By Rhio

Have you ever prepared a raw dish from a recipe and then bit into it to find that the flavor fell a little short of your expectations? Sometimes the flavor is downright disappointing and you wonder why you spent all that money on good organic food to end up with this.

Other times you might feel that the flavor was almost there, but needed something. . . but what? You start thinking: What if I did this to it; would it taste better? Or, what if I used some different ingredients than the ones listed? Or what if I blended it and then added. . .

Welcome to the evolution of a recipe, or How to make a recipe your own.

The above scenario has happened to me so many times that I can almost look at a recipe now and know what it needs, at least to please my own taste.

When I was writing my book, Hooked on Raw, I had a lot of failures with recipes. It was not that they couldn't be eaten. They still contained good food, of course, but in order to put the best of the best into the book, I was very selective. I had a lot of recipes that I liked, but Leigh (he's my honey) wouldn't eat them. Then a funny situation occurred that led me to discover that people really have widely differing tastes.

I had made a dehydrated cracker that I thought was pretty good, but Leigh turned thumbs down on it a number of times. I thought "Well, Leigh is a pretty good judge of what people will like." But it just kept nagging at me that this was a pretty good cracker. I liked the taste of it, but I also like to eat raw turnips and potatoes, so I'm not really a good judge of what other people are likely to eat.

One day we were going to have a big party and I decided to make up a batch of these crackers and see if the crowd liked them. Half way through the event I went up to Leigh and said, "You know people are telling me that--" and he finished my sentence for me: "They LOVE those crackers!!" People had been telling him the same thing too.

After that I wondered how many good recipes I might have discarded because I relied on Leigh's taste buds only. And I started trusting my own judgement more.

This year, at the Portland Raw and Living Foods Festival, we were introduced to some wonderful raw bread. The recipe was created by Igor Boutenko (of The Raw Family) and he called it Borodinsky Crackers. (It could be either a bread or cracker, depending on how long it was dehydrated.) Now Igor, as he is from Russia, likes a strong flavored and robust bread. I think his Borodinsky reminds him of the hearty Russian sourdough breads he was accustomed to. We wanted to make the bread at home too, so Igor gave us the recipe.

Back in my New York kitchen experimenting with the ingredients, I started thinking what if I make this bread less strong tasting?" What if I make a milder version and not let it ferment so long?

The first thing I changed was the flaxseeds. Instead of using brown flaxseeds, I switched to golden flaxseeds, which have a milder flavor. Next, I decided not to allow the bread dough ferment so long. Instead of letting it ferment overnight or even longer, as Igor sometimes did, I let it sit for only four hours, just enough time for the dough to rise a little bit. Then I thought: let's sprinkle some sesame seed and dehydrated garlic flakes on the top of the bread before dehydrating it.

That was the extent of my changes to Igor's fabulous recipe, and now I had a bread more to my own liking.

But I continued. I thought: "By adding some other grains to it, this recipe can be used as a base to create a lot of different breads. " Thus the evolution of a recipe continues. (See recipe for Whole Wheatless Sandwich Bread below.)

Let me give you another example. My friend Patrick, an excellent budding raw food chef, sent me one of his soup recipes. I prepared the soup but it was too watery for me. The flavor was good, but I wanted to improve the texture. I made a creamy base by shuffling some of the ingredients around. And now I've got my own version of Patrick's fine soup. (See Thai Soup recipe below.)

So what I am trying to say is, be creative in the kitchen. Shuffle things around. Take out what you don't like, put in what you do like and, lo and behold, you will have made your own version of someone else's recipe -- and it will suit you just fine.

Based on a recipe by Igor Boutenko

2 cups golden flaxseeds (I get them from Sunorganic Farm in California. They send them by mail order, using UPS. I called UPS and they have no plans to use irradiation. Some health food stores carry the golden also, or might carry them if you ask.)

1 cup filtered water
1 large onion, chopped
3 stalks of celery, chopped
4 medium cloves of garlic
1 tsp. coriander seed or powder
1 tsp. caraway seed
1 tsp. Celtic sea salt
dehydrated garlic flakes
sesame seeds

1) Grind the golden flaxseeds in a blender or Vita-Mix. The jar of the blender has to be very dry, not wet. If it is wet, dry it with a clean dishtowel before putting in the flaxseeds. Once ground, transfer the flour to a bowl. (It won't look like any flour you've ever seen before, of course.)
2) Put the water, onion, celery, garlic and spices (but not the garlic flakes and sesame seeds) into a blender and blend well.
3) Add the blender mix to the ground flaxseeds and mix well. Let it sit for about a half hour and then knead the dough with your hands.
4) Cover the dough with a cotton cloth and let it sit for four hours (or overnight) at room temperature to allow it to rise. It won't rise too much. The longer you let it sit, the more fermented will be the flavor. I prefer the four hours.
5) Then divide the dough into two pieces and spread out with your hands into a flat, thin bread on dehydrator trays that are covered with Teflex dehydrator sheets. To make the bread easier to spread out, wet your hands with water. You have to work with the dough a little to get it to spread out. (This amount fills two large-size dehydrator trays.)
6) With a soft-edge knife, mark the bread into whatever size pieces you want. Depending on how you cut, you could get six to nine pieces per tray.
7) Before putting the bread into the dehydrator for 24 to 36 hours at 95-100° F, sprinkle with dehydrated garlic flakes and/or sesame seeds. Turn the bread over when half finished and place directly onto the mesh dehydrator trays, peeling the Teflex away.
Makes approximately 12 to 18 slices. Keep in a sealed container at room temperature, or in the refrigerator. The bread can be frozen. It's OK when defrosted, although I prefer to make it fresh and then just keep it for one or two weeks. It's very fast to make--15 minutes tops. Freezing seems to stiffen the bread a little, making it less malleable. If you're not freezing the bread, I suggest using the bread within two weeks, since flaxseeds contain a lot of oil, which can go rancid.

Based on a recipe by Patrick Collins

3 young Thai coconuts (we'll be using the water from these)

Note: Thai coconut is the same as young coconut. For more information see: www.youngcoconuts.com

2 large tomatoes, chopped
1/2 avocado (for soup base)
1/2 to 1 red jalapeno pepper, chopped (start with 1/2)


Note: Red jalapeno pepper is vine-ripened green jalapeno pepper. If you can't find the red, then use the green, but the red are optimal. One of the problems with store-bought food is that much of it is not ripe, and because of that, people are being shortchanged on nutrition; the food hasn't had a chance to develop fully in nutrient quality.


1 large handful of mixed fresh herbs (rosemary, basil, tarragon (especially), and oregano). If you include any fresh herbs that have woody stems--such as rosemary or oregano--use only their leaves.
1 tbsp. Nama Shoyu or 1 scant tsp. Celtic sea salt
1 tbsp. ginger, chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 avocado, diced
1/2 red onion
A handful of finely chopped cilantro
A handful of finely chopped parsley
Extra virgin first cold pressed olive oil
1) Make a hole in the top of each coconut and pour the water from it into a jar, to use in this recipe. (Save the coconut meat in the refrigerator for eating at another time, but consume it within a couple of days. You could also cut the coconut meat in thin strips and dehydrate it for use instead of store-bought dried coconut, which has been bleached and pasteurized.)
2) First make the soup base. Put into blender: 1 cup of the coconut water, the tomatoes, half an avocado, and the ginger, garlic, jalapeno, fresh mixed herbs, and Nama Shoyu. Blend until the herbs are well mixed. Add the remaining coconut water and end again.
3) Pour the soup base into individual bowls and add diced red bell pepper, onion, avocado, and the finely chopped cilantro and parsley to each one. Drizzle with olive oil and serve.
Serves 4-6. This is best when eaten the same day you made it.

Note: A performer as well as a raw foods advocate, Rhio has appeared on over 50 TV shows. She's completing her third album, Half and Half, for the Latin and American markets, and is working on a fourth with environmental/food related themes. Her syndicated radio show, The Fruit and Veggie Lady, is scheduled to begin airing in 2002. Rhio has a raw foods hotline, (212) 343-1152, and a website, rawfoodinfo.com.