Fennel & Cabbage Tahini Slaw with Chickpeas and Cashews

I call this little creation a 'tahini slaw' - it's essentially a coleslaw but the bulk of the creamy dressing is made from delicious nutritious tahini rather than lots of gluggy and nutritionally deficient mayonnaise. It's versatile, of course, so feel free to make your own adaptations. In this recipe I've used not just cabbage but thinly sliced fennel which gives it a wonderful crisp flavour and I've added a can of chickpeas to bulk it up a bit and turn it into a main event dish rather than a side. If you're just bringing it along to a bbq then you can choose to omit the chickpeas.

This recipe makes enough for 2-3 people to have a big bowl of it for lunch or dinner, or for 4-6 people to have as a side salad.

Fennel & Cabbage Tahini Slaw with Chickpeas and Cashews

Ingredients
1/4 medium green cabbage (you can substitute purple cabbage or a mixture of both)
1/2 large fennel bulb
1 small Spanish onion
1 small granny smith apple
1 400g can of chickpeas, drained
1/2 cup roasted cashews
2 tbsp unhulled tahini
1 tsp mayonniase
1 tsp soy sauce
Juice of small 1/2 lemon
2 tbsp olive oil
Cracked pepper, to taste
1 punnet cherry tomatoes, washed and halved.

To Make
1. Very thinly slice the cabbage, fennel bulb and Spanish onion and toss together in a bowl. Cut the core out of the apple and cut into thin matchsticks. Add to the salad along with the chickpeas. Once you've added the apple, sprinkle a bit of the lemon juice over the salad to stop the apple going brown while you make the dressing.
2. Combine the tahini, mayonnaise, soy sauce, remaining lemon juice and olive oil in a small bowl or jar. Mix well to combine. It may be very thick at this stage, but don't worry it will thin out as you mix it through the salad. Season to taste with cracked pepper.
3. Add the tahini dressing to the salad and mix thoroughly until the salad is evenly coated with the dressing. Break up the cashews a bit with your hands and toss them in along with the halved cherry tomatoes. Mix well and serve garnished with extra cashews (optional).

Notes: You can use the cherry tomatoes to decorate the top instead of mixing them through if you like. 

Serves 2-3 as a main or 4-6 as a side salad.

Sesame & Chilli Fried Potatoes

I'd sound like a broken record if I told you again how much I adore tahini - if you've ever read this blog before then you probably know it already! So I won't. Wait, I just did. Oh well.....

It's hard to pass up the opportunity to make fried potatoes of any variety - and these ones in particular. In this recipe you make a bit of a home made tahini with toasted sesame seeds and spices, fry it up with some potatoes & chillies and then sit back and eat it straight out of the pan with a fork. Or serve it up on nice plates to dinner guests - it's your choice!

Ingredients
500g potatoes
1/2 cup unhulled sesame seeds
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 green chillis, chopped
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp asafoetida powder (just leave this out if you don't have any)
Juice of 1 lemon

To Make
1. Peel the potatoes and chop into wedges, keeping them all roughly the same size. Boil in water until just tender. Drain and set aside.
2. In a dry (preferably non stick) frypan, toast the sesame seeds until golden. Transfer to a food processor and blitz into a powder.
3. Heat the oil in a large (preferably non stick!) frypan, and add the chillies and fenugreek seeds. Fry until the fenugreek is golden brown and then add the spices and fry for a further 15 seconds. Then add the sesame seed powder and stir well, to make a paste.
4. Add the drained potatoes and toss well to coat in the sesame chilli paste.Turn the heat down to low and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring often. The potatoes should be cooked through, but not starting to break up yet.
5. Add the lemon juice, stir through and remove from the heat. Serve.

This month I'm featuring lots of recipes from Nepal!

Check out my other Nepali/Nepalese recipe posts:

Tomato Achar

Aloo Roti (Potato Roti)

Semolina Halva

Vegetable Momo with Chilli Sesame Dipping Sauce

Chilli Grapefruit & Orange Salad

Saag Tarkari

Creamy Tahini Sauce (Egyptian Tahini Salad)

Tahini is my idea of heaven - who knew that sesame seeds could purée to such a delectable paste? Tahini is one of the "basic essentials" in my cupboard. You know how most people think "basic essentials" and they think bread, milk and butter? Not in our house. Our basic essentials are soy sauce, tea, vegetable stock and tahini. So I never pass up the opportunity to make a new recipe containing tahini.

This recipe is called a tahini salad - I'm not sure if that is a literal translation or just a culturally different definition, but it's more what I would call a sauce. It is served as an accompaniment to a lot of Egyptian food. It goes perfect drizzled on your falafel, pita bread or salad. Smear it on your veggie burgers, drizzle it over your tofu or just use it as a dip with fresh chopped veggies and crusty bread. Yum!

Creamy Tahini Sauce

Ingredients
1/2 cup unhulled tahini
Juice of 1/2 lemon
3/4 cup water
1 tsp cumin
2 garlic cloves, minced finely
Salt and pepper to taste
Sumac, to garnish
Fresh mint, to serve (optional)

To Make
1. Place tahini in a bowl and add the lemon juice. Mix well until completely combined. Add the water bit by bit, stirring well all the while until the sauce is creamy and there are no lumps of tahini remaining.
2. Add the cumin, garlic, salt and pepper and mix well.
3. Chill in the fridge for at least half an hour before serving.

This month I'm featuring lots of delicious food from Egypt.

Check out my other Egyptian recipe posts:

Preserved Lemons

Limoonada (Egyptian Lemonade)

Mesa'a'ah (Spicy Eggplant)

Orange and Olive Salad with Cumin

'Ancient Egyptian Peasant' Beer Onions

Ful Medames

Khoshaf

Peri Peri Hummus Cucumber Bites (Easy Healthy & Vegan Appetiser)

Sometimes you just need appetisers to be quick, easy, delicious and healthy. Because who wants to fiddle around with tiny things when you're in a rush (or just not in the mood). This is the perfect healthy appetiser to whip up quickly - you can even use store bought hummus! Use home made if you feel like it of course. It has a bit of a kick with the addition of some Peri Peri Spice blend from my spice rack. You can substitute peri peri sauce or even just a pinch of dried chilli flakes if you don't have access to either. Start with just a little peri peri and then gradually add  more until you get to the level you like it. If you or your guests don't like it hot at all, just substitute a little cumin or garam masala instead.

Peri Peri
Peri Peri is just chilli really, but it's a chilli blend which is used extensively in South Africa. The term Peri Peri (or Piri Piri) is used loosely to describe chillies in India and South Africa. Both peri peri spice powder and peri peri sauce are simply made from a blend of chillis, generally being quite hot. If you want some interesting facts about chilli that you probably didn't know jump over to my Spicy Chickpea Salad with Olive Hummus Dressing where I've written up some info about chilli :)

Reference: Hemphill, 2006

For my month of spices I'm using Spice Notes and Recipes by Ian Hemphill as my reference tool to learn about spices and for all the information above. Thanks Ian for writing such a great and informative book! 

Peri Peri Hummus Cucumber Bites

Ingredients
1 tub store bought hummus
1/2 tsp peri peri spice blend (or 1 tsp peri peri sauce), add more or less to taste
2 cucumbers
1/2 cup black olives, sliced in half and pitted.

To Make
1. Stir the peri peri through the hummus.
2. Slice the cucumbers about 1 cm thick and arrange on a plate.
3. Top each cucumber slice with 1 tsp of hummus and half a black olive. Serve as soon as they are made (preferably).

Chickpea, Apple and Cashew Salad with Tahini Dressing

My mum calls me the Salad Queen because I almost never make the same salad twice. I just love making salads - they are so easy and so versatile. A lot of people think that salad is boring which baffles me - maybe they just put lettuce, tomato and cucumber in their salads and then add some store bought sugary dressing? If that is how you view salads then I challenge you to try some of my salads.

There are so many different vegetables and fruits, beans and pulses, nuts and seeds and different dressings to use in salads! This hearty salad is perfect for people who think that salads aren't filling enough to be your whole meal. It's also deceptively healthy - the rich creamy dressing is made with tahini which already has a certain oil content so that means you don't need to add any oil to the dressing - winner! 

Ingredients

1 small or medium sized beetroot

Lettuce (as much as you want for 2 people)

2 tomatoes, chopped

2 tbsp pepitas

1 x 400ml tin of chickpeas OR 1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas (soak for 24 hours, then boil for 30 minutes)

1 medium apple (see note)

1 cup unsalted cashews

Dressing

2 tbsp unhulled tahini

Juice of 1/2 lemon

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 small glove garlic, crushed

Note: The variety of apple you choose will alter the flavour profile of the dish. I chose a sweet apple (like gala or pink lady) to add some crunchy sweetness to the salad. If you use a granny smith you'll have a more sour taste to the salad. Try both and see which one you prefer? :)

To Make:
1. Peel and dice the beetroot. Place in a saucepan and cover with water. Boil until tender (about 15-20 minutes - depending on how big you cut the pieces). Drain and rinse with cold water. Set aside.
2. Spread lettuce between two bowls. Chop tomatoes and layer on top of the lettuce. Then top with the cooled beetroot.
3. Lightly toast the pepitas by dry frying in a pan for about 60 seconds, tossing them regularly until they're browned and starting to pop. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.
4. To make the dressing mix together all the ingredients and stir vigorously until smooth and combined.
5. In a bowl toss the cooked chickpeas, diced apple, cashews and pepitas with the dressing to coat. Distribute amongst the bowls and enjoy!

Serves 2

Lentil and Sweet Potato Hummus

I rarely ever make the same dip twice. There are so many wonderful opportunities for delicious combinations! Making dip is easy, quick and a nice safe place to experiment if you're creative but not sure about your flavour combining abilities! It's also lovely to share communal food with friends. Bringing a home made dip when you visit a friend is cheaper than bringing bought food, more fun and shows that you thought they were worth a bit of effort (even if it was just a little bit!)

Dip can also be a great way to use up ingredients if you don't know what to do with them! Got a quarter of a cauliflower languishing in the fridge? Dip it. A ridiculously small amount of lentils left in the bottom of a packet after you made something else? Dip it. A tin of beans at the back of your cupboard? Dip it. A spice which you have no idea what to do with? Find a vegetable that fits it's flavour profile and DIP IT!

If that isn't enough - here are something else awesome about dips. You can use leftover dips to smear on your burgers, sandwiches or wraps. You can use this leftover dip to add thickness and flavour to a vegetable soup or a lentil soup. You could even mix it up with some fresh herbs and olive oil and make a salad dressing out of it. Endless possibilities!

How do you use up leftover dips when you entertain?

Lentil and Sweet Potato Hummus

Ingredients

1/2 cup red lentils

2 carrots

1 medium sweet potato

1 cup vegetable stock

1 tsp ground cumin

2 tbsp tahini

4 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp lemon juice

Sumac, to sprinkle on top

To Make

1. Dice the carrot. Peel and roughly chop the sweet potato.

2. Place the lentils, carrot and sweet potato in a small saucepan. Add the cumin and vegetable stock and bring to a simmer over a medium heat. Simmer, covered for 20-30 minutes, or until the vegetables and lentils are all well cooked. Set aside to cool slightly.

3. Combine the lentils and vegetables (including any cooking water remaining), tahini, soy sauce and lemon juice in a food processor and process until smooth consistency. 

4. Transfer to a bowl and sprinkle liberally with sumac.

Can be served warm or at room temperature.

Happy Australia Day! Are you celebrating anywhere this year?

Sweet Potato, Asparagus and Tahini Sushi Rolls

I've been getting back into sushi lately. I tend to have a big huge sushi making glut and then not make it again for months, well that glut is now! I love experimenting with new and interesting fillings for my nori rolls, like my Wasabi Fried Eggplant and Avocado Nori Rolls. These are my new absolute favourite, tahini in sushi rolls may be a bit of an unusual fusion, but trust me on this one it is fantastic! Plus, the Japanese love their sesame seeds, so I'm sure they'd love this! As an aside, I gave some of these to a 3 year old to try and she absolutely loved them, so don't be afraid of giving sushi to your kids!

Sweet Potato, Asparagus and Tahini Sushi Rolls

Ingredients:

1 quantity sushi rice

6 sheets nori seaweed

1 small sweet potato (about 300g)

1 tsp sesame oil

 12 spears asparagus, woody ends removed

Tahini

You will also need:

A sushi rolling mat

Plastic wrap

A bowl of water with a splash of rice vinegar

To Assemble:

1. Peel the sweet potato and cut into strips, about the size of hot potato chips. Toss in the sesame oil and lay out on a baking tray, bake for 1 minutes, or until tender. Blanche the asparagus spears and set aside.

2.  Lay a sheet of nori seaweed on your sushi rolling mat. Wet your hands in the bowl of water (this stops the rice sticking all over your hands) and grab a handful of rice (about 2/3 cup worth, but you don’t need to measure it out). Spread it over the nori sheet evenly, making sure you spread it out to all the edges as well but leaving about an inch or so at one end.

3. Smear a line of tahini over the rice and then add a line of sweet potato and 2 pieces of asparagus.

4. Pick up the edge of the mat and roll it gently over the ingredients, pressing gently on the filling with your fingers as you go to keep them in the centre. Press gently on the roll to mould it together. Be careful not to let the mat get rolled up in the sushi.

6. Once the sushi is rolled into a neat log press gently around it with the matt to make it firm.

7. Repeat steps 2-6 until all the ingredients are used up (approx. 6 thick rolls).

8. Use a very sharp knife to cut each log into eight equal pieces. Serve immediately with soy sauce and wasabi to taste. Tip: dip the knife in the bowl of water between cuts to prevent the rice from sticking to the knife.

Makes 6 thick sushi rolls. 

Vegan Truffles in 3 Flavours: Tahini Temptress, Paprika Paradise and Strawberry Gum Seduction

This is our second contribution to the Death By Chocolate Blog Hop - as the fabulous hostesses were very kind and allowed that we could have a special consideration for this hop and post one recipe each (since we have 2 authors on this blog). This was a huge relief really because chocolate is probably my favourite thing ever and if I had had to fight K-bobo for it things would have got messy (in a melted chocolate everywhere kind of way - kind of like they did anyway.... as you'll see from pics below).

K-bobo has already contributed the incredible Black Forest Shots to the hop, so I thought I would go with a more traditional way to die consuming chocolate - decadent creamy truffles. There really is no end to the flavour combinations you can create with truffles, and they take little effort whilst looking and tasting mighty fine. K-bobo came up with the frankly genius idea of smoky paprika truffles, and I just couldn’t resist trying my new strawberry gum (the ground leaves of a eucalyptus tree with an amazing strawberry passionfruit flavour) and combining two of my favourite things: tahini and chocolate. And the result? These truffles pretty much Blew.My.Mind.

Strawberry gum might seem like a bit of an obscure ingredient, but it can be bought from some fruit and vegie shops or quite easily online here at Herbie's Spices. Trust me it is well worth getting - the flavour and the aroma are incredible

Ingredients:

250g of dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
¼ cup of soy milk
¾ tsp of ground strawberry gum
¾ tsp of smoky paprika
2 Tbsp of unhulled tahini
¼ cup of toasted sesame seeds, for coating
Cocoa powder and sweet paprika for dusting.

How to make:

1. Heat the soymilk in a small saucepan until small bubbles appear and steam rises off the pan.
2. Take off heat, add chocolate and stir vigorously until the chocolate has melted and the ganache is smooth.
3. Divide the ganache into three small containers/bowls or as I used, ramekins:
4. Add the smoky paprika to one of the containers and stir until combined. Add the strawberry gum to the second container and stir until combined. Leave the third as it is, cover the containers and chill in the fridge for eight hours or overnight.
5. Time to roll some truffles!

Strawberry Gum Seductress:
Remove strawberry gum ganache from the fridge. Place about ¼ cup of cocoa powder on a small bowl, and using a teaspoon or a melon baller (these are perfect!), place a spoonful of the ganache into the cocoa, tossing it in the cocoa until covered. Then dust your palms with some of the cocoa and roll the ganache piece into a ball, and place on a serving plate/whatever plate you like. Repeat until you run out of ganache.

Paprika Paradise:
follow the instructions above, adding 1 tsp of smoky paprika to the dusting cocoa. When the smoky paprika truffles are rolled, sprinkle the tops with some sweet paprika for colour and added flavour.

Tahini Temptress:
Now we get to the double sesame amazingness! K-bobo perfected the technique for these, so I’ve included step by step photos of her making them like a champion. First, toast your sesame seeds in a small pan, stirring them over a low heat until browned, and transfer them to a small bowl. Allow to cool completely. Then dust your palms with a little cocoa and take a spoonful of the mixture, this time without dusting it in cocoa. With your fingers, mould the spoonful of mixture into a pancake shape, like this:

Then get a pea sized amount of tahini and place it in the middle, like this:

Now carefully fold in the edges of the ganache until it is sealed, and very gently roll into a ball with your palms (your palms will get pretty chocolaty with these!). Lastly, place the rolled truffle in the bowl with the toasted sesame seeds and gently roll until covered in seeds. By the end of making of making the double sesame truffles, your hands should look like this (cue chocolaty jazz hands!):

8. Enjoy your truffles!

Makes approx. 35 truffles

Chickpea and Cabbage Salad with Tahini Dressing

I've recently bought the amazing 'Appetite For Reduction' by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and honestly it is the best book she has ever written (except maybe Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, but that is in a league of it's own). The first section in the book is dedicated to the most amazing sounding salads and I am literally planning to make them all starting from the first and working my way through. Salad is something, however, that I find recipes are often basic, boring and something I could have made in my sleep and I often think they are a waste of space in a cookbook. However, there is something very exciting about salad recipes which make you drool just reading them - mostly because salad is so easy to make.

As a doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, however, I am not an enormous advocate of salads and would strongly try to dissuade anybody thinking of going on a raw food diet against doing so. This is because eating a lot of salads and raw foods expends a lot of extra heat in your body in order to digest it and can result in cold in the interior. Cold foods can also damage the functioning of your Spleen Qi, and therefore may cause digestive problems, bloating, water retention and even weight gain. So - I advise salads to my patients only in moderation and when I eat salads I often try and make sure that at least some of the ingredients are cooked (see my Marinated Tofu, Broad Bean and Broccoli Salad, my Glass Noodle, Green Bean and Black Fungus Salad, or my White Bean Salad).

However, this salad doesn't involve cooking any of the ingredients, therefore I recommend not having it too often. Whenever I eat a salad like this I always drink a cup of herbal tea with it to help warm up my Stomach and aid in the digestion of the food. In this case the tea you should drink is my Cabbage-Is-My-Friend Tea, there are two reasons for this. As this salad contains raw cabbage I would recommend having a couple of cups of this tea with and after your salad for a carminative (anti-flatulent) affect. Secondly, it contains herbs which aid in digestion, therefore may help prevent any damage to your Spleen Qi caused by the cold nature of the foods. 

Ingredients

1 cup shredded iceberg lettuce

1 1/2 cups shredded green cabbage

1 carrot, grated

1 small cucumber, finely diced

1/2 punnet cherry tomatoes, sliced in half

1x 300g can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed

2 tsp pepitas

1/2 lemon

1 tbsp unhulled tahini

1 clove garlic

2 tsp soy sauce (substitute tamari to make this salad gluten free)

Cracked Pepper, to taste

To Make

1. Combine the lettuce, cabbage, carrot, cucumber and chickpeas in a bowl and mix well to combine.

2. Sprinkle the cherry tomatoes and pepitas over the top.

3. Add a little zest from the lemon.

4. In a small bowl or cup, combine the tahini, lemon juice (from the half lemon) and garlic and mix quite vigorously until the tahini is all smooth and has turned a paler colour (due to the lemon juice). Add the soy sauce and mix well to combine. Add pepper to taste (you will not need to add salt, as the soy sauce is salty enough).

5. Drizzle the dressing over the salad and toss to combine. Eat straight away.

Serves 2

Marinated Tofu, Broad Bean and Broccoli Salad with Tahini Dressing

There is nothing quite like a good salad and a glass of wine out on the deck in warm weather. This salad is the perfect mix of 'light and refreshing" and "surprisingly filling", and isn't that just what you need in summer? The real beauty of this salad though is that the marinade doubles as the base for the dressing because you're not using meat - so nothing goes to waste!

In this salad I added something a bit special which I call 'mature snow peas' - which means that I left the snow peas on the plants in my garden until they became big fat pea pods and ate the peas. I realise you'll only be able to do this if you have a vegie garden (and if you do then you should try it because they are lovely sweet peas!), if you don't then you can either add plain fresh garden peas or just leave that bit out.

Ingredients

300g hard tofu

1/3 cup soy sauce

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 red chilli

1 tbsp sesame seeds

1 tbsp sesame oil

1 cup shelled fresh broad beans (has to be fresh for this one!!)

1 thing of broccoli, cut into florets 

2 tbsp sunflower seeds

1/4 spanish onion, sliced thinly

1 cucumber, diced

2 vine ripened tomatoes, cut into wedges

1 tbsp capers (drained)

1/3 cup fresh peas (see note above)

Baby spinach (plenty)

2 tbsp olive oil, for frying

1 tbsp tahini

Juice of 1/2 lemon

To Make

1. Drain the hard tofu and squeeze to remove as much liquid as possible. Cut into chunks about 2cm by 1cm and put in a flattish bowl. Add the soy sauce, crushed garlic, sesame oil and sesame seeds. Roughly chop the chilli and add that too (including seeds). Mix well. Marinate for at least 2 hours, stirring occasionally to evenly spread the marinade. 

2. Preheat the oven or grill to 150 degrees C. Toast the sunflower seeds until lightly browned, this will only take a few minutes so keep your eve on them the whole time! Put aside and turn off the oven.

3. Steam the broad beans and broccoli until just cooked (but not overcooked!) then remove from the heat and allow to cool in a strainer (I recommend doing this step while your oven is preheating). When they are cool enough to touch peel the outer skins off the broad beans (they should have gone all wrinkly during steaming so all you have to do is cut the outer skin open and squeeze them out). 

4. In a large bowl combine the baby spinach, spanish onion, chopped cucumber, sunflower seeds, capers, cold steamed vegies and tomatoes. Mix to combine.

5. Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a fry pan. Scoop the tofu out of the marinade (and keep it!) and fry until crispy and golden - you will have to turn them over with tongs a few times to make sure they are crispy on all sides.

6. Now, take that marinade (that you didn't throw away!) and add 1 tbsp tahini and the juice of 1/2 lemon. Mix very well to combine. (Hint: if you are down the bottom of your tahini jar and the tahini is a bit dry then you should add some oil to the jar and mix well to make it nice and liquidy again before adding to the dressing - otherwise you will get big lumps of tahini in your dressing which is not ideal). 

7. Divide the salad you have mixed evenly between 3 bowls and drizzle 1/3 of the dressing over each bowl. Add the still warm fried tofu and eat it immediately! (Preferably out on the deck with a glass of wine).

Serves 3 (or two people with slightly bigger serves)