Raw vegan experiment - Day 6

'Music For A Nurse', by Oceansize

Raw vegan experiment - Day 5

'The Golden Age' - Beck

Beetroot salad with yogurt, lemon and cumin dressing


Serves 2

3 beetroots of varying varieties if you can find them
A pinch of ground cumin
1 tablespoon (soya) yoghurt
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
A handful of parsley and chives, chopped
A shallot, peeled and sliced
Salt and pepper

Peel and slice the beetroot. Stir together the cumin, yoghurt, lemon juice and olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Arrange your beets on a plate and garnish with herbs and sliced shallots.

Raw vegan experiment - Day 4

'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now' - The Smiths

Cold cucumber soup



If you try and pretend that you are indeed eating soup, and not just a big bowl of tzatziki, then this is really rather delicious. Perfect for a starter in the summer. Next summer.

Serves 1

A quarter of a cucumber
4 tablespoons soya yoghurt
1 small clove garlic, peeled and crushed
A handful of mint, coriander and chives, chopped
A good squeeze of lemon juice
Salt and pepper

Grate the 'cumber into a bowl. Stir in the yogurt, garlic, herbs and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper and chill for an hour or so. Remove from fridge, check for seasoning and adjust with salt or some fresh tears, and eat.

Raw vegan experiment - Day 3

Couscous salad with cherry tomatoes and chilli


I'd never done couscous using cold water, and I have to say that I was not convinced it would be a success when told about it by my mate Dave. I'm thrilled to say that not only was it great, I actually preferred the texture to couscous done with boiling water. So there.

Serves 1

A handful of couscous
150ml water (or thereabouts)
A few cherry tomatoes, halved
1 chunk of cucumber, roughly chopped
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
A good handful of mint and coriander, chopped
Juice of half a lemon
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Stick the couscous in a bowl and pour over the water. Leave for 15 minutes (the couscous, not the room - it's not that coy).

Fluff with a fork then add your other ingredients, seasoning with salt and pepper and olive oil. Devour like a crazed animal.

Banana and blackberry smoothie



Makes about a litre

3 bananas
A big ol' handful of blackberries
150g oats and seeds
1 tablespoon honey
3 tablespoons soy yoghurt
200ml orange juice
Dried berries - raisins, cranberries, woteva

Stick everything but the dried berries in a blender and, you know, blend. You could sieve it if you are worried about having bits in your teeth for a week (I personally consider the detritus between my molars a cheeky mid-morning snack).

Chill for an hour and pour into a glass with a handful of dried berries on top.

Raw vegan experiment - Day 2

Gazpacho

Makes 2 large portions, serves 4-6 as a starter

2 large tomatoes
300g passata
1 red pepper, deseeded and roughly chopped
1/4 cucumber, roughly chopped
1/4 red onion, roughly chopped
1 small clove garlic, roughly chopped
1 red chilli, deseeded and, you guessed it, roughly chopped
A handful of herbs - parsley and basil, a little rosemary
Salt, pepper, sugar
Olive oil
White wine vinegar, about a tablespoon



Peel the tomatoes by putting a cross in the top with a sharp knife, then leave them in boiling water for a minute. The skin should then come straight off. Quarter them and remove the seeds.

Put the tomato flesh, passata, cucumber, onion, garlic, chilli and herbs in a blender. Season with salt, pepper and sugar and add a dash of olive oil and white wine vinegar. Blend.

Chill for an hour in the fridge and serve with a blob of pesto.

Raw vegan experiment - Day 1

Tagliatelle of courgettes with pesto and black olives



It might seem a little pretentious to be calling this 'tagliatelle', but for all intents and purposes the courgette was a replacement for pasta.

Serves 1

A big handful of basil leaves (no stalks)
50g pine nuts
1 crushed garlic clove
Juice of half a lemon
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
(N.B. - you will have pesto leftover. I intend to plonk mine in some gazpacho)
A few black olives, roughly chopped
2 small courgettes
Tarragon vinegar

Make the pesto by whizzing together the basil, pine nuts, garlic and lemon juice. Blend in olive oil until you have a loose-ish consistency. Season with pepper and salt.

Take a vegetable peeler and peel the courgettes down into strips. Toss through the pesto and olives, add a dash of vinegar, and serve.

Rocket and beansprout salad with chilli lime dressing



Again, genuinely tasty, though would have benefited from having a whacking great chargrilled steak sitting proudly atop it.


Serves 1

For the dressing
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 teaspoon sesame oil (not strictly allowed, I since discovered, though just painting an honest picture. Replace with sesame seeds if being strict)
Dash of soy sauce
Dash of fish sauce (both technically fermented, I believe)
1 red chilli, finely chopped (I wouldn't recommend using a habanero as I did. A little too pokey)
1 small clove of garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon chopped coriander
A pinch of sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil
(NON-VEGAN RECOMMENDATION: I have done this dressing before with yoghurt and it's delicious that way too)
For the rest then
Rocket leaves
Beansprouts
Some finely sliced red onion
A few coriander leaves

Make the dressing by whisking together the ingredients. Taste and adjust with a little more oil, sugar or lime juice if needed.

Assemble the salad leaves, sprouts and onion, and drizzle over the dressing. Garnish with a few coriander leaves. Try not to cry yourself to sleep.

Raw power

Today I start a two-week raw vegan diet and I'm beginning to wonder why. It all started a few months ago when discussing raw veganism with Frank 'Aloe Vera Frankie Baby' Bryant. Frankie told me that it was a diet that he had done often, and that it had the most extraordinary effect on him, not only making him healthier of body but also of mind and spirit. A child once came up to him in the street and hugged him, seemingly due to the spiritual energy vibrating through his very being. In a somewhat Thatcherite manner (and therefore not particularly raw or vegan), he needed only 4 hours sleep a night. There were clearly benefits to such a diet.

But come on - raw and vegan? Just raw I could probably manage, quite happily living off sushi and salads for a couple of weeks. Were it only vegan I might get by as well (only for those two weeks, mind). Toast with tahini and jam for breakfast, vegetable curries and pastas and the like...it would be very doable. But both at the same time? This ain't going to be a picnic (and quite frankly, what would a picnic be without a pork pie and a doorstop sized hunk of cheese?).

But I like a challenge, and seeing as I'd been doing a bit of writing for a vegan magazine called Off The Hoof (whilst remaining firmly ensconced in omnivorous territory), I decided to mix business with displeasure, and embark upon this fortnight of gastronomic insanity, all the while recording its effect on my mind, body and soul.

The implications on the mind and soul will, I imagine, become clear as time progresses. There are all sorts of lofty and wafty theories out there in the ether, suggesting that I will reach spiritual enlightenment, and that my connection with Mother Earth will intensify holistically, her bounty and succour becoming one with me, as I chomp through everything she has to offer without even bothering to cook the stuff.

As for the body, there are two schools of thought. Although I am doing this principally as an experiment to challenge both my willpower and culinary creativity, I'm not going to pretend the supposed positive benefits to my health won't be a bonus. Should the experiment be a success, I will have increased energy, better skin, and better digestion (sounds ominous). I should also lose some weight (a brief perusal of the last few posts should indicate that this can only be a good thing), and my risk of heart disease will decrease. I have a feeling that two weeks is not going to have a huge effect on my heart, though as someone once said, every little helps.

The bad news then. I am likely to suffer a detoxification reaction involving headaches, nausea, and cravings. Considering I crave meat and cheese at the best of times, God only knows the level of longing that will be pawing at my (supposedly composed) brain after a few days of this. I am also likely to be deficient in calcium, iron, B12, protein and calories. So quite where all this 'energy' is supposed to be coming from I'm not sure.

But it's the anthropological arguments that I find most fascinating. A vegan (and raw vegan at that) would argue that our ancestors ate everything raw, and therefore so should we. They have clearly never heard of the theory of evolution. Our ancestors lived in caves, wore loin cloths, communicated in grunts, gnawed at raw flesh, interbred, and then died somewhere in their twenties. Not the greatest yardstick by which to conduct life in the 21st century.

As the brilliant Jeffrey Steingarten points out in his equally brilliant The Man Who Ate Everything, neanderthal became homo sapiens when he worked out that a grilled mammoth steak tasted and digested better than a raw one. Health improved, brain power developed, and the neanderthal ceased to exist, remembered only as an idiom for crudeness and vulgarity. Sort of like Jordan, only better looking.

What Steingarten also explains, is that the notion that 'raw = healthier' is not only utterly misguided, but actually often contrary to the truth. Many foodstuffs are harmful until cooked. We've just about worked that out with things like potatoes and rice, yet continue to extol the virtues of raw spinach, broad beans and broccoli. It doesn't seem to make sense.

Nevertheless, in the coming two weeks I shall try to make sense of it, and will keep a day to day video diary of my progress on this site.


In the meantime, any suggestions for good raw vegan recipes (surely you have hundreds of them?) would be much appreciated.