Saturday, August 30, 2008

flowering zucchini with raw pesto

i haven't made a lot of raw dishes lately as i have been working with limited ingredients. however, my garden provided me with a fresh zucchini and tomato, so i decided to whip up something. the pesto doesn't taste exactly like regular pesto, but it's definitely similar in taste. the ingredient list below serve about one as a main dish - i made it for lunch.



  • ½ medium size zucchini
  • 1 medium size tomato, chopped
for the pesto:
  • 1 tablespoon pine nuts, soaked 15 minutes
  • 2 tablespoons cold press olive oil
  • ¼ cup fresh basil
  • 1 tablespoon water
  • ½ teaspoon fresh garlic, minced

i used the flat blade on my spiral slicer to make the zucchini into flowering strips. i chopped up the tomatoes and placed on top. for the pesto sauce – i put the rest of the ingredients in my magic bullet and whipped up. i don’t like a lot of olive oil, so i added some water. as you can see, my pesto is a bit thick, so you could add more olive oil if you like. if you aren't worried about eating 'raw', you could just use a store-bought pesto... but i recommend trying your hand at making it fresh. there are any number of recipes on the internet.

enjoy!

3 comments:

Rose said...

Hi, I just discovered your blog, and as a person exploring the raw lifestyle, it's pretty helpful!

Mark by Chocolate said...

Dear Miss V.,

I have had a number of raw vegans who've come stay with us. One of the special dishes I've done employed finely diced, almost minced, zucchini and yellow squash. And not just as a garnish but as a major component for the meal. I also shaved cucumber and zucchini over some of my raw dishes.

If you like the risotto, please also check out my hot salad. It's in with the beef ribs dinner. I do a number of hot salads. One of my favorites, not on the blog, is to dice up a hot baked potato into the salad and after tossing. I also use rice. But for a raw vegan, no cooking.

When doing the risotto, you'll have to use vegetable stock. I make vegetable stock the mother stock, as it were, for all my other stocks and build them on the base of my vegetable stock. That way, I'm ready for a vegetarian or vegan.

Often for sides, I'll do vegetarian or vegan main dishes to give my sides more depth. It's very refreshing for me to get a person who only eats vegetables, rather than a person who says she's a vegetarian but also eats eggs, and fish, um, and chicken, ah, lamb, and sometimes pork but no meat. ;-) What's left? Beef? Yak? When I was a vegetarian, I ate nothing with a face or potential face.

To me the secret of raw dishes is to balance flavor with texture. That's the hard part.

Great blog. Tell me how you like the risotto. And remember to stir. :-)

Gauri Radha गौरी राधा said...

Looks good.