Your Body Is A Temple
Give it a little TLC when it’s hot out!
Today’s forecast called for scorching heat. Before heading upstairs for the bed last night, I pulled out my Speedy Bosh! cookbook and set it open to the page to make My Body’s A Temple Elixir first thing this morning to kickstart my system with a load of nutrient-full hydrating fluid.
It is set apart from your average green juice by the addition of fresh herbs plus an infusion of lemongrass stalks and cardamom. It takes a little longer to make thanks to this, but the flavor boost is freaking fantastic. Well worth it! While the aromatics are infusing in the juice in the refrigerator, you can clean up your prep mess and be ready to be on to the next thing in your day.
Awesomely refreshing!
My Body’s A Temple Elixir
from Speedy Bosh! by Henry Firth & Ian Theasby
Makes 2 servings
Or one big one….I sipped on mine all morning and it kept me full until the afternoon.
INGREDIENTS
For the juice
2 small pears*
1 lime
5 oz cucumber
2 oz spinach leaves
handful of fresh mint leaves
handful of fresh cilantro leaves
2 tbsp real maple syrup
3/4 cup filtered water (or more as needed to thin as desired)
For the aromatics
2 lemongrass stalks
6 cardamom pods
1 makrut lime leaf (optional)
For garnish
Handful of mixed fresh berries
Ice
TOOLS
Chef’s knife
Cutting board
Blender
Sieve for straining blended mixture
Container large enough to accommodate sieve
Measuring cup
Food scale
INSTRUCTIONS
Chill 2 tumblers before preparing the juice.
(I didn’t, opting instead to grab a medium-sized Mason jar when I was ready to strain the elixir, and then stuck some fruit garnish on it and used it as a drinking vessel without dirtying another glass.)
Prepare the juice
Wash and dry all of the produce.
Cut a few thin slices from the pears and reserve them for later. Roughly chop the rest of the pears and put them in the blender.
*I didn’t have pears on hand, so I substituted apples. It is possible that this resulted in a thicker blended texture, so I added more than the 3/4 cup of water specified in the original recipe to thin out the elixir.Zest half the lime and add the zest to the blender. Halve the lime and squeeze the juice from both halves into the blender.
Cut a few slices of cucumber and reserve them for garnish, then roughly chop the rest and add to the blender.
Reserve a few mint and cilantro leaves for garnish, then roughly chop the rest of the mint and cilantro and add to the blender.
Add the remaining juice ingredients to the blender (maple syrup, spinach leaves, water). Blend until very smooth.
Infuse the juice with aromatics
Roughly chop the lemongrass and, if using, the lime leaf.
(I did not use the lime leaf as I didn’t have it on hand.)Crush the cardamom pods with the flat of a chef’s knife.
Add the aromatics to the juice in the blender and blend briefly to roughly break them all up.
Transfer full blender jar to the refrigerator to infuse for 15 minutes.
Serve
Set a few berries aside for garnishing and roughly chop the rest.
Add the reserved pear (or apple) slices, cucumber, and the chopped berries to the chilled glasses along with some ice. (If I were entertaining, I’d probably go all the way and do this, but I took a much simpler route. I put a quick cut into a lime wedge and a thin apple slice and hooked them over the edge of my Mason jar.)
Strain the juice, then pour it into the glasses.
(I strained directly into my Mason jar-turned-drinking glass before garnishing.)Garnish with the reserved herbs and remaining berries.
(When you do this, it will be jazzy, but the elixir still tastes extra without the fancy dressing up.)
Source Material
Speedy Bosh! is a quirky book. I love some of the recipes in the book (published back in the Covid age, circa 2020) and can absolutely pass on others. This green juice is one of the hits, as is Ivory Coast Squash & Peanut Stew (which always makes more than we can eat in one meal, so it feels like the cooking effort has double payoff) and Asparagus & Herb Tabbouleh.
I got the cookbook when visiting an expat friend of mine in Mexico, who had been helping another expat in her village declutter following the death of her husband. In his advanced age, he had decided he wanted to learn how to cook many different kinds of food. He proceeded to order a library’s worth of cookbooks from Amazon. His widow — not a cook — had no use for them after his demise. My friend offered to take them, organize the inventory and sell them to raise funds for a local charity. In exchange for two handfuls of pesos, I bought the book off my friend and spent innumerable hours wondering what on earth the title meant.
According to urbandictionary.com, bosh is a term from the UK that basically means incredibly good food. There are some variant definitions that peg it more specifically as having to do with hearty working class food.
In other words, the book is a guide to making good food quickly. All of it happens to be 100% plant-based, too.
Apparently the authors are famous, and have their own tv show. But I had never heard of them before I stumbled across this book in my friend’s makeshift bookshop.
The authors dedicate the first section of the book to tips on how to prepare food quickly and offer technique hacks like grating garlic with the skin on instead of peeling and mincing it, boiling risotto rice in stock for 5 minutes before starting to make risotto, or using a blender to make instant sorbet. Who can’t use a few hacks and a little more time? There are many ways to treat yourself to a little TLC.
Stay cool!