Good Food!

This is a super low calorie dessert – and while it might not be Tiramisu – it is a lovely sweet treat you can eat while remaining faithfully on your diet!

Summary: Low Calorie but delicious dessert

I recently had Dal Tarka for the first time at my favorite restaurant and I was blown away by how delicious and satisfying this simple dish can be. I came home determined to make my own.

Dal, made from any of a variety of pulses (dried beans or lentils), is a mainstay in South Asian vegetarian cooking. Dal Tarka is made by pouring Tarka over the Dal after it’s been cooked. I made my Dal from yellow split peas.

Tarka is more a method than a list of ingredients. Also called chaunk, bagar, popu and a several other names – Tarka is essentially whole spices fried briefly in oil or ghee to release the essential oils from the spices. The Tarka is then poured into the dal and voila! – Dal Tarka!

I used the Tarka spices from a recipe in my “Hare Krishna Book of Vegetarian Cooking” by Adiraja dasa. I also used unprocessed, organic peanut oil instead of ghee – so that the end result would be vegan. The peanut oil worked perfectly as a replacement providing the rich flavor that ghee gives – without the butter. The whole spices included:

• a couple of bay leaves
• a cinnamon stick broken in 1/2
• 1 1/2 t. turmeric
• 1 1/2 t. cumin seed
• 1 dried chile, crushed
• 1/4 t. asafetidda
• 2 t. crushed ginger

I squeezed half a lemon into the Tarka before pouring on the dal. Served with Basmati rice, coconut yogurt, cilantro and chutney, it was a meal in itself.

We used Cilantro Pesto on half the pizza and homemade Basil Pesto on the other half. They were both amazing but I found the cilantro slightly more interesting. For the Basil Pesto we just whirled 2 cups of basil leaves with 1/2 cup olive oil, 2 or 3 garlic cloves and some salt. It was earthier than the cilantro and also delicious!

I used half spelt flour in the crust which was a thick crust pizza dough from Deborah Madison’s “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone“. (If I had a list long enough to include a bunch of ingredients, this is hands down the book I would bring to the desert island to cook them with….Joy of Cooking for Vegetarians….more about this later.) The author, Deborah Madison, is one of the founding cornerstones of contemporary vegetarian cooking. She worked with Annie Sommerville at Greens Restaurant, the landmark San Francisco Vegetarian restaurant in the Fort Mason Center in the Marina District overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA with Alice Waters.

Back to my pizza! The spelt addition is not in the recipe but not only is spelt much better for you than wheat, it’s lighter texture and nutty flavor are perfect for a thick crust pizza.

We slathered the two pestos on each side of the rolled out pizza dough and topped it with generous helpings of those amazing fire roasted tomatoes they sell at Whole Foods, Kalamata olives and whole milk mozzarella.

The pizza bakes at 500 degrees and as usual the fire alarms in the house went off. It’s the price you have to pay since a lower temp will not do justice to the crust.

Pizza’s always good but I loved the twist with the green sauces….we just kept smiling and eating until it was gone!

We just had an amazing gourmet meal that was tantalizingly delicious, deeply satisfying, vegan, lo-cal and a blast to prepare! I do know the tradition is to eat a turkey, stuffing, potatoes, pumpkin pie etc. but I’m a vegetarian, ertswhile vegan, for goodness sake…and I still wanted some exceptional food on this special day.

It doesn’t get much better than this for a vegan feast. We marinated baby Dutch Potatoes, Butternut Squash, Red Peppers, Red Onions, Zucchini, Garlic, Fennel, Turnips, Brussel Sprouts and Parsnips in Virgin olive oil, lime, sea salt and fresh ground pepper and then slow-roasted them. This was served up with a side of Orzo, Wild Rice, Roasted Leek, Raisin & Walnuts. A fantastic Cilantro dipping sauce tied everything together to make it one of the best meals we’ve had!

Recipe: Raw Chocolate Bliss

Summary: This is the best tasting chocolate I know of and it’s good for you too!

Ingredients

• Crust
• 1 ½ c. almond meal
• 1 ½ c. organic dried cranberries
• cranberry juice or almond milk
• Filling
• 1 c. cacao nibs
• ½ c. coconut oil
• ½ c. cashews
• 1 vanilla bean
• ½ c. agave nectar or maple syrup

Instructions

Crust

1. Blend crust ingredients in a food processor well.
2. Add cranberry juice or almond milk until mixture just begins to stick together.
3. Press into pie plate forming crust.

Filling

1. Grind up nibs and cashews in a clean coffee grinder.
2. Blend ground up nibs, cashews, coconut oil, and vanilla bean (or vanilla) in a high-powered blender. Use a spatula to work mixture into blade. As the mixture warms up it will blend better.
3. Add agave and blend briefly until mixed.
4. Pour into crust, smooth with spatula. Refrigerate

Quick Notes

(modified from a recipe called Chocolate Fantasy Pie by Bliss)

Cooking time (duration): 1/2 hour

Diet type: Vegan

Diet (other): High protein, Gluten free, Raw

Number of servings (yield): 12

Meal type: dessert

My rating: 5 stars: ★★★★★

Microformatting by hRecipe.

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If you’ve eaten fresh cacao beans or nibs then you know most chocolate bars you get at the store have been stepped on to a degree that almost completely disguises what chocolate really is.

Amazingly the taste of this new chocolate bar from TJoes is close to uncut cacao. It has enough sugar (don’t worry) but not very much sugar at all. It’s lightly sweet but mostly rich in deeply satisfying chocolate magic!

It’s also only $1.49 for two 50 gram bars.