Raw Food Thursday: Beets

Raw Food Thursday 12/11

Beet Hand Rolls
(recipe below)

Borscht
(adapted from Juliano)

The idea today was to make Beet Crepes -- which, as you'll see below, we did.

For a meal like this, we usually start in the morning, so all we need to do is assemble come dinner time. The crepes were finished right around lunch time (RAWvolution's "Chicken" Salad), and while removing them from the dehydrator one of the crepes snagged and tore a chunk out of it. This made it unusable as a crepe, but we were able to salvage it by cutting it right down the center which left a semi-circle. So we put two and two together and made an impromptu sushi hand-roll.


Un cadeau pour mon petit chou-chou

This turned out so well, we decided to postpone the crepe part of dinner and just make these instead. ;)

Beet Crepes
(makes approximately 8 crepes)

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup flax seeds

1 tsp. caraway seed
1/2 tsp. dill seed
1/2 tsp. celery seed
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. thyme
1/2 tsp. black pepper

1 1/2 cups of beets, diced
1/2 cup orange juice
1 tbs. olive oil
1 tsp. nama shoyu


Mix the water and Flax together, let sit for 15 minutes.




Grind the spices together and add to the flax.




Peel the beets and dice them, add to the flax along with the orange juice, olive oil and nama shoyu.



Puree everything together in the vita-mix. It'll sound painful. It may need to lie down in between, but it will preserve... maybe.




You'll need two teflex sheets. Pour the mixture into rounds -- an offset spatula works wonders here -- trying to keep it roughly in a round shape.

Place both sheets in the dehydrator at 105F for 90 minutes.

After 90 minutes, check to see if the edges are starting to get dried out. You want to see a little of that -- not too much, as it will become brittle, and you won't be able to cut and fold them later. If it looks firm enough across the entire sheet, you can try to flip it over. If not, wait another 15-20 minutes.

If it's looking good, flip the entire sheet over onto another tray (we like to place one on top, and then flip both over so it doesn't go flying).

Now this is the tricky part -- peel one of the corner edges back, sloooooooowly. If you have a small offset spatula, see if you can loosen the edge of the crepes off of the sheet and hold it down while peeling the rest of the teflex off. You'll have some of the mixture remain on the sheet as you're peeling it back -- don't worry -- you can scrape it off and re-apply it once you've peeled the sheet off. But slowly is the key here.



After flipping/peeling the crepes, place them back in the dehydrator for 30 minutes at 105F. Again, keep an eye on them so they don't become too brittle -- softer is better here.



Assembly

Cut the crepes in half, place filling (shredded carrot, red bell pepper, red cabbage, Dr. Cow*, which has been tossed in an orange poppyseed vinaigrette) at a 45° angle, and roll tightly into a hand roll.



Secure the roll with a thin strip of carrot, and serve immediately.



*We ordered some Dr. Cow Aged Cashew Cheese from Pangea (in addition to our usual Teese order). It reminded us of a sharper version of the cashew cheese we make at home. I liked that you could shave the cheese extremely thin.

Tags: raw food wednesday, raw food, raw, beets, carrots, orange juice, dr. cow, borscht, soup, vegan, food, dinner, tofu666