Tag Archives: healthy

African Peanut Soup with Collard Greens & Crispy Tofu

So I’ve been tinkering with this recipe for a few days. I’ve had many African Peanut Soup and I love them all. Some of the recipes I’ve seen incorporate collard greens, others swiss chard. Some not any greens at all, which doesn’t sound fun. I made this really simple but love the slight bitterness of greens against the saltiness of the peanut which also provides just a touch of sweet. A lot of recipes call for brown sugar or sugar, but I think its perfectly balanced to omit it and just go straight for the real natural flavor. A little crispy tofu, chopped minutes and a finish with sea salt, makes it perfect. Hope you agree.

African Peanut Soup
2 tbsp sunflower oil
1 medium yellow onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbsp cumin
1 Tbsp coriander
1 Tbsp curry powder
1 quart vegetable broth
2 medium carrots, diced
1 bunch Collard Greens, chopped
1 cup peanut butter
1 can coconut milk
2 tbsp finely chopped peanuts (for garnish)
sea salt
Sriracha

In a large stock pot, heat oil over medium heat. Add onions and garlic, cook 5 minutes or until they begin to sweat. Add spices and stir. Add vegetable broth, carrots and collard greens. Cook for about 30 minutes until the carrots are fully cooked. Add peanut butter and coconut milk and pulse with an immersion blender or transfer to a blender (careful, HOT!) and blend until there are no more chunks. Pat dry some tofu and fry on medium heat on all sides until crispy, put tofu on top, finish with peanuts and sea salt and maybe a little Sriracha.

Thai Coconut Milk Soup with Shirataki Noodles

In this long adventure into healthier cooking, we sometimes have a longing for things that are just taboo, save for the one day a week we indulge. The lack of carbohydrate rich foods in our diet did leave something missing. I don’t know if it’s psychological or physiological. It’s hard to say. Assuming its psychological, finding substitutes should help.

Every few months I like to bust out this Thai soup that is packed with veggies. But most Thai soups tend to have noodles. Occasionally I would add julienned zucchini to the soup which…helped…but wasn’t great. To compensate for that I started using Shirataki Noodles. They are made from a white yam, but unlike most yams it has no sugar and is very low in carbohydrates. It barely has any calories either. Evidently it expands in your stomach too, giving you the feeling of fullness. This isn’t so much an issue for us, as we eat as much as we want of the healthy stuff, which is a lot less now than it was 8 months ago. I think naturally our stomachs just shrank, along with the rest of us. Some shirataki are made from tofu. I try to avoid those b/c we already eat too much soy aside from the fact that they really don’t taste as good as real shirataki noodles. The tofu is seasoned with a little soy sauce but you can use Bragg’s Liquid Amino’s instead. My girlfriend doesn’t like the word “amino” so she doesn’t go anywhere near the stuff. Alternatively, if you are not a vegetarian you could use chicken (which is how I prefer it)

Thai Coconut Milk Soup With Shirataki Noodles
2 cans coconut milk
2 tbsp red thai curry paste
1 red onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 large red pepper, diced
1 large carrot, julienned
1 stalk lemongrass, cut in 3 inch pieces and smashed
4 cups vegetable broth
4 cups water
1 package tofu, extra firm
1 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp soy sauce or Bragg’s Liquid Aminos
2 packages shirataki noodles

Start by cutting the tofu into 1/2 inch thick slices. Wrap between paper towels and set on deep plate. Place a plate on top of it so that it squeezes all the water out for about 1/2 hour. Before unwrapping give another good squeeze then cut into 1/2 inch cubes. Heat sesame oil in a non-stick pan over medium-high heat and saute about 3-4 minutes on each side until tofu is crispy. Toss in soy sauce in pan and mix until well incorporated. Remove from heat.

Separate the coconut cream from the coconut milk. Add cream to a large stock pot over medium-high heat. Mix in thai paste and cook until fragrant. Add onions and garlic and saute until the onions sweat – about 4 minutes. Then add peppers, carrots, and lemon grass. Mix well for 1-2 minutes. Add broth and water and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer and cover and let cook for 25 minutes. In the meantime, drain your shirataki noodles (they may smell funny but that smell goes away after you cook them. After the soup cooks for 25 minutes, add shirataki noodles and cook for another 5-10 minutes on simmer. Use tongs to remove desired amount of noodle into bowl. Use a ladle to spoon vegetables and broth into bowl. Top with tofu and enjoy.

Sous Vide Bittman Chinese Chicken with Bok Choy: Another 4 Hour Chef Exercise

So I’m back at the 4 Hour Chef book today and decided to make the bittman chinese chicken recipe from the book. The recipe in the book calls to steam the chicken but I think that was more for practicality. Since I can Sous Vide, I will. 60c (140F) for 95 minutes was all I needed to get a smooth meaty texture out of the chicken. 10 minutes at the same heat for the Bok Choy kept the leaves green and crisp, with just a little give to the white part of the greens: Perfection. Not that there was much taste in it until I added the wonderful sauce made with sunflower oil, sesame oil, scallion, ginger and soy sauce. After the photo, I just drenched the entire dish in the sauce and devoured it very quickly.

Spicy Harissa & Scallion Low Carb Crab Cakes (The 4 Hour Chef)

I got my copy of The The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life, Tim Ferriss’s follow up to The 4 Hour Body, a lifestyle change that I made about 5 months ago and has resulted in pretty amazing weight losses in that time. The one thing that 4HB lacked was creativity in cooking. Tim attempts to make up for it in this book by introducing some great new slow carb meals. Having only skimmed through the chapters at this point, I can see that he also teaches us how to clean a deer, build a fire and tie a knot. I’m certain there is tons more, but for now I’m just sticking to the cooking. Not that I am a stranger to slow carb cooking. There is certainly a monotony to this regimen and I couldn’t stand for it so I made my own recipes, which you can see here. But now I’ve got a book from the master Reverend Tim, as I like to call him. First up is this wonderful crab cake, which I just devoured minutes ago. Not a bad way to utilize $10 worth of canned lump crab meat. The low carb crab cakes recipe is simple an egg white, a chopped scallion, a little harissa and crab meat, mixed all together, fried in a pan and sprayed with a little lime juice. I decided to make mine a meal…and I could seriously eat another batch of these things right now. They are amazing.

Thai Cabbage Salad with Chicken

I’ve gotten into the habit of making this salad at least every other week. Sometimes it’s once a week. It’s very easy to make with a little prep work involved. I recently bought and OXO mandoline slicer to make julienning carrots easier – my knife skills are least to be desired. The great things about this salad: The flavor and kick are amazing and for two people, this salad stretches out over at least 2 meals each. To make this meal vegan, you can use WestSoy’s Seitan Strips – sometimes I prefer them over the chicken.

The original recipe called for sugar, which is something that is annoying the hell out of me lately with the supposed healthy options at restaurants. I had this great salad at a mexican restaurant, only to find out afterwards that the dressing had sugar in it. The dressing would have been just as good without the added sugar. And with this Thai Cabbage Salad we have a perfectly robust and flavorful salad with a dressing that has some amazing spice and kick and we want to ruin it with sugar? Sure, sugar tastes good, but can’t we get the same effect by omitting the sugar? The lemon and lime juice are added to give it a little sweetness without the damaging effects of blood sugar spikes. Something that I am trying to avoid to lose excess fat. Lemons, limes and grapefruit have a surprisingly leveling effect on blood sugar, but it should be noted that it doesn’t work all the time, only occasionally and in small amounts. I try to incorporate a small squeeze of lemon in almost every salad I make.

Thai Cabbage Salad (adapted from the epicurious recipe)
Makes: 4 humongous bowls
Serving Size: 1 humongous bowl
Protein: 20 grams
Carbs: 14 grams

Salad
1 small to medium head Red Cabbage, shredded
1 small to medium head Savoy or Green Cabbage, shredded
1 large red pepper, diced
3 carrots, julienned
1 large cucumber, seeded and diced thin
1 bunch green onion, sliced thin
1/2 cup tightly packed basil, chopped
1/2 cup tightly packed cilantro, chopped
1 cup unsalted peanuts

Mix all ingredients together, except for the peanuts, top with dressing, chicken and peanuts just before serving, season with a little salt and Sriracha if necessary.

Dressing
1/2 cup sunflower oil
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 Tbsp, Sesame Oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 jalapeno pepper, minced (seeded for less spice)
Zest and Juice of 1 Lemon
Zest and Juice of 1 Lime
2 Tbsp Sriracha

Mix all ingredients together, shake vigorously in a jar to emulsify.

Chicken
2 chicken breasts, diced
1 tsp, turmeric
1 tsp, ground ginger
1 tsp, garlic
1 tsp, salt
1 tsp, cumin

Season the chicken with the spices and cook over medium heat, stirring regularly for about 6 minutes or until thoroughly cooked.

Vegan Ingenuity – Maimonides of Brooklyn – Brooklyn, NYC

Maimonides of Brooklyn (MOB) - Boerum Hill, Brooklyn

Interior dining area of MOB

Their menu comes with it’s own MOB comic book. They make “cheesecake” by culturing almond milk with probiotics. Need I say more? Well, yes, I should. The menu is simple, in a good way. The MOB’s are amazing – my favorites are the Iron Man and The Belly Charmer (pictured below). But this special one, made by chef Neal Harden, is not on the menu. It features avocado, zucchini and tomato with olive tapenade. The bread is a crispy and soft flatbread (which also comes gluten-free) that is shaped like the arches of the Brooklyn Bridge and out of this world. The presentation of these are really cool. The quinoa salad is refreshing and filling. Kale chips are served like tortilla chips at a mexican restaurant and you can have as many as you want. And as it turns out are super simple to make (recipe after the photographs). I’m not a vegan but if I ate at this place everyday, I’d have no complaints.

Maimonides of Brooklyn (MOB)
525 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn 11217
(718) 797-2555

Quinoa Salad dressed in lime, scallion and mint, candy beets, avocado, pumpkin seeds, toasted cumin

Belly Charmer MOB tagine of eggplant, zucchini, and carrot, moroccan spices, pistachio, mint and cilantro and Special MOB of avocado, zucchini and tomato with olive tapenade

Special MOB of avocado, zucchini and tomato with olive tapenade

Belly Charmer MOB tagine of eggplant, zucchini, and carrot, moroccan spices, pistachio, mint and cilantro

Chocolate Cheesecake with Mango and Passion Fruit Sauce

Chef Neal Harden

Kale Chips

Kale Chips
note: this recipe does not make much, if you want more than just a snack or would like to stock up on the chips, you can double the recipe and store these in a sealed container for a few days
1 bunch of Kale, hard stems removed
Olive Oil
Sea Salt

Toss Kale Chips in Olive oil and sea salt to taste, lay flat on a baking dish and cook for 10-13 minutes at 350F.

Meatless Mondays: Spaghetti Squash and Lentil Meatballs

Everyone loves the low-carb diets out there. They really do help you lose weight. Unfortunately they also leave you yearning for those carbo-meals that you love. Here is one that should do the trick and to top it off, it’s vegetarian, using a lentil base for the meatball. This brings me to my next point: The low carb lifestyle has put prominence on the high protein lifestyle which can also mean high-fat lifestyle, which is probably worse for your heart than being overweight on carbs. Which is why these meatballs, when fried in a good oil, are still very heart healthy. And if you want to be even more heart-healthy, you can just bake them. Personally I use sunflower oil so that I can get a nice crunch in a matter of minutes on these meatballs. Speaking of meatless meatballs, I think it is important to have a meat-free day at least once a week. Since my girlfriend is a vegetarian, it is essentially every night, unless I go out to dinner. But when I cook for us, I cook vegetarian. I think we both miss these great american (or italian) staples in our diet, so we choose to do them in a much healthier way. Plus, reducing meat consumption once a week is really great for the environment.

Spaghetti Squash & Lentil Meatballs (serves 4)

One Large Spaghetti Squash

Preheat oven to 375F
Poke holes in your squash and place on a shallow baking sheet, whole
Cook until throughly cooked 45 minutes to an 1 hour.
Let cool for a few minutes then cut in half, lengthwise. scrape out seeds in the center and with a fork gently pull strands of the squash out. Toss with a little salt and set aside

4 cups of your favorite homemade pasta sauce

Lentil meatballs
1 cup lentils
2 cups vegetable broth
1 cup breadcrumbs
1 cup arugula, finely chopped
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cloves garlic, minced
2/3 cup ricotta cheese
1/3 cup parmesan cheese
Salt & Pepper, to taste
frying oil, enough to half cover the meatballs in the pan (rec: sunflower oil)

Cook 1 cup lentils in a saucepan with 2 cups of broth. Bring to a boil for 2-3 minutes, then cover and let cook for 30-45 minutes or until lentils are soft. Let cool drain any access juice. Puree the lentils in a blender and then add all the additional ingredients in a bowl. Hand mix until everything is well combined. Refrigerate the mixture for 3 hours. Once the mixture has set, form into 2 tablespoon sized balls and cook in frying oil for a few minutes on each side to brown. Push the balls down a little bit if they seem to be cooking unevenly. And flip often to make sure they fully cook inside. Once cooked, transfer to a plate with paper and let excess oil drain off.

Arrange a small amount of spaghetti squash on plate. Spoon sauce on top of the squash and then arrange a desired number of meatballs (4 is good) on top of sauce. Top with freshly grated parmesan cheese. Enjoy.

Slow Food Is A Good Thing – Northern Spy: East Village, NYC

It’s not some cheesy spy-themed restaurant. It’s a type of apple. Northern Spy, in The East Village, was started in 2009 by Christophe Hille, Nathan Foot, and Chris Ronis. It prides itself on the principles of Slow Food which means that everything is always fresh and seasonal. One may not need to eat like this all of the time, but they should most of the time. It is more than just a health issue, it is an environmental one as well.

The Slow Food Movement, founded by Carlo Petrini in 1986, is the ultimate alternative to fast food. It gives prominence to farmers and combats the globalization of agriculture. With over 100,000 members in 132 countries it promotes small businesses, sustainability and local agriculture.

Restaurants like Northern Spy are a great example of how the restaurant industry can improve their impact on their environment on both a local and global level. I’m often appalled by restaurant business practices, the waste they produce and the massive PR they do to counteract all the negative crap they put out there. It seems like it would be easier to just do it right the first time – and I’m not just talking about fast food restaurants.

Oh and Northern Spy makes some pretty amazing food as well.

Northern Spy Food Co.
511 East 12th Street
(between Ave. A and Ave B)
New York, NY 10009
212-228-5100

Chef Nathan Foot of Northern Spy