Cilantro Pesto Collard Wrap

After my "Best Ever" smoothie on Sunday I was feeling really inspired. We decided to have Rumil's parents over for dinner. Rumil was preparing flank steak for tacos so I knew I had to come up with something equally exciting. I made some cilantro pesto (my go too ;) stuffed mushrooms with some beautiful organic baby bell mushrooms from Farm Fresh To You.

OH. Major Sidebar right here for a minute: my nifty celery in water technique...total fail. I tried to rinse it first and it went limp. I tried not rinsing it, and it still went limp. I put it in the door instead of on the top shelf, and it still went limp. Finally, I tried to do what Mimi, the author of Live Raw, my Bible, suggested and keep it in the crisper and then when it's ready to be used, rinse it, wrap in a paper towel and put back in crisper. All of these tactics to no avail.

Back to Sunday night dinner...I went all out and made Collard Green Wraps, baby. That's right! Was I in the kitchen for four hours? Yes. Did I love every minute of it? Maybe not every minute, but for the most part, it was a great experience. And honestly, if I had a mandolin I would probably have only been in there for two hours. But I was like slicing, and slicing again. To julienne by hand ain't easy! My fiance was doing homework so I used him as my taste tester for the first two wraps I made.

Mimi suggested rubbing down the collard leaves with oil, lemon, and salt...seemed greasy. I decided to just rub down the inside of the wrap. Also, while chopping, slicing, and dicing vegetables for the collards, I had my bin out for veggies for our salad for the week - which is now lasting three days. So a little went into this pile and a little went into the that pile. After I made all the wraps the left over red bell peppers (which I never buy but are in so many raw food recipes so I did - organic - so freaking juicy and beautiful delicious), sliced carrots and radish went into the salad bin.

I had made my fiance a raw trail mix so I put that out for the parents in addition to the stuffed mushrooms and we had some organic tortilla chips and fresh made guac. When my FMIL saw me making the collard wraps she thought I was attempting to make dolma! Ha! She is an amazing cook so I would never even attempt that without her help.  She asked me if I was going to cook the wraps. I said, "They are Good. To. Go."

When we sat down for dinner, she said, "This is how a table should be." What she meant by that was you should only have what's necessary for your dinner. At her house they always have a HUMONGOUS spread out. I'm talking about a few different kinds of cheese, a couple baskets of warm bread, a few different kinds of meat, rice and/or potatoes, etc. etc. There could be two people or twenty people...it's a full on feast. His parents still think I'm crazy because I drink my tea without a "sweet."

You know by now my directions for recipes are all over the place, so please, if you just remember one thing, do whatever you want! Make it yours!

What you need:

Collard Greens

Little bit of EVOO, oil, and fresh lemon 

Radishes

4 Carrots (If you have huge carrots, I would use one - I had small ones from produce box)

1 Red Bell Pepper

Mushroom stems

Celery

Cilantro

Jalapeno (you choose how much - I used half)

2 Cloves Garlic

Red Onion (I didn't have any but it would have been a great addition)

Cilantro Pesto (see http://www.fromsadtoraw.com/Recipes/CilantroPesto.htm and don't let the picture scare you - it looks nothing like that. Also, I use twice as much spinach and a fourth of the oil. It calls for way too much oil. Another thing, you can pretty much use whatever nut you want. If you use pine nuts, you really don't need a lot of oil.)

Step One: Make the cilantro pesto. Go ahead and stuff some mushrooms with it while you're at it.

Step Three: Using a mandolin (or lots of time) julienne red bell pepper, carrots, and radish. Set aside

Step Four: Mix oil, lemon, and dash of sea salt. I poured oil into 1/4 cup measuring cup, added fresh squeezed lemon and a few cracks of Himalayan Sea Salt. Keep on cutting board next to collards.

Step Five: Slice stem out of collard green. Hopefully I don't have to tell you to rinse them. Mimi suggests rinsing, wrapping in towel and putting in crisper until ready to use, so that's what I did. Dip your fingers (yes, your fingers, like my FMIL said when I apologized for using my fingers: "If you don't use your fingers, you can't cook") into the mixture of oil, lemon and salt and rub gently on dull side of leaf. 

Take one small spoonful of pesto and spread down center of collard green (shiny side down but it doesn't really matter. I go with natural shape of collard). 

Take one large pinch of stem/cilantro/celery/etc. mix and place along cilantro

Take few carrot, radish, and bell pepper sticks and place longways (so they stick out of top of collard) on top of mixture

And Wrap. Just like a burrito; wrap it up. If you want to leave it open on both ends, go for it. I wrapped it up so everything stayed in there nice and neat. It was a blast.

I will note here that I used the remainder of the cilantro pesto to lightly coat our vegetable mixture for lunchtime salads and in the morning I have been placing that over a bed of lettuce. The Pyrex are perfect for this. Last night the mixture was already getting low so I sliced cucumber and gradually stirred it into the mix. Perfecto.