Immunity from Within
Boost immunity and grow your inner garden!
By Deirdre McCafferty, recipe by Tony Keogh of Cornucopia Dublin
A tasty way to boost your immunity this autumn and winter is with some warming stews, bakes and soups and by adding some wonderful tummy friendly fermented foods to your diet. Currently, we’re big fans of the vegan brie and cashew blue cheeses created for Cornucopia by Tony Keogh. Healthy fermented foods help populate our digestive tracts with the bacteria that help protect us from the inside and help you grow your inner garden.
Changing seasons, shorter days and colder, wetter weather can all add to the challenge our immune systems face so our thoughts for recipes now naturally turn to health boosting meals. Here we have a great recipe for a vegan, Irish style Stew, with a twist – lots of spices! It’s chock-full of other immune boosting ingredients too; seaweed with its iodine, kale with its antioxidants and oats with calming, supportive, nerve boosting qualities.
Irish style vegan stew with seaweed, kale, ginger and oats
Serves 4 -6
This recipe can be made gluten free by replacing the shoyu with tamari and by omitting the oats and adding a dessertspoon of cooked brown rice to each bowl of stew just before serving.
For the base of the stew
- Sunflower oil
- 1 large onion roughly chopped
- 2 carrots, peeled and grated
- 2 sticks of celery plus leaves finely chopped
- Thumb sized piece of ginger finely chopped
- Dessertspoon of sesame oil
- 2 bay leaves
- 5 cloves of garlic
- 1 finely chopped chili
- ½ teaspoon of Chinese five spice
- 70 ml shoyu
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- 1 level teaspoon of smoked paprika
- Dessertspoon of nutritional yeast [optional]
For the body of the stew
- 100 g whole oat groats, (these can be soaked overnight to speed up the cooking time)
- 1 medium parsnip peeled and cut into small dice
- 1 small head of celeriac about 350 grams chopped into small dice
- 200g button mushrooms
- Two leeks, halved lengthways and cut into 2 cm pieces
- 300g of firm tofu cubed into 1 cm pieces
- 200g of fresh kale, rinsed, finely chopped and blanched for 1 minute in boiling water
- 50g of arame soaked in hot water and drained
- 20 g of flat parsley
Method
1. Pre-heat the oven to 220 degrees. Rinse the oat groats under some cold water and then cook them in a small saucepan in three times their volume of water.
2. Next, heat the oil in a large saucepan and add the onion, carrot, celery. Stir vigorously for a minute before adding the next six ingredients along with a few dessertspoons of water to stop the mixture catching. Leave to simmer over a medium heat.
3. Coat the celeriac and parsnip in a little sunflower oil with a pinch of salt, spread them onto a large baking tray and bake in the top of the oven for about 15-20 minutes, they will need to be stirred half way through to prevent them from sticking.
4. Add a litre or so of water and the smoked paprika to the onion carrot spice mix and Leave it to simmer over a medium heat.
5. In a medium sauce pan, along with a dessertspoon of oil and 200 ml of water sweat the leeks until soft.
6. Coat the mushrooms and tofu in a little oil along with a pinch of salt. Spread them onto a roasting tray and bake in the oven for about 10-15 minutes.
7. Remove the bay leaves from the sauce base. Add the mustard and nutritional yeast if using and puree the mixture using an immersion blender. You may need to add a little water at this stage depending on how thick the sauce base is.
8. Season and stir in the cooked celeriac and parsnip. Strain the leeks, retaining the cooking liquid. Stir in the tofu and mushrooms. Depending on how thick the sauce is you may need to stir in some of this cooking liquid. Stir in the kale, seaweed and chopped parsley, bring to a simmer and serve.
Cornucopia are now offering an online order system so you can get more lunch time convenience. Order online and collect at the quick-till between 12 and 2 to beat the queue!