Making Tasty Raw Food

An excerpt from chapter 1 of Eating Without Heating by Sergei and Valya Boutenko

"When we prepare, we use recipes only as ideas, as general guidelines, or just for the ingredients. Then we adjust the final taste using a method of five tastes. There are thousands of different tastes in natural food, but when we balance five major ones, the food is so delicious that everyone says, "Wow!" These five tastes are: sweet, sour, salty, spicy, and bitter. When you learn to balance the five tastes, you will make delicious food. When all five groups of taste buds on your tongue are excited, you will say, "Wow!"

When you attempt to un-cook a delicious meal, make sure that all five tastes are present in the final taste and not one is missing. Each of the five tastes doesn't have to be strong, but just enough for a practical dish. For example, the strongest tastes in a garden burger should be sweet, spicy, and salty with only a touch of sour and bitter, but all five need to be present. Otherwise, the garden burger will taste bland."

"For sour taste add: lemons, cranberries, rhubarb, lemon grass, sour grass, sorrel, tomatoes, rejuvelac, nut or seed yogurt, or apple cider vinegar.

For sweet taste add: dry fruit such as figs, dates, prunes, raisins; fresh fruits such as ripe banana, mango, peach, pear; apple juice, orange juice, raw honey, or fresh stevia leaves.

For spicy taste add: garlic leaves or cloves, onion leaves or bulbs, ginger, mustard greens or seeds, radish, horseradish, cayenne pepper, wasabe sea weed, herbs, fresh or dry as basil, dill, cilantro, rosemary, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla or peppermint.

For salty taste add: celery, cilantro, dill, parsley, or sea vegetables such as dulse, kelp, nori, arame, or Celtic sea salt.

For a bitter taste add: parsley, celery tops, endive, garlic, onions, dandelion, bay leaf, sage, poultry seasoning, or cayenne pepper."

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