Raw Valentine’s Fig and Banana Cheesecake
Bars and cookies, Cakes, Desserts, Paleo, Vegan
A lot of the time my inspiration for food comes from looking at what we have and making it become something else… this was one of those. After a batch…
If there’s one meal that shouldn’t be made strictly to a recipe, I think it’s soup. You really just have to taste it as you go along. Every vegetable you use can taste so different depending on season and quality so what you need to add to it will be different, along with everyone having a different palate. Where in other recipe’s you need the technicalities and volumes of a recipe to get the final product to just work, with a soup as long as you have some liquid and some veggies you’re going to get a soup. So use it as a moment to off road, taste, adjust and make it your own.
You can leave the cheese out, add a different herb, switch the beans out for soaked cashews… but this is the way we love it. For Jared I serve it over a few tablespoons of shredded chicken and some extra whole beans but I love mine smooth and simple so I serve it as is.
INGREDIENTS
12oz broccoli florets (about 5 cups)
1/2 small onion
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup goat cheese (omit to avoid dairy and add 1T nutritional yeast)
2 cups drained broccoli steam water
2 cups good stock (I use organic Better Than Bouillon stock concentrate)
1 cup basil
1 cup white beans
A good amount of pink salt and pepper to taste
To serve:
Extra goats cheese
Micro greens
Basil leaves
DIRECTIONS
Start by soaking the white beans overnight, then draining the soak water and cooking them until they are very soft and tender. Then set them aside.
Chop the broccoli into small florets and steam it until fork tender. You can use a steamer, or just place them in a pan with a tight fitting lid and add boiling water to about 1/3 the depth of the broccoli. Let them steam with the lid on for about 10 minutes. Drain the soft, steamed broccoli but retain the cooking liquid.
Finely dice the onion and crush the garlic. Heat a skillet with a tablespoon of coconut or avocado oil to a medium heat the add the onion and garlic to the pan. Cook them on a medium heat, stirring regularly, until they are soft and starting to brown. Use a cup of the stock to deglaze the pan, scraping up all the yummy tasty bits from the bottom of the skillet. Then set aside to cool.
I want to tell you I don’t put hot ingredients into my blender, because I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t but I don’t have that kind of patience so I always do. But don’t. Let them cool. Cos I think you’re supposed to.
Depending on the size of your blender, add the ingredients in one go, or in batches – doing exactly half and half will make it easier to taste and season as you go. You can add more stock if you want a thinner soup, or less of the broccoli cooking water if you want it thicker. Then just blend, taste, add, blend, taste until you have the soup that you want. More stock, more cheese, more basil – make it your own. Then pour it all back into the saucepan and heat it to piping hot to serve.
Pour your soup into bowls and enjoy! We topped ours with crumbled goats cheese, fresh basil, and micro greens. (Micro greens aren’t just pretty they add a really great spicy pop to the soup! I don’t often buy them because of their high price but I have them from the garden right now so they’re on everything!)
