New Recipe - "Haarweibchen" (Cucumber Jelly) from Harald Irka´s Cookbook Terroir

You still know that eating plant based, vegan, starch free and free of soy products is the best way to become healthy again and to stay healthy. As there will be few cookbooks for vegan and starch free meals in your kitchen let´s make traditional recipes suiting to this diet. As we were speaking a lot of Harald Irka´s cookbook Terroir let´s do it with one of the recipes in the book. It is not difficult and you can impress your family and friends with this.

As the diet requires vegan and starch free food you will to have to replace some things.

•  TIPS

• to make traditional recipes vegan and starch free:
• instead of milk use plant milk (almond, cashew and oat are the best),
• instead of butter use best oil or 100% organic margarine,
• replace cream by plant based cream (oat is very good),
• yoghurt by plant yoghurt (coconut! – so delicious),
• eggs by psyllium husk powder and water,
• traditional “bad” (acid) flour by buckwheat meal, amaranth meal, sunflower meal, oatmeal and chestnut meal and
• cheese by best organic vegan cheese (you must get the best quality, you will be surprised – it tastes like cheese).

If you were not under the happy winners of Harald Irka´s cookbook Terroir (photo: M. Luttenberger) find here another recipe by him. It is so fanciful and so tasty that I am sure you will love it.

• Haarweibchen (serves 4)

• 400 g Haarweibchen (cucumber sort, you can of course take any cucumber)
• 30 g balsamic vinegar (organic and best quality), – as it will not be easy to get verjus
• about 2 tbsp agar powder
• 5 g salt

• Hazelnut cream

• 100g hazelnut
• 100 g coconut yoghurt
• 3 g salt
• 50 g hazelnut oil
• white, red and/or black currants

Juice the cucumbers (if you have no juicer – blend well and sieve). Add balsamic vinegar (or verjus) and salt.

Cucumber jelly: use for 0.25 l juice 1 teaspoon agar* powder. Bring the solution to a boil and allow it to simmer for about 3 – 5 minutes. Stir the solution until the agar is completely dissolved. Pour the mixture into very small bowls or in or into demitasses and leave it out at room-temperature to gel.

Put roasted hazelnuts into coconut yoghurt, stir hazelnut oil in, salt.

With the help of a knife – be careful – remove the jelly out of the demitasses.

Serve the jelly with hazelnut cream, white/red/black currants, baked vegetables (sweet potato or zucchini) and with salad.

*Doctor Heldt about agar: it is a product of red algae, you can cook it several times and it will always become jelly again. If the jelly is too hard add more juice, if it is too soft add agar powder. Agar contains fibers, minerals and fatty acids and is tasteless.