Hi Everyone,
Well as promised here is my review of "
The Green Kitchen" by David Frenkiel and Luise Vindahl, Delicious and Healthy Vegetarian Recipes for Every Day. What can I say..this book is utterly beautiful and the recipes are to die for! David and Luise are a married couple with a daughter based in Stockholm and are the new faces of exciting vegetarian food. The have a blog called
Green Kitchen Stories which as you can imagine has become enormously popular. They show you on the blog and in the book how to combine everyday staples to create nourishing, delicious food using only natural ingredients.
"The Green Kitchen" is beautifully photographed with vibrant colours and pictures of fresh, healthy food that is good for your health. Two recipes that caught my eye immediately were the flourless banana pancakes and the Pizza with a Cauliflower base. Both of these recipes are gluten free and this is denoted with GF in a circle below the number of serves.
The Cauliflower pizza crust is a very clever recipe. It mixes together beautifully into a big ball that resembles dough and presses out perfectly onto your baking tray on top of some baking paper.
My pizza base straight out of the oven.
I made a margarita pizza on top of my pizza base and it was really good..it is as they say in the book "super tasty and really quick to make"...my daughter just commented "it was beautiful". You would never know the crust has been made from cauliflower, the pizza cutter glided through the base smoothly and lifted up as a firm slice you can hold in your hand and eat. A great recipe to make for children if you want to get more veggies into their diet, I think they'll love this pizza and wouldn't even notice the difference.
The Flour-free banana and coconut pancakes had me intrigued, lately we always seem to have a couple of bananas going brown in the fruit bowl that are perfect for this recipe. The pancakes were delicious and light. Be gentle turning them over as they are a little more fragile seeing they don't contain flour. My youngest daughter thought they tasted a bit eggy. I liked them and didn't have that overfull, bloated feeling you can get with traditional pancakes.
My pancakes.
I think this a wonderful book for cooks of all levels. Both the recipes I made here were easy to whip up and very tasty. There is an informative introduction and an "Inside Our Pantry" section at the front explaining the ingredients and why they're good for you. I borrowed my copy from the library so I could check it out before committing. I loved this book so much and know I'll be cooking from it often so will now purchase a copy. I highly recommend it.
(excerpt copyright David Frenkiel & Luise Vindahl 2013. Images copyright Johanna Frenkiel)
If you try any of these recipes I'd love to know what you thought and how they turned out.
Pizza with a Cauliflower Base
florets from one cauliflower
80g (3oz, 3/4 cup) ground almonds
1 Tblsp dried oregano
sea salt, freshly ground black pepper
3 eggs, beaten
Preheat your oven to 200 degrees C/400F, place some baking paper on a baking tray.
Cut florets from the cauliflower and pop into a food processor and whiz until you have a fine crumbly mixture. Measure out 3 cups of the cauliflower 'crumbs' and place into a bowl. Add the ground almonds and oregano, salt & pepper and mix up using your hands. Make a well in the centre and pour the eggs into it. Using your hands again, work from the outside and mix ingredients into the middle mixing well to incorporate everything.
Form the mixture into a ball, it will be looser than a normal pizza dough.
Put the ball on top of your baking paper and press down to flatten into a pizza base with your hands. Build the edges a little higher. Bake in the oven for around 25-30 minutes, until golden,
(mine cooked in 25).
Remove pizza from the oven, cover top with tomato pizza base (I buy mine pre-prepared from the supermarket) or (this is not in the book - whiz up a can of whole peeled tomatoes in the food processor with some salt and pepper, dried oregano and basil). Then top with your favourite toppings, I made a margarita pizza here (tomato base, grated cheese, bocconcini and sliced tomato).
Flour-Free Banana & Coconut Pancakes
3 ripe bananas
6 eggs, lightly beaten
50g/2oz desiccated coconut
150g blueberries, fresh or frozen
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp coconut oil for frying
maple syrup for topping
With a fork mash the bananas. Put into a bowl with the eggs and coconut. Add blueberries but reserve some for garnish. Mix well.
Heat the coconut oil in a frying pan and pour two to three tablespoons of pancake batter per pancake. Using a spatula carefully flip them over when they look set and cook on the other side for about another minute until cooked through.
Stack a few on a plate and drizzled with maple syrup and yoghurt if desired.
Catherine x
