Plant based recipes Masterclass 1

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<v ->Hello everyone. My name’s Darren Burke.</v> Welcome to the Culinary Arts Academy, Switzerland. I’m a chef instructor here and I’m currently teaching on the diploma in vegetarian culinary arts. I would like to show you today two exciting recipes that we’re currently teaching here in Le Bouveret. The first one will be a nut and flax seed cracker with a cashew cream, caramelized figs, orange, and micro-herbs. And the second will be a smoked watermelon resembling a ham. So these are both plant-based dishes. The first thing we need to prepare is the nut and flaxseed taco. So flax seeds, also known as linseeds, are a great source of omega-3.

They’re very good, high in protein, high in iron, and they can have a lot of health benefits. If you’re planning to switch towards a plant-based diet, this is something you really need to incorporate into your diet. We’re incorporating this in a more exciting way and presenting it in more of a gastronomic fashion. So we take our flax seeds. These are available both brown and yellow. We’re using the brown variety today. We’re gonna be using some walnuts. We’re gonna be using some chopped almonds, and also, some pumpkin seeds, as well. So the important thing about flax seeds, for this recipe, is they’re a hydrocolloid. So that means they form a gel when introduced to hot water.

That’s really the key part of this recipe. We’re also gonna use a little bit of potato starch here to help the cracker bind together. And when we place it in the oven, we place it 160 degrees, and that cooks it and dries it out. So this is a really nice recipe to give you a lot of health benefits but also to give you a little bit of crunch as well. This is totally plant-based, also gluten-free, lactose-free, so it’s good for me. I currently don’t eat wheat, and I’m following a plant-based diet, so this is one of my personal favorite recipes. So, what we do first of all, we take our flax seeds, like so, into a bowl.

Then we take our walnuts. Now, the walnuts, you can get crushed walnuts like this, whole walnuts. We just want to chop these a little bit, okay? The reason for that is we want a nice, thin cracker.

We’re gonna use this to make a kind of dill. We want a nice texture as well. So it’s really nice to add some different nuts in there for different textures and different flavors. Ultimately, once you use this recipe, if you have the flaxseeds as a base, really, you can, you can play around with it a little bit. If you don’t like walnuts and try Hazel nuts, for example you don’t like almonds. Than leave them out. If you don’t like pumpkin seeds, you can use sunflower seeds. You can maybe add some chia seeds. You can have some different spices in there. And that’s really, for me, the most important part of of cooking.

It was really learning to kind of learning the methods and then expressing it yourself. Okay. There’s no point you’re trying to cook anyone else’s recipe. You need to cook the food that you like to do once you understand the methodology and why things work then you can kind of run with it. Okay. So we’re going to add the walnuts to this mix

Like, say, let me go a pumpkin seeds, again another different texture going to get up and really nice flavor to the cracker in the end. And then we’ve got our chopped almonds. Okay. So you may notice that I’m not tasting any of these ingredients. The reason for that is obviously we’re going to cook it in the oven. We’re cooking it at 160 degrees for about an hour. So the nuts are going to slowly caramelize it any higher than that. They’re going to cook too quickly and you’re not going to give time for the for the starches to set in the correct way. Okay. Next we’re using potato flour. Okay. So this is potato starch extracted from potatoes.

You can also use rice flour, you can use tapioca flour. And if you’re fine with gluten products you can also use wheat flour for me I’m using this because it gives a much lighter result and it means I can eat it without feeling terrible afterwards. Okay. And then most importantly we’re going to use a bit of salt. Okay. So I’ve chosen nice flow to sell here. I’m a little bit of a salt snob. So I like use flatter sell my personal favorite which is Maldon, Maldon salt from the UK, like me. And next we’re gonna take 350 grams of water

and we’re gonna heat this up.

While that’s heating. It’s really important that you give this a good mix. Okay. If you don’t mix this well what you can find is the potato flour or the rice flour can kind of clot together. Okay. And that’s what we really want to avoid. You want a nice, smooth homogenous mix. Okay. That means when we’re transferring it to the baking tree later, it will smooth out very nice. Then you’ll get a nice even cracker. Okay.

So everything should be nicely toasted in there. Nicely tossed in the flour. You should kind of have a dusty sort of finish to it. Okay. Meantime, we bring the water to boil.

Okay. What we’re going to use to compliment this cracker is we’re gonna make a cashew cream. So cashews are really good for giving you a kind of creamy texture in plant-based cooking. That’s something we kind of missed a little bit is you know, some of the creamy kind of round Milky sort of flavors, cashews are a brilliant substitute for this the cashew cream I’ve got, I’ve taken some, some cashews and then they’ve poured boiling water over them initially. Okay. That’s just to wash them, pour boiling water over them then strain them. Okay. And then you have the cashews. So they’re still quite crunchy and still quite warm, but this way you pasteurize them a little bit. Okay.

In the meantime, our water is coming to boil. Now your water is brought to boil. We just really pour that straight over All of the nuts, the flax seeds and the flour. And as I said earlier, flax seeds are hydrocolloid. So that means when they come into contact with water they form a kind of like a gel. All right. So you will see this in chia seeds. Also, if you’ve ever used cheer seeds, you leave them in cold water overnight. They form like a glue, other natural substances. you see in is a seaweeds, Agar, Agar for example is extracted for seaweeds. So that’s a hydrocolloid that you find naturally and it’s very good for gelatin substitutes. Okay.

So what we’re left with is kind of Milky sort of substance at the moment, and you will know that it will be relatively thin but we leave that for 20 minutes to hydrate And then that’s good to go. (gentle music)