It is a silent but constantly progressive revolution in food customs around the world. An international party was even dedicated to her on November 1st. There vegan cuisine is no longer a customary phenomenon for the few but a real food reality, a food culture that has taken hold especially in this last year in which the Covid it has forced us to review eating habits and to think about the nutraceutical properties of what we eat.
A culture that has had official recognition even in a sentence of the English court of Norwich, which, accepting the appeal of an employee fired because of his veganism, established that the beliefs of those who do not eat animal products are equivalent to a philosophical or religious belief, have a value ethical and healthy and therefore cannot be discriminated against. And in order to understand that we don't think about philosophy but about numbers, it is worth reporting the data provided by TheFork, the online restaurant booking app at a global level.
Well from early 2019 to early 2020 search engine logged a 24,8% growth in requests for vegan cuisines. The survey also made it possible to ascertain that "if it is true that only 16% of the users interviewed said they follow this diet, 50% try to limit the consumption of foods of animal origin and, above all, 70% have claimed to have been to a vegan restaurant."
Arriving in Italy if the people of pure vegans reaches one million two hundred thousand units in reality, those who have moved away from the consumption of meat are far more numerous, as evidenced by the numerous poké restaurants that can now be found on every street corner.
In a period between the big dinners at the end of the year and the carnival food excesses, to tell the truth, an all-vegetable cuisine can be useful for making peace with your body and feeding yourself with a detoxifying diet.
Daniela Cicioni, freelance cook, consultant and teacher of vegetable-based, raw food and macrobiotic cuisine, born in Milan and transferred to Lake Como, after a past as a landscape architect she graduated from the La Sana Gola Natural Cooking School in 2008, subsequently working for the Centro Botanico restaurant in Milan until 2012, where he created vegan and raw food dishes.
His career took off when in June 2014 he won the first edition of the International Vegan Cuisine Contest “The Vegetarian Chance” conceived and organized by Chef Pietro Leemann (Joia restaurant, Milan, one Michelin star), an international authority on vegetarian cuisine.
In 2017 in collaboration with an Italian company Daniela Cicioni has created and put into production the first “non-cheese” based on fermented oilseeds (named by you "fermentino") which bears his name, made through the fermentation of almonds and cashews.
For FIRSTonline readers it offers a raw-vegan dish that satisfies the palate for its taste, the eye for its aesthetics and the stomach for its nutritional properties. It is not worth talking about the properties of almonds because they are known to all for their content of minerals, oils and vitamins which are essential for the human body.
Instead, it is worth spending a few words on the beetroot, a humble plant that evokes peasant worlds, often relegated to second place on market stalls, but which reveals many surprises. Its properties were already known in the times of the ancient Greeks who cultivated it, harvested the tuber but also used the foliage. And rightly so.
In fact, beetroot is a very valid ally of the digestive system, it is useful for purifying the body as it is composed of 91% water, and very rich in fiber and. In addition to that it stimulates diuresis, it helps to prevent urinary tract infections. It is also a natural tonic. Its benefits are perceived in winter when one feels exhausted or tired because it contains a fair amount of sugars.
Its leaves are also important. In the kitchen they are used like spinach leaves. But used for decoctions or centrifuged they help keep the cardiovascular system healthy by improving blood flow and reducing blood pressure. In short, there is no shortage of reasons to indulge in a raw-vegan plan these days like the one proposed by Chef Cicioni
The recipe: Beetroot ravioli with fresh yeast* with aromatic herbs
Ingredients for the ravioli
– *Fresh herb ferment
– 1 raw beetroot
- Extra virgin olive oil
– ¼ lemon Juice
- Salt
– A few florets of fresh aromatic herbs to taste (mint, dill, thyme, marjoram) to garnish
– Pink pepper to garnish
Process for the ravioli
Peel the beetroot, cut it into very thin slices with a mandolin.
Wet the slices with a few drops of lemon, grease them and salt them lightly, then cup them with a pastry rings.
Place about half a teaspoon of filling in the center of each slice, close into a small bag or ravioli.
Complete the ravioli with pink pepper and fresh aromatic herbs to taste (dill, thyme, mint, marjoram) and serve.
*Fresh almond ferment with aromatic herbs
Ingredients for the fermenter
– 200 g of almonds soaked for 4-8 hours, rinsed and drained
- 150 ml of water
– 2 capsules of lactic ferments (Lactobacillus Acidophilus )
– 5 ml of lemon juice
– 5 c salt
– 15 ml of extra virgin olive oil
- Black pepper
– 20 g of fresh aromatic herbs of your choice, chopped with a knife (mint, marjoram, thyme, dill).
Process for the fermenter
Blend the oilseeds with the water and the ferment (open the capsules, pour the powder on the seeds and discard the wrappers), collect the mixture obtained in a muslin in a colander, cover and leave to ferment for 24-48 hours covered and in the dark, adding a weight after 2 hours to facilitate the drainage of excess water.
Once the fermentation hours are over, the fermentino will have acquired a pleasant sour taste (similar to that of yoghurt), then move the mixture into a ceramic or glass bowl and add the lemon, salt, pepper, chopped herbs, oil and mix.
The leftover fermentino can be kept for a few days in an airtight container in the refrigerator, and used spread on bread or croutons, to flavor pasta or in tufts on a salad.
