Whole Food Wednesday: Baked Ricotta with Roasted Tomato Parsley Salad

Welcome to Whole Food Wednesdays! You’re invited to come and share your real food recipes using the Linky below. We’re excited to see what yummy things you’ve been creating and what great informational posts and videos you’ve got for us!

Tapas style dinners are my favorite and what would a tapas style dinner be without some yummy cheese and some good bread?

Many of you out there have gluten sensitivities and allergies. Some may even be celiac. This is very common these days. You’ll be happy to hear that some breads (not gluten free ones) can be digested by those having sensitivities and issues with gluten and grains. If you’re celiac, you may want to look into the GAPS diet. For the others consider this…

There are actually 3 options, not including gluten free products:

Buy or make only sourdough bread.

I touched on the subject in my last post, but for those of you that may have missed it, I’ll recap. In short, sourdough bread is fermented. Be careful though, as many sourdough breads are not actually fermented, but rather use yeast like all other breads. A small amount of sourdough starter is added to the bread to achieve the right flavor. It’s like cheating. Ask or read or do both to find out if the sourdough is REAL sourdough. If you do have allergies, the best option is to make your own with a sourdough starter.

This fermenting process mimics the digestion process in our bodies. With 80 % of the work already done, digesting sourdough bread becomes easy. The fermenting process breaks away at the anti-nutrients and phytic acid.

Note: A healthy gut can make its own phytate, the enzyme required to break down phytic acid. GNOWFGLINS is a wealth of information on this topic and I could not do sourdough and its benefits any justice here in such a short post. If you’re interested in learning more, read my previous post where you can find some helpful links or check out Wardeh’s ecourse. I’m taking it right now! I knew a lot already, or so I thought, but this course is absolutely fascinating and I feel like I’m learning so much.

Buy or make bread, tortillas and pastas out of sprouted flour.

You can sprout your own grains and mill them into flour, but this can be time consuming. Or you can buy sprouted flour, but this is more expensive than unsprouted flour. For us, it’s a worthwhile expense.

Why does this make a difference? When a grain starts to sprout, the grain is essentially a small plant, a vegetable. When the grain takes on this new form, the phytic acid is no longer an issue and is easily digestible. Up until just recently, let’s call it the 50′s, all wheat was essentially sprouted. It sounds fancy but really, it’s nothing new. Before the industrial age, wheat was left on the fields for long periods of time. It would rain and then the sun would come out, and the seed would sprout before the grain could be removed from the damp earth. It’s only after our machinery became so fast and effective that grains never get the chance to go through this process anymore.

Soak your flour.

Yup you heard me, soak your flour. I know it sounds strange but traditionally this is a very common practice in many cultures. Essentially soaking the flour in a water/milk and acid mixture breaks down the phytic acid making it easy to digest. This is a more time consuming way but very cost effective, allowing you to turn any flour into something digestible and nutritious. Of course I’m not referring to soaking all purposed bleached flour which is stripped of all it’s goodness.

My Opinion

These 3 things listed above are all traditional ways bread and wheat based dishes used to be made. Though it may seem really crunchy, the truth is it’s only up until very recently that these methods have been abandoned. It is my belief, (just my opinion folks), that this is the reason for the huge outbreak of gluten intolerance and sensitives. Sure there are issues with unhealthy guts from all kinds of other issues such as sugar, processed foods and a lack of fermented foods in our diet, but those would be far less of a problem if we were still following traditional methods of cooking grains.

Where are you on your journey?

Joshua and I talk about our journey through healthy whole foods here at Beyond The Peel. We’re all at different points in our journey. Some of you have followed us through a lot of it right here on the blog. Just go back in the archives and you’ll find the occasional recipe with white sugar. Gasp! But it’s a journey. We make small changes almost weekly and we can look back now and see how far we’ve come. I think baby steps are essential in making the changes last.

The beginning

Some of you may be at a point where you’re just at the beginning of your journey. You’re learning what to buy, how to read ingredient lists and labels. You’re at a point where you’re cutting out processed foods. You are learning how to shop locally at farmers markets and buy seasonally. For this I recommend checking out Real Food for Rookies. This is a great introductory tool.

The journey

If you’re a little further along but find real food too time consuming and confusing and just want healthy meals that taste delicious on the table fast. I recommend my book The Whole Food Revelation.

In it you’ll learn to soak beans, use a boat load of different grains, legumes, and vegetables and how to cook them. It works through meal plans, grocery lists and a meal preparation day once a week. You’ll even learn to make bread and how to knead. This is where my husband and I have been hanging out for the last 4 years. We continue to implement new things, small changes and better product choices, but essentially we want great tasting restaurant quality meals on the table every night of the week, made from whole foods, and we want it fast. You can check out a sample here.

The next stage

But now I feel I’m ready for more. The Next step. If you’re already cooking with whole, real foods and are interested in learning even more, then join us. If like us, you’re at a place where you want to maximize nutrition, are willing to put a little time and effort into learning and implementing it, check out GNOWFGLINS ecourse. I can’t get over the incredible value. I think there are over 50 lessons…I lost count after the first 30 or 40.

So now that you can have your bread and eat it too, with no further ado, yummy baked ricotta! I love this meal because the whole thing goes into the oven at the same temperature and is done at the same time. Hands on time is less than 5 minutes.

Disclaimer: I’m not a physician. If you are highly allergic to wheat and you get an allergic reaction from trying one of these  methods of food preperation, you can’t blame me or sue me. These ideas are a starting point, not specific recommendations for you personally.

Baked Ricotta with Lemon and Oregano

• 250 grams ricotta
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan
• 2 Tbsp chopped fresh oregano
• 1 tsp lemon zest

Preheat oven to 375 F. Butter 4 ramekins or line with parchment paper. Mix all the ingredients together until combined. Pour the mixture into the 4 prepared ramekins. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the tops begin to brown. Remove from oven and serve with toasted sourdough and roasted tomato salad.

Roasted Tomato Parsley Salad

• 1 pint of grape tomatoes
• 1 Tbs olive oil
• 2 cups of chopped parsley
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• salt and pepper to taste

Place the tomatoes on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Using a fork prick a whole into each tomato. Drizzle with 1 Tbsp of olive oil. Bake at 375 F for 25 minutes.

Remove from oven. In a large bowl toss the remaining ingredients together and season with salt and pepper.

Note: 10 minutes before the timer goes, slice the bread, spay or brush with olive oil and place the pieces on a baking sheet. Bake at 375 F until brown and toasted, approximately 10 minutes.

 

The Rules:

• 1. Follow Beyond The Peel on Facebook,  Twitter, and Pinterest.  It’s very easy to do and there are also buttons at the bottom of this page to do so.
• 2. Introduce yourself, your blog, and what you’re about in the comment section and a small blurb about what you’re sharing. This way people can get to know you a little bit right off the hop and hopefully follow you as well.
• 3. Be sure to add a link in your post back to this post. Simple linky etiquette. This allows your readers to find other posts that may help them on their journey.
• 4. If you’re sharing recipes, the only requirement is that the ingredient list be comprised of real food only, that means non-processed food items. That being said, we are all in different places on our real food journey, some more advanced than others. I invite all of you to share, no matter where you are on your journey, but I ask you to stay mindful when sharing your recipes that this is a whole (real) food blog. This means, no ingredient lists that include edible oil products (velveeta, frozen whip topping), protein powders, ketchup, white flour or white and brown sugar.
• 5. Less of a rule but more a suggestion: Retweet,  Stumble, or Pin this post so EVERYONE gets more exposure and traffic. It’s win-win for everyone.
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• 7. Please visit some of the links below. After all, that’s how we’ll get to know each other!

 

Now it’s your turn to share your whole food recipes and ideas!

I’m sharing this with Mangia Monday, Monday Mania, My Meatless Mondays, Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays, Tasty Tuesday, A Little Birdie Told Me, Fat Tuesday, These Chicks Cook, Cast Party Wednesday, Allergy Free Wednesday, Tasty Alternative, Whole New Mom, What’s Cooking Wednesday, Real Food Wednesday, Pennywise Platter Thursday, Simple Lives Thursday, and Full Plate Thursday, Friday Food Flicks, Freaky Friday, Fight Back Friday, Foodie Friday, and Feed Your Soul.