Fruit salad with basil

We are still on Sardinia, enjoying the beautiful late summer. Today it has been really hot and after a long biking trip, I felt like something light and refreshing. I simply combined all the fruit I had at hand with some chopped fresh basil leaves, lime juice and maple syrup. A very nice dish on a hot day! Last time I made it, we had it as dessert and then the following day I combined the leftovers with some mixed greens. It turned out to be a fantastic side salad to the grilled tofu, eggplants and zucchini we had for dinner.

Fruit salad with basil

1/2 small water melon
1/2 melon
1 orange
2 peaches
1/2 small pineapple
a handful of chopped basil leaves
juice of 1/2 lime
maple syrup to taste

Kamilla's signature sandwiches ;)

I love sandwiches. There are many combinations of vegetables I like using as toppings, but for sure a classic one for me is tomatoes and avocados. A simple but delicious combination which I discovered during my trip to Chile and Argentina in January/February this year. It started with a few hotel breakfasts, where I quickly realized that the usual options include toasts, jam, ham, sometimes cheese, some great fresh fruit, at least ten types of cakes and absolutely no vegetables, which is what I would normally have with the bread in places where no other vegan options are available. So I started bringing my own tomato and avocado for breakfast ;) I would also use this easy to prepare combination for my road trips sandwiches. And those I ate a lot of, as we covered hundreds of kilometers by car every day. In a way I feared I wouldn't be able to look at avocados and tomatoes after coming back to Brussels, but that wasn't the case, it's one of the things I seem not to be able to get bored with. I just wish the vegetables I buy in Brussels reminded more of the South American ones ;)

Some of my favourite choices for other ingredients to go with the avocado/tomato combination are listed below. The tofu is optional. I often keep some marinated tofu slices in the fridge, but they all taste great without it as well:

- hummus, mixed greens, tofu, tomato, avocado, salt, pepper
- any vegan bread spread, tofu, tomato, avocado, salt, pepper
- hummus, vegan 'ham' slice, tomato, avocado, salt, pepper

Right now I'm on Sardinia, where the tomatoes and avocados are just so divine that it would feel like too much of a waste not to eat plenty of them every day. Below just two examples of some Sardinian interpretations of my tomato-avocado sandwich:

a slice of durum semolina bread with sundried tomatoes, vegan sundried tomato spread, mixed greens, tomatoes, avocados, salt, pepper, chili powder

a slice of durum semolina bread with sundried tomatoes, grilled tofu, tomatoes, avocado/grilled zucchini, pepper

04.09.2011 - update ;) A friend of mine from Denmark sent me a recipe and photos of his version of the avocado/tomato sandwiches. They for sure look fantastic! I have never tried artichoke pesto, but I will definitely see if I can find it in Brussels once I'm back, so that I can also try this very tasty looking combination. Thank you, Kim!

Brown bread or toasted white bread, some artichoke Pesto from Irma, tomatoes, avocado in slices, basil leaves

Breakfast pancakes

After a long break, I finally pulled myself together and so here comes a really delicious recipe for vegan pancakes, ideal for a lazy weekend breakfast ;)

Ingredients:

½ cup buckwheat flour

½ cup spelt flour or all-purpose white flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

1 tbsp. cinnamon

1 cup soy milk

¼ cup vanilla soy milk (or rice milk instead of both types of soy milk)

1 tbsp. lemon juice

1 tbsp. olive oil

1 tbsp. agave syrup

2 bananas, sliced (I used frozen banana pieces that I keep in the freezer for making quick smoothies, I just defrosted them by putting the plastic bag with the bananas in some hot water)

Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a separate bowl mix the wet ingredients and the banana pieces. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and mix together. Heat a nonstick pancake pan over medium-high heat and pour a portion of the batter, the amount depending on how big you want the pancakes to be. Cook until the underside is lightly brown, then flip to the other side. Repeat until you have used all the batter. I served them with some mango and peaches, agave syrup and extra cinnamon. They are absolutely delicious, I will for sure be making them often.

Mango and tomato salad

This is another invention I came up with after returning from a holiday and realizing there isn't much food at home. I had never tried to combine mangoes and tomatoes, but it tastes really good. I think it would be even better with some fresh corriander and maybe some avocado slices. Next time!

1 ripe mango, cubed
3 tomatoes, cut into wedges
1 tbsp dried basil
salt
pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp red wine vinegar

Mix all the ingredients in a salad bowl. I served it with potatoes with dried rosemary, salt and pepper, garlic cloves (peeled) and red onions (cut into wedges), all baked in the oven.

Beetroot, strawberry and pineapple juice

Ever since I discovered that my local supermarket has strawberries at 1.5 euro for 500g, I have been a regular customer ;) Of course they don't taste as good as the 'real' stuff in June, even though for a few years now I've had an impression that strawberries are just not what they used to be... Still, I love them and I have not only been eating a lot of them, but also juicing them a lot. The idea to combine beetroots and strawberries in a juice started as a purely esthetic consideration about the colour I would get out of this mix. Well, the colour is fantastic, red with a bit of purple shades, but what's more important, the juice tastes great. Especially if you like the taste of beetroots, of course ;) In fact the beetroots taste is not very strong, very much overwhelmed by the strawberries and the pineapple, but if you 'hate' beetroots (like my husband ;), it might still be too much. I love it.

1 pineapple, peeled and chopped into chute fitting pieces

500g of strawberries, washed

500g of packed, pre-cooked beetroots
half a lime, peeled

Juice everything trying not to make too much beetroot juice mess ;)

Sundried tomatoes, basil and tofu quiche

400g silken tofu
375g firm tofu
10 sundried tomatoes (if you use the ones in olive oil, drain them first, if you use dried ones, put boiling water over them for a few minutes, then drain)
1 yellow pepper, cut in stripes
1 red onion, cut in wedges
1 can of artichoke hearts, drained and cut in halves
5-7 cloves of garlic
a bunch of basil
10 cherry tomatoes, cut in halves
a pack of puff pastry
pepper, salt, chili to taste
olive oil

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Place the yellow pepper and the red onion on a baking sheet coated with olive oil, roast them in the oven for about 10 min. At the same time, or when the vegetables are ready, bake the puff pastry for about 15 min, until it turns light brown.

In the meantime place the sundried tomatoes, silken tofu, half of the firm tofu, garlic, basil (leaving aside a few leaves) and two spoons of olive oil in a food processor and blend until smooth. Crumble the remaining half of the firm tofu into the mixture, add salt, pepper and chili to taste. Put the tofu filling into the pre-baked puff pastry bottom, arrange the cherry tomatoes, red onion, artichokes and yellow pepper on top. Bake for another 25-30 min. Garnish with the remaining basil leaves. Serve with a mixed greens salad (I used mixed greens, green olives, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, olive oil and balsamic vinegar)

Strawberry and pineapple juice

I love strawberries and can never get enough of them. So when I came across the idea to use them for juice, I thought is was brilliant and I had to try it. I chose pineapple as the other main ingredient, as I thought this combination would give a great sweet and creamy juice. And it did. An addition of lime breaks the sweetness a bit and makes the juice fantastically refreshing.

I think the best recommendation for this recipe is my husband's reaction when he tasted it: Wow, this is for sure one of your masterpieces ;)

Strawberry and Pineapple Juice

1 pineapple, peeled and cut into chute fitting pieces
500g of strawberries, washed (I left the green leaves)
2 apples (Royal Gala)
1 lime, peeled

First juice the pineapple pieces and strawberries (pineapple, a few strawberries, pineapple again and so on), then the lime and finish with the apples. Enjoy!