Saturday, March 13, 2010

Juice and Chips! (hopefully)

For lunch I made a tasty juice, 1 large red beet, 1 large golden beet, lots of carrots, a whole cucumber skin and all & a pretty good chunk of ginger. It's such a pretty ruby color!







I always hate to waste all the pulp from juicing, so today I'm experimenting with making chips out of them.

I have a waring pro juicer, it works pretty well, no juicing grasses, but leaves a few chunks of veggies.

I took all of the pulp out of the juicer, found the bigger chunks and pulled them out to munch on or dehydrate or compost.

I added a bit of sea salt, alot of black pepper, herbs de provence and about a 1/2 cup of water to make it pliable. I covered one tray of my round dehydrator with unbleached parchment and smoothed the mixture out thinly with an offset spatula!






Sooo pretty! I'll update later on how long it takes to get crispy!



Seven hours later:

Soooooo... This did not end well.



It's kinda crispy, kinda fibrous, I'm just gonna throw it in the compost!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Friday, March 12, 2010

Eggplant Bacon

This is my compilation of several Raw Eggplant Bacon recipes that I have found and tried

2 large eggplant
1/4 C apple cider vinegar
1/8C ume plum vinegar
1/4 C nama shoyu
2T molasses
1t freshly ground black pepper
1/4t ground cayenne pepper

I dehydrate this for almost 24 full hours at 110 degrees in my round american harvest dehydrator, I would like a nicer one but this one was free! (Thanks freecycle.org)

If you prefer thinner pieces I'm sure the time will decrease, and I do not add oil to anything I dehydrate, many recipes call for Olive Oil but nothing I have ever tried comes out crispy if there is oil in the marinade!


I start by peeling the eggplant, cutting in half lengthwise. I like hearty pieces so I cut the slices pretty thickly.



This is what the marinade looks like!


When you first pour the marinade over the eggplant it does not cover them, so i weight it down, turning the slices several times, after two hours the eggplant has lost moisture and the liquid now covers them while weighted! Don't you just love my ingenuity!!! :) btw... that is a large grapefruit in the bowl!


With the two eggplants it takes up all four trays of my round dehydrator while still being nicely spaced.



This is about hour 16 of dehydrating at 110 degrees... it's still kinda chewy at this point


This is the final product around hour 23 of dehydrating at 110 degrees, it's super crispy and crumbly, perfect for salad toppings or a sandwich!
I encourage everyone to try spices and flavors that you like and to tweak a recipe to your liking, don't be afraid!!!