I posted a photo of these beauties on my Instagram and Facebook accounts this week, and got so many requests for the recipe that I thought I’d share.
This week, I’m doing a fall cleanse. I was telling a patient yesterday that it’s interesting how we can be in a pattern of habit for long periods of time, and then fall out of those habits quickly and easily when life gets busy and our priorities shift. I used to have a habit of cleansing, or at the very least being strictly clean with my diet for a few weeks, a couple of times a year; change of season (spring and fall) being my two favourite times to embark on a cleanse. But I realized this month that it had been over a year and a half since my last true cleanse! So much for walking the walk and living like you preach. I have a million excuses, but none of them are good ones! So I picked up a couple of herbal detox kits, and here we are.
With this particular cleanse, we’re eliminating most inflammatory foods, and in particular are watching those foods that fuel candida (an opportunistic yeast). With this approach, we can still have eggs and caffeine, but off the table are dairy, flours of any kind, sugar and all sweeteners, some high glycemic fruits (bananas and tropical fruits), and a few other odds and ends. The diet is high in colourful veggies, healthy proteins, good quality saturated and unsaturated fats, and some whole grains (rice, quinoa, millet, buckwheat).
In order to prepare ourselves, on the weekend we made three batches of these vegetable flatbreads (recipe is from Green Kitchen Stories, one of my favourite vegetarian recipe sites). They’re soft and flexible, but hearty and have a delicious flavour used as a sandwich bread or under eggs and avocado; their texture reminds me of a thin foccacia.
Try them – I promise they’re easy and they are a great way to get in a few extra servings of veggies in your day.
Green Broccoli Flatbread - Green Kitchen Stories
Ingredients:
1 large head of raw broccoli
1 cup almond flour/ground almonds (we used a food processor)
4 eggs
1 tsp dried herbs of choice (we used oregano, but thyme would work too), optional
sea salt and black pepper to taste
Directions:
1. preheat oven to 400F and line a baking tray with parchment paper
2. coarsely chop the broccoli (use the stem too), place in food processor and blend until you have a fine rice-like texture
3. measure 4 cups of the ‘veggie rice’ and place in a mixing bowl; add ground almonds, salt, pepper and herbs (if using), and mix with your hands
4. make a well in the centre and add the eggs. Whisk the eggs with a fork and then use your hands to pull the dry ingredients toward the middle until everything is combined and you can shape it into a ball. It will be much more wet than a bread dough – that’s ok!
5. transfer the ball to baking paper and smush down into the shape of the tray with your hands
6. bake on the middle rack of the oven for 23-25 minutes, or until slightly golden and firm. Remove from the oven and let cool completely. Turn it upside down on a cutting board, remove the baking paper, and cut into bread-size slices to store in the fridge
We also made Beet Flatbread and Carrot Flatbread from the Green Kitchen website. The recipes are almost identical to the Broccoli Flatbread above, with a change in the veggies used to make the ‘veggie rice.’
For Beet Flatbread: use 2 medium raw beetroots, peeled, and a small head of cauliflower – blitz in food processor and use 4 cups of this veggie rice to make the flatbread as above
For Carrot Flatbread: use 1 large carrot, peeled, and a small head of cauliflower to make the veggie rice
Enjoy! In health,
Dr. Kali MacIsaac HBSc, ND Naturopathic Doctor