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Summary: Do you love lasagna, but you avoid the traditional recipe because you are vegan, gluten-free, raw, or just wanting to improve your diet and make healthier food choices ? If yes, you will love this recipe : the wheat lasagna sheets are replaced with thin slices of ultra low calorie courgette ; the raw marinara tomato sauce is quick to make, and can be made oil free. The fermented vegan cashew cheeze sauce provides beneficial probiotics, if you have the time to allow the cheese to age. Last but not least, this raw vegan lasagna passes the taste test : in fact, it is so delicious that you will not be left missing the original !
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Summary: Fruit salad with cheese is one of my personal favourite combinations. It might sound unusual, but give it a try, and you will be surprised at how well it works. I love my fruit salads with cheese at any time of the day, from breakfast to a light lunch to a refreshing Summer starter to a post-workout snack to even dessert. A sure winner with children too. Again, putting pepper on fruits might sound odd, but the pepper really brings out the sweetness of the fruits and wonderfully rounds off the different flavours.
This one is a summer incarnation, when stone fruits are plentiful. Use any combination of plums, apricots, nectarines, peaches and cherries. I used the juice of half a blood orange to marinate the fruits in because I had one (the last of the season), but regular orange is great too. Thyme just goes really well with goats cheese, but basil works great too.
The key is to use perfectly ripe fruits, as they will be deliciously sweet ; halving and pitting the cherries takes a bit of time, but it is well worth the effort, believe me ! Leave a few cherries whole for decoration.
For a Vegan and Paleo version, replace the goat cheese with soaked almonds.
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Summary: Despite their unpleasant sting, the humble wild nettles are actually tasty and very nutritious: they are high in Iron, Calcium, Magnesium, Phosphorous, Zinc, Chromium, B vitamins and trace minerals including Selenium and Manganese ! Plus, they are free and widely available, so the little care required in handling them is totally worth it. In fact, the occasional nettle sting, unpleasant as it can be, is actually a good tonic for the nervous, circulatory and lymphatic systems. Nettles are used intentionally for this purpose in a treatment called uritication.
Popular ways to eat nettles include nettle soup, nettle tea and steamed nettles ; in fact you could swap the spinach in any recipe with wild foraged nettles. But long cooking times destroy some of nettles beneficial phytonutrients, so eating raw nettles like in this raw vegan nettle pesto is a bonus. Just handle the leaves carefully while washing and drying them. Thoroughly chopping the nettles in the food processor stops them from stinging.
This pesto is delicious served on cucumber or tomato slices for canapés, on toast topped with roasted vegetables, or stirred through grain pasta or courgetti (spaghetti substitute made by processing raw courgettes using a spiraliser or a julienne peeler).
These quantities make up quite a big batch, please feel free to halve the recipe if needed.
PS: The quality and freshness of your nettles really shine through in this recipe. Use the freshest, greenest, youngest nettle leaves you can find.
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