not always so serious

All day long I talk about food, and wholefood, how to cook food, ways of thinking about food, and the benefits of eating wholefood. All day. I'm surprised anyone even likes me. I can see how I could be a bit boring and/or intimidating. Food is a subject I'm passionate about, and more recently my passion has included the subject of how one's health is so deeply connected to what one consumes.

When you are into wholefood, once you have gained an understanding of what that means, you find yourself spending a lot of time soaking, fermenting, sprouting, culturing, boiling, braising and washing foods to prepare them to be eaten. It all becomes very serious, the tasks of breaking down nutrient inhibitors, removing toxic layers, encouraging good bacterial growth. It's all about what you must do to the food, before the food can work for you. Serious stuff.


I enjoy the planning and preparation involved in cooking something delicious. I enjoy that it actually does not take much effort at all. But sometimes I find that in all the planning and preparing I am forgetting about the lovely things. The little delights that can elevate a meal, lift it's ending. The taste tempting morsels that can punctuate a long afternoon.

Then I find a recipe that kind of fits my wholefood ethos, but is a delight and just what I had been forgetting about in all my other food planning and preparation. A little treat. Something to share.

As a brief preamble to this recipe, once upon a time there were these biscuit-y things called macaroons. They were weird and squidgy, lumpy and misshapen, usually containing coconut and slightly almond-y in flavour. Your Nana might have made them to use up some egg whites left from making proper custard. Then 'macaron' arrived and were Zumbo-ed and we all thought we were French and these other Country Womens style things were very uncool. People pretended they didn't know what we were talking about. This recipe revives the old macaroon.

Macaroons

180g nutmeal
- Any. Almond, hazelnut, LSA, LSC (chia!), walnut, even coconut. Or any combo you feel like.
100gm caster sugar
zest of a lemon, or an orange
pinch of salt
2 egg whites
2t honey

Set the oven to 170c.
In a bowl place the meal, sugar, salt and zest and rub together with your hands to infuse the sugar and meal with the zesty flavours. You can also add vanilla, and spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, ground ginger, all spice) if you like. I have even ground the sugar with rose petals (or lavender!) in a mortar and pestle to flavour the sugar before starting. Delish.

In a small cup, break up the whites with a fork and then stir them into the meal with the remaining ingredients. Mix it all together to form a stiff paste.

Line a baking tray. Break off lumps from the dough- you will get about 20-24, about the size of a walnut. Roll them if you like, of squidge them or shape 3D diamonds, it doesn't matter, and any extra surface area will give you more chewy, crusty edges. I rolled mine and then pinched them into pyramids.

Line them up on your tray about 5cm apart. For an extra brown crust, you can dust them with icing sugar before baking. Bake for 12-15 mins, until golden on the bottom. Cool completely on the tray and store airtight (if they last that long!). There will keep for ages, if nice and dry when they come out of the oven.

Wholefood is not always so serious.