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Treats & Snacks, Vegan &/or Raw, x For Freezer x

Mint Chocolate ice-cream pops

What do you get when you blend up a popular nut, a green vegetable and Lisa Hannigan’s new album? A Nobel prize in chemistry.

Please don’t’ ask me to explain what happens at an atomic level – I haven’t got the foggiest. The end result feels inexplicably gifted, like Allan Rickman and Sharleen Spiteri dirty dancing at the petrol pump.

Music can heighten the enjoyment of a recipe. Watch what happens to your appetite when you play Bob Dylan on repeat – your synapses will feel like a potted geranium dropped from six stories high. Don’t get me wrong. I have all his albums. But just not in the kitchen. Crank up the volume on Lisa Hannigan when you’re at the stove, and her groove will magically transfer to your fingertips and dimples. Food just tastes better. She gives me wings.

 

 

When cashew nuts are soaked for six hours, they blend up like thick cream. Cashews are the David Blaine of vegan ice cream. Magic.

Add to this sumptuously whipped avocado and sticky honey, and you’ve got yourself a blueprint for any dairy-free ice pop.

Cashews have a neat supply of copper, a rather important trace mineral for our bods. Copper is a Big Wig for a whole suite of essential enzymes, such as superoxide dismutase. SOD (geek speak for superoxide dismutase y’all) buoys up our mojo and energy production. And you know what? A good handful of cashew nuts rings in at over 100% of your recommended daily intake of copper. Score.

 

 

 

Dark Chocolate & Mint Ice Cream

I’ve added matcha green tea powder for its groovy glow (and to give my frontal lobe a good rave). Then great big chunks of 70% dark chocolate, because St Patrick is all about chocolate. I. Think.

Drop the coconut milk, if you prefer less ice in your popsicle.

 

100g unsalted cashews

2 avocados

1 tin full-fat coconut milk

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

5-8 tablespoons rice malt syrup (for IQS fans) or raw honey (stronger tasting) 

Pinch of sea salt

1 teaspoon matcha green tea powder

½ teaspoon real peppermint extract

40g your favourite dark chocolate

 

Soak your cashews in filtered water for anything between 6 and 12 hours (overnight is perfect). Drain and discard and soak liquid. Tip the softened nuts into a high-powered blender and add the remaining ingredients, all except for your chocolate of course. Blitz the bejaysus out of it. When it’s silky and creamy, stir through your chunks of chocolate.

Spoon into lolly molds and freeze for 6 hours before annihilating in one glorious binge. Just kidding! Keep a lid on that lust!

 

 

Salads & Suppers, Vegan &/or Raw, x For Freezer x

Mushroom & Merlot Stew

 

I am lovebombing mushrooms before they are swallowed up by Spring. Mushrooms have to be one of the most sophisticated and understated veggies we’re not eating. They are the Woody Allen of the grocers  – hardly overburdened by good looks, but scrumptious and uniquely nourishing all the same.

Mushrooms bring great depth to dishes as well as inimitable flavour profiles. Often ‘shrooms can make a stealthy replacement for meat, like in this recipe. Apart from their meaty, lip-dancing taste, mushrooms of all sorts like to fangirl our immune system. Especially shiitake.

For hundreds of years, Chinese doctors have prescribed shiitake mushrooms to boost white blood cell activity. A unique polysaccharide found in shiitake – the beta glucan – has shown to tickle the immune system by activating cytokines and killer T-cells. Oooh argh. Kind of like a fascinating immune system defibrillator. More clinical trials are under way to understand the medicinal effect polysaccharides can offer our bodies.

 

 

This mushroom and merlot stew uses bone broth to help it sing. But this ain’t no singsong. Think opera. We serve it with mash, and a dot of horse radish yoghurt. My BAE. (Okay, so this teenspeak is normally a reference point for Justin Bieber’s abs, or bare-chested members of One Direction. Grand so. Except when you get to my age, food will excite you more).

 

Mushroom and merlot stew

Serves 12, freezes well

 

6 tablespoons ghee, butter or olive oil

2 large onions, peeled and diced

4 fat cloves of garlic

4 beetroots, peeled and chopped

3 bay leaves

5 sprigs of thyme

3 cups (750ml) merlot or other dry red wine

8 cups (2 litres) really good vegetable stock or bone broth

1 tin of anchovies, chopped (leave out for vegetarians)

8 big handfuls of wild mushrooms

4 tablespoon grated ginger (optional)

2 tablespoons kuzu or arrowroot

 

For the horseradish yoghurt:

4-6 tablespoons freshly grated horseradish

1 large tub natural or Greek yoghurt

Handful of fresh parsley

 

Heat 2 tablespoons of your preferred fat in your largest, heavy-based saucepan. Add the onion and garlic. Sauté until glassy.

Tumble in the chopped beets, bay leaves, thyme and let them socialise for 5 minutes on a low flame while you get going on the shrooms (method below). Then pour the merlot, stock and anchovies into the pot. Let the pot gurgle for 60 minutes until the beets are tender. Leave the lid off and let the alcohol escape. This might sound counter-intuituve if you’re Irish, but trust me. You don’t want alcohol in this.

To prep the shrooms, slice into bite-sized chunks or leave whole if small. Heat the rest of your chosen fat in a large frying pan, lower the heat and cook the mushrooms until tender and caramelised. I do this in batches while the stew bubbles. Season the mushrooms, and parachute them into the pot. Simmer until tender.

Dissolve the kuzu or arrowroot with 2 tablespoons of cold water and add to the pot 10 minutes towards the end of cooking to thicken the broth. At this point, you can also grate some ginger into the pot and let it gently simmer until the beets are tender.

Serve with fabulously spicy horseradish yoghurt, creamed potatoes, or chickpea mash.

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Elle Magazine in Canada for originally publishing this recipe over Yuletide. Yez are The Snazz, Elle Canada!

 

 

 

 

Breakfast

The Brew: COUGHs AND COLDs

Carrageen is an Atlantic seaweed available in trendy supermarkets across Ireland. Californian hipsteratti like to call it Irish moss, and use it to set vegan desserts in place of verboten animal gelatin. So it’s not surprising that, when boiled, carrageen has an Angel Delight texture to salve achy throats. My little ones think this brew is like a wobbly dessert, administered from a spoon. Granted, their taste buds are probably shot when they’re fighting a cold.

It’s unclear whether the antimicrobial effect is from the raw honey, vinegar, turmeric, ginger or wild carrageen. There’s evidence to suggest that each of these sonic ingredients harbour their own deadly ninja moves. Not that I care much, so long as my cough is salved in some way (if even momentarily).

Treating yourself with your mind is also a great recipe. If the placebo effect can account for up to a 48 per cent improvement in symptoms during some clinical trials, it’s not unfair to suggest that our minds are in fact the best superfood du jour. Such a state of affairs can really ruin a coffee break at a medical conference.

The idea that your brain can stimulate healing is hardly new. But it’s certainly worth remembering our brain’s currency in the healing process. If our emotional selves can help convince our physical selves that a fake treatment is the real thing — the placebo effect — just think of the amazing benefits and possibilities we all hold for our future wellness. Wish yourselves well, my friends!

The Brew

Makes 2 mugs

Carrageen is a type of Irish mossy seaweed available in loads of Irish supermarkets like Supervalu, and certainly in all good health stores.

  • Roughly 20g packet of Carrageen moss
  • 3-4 cloves
  • 2 tablespoons raw honey
  • 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar or fresh lemon

Optional add-ons

  • 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
  • Crack of black pepper
  • Other citrus fruits
  • 1 teaspoon minced turmeric root, or dried turmeric

1. Soak the carrageen in water for 30 minutes to rehydrate it. Remove, discard liquid, and rinse under the cold tap. Boil the carrageen in a large saucepan with the cloves and around 750ml of fresh water. Secure a lid on it.

2. After 20-30 minutes, strain the “ocean veg” brew and allow the liquid to cool to lip temperature before stirring in the remaining ingredients and optional add-ons.

3. The brew will set like lemon curd once cooled. If (or when) this happens, gently re-heat. If your cough is particularly chesty, make several batches with added ginger zest and sip all day, with the aid of a couple of Woody Allens.

For kids:

Add extra honey, making sure it’s locally sourced. Administer by the spoon to help with their bark! A few teaspoons a day is plenty. Not suitable for babies.

A special announcement

Join me on Substack

Howdy! I’ll be deleting this website shortly. Gah! But please stay in touch – I so appreciate your loyalty and lovebombs.

You can continue to access my recipe drops over on Substack.  Hope to see you there, and to continue frolicking on this veggie-fueled dance floor.