Live Mexican Food, Raspberry Lemon Pie & Meeting Natasha Kyssa

Chile Rellenos, monta-raw jack “cheese”, cacao mole and red pepper sauce. Recipe is by Matthew Kenney and found in this beautiful new book, Entertaining in the Raw, page 188.

Scott and I were craving Mexican food this past week and this recipe looked absolutely divine! We lived in Encinitas, California from 1998 to 2000 which is in San Diego’s coastal North County. We always loved the authentic Mexican food that was so plentiful. Sometimes we still miss it! So this is the perfect answer for folks eating a raw vegan diet or just looking for healthy and delicious alternatives.

Joyce’s Notes: OH MY GOSH!!! THIS IS AMAZING!! Scott and I could not believe how good this was all together with both sauces! This is one of the best raw vegan entrees I’ve made in a long time. Even Scott was saying the meal was wonderful. Yes, he really did say that. The chile rellenos alone was so good with the cheese and filling but the sauces brought everything to a new level. It was an amazing combination of flavors. Matthew and his team should get an award for this brilliant dish as it truly raises the bar once again for gourmet raw vegan food.

This recipe has four parts: The filling, “cheese”, mole sauce and the red pepper sauce. It’s not a complicated recipe at all, but there are a lot of ingredients to buy and prep. I spent about $67 between City Market and Natural Provisions which seems like a lot. But we still have leftovers (recipe makes 3 meals for 2 people plus enough for salads). I am including a photo of the chile rellenos before we stuck them in the dehydrator for 3 hours. The recipe calls for a sheet pan and covering everything with plastic. We had these tin pans which worked well.

The rellenos filling was mostly chopped up fresh produce which was nice. It consisted of corn, zucchini, red bell pepper, tomato, red onion, jalapeno, fresh cilantro, lime juice, cumin, cayenne, chili powder and black pepper. This all was very good by itself!

The monta-raw jack cheese was so delicious! I loved this! It consisted of macadamia nuts, olive oil, shallot, garlic, lemon juice, sea salt, nutritional yeast, chili powder and cayenne. I cut back on the salt. The recipe calls for 1 tablespoon which seems like a lot. I used 2 teaspoons which was just fine. I kept eating it right out of the food processor! I love raw nut cheese with shallots!

The cacao mole sauce was the bomb! Oh my goodness this is sooooo incredible. It’s a nice thick rich chocolate sauce with a very spicy kick. The dried chipotle chilies give it that hot flavor! Scott and myself weren’t sure how this would taste with everything and even considered not making it. I’m so glad we did make this! There are a lot of ingredients but most of the stuff I already had on hand. The mole consists of 2 dried chipotles, red onion, garlic, sunflower seeds, almond butter, raisons, olive oil, water, agave syrup, cacao powder, cumin, coriander, sea salt, cayenne & black pepper. This sounds like a crazy mix of ingredients! Yet everything works out so well after the magic Vitamix does it’s job of blending everything up into a smooth creamy mole! I was eating this stuff straight with a spoon! Chocolate lovers will be in heaven with this cacao mole!

And the red pepper sauce is excellent too! It’s a rather sweet sauce which compliments everything so well. We loved drizzling it all over the chile rellenos and then adding the mole on top. The pepper sauce consists of red bell peppers, a red chile pepper (I used half of this long red hot pepper), cashews, water, lime juice, agave syrup and sea salt. Don’t skip this as it’s so delicious with everything!

I used 6 poblano peppers for this. They are not very hot and are a good size for stuffing. The only thing that I would do differently is dehydrate them a bit with olive oil first to get them to soften. I didn’t mind the crisp peppers for the summer but in winter I’d prefer them softer. Scott noted this too about the crisp peppers. However, he still loved this wonderful dinner!

Overall I highly recommend making this raw vegan Mexican style dish for a special occasion, a celebration, or just an intimate dinner for two. It’s a definite winner! Thank you Matthew and your talented chefs. I also want to add that Matthew has a note saying that this dish would be his favorite to enjoy with a glass of good wine, hence the lovely Spanish wine we tried that night!

At this stage in my raw journey, I really love being able to make delicious gourmet raw foods on the weekends. (I have only been on a high raw diet for about 2 years now.) It’s something I look forward to all during the workweek as I find it so much fun and enjoyable. By making gourmet raw and living foods most weekends, I’ve been able to stay high raw and maintain great health and pain-free knees for running longer distances and all my other outdoor adventures!

Here’s what we brought to Sunday’s Raw Vegan Potluck:

Raspberry Lemon Pie! Recipe is by Heathy Pace and is found in her E-book, Just Desserts.

This was the first time I tried this brilliant summer recipe. I had my eye on this for a while as I love raspberry and lemon flavors. With raspberry season finally here in Vermont I had to make this! I picked up some beautiful fresh organic raspberries from our local Farmers Market in Richmond on Friday, so this dessert was extra special!

Joyce’s Notes: Wow, this is a fantastic recipe! Everyone at the potluck loved this and asked about the ingredients. One person jokingly said that he was wondering if it was really raw! I split a slice with Scott at the potluck and was so pleased with how good it came out. Raspberries and lemon go so well together!

I did the recipe one and a half times so we could have a small 4 inch mini pie for ourselves. This worked fine. Here’s my mini below:

The crust was really good and was actually the closest thing I’ve made to tasting like real pie dough. It consists of macadamia nuts, shredded coconut, agave syrup, and lemon zest (I forgot the pinch of sea salt but it was still great). This gets combined in the food processor until nice and moist. It’s a brilliant crust recipe!

The filling was just divine! It consists of cashews, agave syrup, fresh lemon juice, fresh raspberries, lemon zest, coconut oil and lecithin. Heathy doesn’t usually soak her cashews so I ground them up in the food processor first which is easier when blending everything together in the Vitamix. I normally buy cashew pieces as they are less expensive. But I discovered that Natural Provisions in Williston, VT has whole organic raw cashews at a decent price (around $8/pound).

Saving the Best for Last: Meeting Natasha Kyssa this weekend at a book signing and raw food potluck!

Natasha Kyssa is the Author of The SimplyRaw Living Foods Detox Manual and the founder of SimlyRaw in Ottawa. Natasha has been living a raw vegan lifestyle for almost 20 years and has helped people all over the world with natural cleansing programs. www.Simplyraw.ca

Scott and I met Natasha for the first time at her book signing on Saturday at Healthy Living Natural Food Store here in Vermont. I have to say that Natasha is one of the most healthy and beautiful women I have ever seen! She radiates with perfect health and her skin just glows. And she’s super nice too! We also had the pleasure of hanging out with Natasha and her lovely husband Mark at the potluck on Sunday. They both love the outdoors and do all kinds of cool sports. Perhaps we might have the pleasure of skiing with them this winter! :-)

 

The above is Natasha’s new book! I am reading it now and loving it! I am finding it very user friendly with a wealth of information and knowledge. In November I am thinking of doing her 28 day detox program as it seems very gentle, feasible and very realistic for myself as well as most people. Even though I eat a high raw diet, I know that there are areas for improvement. Doing a program like Natasha’s will bring me to a new level of health and well being. I highly recommend this book for everyone who is interested in their own health and well being. I think this book would make excellent Christmas presents for a few of our family members! ;-)

Here’s a photo from last night’s potluck of myself, Natasha, and Linda of Vermont Fiddle Heads :

Lastly, I want to thank Geniel Fife, Joshua Pfeil, and everyone for hosting the awesome potluck last night. There were great people as well as amazingly delicious raw vegan food! So many great dishes and lovely desserts. I still need to get that recipe for the sage croquettes! And thanks to Fern for that delicious pesto recipe made with fennel tops from her garden. Scott and I are going to try harder and get to more of these potlucks at Geniel’s lovely home in South Burlington, VT. So nice to make new friends with common values and to try new wonderful living foods.

Have a wonderful week and enjoy the warm summer weather!