a vegan & raw food blog
I’ve been going to the farmer’s market and getting so excited by produce that I tend to overbuy and have too much of something. Well, more than I need for a recipe or two sometimes. Like garlic scapes. My herbs are also growing almost out of control outside, so I thought I should bring the two together and make a creamy cannelini dip with a hint of basil and lemon. This is a lot lighter than pesto, both in flavor and tummy-filling-factor, but sometimes I think that’s kinda nice. I ate them with vegetable crudites, as a sandwich spread, and with some pasta – it’s kind of a dip and sauce in one.
Lemony Scape and Herb Spread (makes about 2 cups):
1 c chopped garlic scapes
large handful of basil leaves (about 15 large leaves)
1/4 c packed parsley leaves
1 3/4 c cannelini beans (one 15 oz. can)
juice of one lemon
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp nutritional yeast
1/4 tsp salt
fresh black pepper, to taste
Place scapes, basil, and parsley in the food processor and pulse until coarsely chopped. Add remaining ingredients and process until smooth.
This week I was excited to find squash blossoms all over the market, and I picked up a bag of almost 20 for $1. I’ve seen it battered and fried most often, but I felt a bit lazy today and started looking up other ideas. I veganized a combination of recipes for sopa de flor de calabaza or Mexican squash blossom soup. Basically it’s some onions and garlic with squash blossoms, veggie stock, non-dairy milk, spices and corn. Everything I’d read promised a light zucchini flavor, and hey, I love creamy soups with corn – should be good, right? Wrong. Well, it was wrong for me. The flowers were so bitter it pretty much ruined the soup and I threw out the other serving. Ah, well… at least I didn’t waste a bunch of money on some exotic ingredient (though I did save two to fill with leftover pine nut crema and sprinkled with cornmeal and toasted, and they were better but still pretty bitter. I put them on top of the soup).
Tomorrow I’m planning on making something delicious with my market strawberries that doesn’t involve baking – raw strawberry pie! Yum. Speaking of raw, I recently got back into making Ani Phyo’s Coconut Breakfast Cakes. My friend made them and was not impressed; he found them too sweet and too heavy. I like them pretty well but can see what he means (and others, it seems), and have a few issues of my own (like how they taste terrible the next day). I think there might be a way to combine the rawmelette shells with these in a way that doesn’t require a dehydrator, which would be happy news to all of you who like the thought of trying raw food but don’t have a lot of equipment. So, imagine waking up to a plate not unlike this (only better!):
If the strawberry pie doesn’t get posted first, be prepared for some tasty flaxjacks in the near future. Hooray omega-3s!
Have you found any alterations that lighten the sweetness and heaviness of these breakfast cakes?
My thinking is to reduce the amount of flaxseeds to cut down on the heaviness, making up for the bulk with some fruit and maybe a little shredded coconut. And to reduce or eliminate the agave, since the fruit should take care of that. I haven’t done this as a non-dehydrated breakfast cake, so I’m not sure what the added moisture from the fruit will do, but I’m going to try it out tomorrow morning
That scape/herb spread looks fabulous! I make a lot of hummus and other bean spreads, but I never think to add herbs. I’ll have to change that now…
I recently read a post involving banana flowers and the blogger forgot to soak them pre-cooking and they were incredibly bitter. Having tried neither banana flowers nor squash blossoms, I have no idea whether the cooking process is the same but the two posts struck me as similar.
By the way–someone brought a avocado lime pie based on your recipe to a Minneapolis potluck a few weeks ago and it was amazing!
I think the issue with the squash blossoms is the stamens are really bitter… I was pretty sure I removed all of those by cutting off the stem end of the flower and shaking them out. But it’s possible I missed some. Or I just hate squash blossoms!
That’s good to hear about the avocado lime pie… and in Minneapolis, too! Thanks for sharing.
Love flax so looking forward to those flaxjacks! That lemony scape and herb spread looks lovely and summery too!
That scape dip looks great. The soup looks delicious – too bad it didn’t taste as good as it looks!
I wasn’t crazy about those Ani pancakes either. I made ‘em once and made myself eat them. But I won’t make them again. Too flaxy for me … and I love flax. Oh well. They sure are pretty though.
As for squash blossoms, I’ve only had them stuffed with tofu ricotta, battered and fried. And they were delicious until I ate a bite near the stem part. That bite was very bitter. I think the petals themselves are tasty, but get bitter closer to the stem.
The pesto dip looks yummy! Can you believe I’ve never even seen a garlic scape?!
I always overbuy at the farmers’ market. The produce is always so beautiful, I can’t resist. I like your white bean/garlic scape idea. I made a pesto with scapes, but it was very heavy.
That scape spead sounds great–did you use *raw* garlic scapes? Or did you cook them first?
And I am sorry your soup wasn’t great! I wonder if maybe they were not fresh? I have heard you need to eat them pretty quickly…like maybe they picked them on Saturday and then you bought them on Sunday?
Yum–can’t wait for the flapjacks recipe
Courtney
[...] my friends, is a white (turned green) bean dip, inspired by Swell Vegan’s lemony scape and herb spread. It’s served over toast and avocado slices, and it tastes like heaven. The recipe is as [...]
That scape dip looks really tasty! I can’t seem to find scapes at my farmer’s market but I’ll keep looking! Oh and yes please more raw recipes that don’t need a lot of fancy equipment!
Thanks for the recipe. The dip sounds amazing. Lemon and basil – yum!
I am a little bit jealous of your great produce! I’ve never had both garlic scapes anz zucchini blossoms.