Stewed Rhubarb with Walnut-Coffee Crumbs

The recipe I'm about to share is a beautiful healthy dessert and I'm sure it can become one of your favourites, too. It's really quick and easy to make, requires ingredients availavle in any kitchen and tastes like heaven, what more can you dream of?

Not only can you serve the dish as a dessert but also add to your granola, yoghurt or toast for breakfast and even serve with roasted meat.

Here you have sour rhubarb balanced by honey or maple syrop and spiced with ginger, and walnut-coffee crumbs are a wonderful rough addition which makes the whole dish perfectly composed. Definitely a must-try, beautiful light dessert.

Ingredients (serves 2):

4 rhubarb stalks about 25-30 cm length

2 tablespoons honey or maple syrop

1 tablespoon olive oil

5 walnuts

1 teaspoon good-quality ground coffee

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom

a pinch of nutmeg

optionally yoghurt, granola or toasts to serve

Directions:

Wash your rhubarb and cut the stalks into 5 cm length pieces. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a pan over low heat and add rhubarb. Stir for half a minute and add honey or maple syrop, half a teaspoon ginger, half a teaspoon cardamom and a pinch of nutmeg. Cover with water (you will need 100-150 ml), cover with a lid and bring to the boil. Now remove the lid and let simmer for 5 minutes over medium heat: half of the liquid will evaporate and you will get tender spicy rhubarb in a thick sauce.

Meanwhile grind the walnuts into crumbs in a blender adding to them a teaspoon groud coffee and 1/2 teaspoon ginger.

Serve the rhubarb over yoghurt, granola or toasts, garnish with these walnut-coffee crumbs and enjoy, your lovely healthy dessert is ready!

Beautiful Roasted Fennel and Garlic Soup

Being a huge fan of garlic I had been willing to make a simple roasted garlic soup for months and couldn't make myself just go and do it putting it off and off. Until I thought that roasted garlic could make a nice pair with fennel - both are rather sweet and creamy when roasted, and the idea looked so interesting that I made this soup almost immediately.

No surprise, the dish turned out to be incredible! No milk, just veggies and a little bit of olive oil - and you get such a beautiful tender creamy texture that you can hardly believe the soup is actually so light and simple! This one definitely goes into my favourites list!

Ingredients (serves 2):

2 garlic heads (about 35 cloves), cloves washed but unpeeled

2 garlic heads (about 35 cloves), cloves peeled

1 fennel bulb (about 200 g)

2 yellow onions

10 green olives, unpitted

a good pinch of nutmeg

1 bay leaf

300 ml boiling water

good quality extra virgin olive oil

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350°F.

Wash and cut your fennel into equal segments and place them into a baking tray.

Add washed and unpeeled garlic cloves to the fennel, season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and generously drizzle with good quality olive oil. Toss well, cover with foil and place the tray into the oven for 40 minutes.

In 40 minutes put the tray out of the oven and let the vegetables cool a bit. Meanwhile heat a little olive oil in a pan over medium heat, thinly slice 2 onions and add them to the pan along with peeled garlic cloves. Add a bay leaf and a good pinch of nutmeg and cook stirring occasionally until the onions soften for about 10 minutes.

When our baked vegetables become cool enough to handle squeeze garlic cloves and add the mass along with fennel to the pan. Add 300 ml water, bring to the boil, turn down the heat, cover with a lid and let simmer for 10 more minutes.

Transfer the soup to the bowl of your blender and puree. Season with more sea salt and black pepper if needed.

Take 10 green olives, smash them, pit and chop finely.

Pour the soup into the bowls, add a couple tablespoons chopped olives into each bowl, drizzle with some more good quality extra virgin olive oil and serve. This is a beautiful creamy vegetable soup, absolutely light and healthy, you will love it.

Bon Appétit!

Best Snacks Ever: Crispy, Tasty and Healthy

This recipe adapted from My New Roots is my personal food revolution concerning snacks, healthy foods, fast foods and joy of food at the same time.

When you deside to switch to wholesome foods - no matter how you do it, of your own free will or by force - the first thing you have to do is to give a lot of things up. You give up chips, sausages, mayo, cookies and other prosessed foods and this is so hard mentally - on one day to review all your habits which you developed during your life. It's sad and it's logical that you indulge from time to time and your weight goes up and down and you finally face the necessity of starting over or at least another completing the steps that you have already once completed. All right, here is where I stop talking the sad stuff because I am going to write about the victory of health over useless snacks without prejudice to taste and even to texture!

My advice when switching to healthy foods is not to give anything up but to add healthy wholesome foods to your shopping list. The right grains, green smoothies, organic vegetables and fruits will redirect your body to a completely new healthy way of life and finally on one day you will sipmly stop craving for this fat burger and those sugary pancakes. If only I was given a bag of these healthy snacks when I just desided I wanted to be healthy and beautiful both inside and outside! How easier and happier my way could be!

Ok, these are definitely the healthiest snacks ever. The base is brown rice, quinoa and flaxseeds. The rest is natural flavourings that can be whichever you want: herbs, poppy seeds, olives, nuts, onion, garlic, chia seeds, etc. My favourite is ground cumin: the snacks with this flavour taste exactly like falafel-flavoured Israeli "Bissli" snacks - awfully chemical small "cookies" which I adore to my shame but absolutely can't eat because of my clean stomach :) No more rancid oils, modified potatoes and questionable starches!

I am also posting this as a part of the monthly link up party Our Growing Edge, an event aimed to connect food bloggers and inspire us to try new things. This month is hosted by Chandler from The Chef With The Red Shoes.

And now I will be happy to share with you this simple but wonderful and necessary recipe!

Best Snacks Ever

Ingredients (serves 4-5):

1 cup boiled brown rice (I had a mixture of brown and wild rice)

1 cup boiled quinoa

1/4 cup raw sesame seeds

1/4 cup flaxseeds

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

Toppings and flavourings: walnuts, dried paprika, dried basil, chia seeds, hemp seeds, garlic, ground cumin

Directions:

Cover your flaxseeds with 1/2 cup boiling water and set aside for 15 minutes. Meanwhile toast sesame seeds in a pan to open their flavour.

In a bowl of your blender mix rice, quinoa, flaxseeds with their liquid, salt, balsamic vinegar and olive oil and blend them all together.

You may blend the mixture into a smooth dough or you can leave the texture of the ingredients - it will not affect the taste. The aim is to get a rather viscous and sticky mixture. In the end you'll just have to add toasted sesame seeds and mix without blending.

And now begins the creative part: you choose the toppings and flavours and start to roll the dough. If you are using some ground spices or herbs (like I used paprika, basil and cumin) then you first have to mix the flavour into the dough, and if you use a topping (like nuts, garlic and various seeds) then you just roll the dough and then top with what you want and press a little to let it stick to the base.

To roll the dough you will need to place it between 2 sheets of non-sticking parchment paper. Roll it into a very thin layer, then remove the upper sheet of paper and with a knife score the dough into the shapes of your future snacks.

This time I had 7 different flavourings and took 2 heaped tablespoons dough for each of them.

Bake the snacks at 170ºC for 25-30 minutes until golden and crispy. If the edges are already done while the middle pieces are not - just remove the cooked ones and return the rest to the oven until done. Cool the cooked snacks and break them into separate pieces.

Hereby you get absolutely guilt-free snacks with great health benefits of brown rice, quinoa, flaxseeds and your chosen toppings. You can eat these while keeping any diet, sticking to healthy foods and even once a week during detox! You can eat them in the evening and not be afraid to gain weight, you can take them with you to the country side, for a trip, for a walk and for work as a healthy snack! And it's so easy to vary the flavours depending on your personal taste!

Basil-flavoured snacks get a traditional Italian hint, snacks topped with chia or hemp seeds are the richest sources of health benefits, walnuts give a very mild and pleasant sweet taste.

Snacks with paprika are the most beautiful due to their bright red color, snacks with garlic are the most "brutal" ones for those who like it hot, cumin-flavoured snacks remind of Mediterranean cuisine.

No matter what flavour or topping you choose - you get a beautiful crispy texture which will make you forget about store-bought crackers made of white flour and chips in unhealthy oil. You have to definitely try these ones and this will make a huge step forward to your new healthy life!

Green peas, chickpeas and a lemon

I have a folder of nice pictures of a regular but lovely dinner that I made some time ago. This is not a super creative recipe or a brand new combination of flavours but it tastes really really good and I would love to share it with you - perhaps it will inspire you to make something like this and have a pleasant time with your family!

Green peas, chickpeas and a lemon

Ingredients (serves 4):

1,5 cups green peas (fresh or frozen)

1,5 cups boiled or canned chickpeas

1 big red onion

1 bunch flat-leaf parsley

1 big lemon

olive oil and sea salt

Directions:

Heat a little olive oil in a pan over medium heat and add roughly chopped parsley.

In a minute add green peas, squeeze over the whole lemon, add a couple tablespoons water, bring to the boil and cover with a lid turning the heat down to minimum.

In a couple of minutes add thinly sliced red onion and chickpeas, some sea salt, turn the heat up and stir for a few minutes until the onion is soft and the chickpeas are warm.

This is it, a lovely, quick and easy to make delicious dish is ready!

Tender and Spicy Green Soup

What I love about a plate of beautiful light soup is that everyone can choose their way of eating it. If you want to be filled for long then take a bun or add croutons and enjoy, if you need a light dinner - eat it just as it is and find pleasure in the lightness inside your body while it gets all the goodness from the vegetables. To my mind, an ideal choice for a late dinner!

Ingredients (serves 2):

4 celery stalks

1 yellow onion

1 green bell pepper

5 big handfuls of spinach

2 garlic cloves

1/2 teaspoon cardamom

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon dried mint

1 l water

cream or coconut milk (optional)

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

Boil water in a pot and add sea salt to your taste. You will need 1-1.5 l water - you can boil 1.5 l, cook your veggies and before blending the soup pour out excess liquid not to have your puree too thin.

Chop your celery, onion, bell pepper and spinach and add them to the pot. Cook the vegetables over medium heat covered with a lid for 15 minutes until they soften.

Turn off the heat, add 2 whole garlic cloves and blend your soup - raw garlic will give it a nice contrasting hot note.

Pour the soup into the plates, add some cream or coconut milk if you want, sprinkle with some more freshly ground black pepper and enjoy!

Gorgeous Roasted Broccoli with Tahini Dip

People who just start eating healthy or do not eat healthy at all use to complain that greens are so untasty and empty in the taste that they will never be able to eat them with pleasure. To this I have a permanent response - with a good dip you can eat anything! Literally, anything. Start playing with dips and after a couple of months your body will ask for vegetables itself. You will discover their genuine taste and there is no doubt - you will love them.

Another tasty tip of cooking vegetables is roasting them. We are all used to see carrots, cabbage, onions and other gorgeous veggies in a soup, and most of the time - I'm sure - it's an over boiled soup, there is no surprise no one would love to eat those. My advise is to start with roasting - it's incredible how widely the taste of vegetables opens up when you put them in the oven.

Today's recipe combines both these tips - we have a beautiful dip and roasted broccoli. Tahini dip is an awesome way to enrich any vegetable dish. It's rather fatty but it contains only useful unsaturated fats, tahini itself is one of the top 10 fatty but necessary products for human body. So I promise, it's vegetable and it's tasty.

Gorgeous Roasted Broccoli with Tahini Dip

Ingredients (serves 2):

For broccoli:

1 medium broccoli head

10 garlic cloves

olive oil

sea salt

toasted sesame seeds for garnishing (optional)

For tahini dip:

1 heaped tablespoon tahini paste

2 garlic cloves

60 ml water at room temperature

juice of half a lemon

1 teaspoon sea salt

freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 200ºC.

With the tip of your knife cut off the smaller stalks of broccoli from the larger central stalk, remove whole florets and then slice them into same sized pieces for even cooking.

Peel and wash the garlic cloves and add them to broccoli.

Toss the vegetables with some olive oil and sea salt and lay on a baking tray.

Roast your broccoli and garlic for 25 minutes.

To make tahini finely chop your garlic and mix it with all the other ingredients. Done!

Lay roasted broccoli and garlic on plates, sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds and drizzle with tahini. Put the bowl with tahini dip beside and dig in!

Warm Lentils and Brussels Sprouts Salad

I made this salad yesterday for dinner, it was something like taking everything what was left in the fridge and mixing it all together in a bowl. And when I tasted it I couldn't believe I made it just like that - it was so tasty and delicious and tangy I hardly resisted having another plate!

The biggest trick here is a combination of cilantro and balsamic vinegar. It gives such a strong tangy taste - very much sour still live and green, it's just fantastic, you should definitely try it. It goes perfectly with a harsh flavour of roasted Brussels sprouts and mild green lentils. And in addition to a wonderful taste it's a smart balanced meal - you get proteins from the lentils and priceless dietary fiber from the vegetables and greens. Ok, run to the kitchen!

Warm Lentils and Brussels Sprouts Salad

Ingredients (serves 4):

400 g Brussels Sprouts

3 cups cooked green lentils

a bunch of cilantro

a little bigger bunch of flat-leaf parsley

1 red onion

balsamic vinegar

extra virgin olive oil

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 200ºC. Wash and cut your Brussels sprouts in halves, toss them with some olive oil, lay on a baking tray, sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper and place in the oven for 25 minutes until they become tender.

Thinly slice your onion, chop the greens, add about 1 teaspoon sea salt and mix together all ingredients in a bowl.

Generously dress the salad with balsamic vinegar, add a little olive oil for a milder flavour and serve.

Bon Appétit!

Three Reds Quinoa

This is a classic risotto inspired recipe - the way of cooking quinoa here is based on risotto-making technique. I have a tendency and permanent desire to make everything more useful and healthy and this time it's risotto. I love risotto with its creamy texture and cheesy flavour but white rice is such a useless kind of food - I guess you can compare it with only fried potatoes!

So, I took quinoa. It's like a habit to me: if you don't know what to use - use quinoa! I took red quinoa. And dry red wine and red slow roasted tomatoes. And it became a Three Reds Quinoa. Delicate creamy taste and pure pleasure!

Three Reds Quinoa

Ingredients (serves 2):

1 cup dried quinoa

1 celery stalk

10 cm length piece of leeks

100 ml dry red wine

a handful of slow roasted tomatoes

1-2 handfuls of grated Parmesan

500 ml warm vegetable stock

extra virgin olive oil and sea salt

Directions:

Wash and rinse your quinoa and set aside.

Finely chop the celery and thinly slice your leeks. Heat some olive oil in a pan and add chopped vegetables. Cook stirring occasionally for 10 minutes over low heat - the veggies should soften but not color.

Now add quinoa to the pan and turn the heat up. Stir constantly for a minute and add the wine. When harsh alcohol flavours evaporate the quinoa will start to smell fantastic.

After the wine has cooked into quinoa start adding vegetable stock. Add it little by little taking 1 ladle of liquid at a time and letting it incorporate into quinoa. Continue adding the stock until quinoa is cooked. You might have some stock left, it depends and is totally fine.

When quinoa is almost done add roughly chopped slow roasted tomatoes and a handful or two of grated Parmesan depending on how creamy you want your dish. Stir well and take the plates.

Serve quinoa topped with a little more Parmesan and drizzle with a little bit of extra virgin olive oil.

Bon Appétit!