pan and place it in a serving dish.

When the cake is ready, allow 5 minutes to cool down then serve by cutting each individual cake and covering them with the syrup.

Serving suggestion

This dessert is hot as in chilli hot literally but it surprising in flavors.

Let me know what you think of it. Tweet @hjulienne