Kristen Suzanne's Easy Raw Vegan Sides & Snacks
Cookbook With Recipes for Dips, Spreads and Vegetable Dishes
Raw food is raw in that it is not heated above 104F/40C, retaining the vitamins, minerals and enzymes present in the food. Raw vegan food is touted for its health benefits and many people find that it gives them more energy. And of course, cold dishes offer a refreshing choice in the heat of the summer.
Kristen Suzanne is a chef who has authored a number of cookbooks with healthy, delicious and creative raw food recipes. Easy Raw Vegan Sides and Snacks (Green Butterfly Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0981755656) is one of these books that helps people add more healthy, flavourful plant-based foods to their diet and to learn to enjoy vegetables they haven't previously enjoyed.
Raw food does not mean eating just salads nor are the foods necessarily low-fat. What is great about raw food is that most foods are very easy and quick to make. Usually you only have to chop the ingredients or mix them - sometimes not even that if they're blended. Some foods are dehydrated which takes a little longer, but does not require extra effort.
Contents
The book starts off with an introduction to raw food, introducing ingredients, storing, preparation techniques and other useful information. This part is included in all of Kristen Suzanne's cookbooks. This chapter also features recipes for nut/seed milk and cream, creme fraiche, raw mustard and raw "mayonnaise".
Dips, salsas, chutneys and sauces feature prominently throughout the book, but there are also salad-like vegetable dishes, breakfast cereal, vegetable mashes and even "rice" dishes where carrots and butternut squash serve the part of the rice.
Ingredients in this book include vegetables (especially carrots, tomatoes, onions, butternut squash and zucchini), fruit, nuts, raw grains, mushrooms and seeds. Sprouts, generally a common part of the raw cuisine, aren't used much. Suzanne likes using spices, especially parsley, basil, thyme, lemon juice, mint, ginger, garlic, cumin and coriander.
The chapter Snacks features mostly seasoned nuts and seeds. Suzanne has come up with the creative idea of seasoning them in some recipes by soaking them in flavoured teas. Sadly most of the recipes in this chapter require a dehydrator, which is rarely used in the rest of the book.
Recommendations
The zucchini-based "hummus" recipe was surprisingly close to chickpea-based hummus, but the sesame taste seemed overpowering even using much less tahini than in the recipe. The ginger version of hummus was interesting.
The raw ketchup, perhaps more like a sundried tomato sauce, tasted a little weird on its own, but went great with foods that were tasty but slightly bland - just like normal ketchup. While the rose sauce was very good, this reviewer probably would not be bold enough to use it for savory foods as suggested.
As with other Kristen Suzanne's books, it's a shame that Easy Raw Vegan Sides and Snacks is so short, less than 100 pages. There are no photos except for the ones in the cover, though pictures of many dishes can be found on Kristen Suzanne's website.
See Also
Kristen Suzanne's Easy Raw Vegan Desserts
Go Dairy Free: Guide and Cookbook Review
Ginger hummus
|
Raw ketchup
|
What do you think about this article?
More in Reading & Literature
Latest Articles