In this month’s recipes, we’ve gone back quite far in the recipe archives – around 10,000 years in fact!
While we’re not advocates of restrictive diets and stick to our ‘educational not evangelical’ mantra, we do occasionally like to look at other eating plans to see where we have some kind of convergence.
One of our key tenets is to cook from scratch as much as possible to reduce additives and chemicals and get the most natural goodness we can out of every dish. That’s something we share with the paleo movement – a belief that due to evolution being a slow process, our bodies are more accustomed to the foods hunter-gatherer tribes would eat 10,000 or more years ago.
This month Jason has created some recipes that borrow from some of their principles – all of them are dairy and gluten free, and rely on really basic, yet fresh ingredients, maintaining that high nutritional content we love so much. If you want to read a little more about how paleo works, James has put together an article here that looks at the basics and assesses some scientific studies on whether it works for weight loss and certain health conditions.
This month’s Brilliant Base comes in the form of a vegan creamy salad dressing that owes much to a miracle of science. Unlike a traditional mayonnaise where you have to drip oil slowly into eggs, with this version, omega-3 rich extra virgin olive oil and aquafaba (the canning water from chickpeas) form a creamy emulsion when mixed together at high speed. It’s a lot like traditional mayonnaise but with fewer calories.
The recipe adds a peri-peri touch thanks to some gorgeous aromatics to create a dressing that is perfect drizzled on beef carpaccio (pictured), as a spicy accompaniment to a caesar or any other kind of salad. It can even be used as a marinade to coat a protein of choice before cooking. We’ll show you how to do that in future updates.
Pork tenderloin – also known as fillet or ‘the other white meat’ – is a really underrated cut. It’s high in protein, low in fat and calories, and full of B vitamins and minerals – plus it’s cost friendly too. We’ve got a new skills video that shows how to prep it, a pork Milanese recipe that shows how to cook it with a nut crumb to increase the protein, and a great new side, an antioxidant-packed salsa verde, which complements it perfectly.
Simple and nutrition packed, this salad Niçoise is a great early-summer light lunch option. We give you a choice of tuna, langoustines or tiger prawns for the protein, or you could add roast tofu for a vegan version. The salad is packed with good fats and gets a small carb boost from new potatoes cooked in our Brilliant Base Bone Marrow Broth.
Another use for your Brilliant Base Tomato Fondue comes here in the form of acqua pazza (crazy water) – a traditional seafood stew inspired by Italian seafarers.
Thanks to the nutrition packed Fondue, you can have this done in 30 minutes or so for a really nice, quick and super tasty evening meal that includes a seafood of your choice.
Want another use for your Brilliant Base Aromatic Nage? Try these savoury custards that borrow from Japanese cuisine and have functional elements when it comes to keeping your bones strong. They take just a few minutes to make before you pop them in the fridge for a few hours to set. After that you can have tonnes of fun, topping them with a whole range of Asian-inspired goodies.
It’s a big month of new recipes for June, but we think we may well have saved the best until last: a paleo-inspired, vegetarian coconut ice cream. This sweet treat has some bone building properties and you know where every ingredient is coming from, so there are no fillers or binders. Oh, and it’s delicious too!
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