Raw Tomato Cream Sauce

 

Ingredients:

1/2 cup Brazil nuts (soaked 8 hours or overnight, or soaked and dehydrated...or not? Peeled is best but I didn't care about a smooth texture, and there are healthy things in the skin, I think)

1/4 cup water

1 medjool date, pit removed (soaked or not. Again, didn't care about a smooth texture)

6-8 cherry tomatoes

pinch of salt

Optional: 1/4-1/2 an avocado, a little lemon juice (lime for a fake, mediocre, but satisfying Thai dish), parsley, basil, or other fresh herb for garnish (or blend it in), garlic or onion, balsamic vinegar (not raw, I don't think...)

Instructions: Blend. That's all. As fine or as chewy as you want. It won't be crunchy unless you cut down on the water and rehydrate the nuts (I'd actually toast them until they're aromatic...but I'm not raw)

This experiment in "raw" oxymoronic cooking was a huge success. I wanted a tomato sauce that could also work as a dip or maybe even a bruschetta topping. I had these beautiful, sweet cherry tomatoes and some soaked and dehydrated brazil nuts (there's a ton of conflicting info on this. Some places say soak 8 hours or overnight, and others say don't soak at all...), so I threw in one medjool date for sweetness, a quarter cup of water, maybe 6 cherry tomatoes, a pinch of salt and...I think that was everything. Sounds bland, but my plan was to re-adjust the seasonings after, maybe add some lemon, but I decided not to in the end since it didn't need any.

For a first attempt at throwing stuff in the blender and calling it a sauce I was pretty happy with it as it was. I don't like raw garlic or raw onion and the powdered stuff tastes either too weak or too metallic. Next time maybe I'll experiment with herbs - add (or garnish with) some chopped parsley.

It's the end of zucchini season. Really, it's already pretty much done, but I found a bunch of big ones at the Plateau Farmers' Market yesterday and these will be put through my handy metallic grating thing and turned into noodles. Raw tomato sauce are generally junk because they're more like chopped tomatoes than sauce, but the creaminess from the brazil nuts (could also have used cashews or pine nuts) makes it into a pesto-type sauce. It reminded me of the pad thai that was not pad thai, but wasn't bad, at Rawlicious in Toronto. Except mine cost pennies and I wasn't disappointed.

Oh, I should explain how to use this differently. For a bruschetta just dice the the ingredients instead of blending, or use a food processor to chop finely. Don't use the water.

You can dilute the sauce to your liking, but thicker is usually better so it doesn't turn soupy. It's easy to make it more liquidy, but hard to make it less so once you've added too much water. If you want it less creamy use fewer nuts. Or think about adding some balsamic vinegar.