A Simple Fantasy of the Food Variety

Sometimes all I want to do is order a huge sushi boat, with as much raw salmon as I can possibly get my hands on; find the rawest juice in all of North America, preferably made by artisans in the most back-alley, suspect conditions; get 2-dozen oysters; a massive amount of illegal unpasteurized cheese straight off the boat from France and since we’re ordering from France might as well throw a steak tartare in there, a very rare steak (preferably with some blood dripping) and some pate too; buy 20 cases of your most raw egg-filled cookie dough (replete with chocolate chips) and go in hard. Really get into it like the Romans with their Vomitoriums might (an idea I’ve always been strangely fascinated by — eating until they vomited and vomiting so they could then eat more). What a concept!

Source: Sample6

It would be ill-advised, gluttonous even for the healthiest person alive, and needless to say, supremely disgusting. I don’t even want to picture what all those different tastes would do to someone. But that’s what I fantasize about, sometimes. On my really dark days, or even on my good days. I remember having C. Difficile and watching the entire season of Chef’s Table on Netflix, all about haute-cuisine. Masochism at its finest and most self-flagellating if I do say so. Starving, unable to eat anything at all and taking in some hifalutin docu-series about the best restaurants in the world.

I have never ordered one of these in my entire life. In my fantasy it’s the only thing I order, anywhere. Source: Pinterest

I’m not even hungry at this particular moment, and I only had a fond propensity for most of these things at best before I wasn’t allowed to have them. It’s not as if I was a connoisseur of French pate and kept stockpiles of it in my basement, I barely even liked the stuff. I had basically gone off sushi in recent years after reading too much about it and losing the taste for it, and would only ever order avocado rolls. And I certainly wasn’t in the habit of buying tubs of cookie dough and shovelling it into my mouth on a Friday night, surrounded by Tollhouse wrappers. Plus, I was a vegetarian for nearly 6 years in my early 20s and even when I started eating meat again, it was with some pause and the frequency at which I would eat it was maybe once a month — if that. I did love a $1 oyster though. And you’d have to be heartless to NOT like cookie dough, especially if you get happen to get the organic, locally sourced, farm-raised artisan one sent to your work and someone gives it to you and then you sit at your desk eating it for about an hour whilst trying to do work but really just reading the pretty label over and over as spoon after spoon makes its way to your mouth (is it just me that that happened to? One of the perks/pitfalls of working in late-night television). There is a simple solution to my cookie dough conundrum, though, and it’s to make this delicious dark chocolate concoction I used to make for a snack to bring to work with me, or just as a snack and then eat the whole thing before I even got to work.

This is not cookie dough. This is steak tartare. Otherwise known as fully and completely raw meat with a bit of mustard. Source: French Guy Cooking

Remember: I am by no means a chef (I don’t even play one on TV) and this is something I just came up with after playing around with all sorts of vegan chocolate recipes over the years.

Not Actually Cookie Dough But It’ll Do

• 2–3 tbs Coconut Oil (sometimes I add more depending on the consistency, play around with it to your liking)
• Half a bag raw almonds (soaked or unsoaked) — about 8oz or 225g. If you soak them, soak the almonds the night before. If you soak them, it’s easier to blend. But you also need foresight, so I usually just do it straight from the bag and it’s not that hard, just need to put a bit more muscle into the mixing.
• 3–4 heaping tbs Cacao powder (for transplant patients — this is a good source of magnesium, in which we are often deficient)
• a few pinches of flaky sea salt
• 3 pitted Medjool dates (I boil water in the kettle and pour over them to soften so they’ll come off the pit more easily and are softer for blending)
• 1 tbs Chia Seeds (totes optional)

Put coconut oil and almonds in first and mix until smooth, you may have to go in with a wooden spoon and keep manipulating the ‘dough’ so it all binds together. Then add the cacao powder, salt and dates (plus chia seeds if you feel like it).

Once smooth, you can either make it into little cookie dough balls or just put it in a jar like I do when I’m feeling lazy and consume at your risk, it’s pretty addictive. It’s also very filling because of the almonds which do make it a good snack and dose of protein. Put into the fridge for a couple of hours to let set, but not before tasting, obvs.

I know what you’re thinking. 1) ‘Where did she get such a professional photo of her cookie dough concoction?’ Off my iPhone, of course! 2) ‘That looks like shit!’ Yes, it does, there’s no denying it. But it tastes really amazing. Trust.

So that’s my beautiful dark twisted fantasy (hey, Kanye). But it’s my fantasy and I shall hold onto it until the end of time. Go get your own fantasy, mine is full of raw and undercooked food and is admittedly, pretty gross. And I hope to be able to make my fun cookie dough substitute one day soon when my upper arm strength gets back to normal and my indigestion subsides.