How to Make a Raw Walnut Taco Part 1/2

Part 1. Learn how to make a delicious walnut taco which is meatless. Matt Amsden shows Nili how to prepare this taco. Watch the Salsa Video for the finale.

How to Make a Raw Walnut Taco Part 1/2 Nili: Hi, I’m Nili Nathan here, I’m standing with Matt Amsden who wrote this book, RAWVolution and we’re in his café. Hi, Matt. Matt Amsden: Hi, how are you? Nili: Good, I’m really excited to see what you’re going to make for us. His café, Euphoria, loves RAWVolution is in Sta. Monica on mainstream and it is a fantastic place. They also have a grocery store where you can buy wonderful raw food items to get you started on the road to raw food. Matt Amsden: Absolutely. Nili: So what were you telling me, you’re going to make -- Matt Amsden: We’re going to make the soft taco with fresh tomato salsa. Nili: That sounds really good. And you were saying that this is going to be very simple because your philosophy is to make it accessible to people. Matt Amsden: Absolutely. There are a lot of people interested in raw food but if it becomes too complicated or there’s too much equipment that’s necessary, then people tend not to be able to do it. So we’re going to make something that’s super easy. Ingredients are very easily accessible and there’s not a lot of equipment needed. Nili: Great. Okay, so let’s get started. Matt Amsden: Very good. Alright, so this is going to be the base of our taco. So instead of a tortilla, we’re going to use a collard green which is just a nice way to get a little bit of greens into your diet and it’s super easy to use. I mean, look, we’ve got a nature grow us a tortilla. So we’ll start with that. And the filling for the taco is, we’re going to make walnut meat which we’re going to start with fresh walnuts. We’re going to need 1 ½ cup of those. We’re going to put them into the food processor. Nili: Walnuts really do make an excellent mock meat substitute. Matt Amsden: Yes, they’re very rich. Nili: I’ve used them to make muffin meatloaf. It’s just great. Very high in protein too and iron, right? Matt Amsden: Definitely, yeah. They’re fantastically for you. We’re just going to grind this up a little bit, not so they’re super fine. Next we need a teaspoon and a half of cumin. Now this is a product called Nama Shoyu which is an unpasteurized soy sauce. And this is going to be the binder that holds this mixture together. Nili: Why is that better than regular soy sauce? Matt Amsden: First of all, this is organic and secondly, it’s unpasteurized which means it’s never been expose to high heat. So it has a lot of the nutritional properties still intact. and that’s really the whole basis of what we’re doing here with raw food; taking food the way it was grown initially and -- Nili: What nature intended. Matt Amsden: Yes, and just not doing anything to it or not minimizing the processing so that it still maintains the nutritional properties that it began with, vitamins and minerals, and the enzymes. I mean this is four ingredients and it’s taking us two minutes to make. So the notion that raw food has to be very labor intensive and -- Nili: It‘s actually it’s easier than cooking. Matt Amsden: Right, I mean, we’re not going to burn ourselves. Nili: Right. Matt Amsden: Everybody’s heard of walnuts and soy sauce and spices, so it’s not -- Nili: Right. Matt Amsden: The ingredients are so -- Nili: You just have to get the walnuts raw, not roasted or salted. Matt Amsden: Right, exactly. So that’s it, that’s done. That’s our first part.