Today, I’m very excited to share with you a guest post from Chef Amber Shea! Below is an excerpt from her newest book, Practically Raw Desserts
Nuts can be chopped, crushed, blended, or used whole; they can add texture, flavor, crunch, or creaminess to a dish; they can even be turned into milks and flours. All nuts contain good amounts of healthy fats (particularly monounsaturated fat), fiber, protein, and minerals. Many nuts are also a great source of fat-soluble vitamins, particularly vitamin E.
■ Almonds: Probably the most all-purpose nut in the raw food world, almonds make beautiful milks, flours, and nut butters, and they’re rich in calcium and vitamin E to boot.
■ Brazil nuts: The world’s best source of the trace mineral selenium, which is important for proper thyroid function, just one Brazil nut supplies 100% of the RDA.
■ Cashews: Thanks to their beautiful creaminess and slight sweetness, they’re an important component of many raw desserts. They’re also a good source of magnesium, which is vital for healthy muscles and bones.
■ Hazelnuts: Also called “filberts,” hazelnuts contain a great deal of folate, an important B vitamin that helps build and repair DNA. They’re super-crunchy and go great with chocolate.
■ Macadamia nuts: Macadamias contain more healthful monounsaturated fats and fewer pro-inflammatory omega-6 fats than any other nut. Rich, buttery-tasting macadamias can be used for creaminess in the same way cashews can.
■ Pecans: Pecans are one of my favorite nuts in the world for their toasty flavor and rich texture. They also contain more antioxidants than any other nut.
■ Pistachios: The lowest-calorie nut, pistachios possess an unmistakable (and lovely) green hue and an addictive crunch.
■ Walnuts: More anti-inflammatory, heart-healthy omega-3 essential fatty acids can be found in walnuts than in any other nut.
As with nuts, seeds are a very versatile ingredient. They have a variety of functions in raw desserts, from binding to thickening to replacing tree nuts. Raw seeds also contain plenty of good fats, protein, fiber, and minerals.
■ Chia seeds: These unique little seeds, which come in regular (black) and white varieties, are positively packed with omega-3 fats, fiber, and protein. When combined with water, they form a mucilaginous gel, which may sound ugly, but it’s seriously awesome. Chia seeds are fabulous at binding to toxins and scrubbing waste from inside your digestive tract.
■ Flaxseeds: Full of plant lignans, omega-3 fatty acids, and fiber, flaxseeds also become gelatinous when ground and soaked. As such, they can be used as a binder in raw recipes. The whole seeds are indigestible and must be ground before eating or using in a recipe.
■ Hempseeds: These superseeds have it all: essential fats, dietary fiber, complete protein, and loads of minerals. They’re tiny and nutty-tasting, and I love making them into a nutritious nondairy milk.
■ Pumpkin seeds: A great seed to use as a tree-nut replacement, pumpkin seeds (sometimes called “pepitas”) are packed with minerals like zinc and iron.
■ Sesame seeds: I most often use these little calcium powerhouses in their ground form, called tahini.
■ Sunflower seeds: Full of vitamin E and delicious in their own right, sunflower seeds are my go-to seed for replacing tree nuts when I need to make a recipe nut-free.
From Practically Raw Desserts by Amber Shea Crawley. ©2013 Amber Shea Crawley. Used by permission from Vegan Heritage Press. Author photo by Stephen Melvin.
