Food & Wine (June 2008)
Our experience with raw cooking is pretty much limited to making salads and the occasional joke in which we suggest to each other that we go on a raw food diet.
No offense, raw foodies.
Food & Wine's recent profile of Ani Phyo, author of Ani's Raw Food Kitchen, made us sit up and take notice. It contained two delicious sounding and beautiful looking raw dishes.
The first -- Zucchini Ribbons with Raw Tomato Marina -- looks amazing and we're dying to try it once we start getting these vegetables from our CSA.
But our interests were especially piqued by the Raw Sweet Corn and Cashew Chowder. The combination of corn and cashews sounded so unusual that we had to make it ASAP.
This recipe could not be any simpler -- obviously, one benefit of raw cooking is that there's no, well, cooking. Combine the ingredients, blend and you're done. We were only able to get white sweet corn, rather than the yellow suggested by the recipe, which explains partly why our soup looks so milky.
Also, we don't own a blender (ours started smoking one day and promptly went into the garbage) so we processed our soup in our handy Cuisinart.
So how was it?
- Tasty: Corn and cashews are a great flavor combination. I'm not sure in what other dishes you would combine them (corn and cashew pizza? I don't think so), but they really work together in this soup.
- Heavy: Maybe it's the cashews, but this is a very filling soup. We were eating it as a first course and almost didn't want our second course after the soup.
- Of a strange consistently: Our soup didn't puree smooth. Tiny bits of cashews were scattered throughout the soup. Did we not puree it long enough? Maybe. Is our Cuisinart unable to get it smooth? Unlikely. Do we really need a blender? I hope not.
Next time, we're going to make sure the soup is pureed as smooth as possible and then strain it to remove any errant bits of cashew.
We also decided that this soup would be excellent served in a very small portion -- perhaps even in a demitasse -- as a first taste for a larger meal.
And finally, next time, we'll add bacon.
Just kidding, Ani Phyo!
Raw Sweet Corn and Cashew Chowder
Food & Wine (June 2008)
(this photo: Food & Wine)
TOTAL TIME: 15 MIN
SERVES: 4
Ingredients
* 3 1/4 cups fresh yellow corn kernels (from 4 large ears)
* 2 cups water
* 1/2 cup raw cashews
* 6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
* 1 small garlic clove
* 2 teaspoons kosher salt
* 1 1/2 teaspoons chopped cilantro leaves
* Freshly ground pepper
Directions
1. In a blender, combine 2 1/4 cups of the corn with the water, cashews, olive oil, garlic and salt and puree until smooth. Pour the soup into bowls. Garnish with the remaining 1 cup of corn kernels, the cilantro and a sprinkle of pepper, then serve.
