Raw Food Wednesday: Green Tomatoes

Raw Food Wednesday 11/12

Green Tomato Enchiladas
(recipe below)

"Fried" Green Tomatoes
(recipe below)

Green Tomato Gazpacho

Much like the previous two weeks, we're taking one ingredient -- Green Tomatoes salvaged by our next door neighbor before the hard frost -- and making three dishes.

The green tomato enchiladas were surprisingly easy and fast to make, only taking about 1 1/2 hours in the dehydrator.



Green Tomato Enchiladas
(makes 12 enchiladas)

1/2 cup flax seeds
1/2 cup water

1/2 tsp. mustard seeds
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 tsp. cumin seeds
1 tsp. Mexican oregano
1 tsp. green peppercorns

1 jalapeno
1/4 cup cilantro
1 1/2 cups green tomatoes (about 4 medium)
2 tbs. olive oil
1 tsp. salt

Soak the flax in the water for 15 minutes. Grind the spices. Add the flax, spices and remaining ingredients to the vita-mix and blend until well pureed.

Pour the mixture into roughly four 7" circles about 1/4" thick on each teflex sheet and dehydrate at 105F for 1 hour.

Remove from the dehydrator and gently flip over onto another tray. The best way to do this is to place another tray upside down on top of the first one and flip them both over. then peel back the teflex slooooowly -- you might need an offset spatula to get under the edge and start the separation. Put the enchilada shells back in the dehydrator for another 30-45 minutes. Keep an eye on them, as you don't want to over dehydrate and make them too rigid. At this point they're ready to use. If you're making them ahead of time, you can place them between sheets of parchment paper in the fridge.

Inside, the enchiladas were stuffed with walnut filling (from RAWvolution), fennel cheese, diced red tomato, minced jalapeno, diced red onion and chopped cilantro)



The enchiladas were topped with red onion rings that were marinated in a sort of escabeche fashion, with key lime juice, olive oil salt & pepper for 6 hours. They also were topped with Liz's secret sofrito (anaheim peppers & cilantro).

Because the enchiladas didn't take that long in the dehydrator, we decided to make "fried" green tomatoes...



"Fried" Green Tomatoes
(makes 8 pieces)

2 medium green tomatoes, cut into 1/4" slices

1 tbs. olive oil
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
1 tsp. nama shoyu

2 tbs. flax seeds
2 tbs. pumpkin seeds
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. mustard seeds
1 tsp. mexican oregano

Depending on how ripe the tomatoes are (and these weren't) you might want to take a vegetable peeler, or sharp paring knife, and remove the tough outer skin of each slice. It's a bit of a pain to do it, but it'll make for a better texture in you mouth later.

Combine the olive oil, vinegar and nama shoyu in a small bowl. Grind all of the spices together, and place in a small bowl.

Dip both sides of the green tomato in the olive oil mixture, shake off the excess liquid and then dredge in the flax seed mixture, coating completely, shaking off any excess coating.

Put the tomatoes in the dehydrator at 105F and process for 2-3 hours, depending on how juicy they are to start.

Next time we'll make some kind of creamy dipping sauce for the tomatoes, but they work just fine as is.



The green tomato gazpacho is pretty straight forward -- it was a puree of about 6 green tomatoes, 2-3 key limes, juiced, 1 clove of garlic, and then olive oil is drizzled in until it starts to thicken. Add sea salt and pepper to taste.

The rest of it is whatever you like for the chunky bits -- in this case it was diced cucumber, diced red onion, diced red tomato, sliced jalapeno.

Tags: raw, raw food, raw food wednesday, green tomatoes, enchiladas, gazpacho, soup, vegan, food, dinner, tofu666