Raw-Food Cuisine

Raw -- Will Hot Trend Fly in Shivering Chicago?

February 26, 2003

BY MAURA WEBBER

Outside it was the kind of cold and stormy midwinter Chicago evening that stokes the appetite for hot soups and grilled cheese sandwiches.

Yet students inside the brightly lit Whole Foods cooking classroom in Evanston were learning to put together a dinner without using a stove. Chef/instructor Jenny Cornbleet, dressed in black yoga-style pants and a leopard print shirt, ran between teams assigned to the evening's dishes.

She urged one group to dice the celery (much) finer for the Not Tuna Salad that uses soaked almonds and sunflower seeds in place of canned tuna (which is cooked); explained the care it takes to put together a top-notch green salad (cherry tomatoes must be sliced in half and cucumbers are sliced as thinly as possible, ideally using a mandoline), and deftly adjusted the cayenne pepper in the marinara sauce made with soaked sun-dried tomatoes.

It was apparent that raw food was a much more serious and complex cuisine/health movement than the term implies. There are myriad new details that uncooking entails, from soaking nuts that are used to add creaminess to gently adding hot spices to create the illusion of heat. All these steps that are undertaken to yield a variety of textures and flavors underscore the fact that uncooking still requires effort; in fact it may even require more effort than traditional cooking.

This isn't about grabbing a carrot off the supermarket shelf. In fact, its proponents argue that more care needs to be taken at every step of preparing raw dishes, because home cooks and chefs cannot rely on the mellowing agents of fire and sugar to cover up low-quality flavors or products.

"You can't cheat with ingredients," said Roxanne Klein, chef/owner of the Larkspur, Calif.-based Roxanne's restaurant, arguably the first chef in the United States to devote herself and her restaurant to an all-raw food fine-dining experience. "Raw foodism is about discovering the inherent sensuousness of each ingredient and highlighting it in the final dish."

That's all very well for those Californians, some might say. They live in a tropical paradise where the aromas of fresh fruits and vegetables beckon year-round. But will raw food fly in shivering Chicago? The answer is that it already has. Despite our arctic chills, Chicago is bustling with raw food enthusiasts who don't give a hoot about hot soups--give them some room-temperature zucchini lasagna and they'll be just fine, thank you.

Indeed the number of people involved in what was once a fringe movement is astonishing. Consider:

* Whole Foods has been offering raw food courses by Jenny Cornbleet, trained at the Living Light Culinary Arts Institute in California, for about the last 18 months. The classes are growing in popularity and attracting students from all over the Chicago area.

* Karyn Calabrese, who opened what may be the oldest raw food restaurant in the country about 20 years ago, has moved her establishment from West Lake View to larger digs in tony Lincoln Park, where she also holds classes on detoxing the body through eating raw foods.

* The Chicago area Organic Food Network offers uncooking classes, potlucks and speakers on raw food.

* No less a star than celebrity chef Charlie Trotter is working on a cookbook with raw food queen Roxanne Klein.

"For years raw food in Chicago was Karyn's and that was that," said Laura Black of the Organic Food Network. "Now it's really picking up momentum."

Why all the fuss? The answer depends on who you ask. Of course, it doesn't hurt that celebrities such as Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson are followers. And Carbondale-based culinary historian Bruce Kraig said radical food movements have often emerged during times of social unrest in the past. But because there is such a wide range of people who seek out uncooked produce to fulfill anywhere from 1 percent to 100 percent of their dietary needs, it's impossible to point to only one catalyst.

Some are drawn to raw food by its health claims. These people believe raw or living foods are easier to digest and more nutritious than food that has had the life "cooked" out of it, in part because the plant enzymes are still intact. Many people who limit or stop eating cooked food altogether say they've experienced increased energy levels, weight loss and a general improvement in their feeling of well-being. It's almost as if they've been born again.

"People show up here and the process is transformational" said a lithe Karyn Calabrese. At 56, she's a knockout former model/actress wearing a black dress and lace-up Jimmy Choo black boots while speaking to a recent class of nearly 100 converts. "It's simple. Live foods, live cells, you feel like you're alive. Dead foods, dead cells, you feel like you're dead."

Some nutritionists say it's not that simple. Christine Palumbo, a Naperville-based registered dietitian, said there are both benefits and drawbacks to a raw food diet.

On the plus side, anyone who is eating a raw diet is taking in more of the unprocessed vegetables, fruits and nuts that are great for you. On the other hand, uncooked is not always better. It's heat that releases the chemical lycopene, which promotes prostate health and prevents heart disease, and a study recently showed that it also is heat that increases antioxidants.

In short, there is reason to praise the raw food movement in moderation, Palumbo said. "But to insist on not enjoying any cooked food is overly strict. You're missing out on some of the great pleasures of life."

Rather than missing out on pleasure, there are those who are intrigued by the creativity that uncooking requires. From top chefs to home cooks, they like the clean vibrant flavors that juicing produces, and they enjoy exploring a whole new world of possibilities. For these people the process of making bread out of sprouted black-eyed peas and wheat berries is like working on a new puzzle.

Charlie Trotter, who serves up a raw food tasting menu at his namesake restaurant that includes such dishes as layered portobello mushrooms with cauliflower puree, has enjoyed learning to prepare raw food as a kind of intellectual exercise. The raw foodists that Trotter encounters in his restaurant are particularly interested in the new taste sensations that raw food offers.

"Some people are fanatics," Trotter said. "But my clients approach it from a sensual standpoint."

He believes that raw food is a movement that is here to stay--similar to vegetarianism--and predicts that all chefs will have to have at least one raw food dish in their repertoire within five years.

Chef Grant Achatz at Trio in Evanston is another chef who, though not a raw foodist, has incorporated some raw food dishes in his menu. For instance, he has served a diced raw eggplant tenderized by a Thai-influenced marinade. He served it along with a cooked lamb dish.

While some chefs look down on raw food as too faddish, Achatz said he enjoys the fact that it has given him a new way to develop flavors and textures in a dish. "It's another color for me to create in."

Back in the Whole Foods kitchen, the students sat down to test the dinner they had prepared. A quiet settled over the group as they dug in and tasted their creations. Murmurs of approval rose from time to time. From the student to the stay-at-home dad from Glenview to the Rockford bookkeeper, everyone appeared blissfully content. "It's delicious," said Monica Shah, a Kellogg MBA student, in a hushed voice.

Creamy and rich are the adjectives they used to describe zucchini pasta drenched in sun-dried tomato marinara sauce; a salad with ranch dressing that uses ground cashews, and a chocolate mousse dessert enriched with avocados rather than eggs and cream.

No one, it seemed, noticed the cold.

Maura Webber is a Chicago-based writer.

Recipes

ZUCCHINI NOODLES MARINARA
Makes 4 servings
Marinara:
2 large tomatoes
1/2 red bell pepper
1 cup sun-dried tomatoes, soaked and chopped
1 teaspoon raw honey, optional
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon sea salt, or to taste
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or to taste
1/4 cup water to thin, as necessary
Noodles:
3 small zucchini, unwaxed and unpeeled
or peeled
Blend marinara ingredients in a food processor or blender. Add water to thin as necessary.
Make noodles with the zucchini in a vegetable spiral slicer. Toss "noodles" with marinara sauce and serve immediately.
From Jenny Cornbleet
Nutrition facts per serving: 143 calories, 8 g fat, 1 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 18 g carbohydrates, 5 g protein, 585 mg sodium, 5 g fiber

CHOCOLATE SILK DECADENCE
Makes 6 servings
3 avocados
1 cup Sucanat (unrefined natural sugar) or maple syrup
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon Celtic sea salt
1/2 cup organic cocoa (can also use carob)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1-1/2 cup water to thin, as necessary
Process all ingredients except water in a food processor. Add water to thin to desired consistency.
From Jenny Cornbleet
Nutrition facts per serving: 331 calories, 16 g fat, 2 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 45 g carbohydrates, 5 g protein, 215 mg sodium, 4 g fiber
Starting raw--and fresh

BY MAURA WEBBER

Roxanne Klein, the raw food movement's most celebrated chef, believes her passion for living foods can be traced back to her childhood growing up on her family's organic farm in California.
When the young Klein and her grandfather would walk out of the house, he would invariably ask her what crop she smelled in the air that day. "I'd say, 'Peaches and strawberries,' and he'd say, 'Well, that's what we're going to pick,' " Klein recalled.
Not surprisingly Klein, now 38, went on to a career in food. She graduated from University of California at Santa Cruz, and trained at the California Culinary Academy. She worked as an assistant pastry chef at such San Francisco restaurants as Stars and Square One. It wasn't until she and her husband, Michael Klein, a former high-tech mogul who turned environmentalist, took a trip to Thailand about seven years ago that they first tasted raw food with friends Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead and actor Woody Harrelson.
Klein was initially skeptical. "I said, 'I'm a chef. What am I going to eat? Get serious,' " Klein recalled in a telephone interview. Already a vegan, she tried it anyway and found a tremendous change in her energy level. Once home, she wasn't able to find enough raw food dishes that were delicious enough to eat 'round the clock, so she set about experimenting with the science of raw food. The intense study was necessary because Klein believes that food, in addition to being good for you, should be an enjoyable, sensual experience. It took a lot of experimenting, Klein said, and ultimately led to the opening of her restaurant, Roxanne's, in Larkspur, Calif. The restaurant serves no food heated above 118° Fahrenheit.
One of the more popular dishes at her restaurant is a mushroom, spinach and black truffle crepe. The savory crepes are made with soft young coconut meat, golden flax meal and scallions. Then there's the pad thai, also made of young coconut, julienned, along with cashews, Thai basil and cilantro. "In each dish I look at the sequencing of sweet, sour, salty and spicy," Klein said.
The chef's choice tasting menu of 10 dishes costs $100. It includes a fresh corn soup; a seaweed salad; a lasagna terrine of layered tomato sauce, mushrooms, baby spinach, corn and cashew cheese, and an ice cream sandwich. Klein makes ice cream using an almond milk base and coconut.
Klein is hopeful that the cookbook that she is working on with Charlie Trotter will help introduce raw food to the curious home cook and the adventurous chef. For those interested in exploring the raw world, Klein said it's ideal to have a good high-speed blender and a juicer, both of which help create creamy textures from produce. Then there's equipment like dehydrators, often used to crisp sprouts or grains into crackers or bread.
But before running out to buy new gadgets, Klein said, the best way to get started with raw food is to take a trip to your grocery store's produce section or, better, your nearest farmers market.
When you get there, start breathing in the fragrances. If you went out thinking you needed parsley but the cilantro feels, looks and smells particularly vibrant, shift gears and get creative instead of sticking with a tried and true recipe. Klein's basic rule of thumb: "Smell before you buy it."
She liked the fact that the best raw food tapped into what she has known since she was a small girl: that the best food is based upon fresh produce.