Master cleanser, for juice fasters and thirsty people
June 14, 2006
If you just think of this as lemonade, you might actually drink it. Master cleanser is the unfortunate name for a cayenne-spiked ginger lemonade, sweetened with maple syrup and sprinkled with sea salt. When you fast or do sports or simply exist in warm weather, it's wise to drink liquids that don't make you pee immediately. Most softdrinks, alcoholic drinks and all caffeinated liquids do this, removing the benefit of drinking for the purpose of hydration in the first place.
In this lemonade, the maple syrup and the fleur de sel allow the liquid to hydrate the body more thoroughy than if they weren't part of the mix. As a master cleanser, the cayenne and ginger are vasodialators and gently invigorate the gut.
If you're fasting, Master Cleanser is the sort of drink that you take with you and sip throughout the day. But if you just want a refreshing summer drink, call this Super Spicy Lemonade or rosé and do the exact same thing. You can even pretend you're fasting and be holier-than-thou, always a refreshing feeling and one of the least mentioned benefits of juice fasting.
Picture recipe after the jump.
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Juice fasting recipes, start with forgotten vegetables and then forget them again
June 13, 2006
I'm the kind of gal that likes to pad her New Year's resolutions with seemingly achievable ambitions like, 'Improve handwriting' and 'Find ways to enjoy ancient root vegetables', but 5 months into the year, I haven't exactly achieved success in integrating parsnips and burdock into my winter diet in any significant way. When I returned home from Saturday's farmers' market loaded with fresh ingredients for a 5-day juice fast, I was confronted with a fridge half-full with ancient burdock, celeriac, carrots, parsnips, and a window sill of dried apples. The produce was definitely local, but in the course of some hecticity the past few months, had inadvertently become non-seasonal. I had created forgotten vegetables.
In the spirit of 'once a year whether you need it or not', I set to thoroughly cleaning out the fridge to make room for the new arrivals. Oddly, the pile of veg that didn't make the cut consisted predominantly of root veg, species hardy enough to survive extreme neglect. Not wanting to waste not, I gave the ancient grub a scrub and placed it in a large pot of water a'simmering over a low flame. Re-visiting the theme of forgotten vegetables, I simply forgot these vegetables anew. When every now and again I happened to remember them in the course of the next day, I just added some water or annointed them with a pinch of sea salt. I didn't even stir.
Yesterday I poured off the liquid, which left to its own devices had transformed itself into an aromatic vegetable bouillon, so delicious that VN and I felt positively blessed drinking it chilled from gold-rimmed shot glasses. Although I am not certain as to the nutritional value of this drink, I am certain that the initial slow-aging of the vegetables and the slow-drying of the apples is the reason that it ended up so flavourful. If you aren't forgetful, you could probably achieve this self-same result with fresh vegetables and a dehydrator, reducing the simmering time to boot. But I prefer to forget and let the soup just make itself.
Forgotten vegetable bouillon
2 kilos of mixed root vegetables; celeriac, parsnips, burdock, carrot)
4 wrinkly old apples, not rotten, just wrinkly and old
1 leek, very old but not rotten
big 'ol pinch of the sea salt
water straight out of the tap
Give the veg and fruit a good scrubbing. If it has been in the fridge for a few months, it really needs it. By the by, leaving the dirt on root veg (and even storing it in sand) keeps it fresher longer. That said, it's the optimism of washing off the dirt that caused these vegetables to dry so perfectly in the fridge over several months time that they retained all of their sugars.
Cut the root veg and apples with skin an all in a large pot filled to the brim with cold water and a big pinch of sea salt. Put the flame on low and if you must, cover the pot no more than half-way. Every four hours check to see what's going on, you may need to add water if you've evaporated too much. After at least two times of adding water and letting simmer, turn off the flame and let the liquid cool, lid off. Pour off the bouillon and use it as vegetable stock or as an ingredient in a root vegetable stock cocktail.
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The Hunger Artist
November 24, 2005
Here's one for the archives: Google (images) 'Hunger Artist'
Happy Thanksgiving, by the way.
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Beets in hibiscus salt crust
November 22, 2005
Preheat oven to 220°c/475°F. Mix in just enough water with the salt to make sandcastle-style sand. Add dried hibiscus flowers to the mixture in a few swift turns of the fork. On a baking sheet covered wtih baker's parchment, pack the beats in the salt. Bake for 20 minutes. Crack open and serve the beets piping hot.
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Eat while you can, in a few minutes it will be Yom Kippur, the chaotic humanistic Day of Atonement
October 12, 2005
And on Yom Kippur, you fast by eating and drinking absolutely *bubkis. In my search for all things concerning fasting, I came upon this article by the Chabad Folks, titled
Laws and Lore: Eating Before Yom Kippur. Apparently,
It is a **mitzvah to eat and drink heartily on Erev Yom Kippur...
...Do we fast on the ninth? We fast only on the tenth! [How then is this verse to be understood?] It comes to teach us that all who eat and drink on the ninth, and fast on the tenth, are considered by Scripture as if they had fasted on both the ninth and the tenth.
And there you have it, Jewish attitude in a nutshell. This article is permeated with a Curb Your Enthusiasm tone that makes me want to read out loud, scrunch my eyes, shrug my shoulders and wave my hands around saying. "Do we fast on the ninth? No! We fast only on the 10th! (meaning the 10th of Tishrei). Written discussions of Jewish scripture always sound to me like trying to wheedle out of something. It seems to me that the learned gents before us, were always trying to find a way to reward themselves for doing something half-assed. I realise that this characteristic is not unique to Judaism, but it is this half-assism to which I am especially tuned.
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Eat while you can, in a few minutes it will be Yom Kippur, the chaotic humanistic Day of Atonement
And on Yom Kippur, you fast by eating and drinking absolutely *bubkis. In my search for all things concerning fasting, I came upon this article by the Chabad Folks, titled
Laws and Lore: Eating Before Yom Kippur. Apparently,
It is a **mitzvah to eat and drink heartily on Erev Yom Kippur...
...Do we fast on the ninth? We fast only on the tenth! [How then is this verse to be understood?] It comes to teach us that all who eat and drink on the ninth, and fast on the tenth, are considered by Scripture as if they had fasted on both the ninth and the tenth.
And there you have it, Jewish attitude in a nutshell. This article is permeated with a Curb Your Enthusiasm tone that makes me want to read out loud, scrunch my eyes, shrug my shoulders and wave my hands around saying. "Do we fast on the ninth? No! We fast only on the 10th! (meaning the 10th of Tishrei). Written discussions of Jewish scripture always sound to me like trying to wheedle out of something. It seems to me that the learned gents before us, were always trying to find a way to reward themselves for doing something half-assed. I realise that this characteristic is not unique to Judaism, but it is this half-assism to which I am especially tuned.
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Ramadan
October 11, 2005
The Dutch text on this poster inivtes non-muslims to join in a post-sunset dinner with their muslim neighbours during the month of Ramadan. Someone was absolutely using their noggin and Amsterdam is now host to this wonderful initiative called the Ramadan Festival. Muslim families have generously opened their homes for each evening's break-the-fast Iftar meal in order to allow greater understanding of Islamic culture and faith during the holiday month. There is a slew of activities; lectures, debates (gotta have those lectures and debates!) on the subject of citizenship, culture, emancipation and the role of religion in secular society.
The Ramadan Festival website is informative including prayer times and the hour of each day's sunset so that you know when you can resume tucking into the goodness! Via the website you can also sign up to receive break-the-fast alerts via text message on your celphone and register for the Iftar dinners. I of course signed up, and am eagerly waiting to hear from the organisation!
This year, Ramadan lasts until the 3rd of November. Get fasting!
http://www.ramadanfestival.nl/
technorati tags: Ramadan, Amsterdam, fasting
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Recipes without words
June 05, 2005
Image: olive oil, green tea powder, ume boshi vinegar, © Debra Solomon 2004
The images above and below are from a cookbook of mine in-the-making titled Recipes without words. Or rather, with very few words. More later. I’m about to do a presentation about culiblog in the ‘s Hertogenbosch artists’ initiative Artis. This Sunday’s programme is titled Art Fluid and culiblog is just one of several interesting programme pieces. We will be making Hang op with rose caramel and local strawberries.
Image: olive oil, grass powder, ume boshi vinegar, © Debra Solomon 2004
Image: sugar, soy sauce, shrimp powder, © Debra Solomon 2004
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Restaurant for anorexics
May 05, 2005
Sehnsucht, (means longing in German) is the name of a Berlin restaurant for anorexics. Owner Katja Eichbaum, formely anorexic, started this project with private funding (only her father would lend her money) as a therapy for her own condition. The chef is anorexic as are several members of staff. Sehnsucht's menu items have names that don't include words for food to avoid confronting anorexics with the fact that they are about to eat. 'Hallo' (lobster bisque), 'Pirate's Eye' (2 fishfingers and a fried egg), and 'Heissehunger' (ravenous hunger = rack of lamb) are all dishes that non-anorexics might order in 'normal' restaurants. But one item on the menu consists simply of a fork, knife, and an empty plate. It is titled 'Thieves Platter' and facilitates the anorexic diner to steal (or share) from those dining with her.
As expected the restaurant has received a huge amount of international publicity. And although I have not yet eaten at there, relying solely on restaurant reviews to inform myself, if Sehnsucht is an attempt to create a location for anorexia patients in the guise of a regular restaurant for the people that love them, it is also a wasted opportunity.
Why not revel in anorexia? Why not serve food items so refined and 'stretched' like anorexics themselves create on the spot each night at the family dinner table? Anorexics are master chefs and food stylists when placed in the harsh context of the family; hardboiled eggs with the yolks surgically removed, crackers deconstructed so that their total surface area has been increased twenty-fold, slices of bread with each visible grain extracted and displayed on the edge of the plate, utterly dissected broccoli. I say this without having seen Sehnsucht's menu but hope sincerely that it is not just another do-gooder resto in which the real food on the menu functions only to lure the paying and eating guests.
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Hors d'oeuvre of affliction
April 27, 2005
Some years ago a friend of mine waxing rabbinic told me that during Pesach week, whilst eating charoset one must never say, 'Mmmmm, I love charoset!", because charoset, a delicious mixture of apples, honey, and/or nuts, dates figs, symbolises the mortar used by slaves to build the buildings of the fill in the blank here, and don't take things too literally, you!
That sounded like a quirky but plausible Jewiish behaviourism to me and I decided to incorporate it into my narrative.
Yesterday evening, two friends of mine from Kampala were back in the Heimatt and fortune placed them at my dinner table. Oddly I didn't feel much like cooking when I wrenched myself away from my work at 19h and I don't know how I did, but I did somehow manage to slap something together for us to eat. It just wasn't me not to want to cook for dear friends and somehow I convinced myself that it was OK to serve a ritual combination of matzah, charoset and bitter herbs (horseradish) as an hors d'oeuvre!
I show Alice and Lee how to do like the Jews do, make a little sandwich by piling the charoset and bitter herbs onto the matzah, how you take enough horseradish so that it causes you to shed at least one tear for the slaves that once were, for the slaves that still are, and finally, that even if you like the taste of the mixture, you're not supposed to say so. Charoset stands for the mortar of the enslaved and we're supposed to act like we hate it.
After the lengthy explanation I space out and Alice and Lee get to work making their own hors d'oeuvres with the materials provided, all the while telling me funny stories about the Amakula International Film Festival that they set up in Kampala last year. Alice takes a bite of her d'oeuvre, and with a pleading look on her face grasps her throat, pounds on her chest, shudders, starts looking frantically for her napkin as if she wants to spit in it, is barely able to swallow the mouthfull, slams her hand down hard on the table with a resounding BAM and pronounces, 'YHhUCK!'
I am completely shocked. The combination of witnessing a cherished friend intensely dislike something that I've dished up, plus all the guilty feelings for not giving it my all earlier that evening, plus a little bit of wonderment thrown in because I'd never actually heard of someone not liking the ritual combination. It's all just a bit too much. 'What, you don't like my cooking?'
Alice and Lee look at me with these puzzled looks on their faces and finally Alice musters, 'But, didn't you just say that...'
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For the Luv of Gawd, Whip Me!
April 25, 2005
Patrick Faas fastens his kipa
I guess I should have known that something like this would happen when Reb Noam, the leader of our pesach seder appeared sporting a self-styled kipa with the words, 'Next year in Miami' written on it. But even my inner-fagele couldn't have predicted that during this auspicious ordered meal we would leap up from our seats and start whipping eachother with longish spring onions. Not that there's anything wrong with that! It's just an innocent illustration symbolizing the oppression from which we were liberated and bringing new meaning to the words, 'Hag Sameach'. I'm filing the Passover bitch-slap under the category, 'Nice Detail'.
Rev Noam's kipa says, 'Next year in Miami'
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Passover cleaning
April 22, 2005
In December 2004, a Spanish Talmudic scholar named Sinterklaas was cited translating the Torah,
'Passover is the holiday when it behooves
us to clean the barnacles out of our grooves'.
If you don't have anything in the fridge, it's easier to clean it. Smetvrees, the fear of contamination, is an ancient Jewish tradition and therefore a once yearly scrub-down (and burning!) is on the menu today, the day before Pesach. Before the week of Passover commences, it's necessary to rid the house of all items containing leaven, creating an elaborate excuse for rarely performed activities such as dusting and refridgerator cleaning.
Since March 11 I've been in my home exactly 3 days. The contents of my fridge (l to r, top to bottom) are: 2 eggs, jars of mustard and homemade sambal from January 2004 (a gift from a then-not-yet-ex, indicating the period of time that has passed over since... YIPES = LEAVEN!!!), 1,5 train station supermarket courgettes, leftover film from a photoshoot in 2003. 2nd row; 2 1000 yr. duck eggs, 1 open packet of gari (pickled ginger), pickled daikon radish, 1 jar of anchovis. 3rd row; 1 tin of sheep cheese in brine containing 1/8th of a cheese, 2 tins containing only brine which I will also categorise as clutter I mean leaven, 4 St. Marcellin lait cru cheeses brought from Occitania on Wednesday.
In the vegetable 'crisper', which I realistically refer to as 'the rotter'; 1 piece of burdock from a 2004 automnal dinner, 1 carrot from same dinner, a lot of paper bags that act as an absorbent layer when I'm gone for any length of time ( = LEAVEN), 500ml of half fat milk, bought at the train station, 1 bottle of ketchup from last century. Ketchup is oddly exempt from all dietary law.
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Delhi Water Bar
April 02, 2005
A water bar on a sidestreet off Janpath in Delhi. Twenty metres down the street is a pump and a well. This water bar is actually a service on offer to draw customers into a shop selling Kashmiri handicrafts and into an alley with other small shops hidden from the street. I love this tented pavillion shared by several shop keepers and its water bar offering a cool place to gather and chat in the shade.
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Juicing, but not frothing, and you?
January 06, 2005
So far this juice fast has yielded quite a number of discoveries, the usefullness of oat milk being one of them. In my opinion grain and nut milks qualify for a juice fast because they are simply the wrung out water in which grain or nut meal has been soaking. These 'milks' don't give the gut flora anything more to do than a glass of apple juice does but they are useful in making things taste 'creamy'.
Other discoveries concern how to make 'comfort food' for the fast yet maintain its nutritional value. Roxanne Klein (and all raw foodies) feel that valuable enzymes in vegetables and fruits are destroyed when heated above 50°c. For this fast I've kept to this parameter while still being able to serve up some warm soup on these cold Occitanian days.
Here are a list of some of the liquids that my ruthless jury has deemed delicious enough to sip even when not on a juice fast: (This is not a menu.)
Cucumber Kiwi Juice
Kiwi Zucchini Juice
Pineapple Juice (fresh squeezed is entirely different from the storebought stuff)
Carrot Grapefruit Juice
Celery Juice
Avocado Zucchini Soup
Celeriac Oat Milk Soup
Green Curry and Carrot Soup
Broccoli Stalk, Zucchini Soup with Guacamole Dumplings
Red Pepper Tomoato Miso Flower Broth
Date and Pear Sorbet (pictured above)
Banana Chai Ice Cream (pictured above)
Pear Sorbet
The juicer that I am borrowing from Fred and Kristine for the duration of the fast is a real Cadillac (Magimix Le Duo). Only crit about this machine is that it doesn't produce foamy froth - like my Braun back in the Heimatt. I think that some of the recipes could be improved with new texture additions. At home I use the foam from the juicer.
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Milk tasting, and you?
January 05, 2005
As I said, not eating solid foods affords you a chance to try new things. Tonight we did a little experimental milk tasting. Because we're on a juice fast and generally behaving as self-righteously as we can we decided to bypass the locally produced cow, sheep and goat varieties and test the locally imported almond, rice and oat milks.
Oat milk was the clear winner in the category; Tastes Like Something I Might Drink Even When Debra Isn't Forcing Me.
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Juice fasting, and you?
It may look like a *beer but it's just fresh-squeezed pineapple juice. We're fasting, remember?
After the holiday gorging, after the guests have gone, we decided that it was high time to do a little juice fast, just a short 3-day holiday gift to our gut flora for putting up with the over-indulgent behaviour of the past weeks.
I like to fast a few times a year and JT was curious about my assertion that fasting can be relatively painless. I will address some of the issues of juice fasting in the coming entries.
What I most enjoy about fasting is the opportunity it gives me to approach food in an entirely different manner. I use the juice fast to create new recipes and techniques for all things liquid.
And how is JT doing? Just fine. We just returned from a long walk along the river, through 17 farmers onion fields and vineyards, strutting over too low fences and broken stone walls up to and around LaRoque and back. JT will be glad to tell you that lunch was satisfying even if it was entirely brown (home-pressed juice from local apples and a bowl of miso soup).
* A Belgian Wit Bier
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Poppyseed Mustard
October 26, 2004
It tastes just like it looks, dark and musty. Even though I mixed this batch with a roasted garlic clove I still think it would taste great with chocolate! Poppyseed 'mustard' makes me long for strudel and as soon as I am done with this juice fast I'll develop a savoury strudel with poppy seeds and mushrooms.
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Autumnal fasting has begun
Today I started the Autumnal Fast. I'll be recording my menus and recipes (!) here. If you always thought fasting was a torture read here to see that the opposite is the case. SO far it is the first day and I'm not interested in juicing, very interested in cooking - so I made some cashew cheese and poppyseed mustard.
Day 1 (of 6)
- coffee (don't say it...)
- sauerkraut juice (Brother Aaron and I used to fight eachother to drink this.)
- fresh orange juice
- apple mint juice
- miso soup with roasted garlic (see nature's garlic entry)
- mushroom bouillion with roasted garlic (idem ditto)
- pear ginger juice with jogi tea
- sleepytime tea
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Autumnal Juice Fast Experiments
September 28, 2004
On top, a mixture of opal basil, spearmint, and apple juices. On the bottom, beet and red pepper juices. I'm getting ready for a culinary juice fast in three weeks time:
apple + mint = great
apple + opal basil = great
apple + beet = great
apple alone = great
apple + red pepper = yuck, (hollow, woody and burpy)
beet alone = too intense, too sweet, woody, badly needs something sour
beet + mint + apple = good
beet + opal basil = too dark, needs to be cut with sour
beet + red pepper = delicious, nectaresque, versatile (soup?)
red pepper + mint = wonderfully fresh, cheerful
red pepper + basil = yuck (woody and burpy)
red pepper alone = delicious
Please read more... "Autumnal Juice Fast Experiments"
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A Single Grain of Rice
April 25, 2004
Yi Li Mi = A Single Grain of Rice in mandarin neon. A Single Grain of Rice is a project for a culinarily oriented fasting restaurant that I am initiating. Future entries in 2006 will explain this project in greater depth, but at least I've got the neon sign.
technorati tags: fasting, China, neon
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Juice fasting, Soup fasting
March 20, 2004
In preparation of my trip to PRChina I am fasting this week. Liquids only� primarily fruit and vegetable juices, but also broths and froths. It is exciting to present myself with the opportunity of creating new juice and soup recipes as well doing a survey on rice, soy, and barley 'milks'. I had never fasted during the winter and this gives me the opportunity to focus on developing satisfying and warming liquid foods of culinary interest.
Enoki mushroom and roasted garlic broth:
Please read more... "Juice fasting, Soup fasting"
Posted by debra at 10:32 PM | post to del.icio.us
Juice fasting, Soup fasting
In preparation of my trip to PRChina I am fasting this week. Liquids only� primarily fruit and vegetable juices, but also broths and froths. It is exciting to present myself with the opportunity of creating new juice and soup recipes as well doing a survey on rice, soy, and barley 'milks'. I had never fasted during the winter and this gives me the opportunity to focus on developing satisfying and warming liquid foods of culinary interest.
Enoki mushroom and roasted garlic broth:
Please read more... "Juice fasting, Soup fasting"
Posted by debra at 10:32 PM | post to del.icio.us
