Chilled Avocado, Turmeric, and Almond Soup

I’m always eager to read about cooking with fresh, seasonal ingredients for healthy eating, and I want to tell you about another book that offers just that. It’s Real Food by Mike: Seasonal Wholefood Recipes for Wellbeing, and I received a review copy. Mike McEnearney operates two Sydney restaurants serving whole food cooking and believes that food is “natures’s medicine.” In this new book, each recipe comes with a note about the ingredients, their nutritional value, and how they support good health. I like those reminders about the benefits that come with eating what’s fresh from the farms each season. The recipes are organized by season and move from summer to spring. You’ll find everything from mains and sides to dessert and breakfast dishes and even preserves and drinks. There’s a Malaysian Spiced Pumpkin and Coconut Soup that sounds great for this transitional time of early fall. I also have my eye on the Mango, Avocado Lime, and Lentil Salad. The Roast Pumpkin with Chai Spice and Buttermilk is intriguing in that the pumpkin wedges are left with the skin on the outside and attached seeds on the inside to protect the flesh for a longer cooking time. The wedges take on great color from longer roasting and get topped with the buttermilk-chai dressing. The Baked Whole Cauliflower with Indian Spices, Mint, and Yogurt looks festive for a dinner party. And, the Pineapple Tarts are adorable minis made with one round slice of pineapple per tart. The first recipe I tried is a chilled avocado soup, but I actually thought of it more as a smoothie. It makes a great, quick, nutritious breakfast on the go. 

In the book, the soup is made with cashew milk, but there’s a note that any nut milk will work. I’ve recently become a fan of a locally-made almond milk called Malk that’s made simply with organic almonds, water, and a little salt and nothing else like other similar products with added stabilizers, thickeners, and flavorings. So, I went with almond milk. Making the soup was a quick puree in the blender of two avocados, almond milk, some salt, lemon juice, ground turmeric, ground cinnamon, freshly grated nutmeg, and a little olive oil. You’ll want to taste and adjust to your preference. I added a little extra lemon juice. Then, the mixture gets chilled until you’re ready to serve it. And, no worries about the avocado turning a darker color. Once blended with the other ingredients, it maintains its pretty shade of green. 

The nutrition notes for this recipe let you know that avocado is good for lowering bad cholesterol and boosting good cholesterol, and turmeric in addition to being anti-inflammatory also has one of the highest levels of antioxidant strength of all herbs and spices. Knowing that made it even more enjoyable. And, all the other recipes in the book come with similar good news about the ingredients used.  

Chilled Avocado, Turmeric, and Cashew Nut Soup
Recipe excerpted with permission from Real Food by Mike by Mike McEnearney, published by Hardie Grant Books August 2017, RRP $29.99 paperback. 

This refreshing soup works well for breakfast to kick start your day, or as a light lunch. There are a number of varieties of avocados available in spring and they get better towards the end of the season. There is no right type to use for this soup, as they are all as good as each other. The only prerequisite is that the avocados must be ripe with a sweet flavour. Pumpkin seed oil can be found in most health food or good food stores. If you can’t find it, try edible argan oil or a simple drizzle of very good-quality extra-virgin olive oil. This recipe will also work well with any kind of nut milk, or you can use full-cream (whole) milk. 

SERVES 4 

2 avocados 
600 ml (20 1⁄2 fl oz) cashew nut milk or rice milk 
1 teaspoon salt 
1⁄2 lemon, juiced 
1 teaspoon ground turmeric 
1⁄4 teaspoon ground cinnamon 
freshly grated nutmeg 
2 teaspoons pumpkin seed oil 

Pulse all the ingredients together in a blender or food processor and serve the soup chilled. 

MEDICINAL BENEFIT: HEART, SKIN Avocado is high in monounsaturated fatty acids, as well as the omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid linoleic acid. A diet rich in these acids can help lower LDL, otherwise known as ‘bad’ cholesterol, and increase HDL, or ‘good’ cholesterol, helpful in preventing coronary artery disease. Avocados also contain vitamins A, K, E (great for skin) and B (for muscle growth). Cashew nuts contain monounsaturated fatty acids too, plus important micronutrients and minerals like manganese, potassium, copper, iron, magnesium, zinc and selenium. Turmeric root contains curcumin, a potent compound that not only imparts a deep orange colour, but can exhibit anti-tumour, antioxidant, anti-arthritic and anti-inflammatory attributes. Turmeric’s phytonutrient profile is off the charts and its total antioxidant strength is one of the highest of all the herbs and spices.

I am a member of the Amazon Affiliate Program. 
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Brown Sugar and Spiced Banana Ice Cream

I like experimenting with bold and interesting flavor combinations in all kinds of food, and doing so with ice cream sounded great to me. I received a review copy of Spice Dreams which is the second book from Sara Engram and Katie Luber about making good use of your spice rack. This book is devoted to ice creams, sorbets, and frozen yogurts made with sometimes adventurous flavor combinations. There are options like honey-mint ice cream with thyme and basil, chile-lemongrass ice cream, white chocolate-allspice ice cream, and chocolate ice cream with cumin and fennel. In the sorbet chapter, pink grapefruit-tarragon sorbet and chile-orange-chocolate sorbet both grabbed my attention. There are also suggestions for frozen sandwiches and sundaes like cardamom snickerdoodle ice cream sandwiches and peach waffle sundaes with cinnamon syrup. Last, there’s a chapter for sauces, syrups, and toppings to further gild the lily. Whipped cream with dried lemon zest is one I'll have to try. I flipped through the ice cream pages calling out options, and Kurt’s pick was brown sugar and spiced banana. I thought it was a great choice, and I readied the ice cream maker.

All of the ice cream and sorbet recipes in this book are written to make one to one and a half quarts. This one made one and a half. For that amount, only one banana was needed, and I thought there would have been at least two for some reason. The one banana was pureed with some milk, and then that mixture was added to more milk, brown sugar, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, and salt in a saucepan. That was scalded and then used to temper four egg yolks. Eggs and the milk mixture went back into the saucepan and were heated until the custard was thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. I always strain custards just in case there’s any unappetizing cooked egg in there, and then it was chilled in an ice water bath. Once cool, it was refrigerated for a few hours before being churned into rich and nicely flavored ice cream.

My first instinct was to caramelize some sugar on top of banana slices and serve the ice cream on top. Or, I thought a drizzle of caramel sauce might be nice over a big scoop. Wrong and wrong. This ice cream brings plenty to the palate just as it is. The one banana in the custard gave it lovely fruity flavor, and the warm flavors of the spices would have been muddied by caramel. I did slice a fresh banana and sat pieces in the cups as garnish, but anything more heavy-handed than that would have been out of place here. This is one to enjoy just as is or maybe in a cone, and now I wish I had some cones and more of this ice cream.

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