Category Archives: Lunch

I’ve tried to make gnocchi a number of times. It is one of those dishes that can easily go wrong. When you cook them in a boiling water, it can go mushy and clumpy – disaster! I asked Daniel to make gnocchi for Valentine’s day a few years ago. I didn’t even go close to the kitchen that day, giving him a full responsibility. Yep, he used self-raising flour and gnocchi pillows blew up in a boiling water. Massive failure! We didn’t end up eating gnocchi that day. It made me laugh and that’s probably his last time he cooked for me. Kitchen is my area now.

Ingredients

70g pumpkin pureed
100g buckwheat flour
50g rice flour
1/2 tsp of nutmeg
1 egg
a pinch of salt
1 tbsp of olive oil
1 tsp of butter
1/2 tsp of garlic
a bunch of sage
100g feta cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Puree cooked pumpkin until there is no lumps. Add egg, flour, nutmeg and salt into the pumpkin puree, stir to combine gently, cover it up and rest for 10-15 minutes. Then place the mixture on a floured surface and roll the dough into a long sausage and cut into bite sizes. Gently press each gnocchi with the back of the fork. Cook gnocchi in a boiling salted water until they rise to the surface and then quickly transfer them to cool water. Heat garlic, olive oil and butter in a large pan over medium heat and add drained gnocchi and sage into a pan and cook until golden brown. Season with salt and pepper. Deglaze the pan with a squeeze of lemon and transfer to a serving plate. Garnish with crispy sage leaves and crumbled feta cheese.

On the road to good health, we are bombarded by so much information and way too many choices these days – Mediterranean diet, Atkins diet, blood type diet, cavemen diet, paleo diet, south beach diet, GI diet, juice cleansing diet, etc. Oh my god. Do you even know what exactly each one is? People seem to just follow each other or media as if you feel better in yourself when you belong to “something” diet group. Sure, I understand you are trying to lose weight or get healthy, then you can exchange some information and get support from each other to get you going. But is it the right information? are you sure it works for your body? It makes me upset when I see people go through fad diets for a short time which put so much pressure on our body and soul. It is exhausting. Please stop comparing each other. Focus on yourself more and listen to your body. Your body knows exactly what you need. For example, if you are too tired and lack of energy on a vegetarian diet, you don’t have to push yourself. It is okay to eat meat or dairy. On my blog, I put raw and vegetarian recipes, but I’m not telling you to cook what I cook, eat what I eat and do what I do here. I hope I’m not sending wrong messages to you. Choice is all yours. Find what really works for you and feel comfortable with so that you can stick to it for a long time (or lifetime). I’m not a 100% raw foodie. I eat cooked food too about 10-20% of the time, but cooked in a right way – steaming, grilling, lightly stir-frying and pan-frying to not lose nutrition. I think you get benefits from both worlds by eating both the raw and cooked foods.
Now, this recipe! I’ve been on a cauliflower kick recently. Why not making a risotto with cauliflower “rice”? Good thing about this recipe is that not only do you get better nutrition from raw cauliflower than from arborio (risotto) rice but also it is a fail proof. There is no stirring or standing next to the stove for half an hour here, like conventional risotto recipe. It leaves you feel light, healthy and satisfied after eating, not heavy and groggy. Don’t worry, yogurt and nutritional yeast replicates a nice creamy and cheesy flavour. Give it a go and tell me what you think x
Ingredients (serves 2)

2 cups of grated cauliflower florets
1 bunch of asparagus
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp thick Greek yogurt
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
a pinch of Himalayan salt
pepper to taste
1 tsp olive oil
parsley for garnish

Add grated cauliflower and chopped asparagus in a large bowl. To make dressing, mix all the other ingredients in a separate bowl. Pour the dressing into the bowl and stir to combine. Spread evenly on a baking paper. Put it in the 100 degree oven for about 1 hour, stirring about halfway. Take it out of the even, stir well and transfer to a serving bowl. Season with pepper, drizzle olive oil and garnish with parsley.

Borscht soup is a soup of Ukrainian origin (I thought it was Russian soup so far >.<), popular in East European countries. The name comes from the old Slavic word borshchevik which is hogweed, a plant from the same family as fennel. Hogweed was an important food in the Ukraine and Poland until at least the 16th Century and borscht was originally made from the young shoots of this plant. Somewhere along the way the original ingredient was dropped and the name shortened and it became the dish we know it to be today. It is made of beetroot as the main ingredients. I adore borscht – earthy, sweet, pleasantly tangy, fragrant and full of autumnal goodness

Ingredients

1/2 cup of cooked lentils
1/2 leek
1 onioin
1 beetroot
2 cloves of garlic
2 bay leaves
1 carrot
1 cup of cabbage
1 tsp coconut oil
1/2 tsp tomato paste
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp caraway seeds
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
3 cups of vegetable stock
1 tsp of olive oil for garnish

Wash and cut all your vegetables into little bite sizes. Heat a large pot over medium heat. Cook leek and garlic with coconut oil until tender. Add bay leaves, tomato paste, Dijon mustard and caraway seeds and stir for a couple of minutes. Add other ingredients, except apple cider vinegar, in and simmer for 15-20 minutes until cooked. Add apple cider vinegar in the last minute. Serve the soup with a drizzle of olive oil.