Magic sauces
The basis of the magic sauce, or «salsactiva», is to blend activated seeds (soaked — see sprouts) with spices, water and oil. On top of that you can add raw or cooked vegetables, soups, juices, spices, brewer’s yeast, superfoods… A useful trick is to add plantago, psyllium husk, wheat germ or soy lecithin to help it emulsify.
First blend the seed base as finely as you can with a little water. I recommend starting with sunflower seeds because they’re cheap. It’s also worth adding chia or flax, which release mucilage and help it bind (soak them first, and add the soaking water too in this case). Then add oil and water, mixing until you find the right texture — you can even take it all the way to an emulsion, a vegan mayonnaise.
For the emulsion to work you need the protein from the seeds. If they aren’t ground finely enough it won’t bind well; you can add the lecithin or the wheat germ, and pour the oil in little by little.
The seed base, preferably oilseeds, can be chia, flax, almond, hazelnut, walnut, hemp, cashew, macadamia, sesame, sunflower, pumpkin, pistachio…
The juice of one lemon helps preserve it. You can add more things: other juices, or infusions, or broths, or even a whole tomato as a source of water, or cooked vegetables.
It matters that the oil is virgin. It can be olive or sunflower for the bulk of it, or walnut, hemp or another seed oil — and seasonings such as tamari for a touch of flavour.
To mix with salad, add more water so it spreads better.
The blend of spices and different superfoods is what gives you different sauces.
My favourite spices are dill, oregano, basil, cumin, fennel, ginger, coriander… also mint and spearmint raw, and rosemary and thyme as a decoction…
Colours matter a lot:
- Red — pepper, tomato, garlic sauce with paprika
- Orange — pumpkin, carrot
- Yellow — turmeric (worth mixing with black pepper: the piperine boosts the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect of the curcumin)
- Pink — beetroot, tomato
- Green — spirulina, moringa or chlorella
- Purple — red cabbage, beetroot
Blue — red cabbage + bicarbonate; you can also get phycocyanin, the blue pigment from spirulina
You can also make sweet sauces with the same technique, adding a sweetener (panela, honey, syrup…), cacao, fruit, maca, cinnamon… The «sicilla» (a positive, vegan and simple take on chocolate spread) would be sweetener, cacao and cinnamon with a little oil.
