Tuesday, July 17, 2012
We are LIVE at the NEW Spice Doc!
Thursday, April 12, 2012
A Few Nibbles and a Bit of News
The reason I have been missing in action on here is I have thrown myself into the last few months of work for the launch of the new and improved Spice Doc site. It will still live at www.thespicedoc.com but not too long from now you will be directed to a fresh new site, with lots of exciting functions that will be unveiled when it's up. Who knew it could take so much love and work to build one of these? I have had my phenomenal friend, artist, and designer, Patricia Callison, imagining away at this for over a year now. If you want to see her incredible work go to Made in Mind. And about 6 months or so ago, Conor Browne, the Spice Doc programmer, joined and has been making Trish's beautiful ideas come to life with his own brilliance. In the meantime I chip away at the content little by little.
While I've been doing that, I've also been cooking up a (medicinal) storm with all kinds of herbs and ingredients, studying Mandarin 4 hours+++ every day, and have begun to translate medicinal cook book recipes into English. A few chefs have opened their doors for me to show me one on one their secret medicinal recipes. And many more people have shared what they've learned from their grandmothers, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, doctors, etc. in terms of the strongly ingrained culture of medicinal cooking here in China. Every day I'm learning something new. There's not much more you can ask for! I can't wait to share that with everyone, TCM practitioners and laymen alike.
See you very soon!
Thursday, April 5, 2012
The Three S's : Soups, Salad, and Spring
(recycled from 4/11/2010)
Now that Spring is arriving, it's time to lighten the food load a bit, and increase your fresh vegetable and fruit intake. However, it is still incredibly important to avoid going all raw and salad-crazy just because the weather is warmer. Your digestion is still like a furnace, even in the summer months, and works at it's optimum when you treat it kindly with warm foods. If you begin to plow yourself with one salad after another, many of you will find yourselves in the grips of gas, bloating, loose stools, phlegm attacks, sluggishness, or wrap around headaches.
A great way to protect your digestion but also crunch away on a crispy light salad, is to make a warm light soup to have before, or with, your salad. I prefer to keep the soups lighter and vegetable-based and I add a warm piece of cooked protein (such as fish or chicken) to the salad to add another warm element. Spring is a time for renewal and cleansing and evolving with the seasons makes sense for your health. Many people ask me about doing detoxes during this time, I don't personally recommend heavy detoxing if you are still living your life as usual, working, running around, and stressing, so I often recommend an "eating fast" which you can find information about here.
Below you will find the recipe for a vegetable, vitamin, and mineral rich soup (Spinach, Roasted Red Pepper, and Yogurt Soup) to pair with whatever your favorite salad might be. Spinach is cooling in thermal nature, with a sweet flavor. It is a wonderful vegetable for moistening and nourishing the body, especially in conditions that create thirst and dryness (such as diabetes) and also at the end of a long drying winter. Spinach can also treat constipation and urinary difficulty and is of course known for being high in vitamin A and calcium. Red peppers are excellent in treating stagnant digestion (often the case at the end of a winter full of cloying heavy foods), as well as being high in vitamin C, and increasing circulation. Plain yogurt adds good dairy as well as some probiotic action. Roasting the red peppers adds more energy to the food (or yang energy as it is referred to in Chinese Medicine), while still maintaining the moistening and yin quality of the food.
Spinach, Roasted Red Pepper, and Yogurt Soup
Ingredients: 1 bunch of spinach, 2 red peppers, chicken or vegetable stock, 1 sweet white onion, plain yogurt, extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper
1. Roast red peppers either over a low flame or under a broiler. Wash and place on a baking pan and make sure to turn each side as it blackens. Remove from oven and rinse under cool water, peel off outer layer of skin and slice into thin slices.
2. Chop up one whole onion and saute in extra virgin olive oil on a low heat until they begin to caramelize, add rinsed spinach and stir until it begins to soften.
3. Add 2-3 cups chicken or vegetable stock plus 1-2 cups of water (depending on how thick you want the soup), add salt and pepper to taste. Add roasated red peppers and let it sit on a slow boil for a few minutes so everything melds together.
4. Add one cup of yogurt and mix in. Remove soup from heat and let it cool. Blend into a thick consistency and reheat before serving. You can add an extra dollop of yogurt and minced cilantro and crunch sea salt on top before serving or just serve as is.
Enjoy!
Now that Spring is arriving, it's time to lighten the food load a bit, and increase your fresh vegetable and fruit intake. However, it is still incredibly important to avoid going all raw and salad-crazy just because the weather is warmer. Your digestion is still like a furnace, even in the summer months, and works at it's optimum when you treat it kindly with warm foods. If you begin to plow yourself with one salad after another, many of you will find yourselves in the grips of gas, bloating, loose stools, phlegm attacks, sluggishness, or wrap around headaches.
A great way to protect your digestion but also crunch away on a crispy light salad, is to make a warm light soup to have before, or with, your salad. I prefer to keep the soups lighter and vegetable-based and I add a warm piece of cooked protein (such as fish or chicken) to the salad to add another warm element. Spring is a time for renewal and cleansing and evolving with the seasons makes sense for your health. Many people ask me about doing detoxes during this time, I don't personally recommend heavy detoxing if you are still living your life as usual, working, running around, and stressing, so I often recommend an "eating fast" which you can find information about here.
Below you will find the recipe for a vegetable, vitamin, and mineral rich soup (Spinach, Roasted Red Pepper, and Yogurt Soup) to pair with whatever your favorite salad might be. Spinach is cooling in thermal nature, with a sweet flavor. It is a wonderful vegetable for moistening and nourishing the body, especially in conditions that create thirst and dryness (such as diabetes) and also at the end of a long drying winter. Spinach can also treat constipation and urinary difficulty and is of course known for being high in vitamin A and calcium. Red peppers are excellent in treating stagnant digestion (often the case at the end of a winter full of cloying heavy foods), as well as being high in vitamin C, and increasing circulation. Plain yogurt adds good dairy as well as some probiotic action. Roasting the red peppers adds more energy to the food (or yang energy as it is referred to in Chinese Medicine), while still maintaining the moistening and yin quality of the food.
Spinach, Roasted Red Pepper, and Yogurt Soup
Ingredients: 1 bunch of spinach, 2 red peppers, chicken or vegetable stock, 1 sweet white onion, plain yogurt, extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper
1. Roast red peppers either over a low flame or under a broiler. Wash and place on a baking pan and make sure to turn each side as it blackens. Remove from oven and rinse under cool water, peel off outer layer of skin and slice into thin slices.
2. Chop up one whole onion and saute in extra virgin olive oil on a low heat until they begin to caramelize, add rinsed spinach and stir until it begins to soften.
3. Add 2-3 cups chicken or vegetable stock plus 1-2 cups of water (depending on how thick you want the soup), add salt and pepper to taste. Add roasated red peppers and let it sit on a slow boil for a few minutes so everything melds together.
4. Add one cup of yogurt and mix in. Remove soup from heat and let it cool. Blend into a thick consistency and reheat before serving. You can add an extra dollop of yogurt and minced cilantro and crunch sea salt on top before serving or just serve as is.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Ramp(ing) up for Spring
(recycled from 4/22/2010)
Spring time is a yang time in Chinese Medicinal terms, while winter is a yin time. Many of you have heard and seen yin and yang theory thrown around loosely, adorned on tshirts, plastered on dorm room walls, imprinted on spa paraphenelia, carved into Acupuncture logos, and so on. Yin and yang theory is one of the major philosophical bases of Chinese Medicine and that little black and white swirly globe actually has some very beautifully simple and yet complex meaning. Simple and yet complex, this sentence is very indicative of yin and yang theory. There is a sentence that explains why it is both : "All that is yin is yang, all that is yang is yin". This sentence is very similar to "what came first, the chicken or the egg?" in that while something may be yin in nature, it can not exist without yang. In essence there is no day without night. Thus, simple yet complex.
As it pertains to food and the body, yin is the liquid and nourishing aspect (blood, saliva, water, etc.) and yang is the energy (electric synapses, physiological reactions, movement, etc.). We need both, but sometimes you need one more than the other. Spring is the time when we're moving from a long cold spell where you were more focused on yin foods and doing yin things (i.e. eating warm slow cooked foods whilst hibernating and conserving energy) and on into a more yang time where you require the energy to literally pop your head out of the ground much like all the young bulbs (in particular for today, ramps, which are part of the Allium family and sometimes are considered wild leeks)! Garlic already has many medicinal qualities that I have discussed here before, but if you want the medicine without so much bite, then a ramp is your friend and it is only here for a few weeks before it becomes scape season, then just plain garlic bulb season.
While yin and yang theory may be flying over your head into esoteric yaya land, once you understand it, you can self-treat and balance yourself out when you need. For these purposes, you want to put a little more bite and spark into your food to wake up your digestion while your life requires you to be outside more, shedding layers of clothes, getting sun, and interacting with people more frequently. Ramps grow from March to late May and sometimes June. You can eat them raw or lightly cooked. I used the pungent white portion to stuff under the skin of a young red cockerel, and I used the sweet green leaves to add to some roasted potatoes towards the very end so they just slightly wilted and melded in. The cockerels and potatoes were served alongside young asparagus which is also just starting to pop it's head out of the ground and will continue to do so for another month or so.
Roasted Red Cockerel with Ramps, Lemon, Olive Oil, and Sea Salt
Ingredients : cockerels or chickens (approx. 4-6 lbs), ramps (ie. young garlic), lemon, olive oil, sea salt, pepper
1. Rub cockerels with olive oil, lemon, sea salt, and pepper. Make a few tiny holes and also loosen the skin around the neck and bum of the cockerel - slip in the white portion of the ramp under the skin. Slice lemons and place in cavity. Place one whole ramp in the orifice of the neck. Let the cockerels sit for 1 hour to 24 hours (overnight).
2. Pre-heat oven to 250 degrees F. Place cockerels in uncovered, breast side down. Roast for one hour at this temperature. Raise to 300 degrees F and roast for 1.5-2 hours more (depending on the size of bird). Cockerels should come out browned and crisp but juicy inside, with a lovely hint of sweet garlic flavor.
How do you use yin and yang theory to treat yourself? If you are feeling excessively yin (lethargic, sluggish, tired, slow, damp, cloudy-headed), add more yang foods into your food (red meat, liver, bones, leeks, chives, scallions, garlic, carrots, lotus, radish... pungent and bright foods). If you are feeling excessively yang (hot, flushed, anxious, wired) add more yin foods into your diet (pork, chicken, almost all vegetables except the particularly pungent ones and those listed above).
If you want more recipes using ramps go here or here. Ramps have a long history of culinary and medicinal use in the U.S., especially in the south. There is even a ramp festival held every year in Tennessee called the "Cosby Ramp Festival". Apparently in the Appalachian region of the U.S. ramps are thought to ward off winter ailments, which is perfectly in line with the Chinese Medicinal use of adding some yang energy into your food to bust out and get ready for summer!
Spring time is a yang time in Chinese Medicinal terms, while winter is a yin time. Many of you have heard and seen yin and yang theory thrown around loosely, adorned on tshirts, plastered on dorm room walls, imprinted on spa paraphenelia, carved into Acupuncture logos, and so on. Yin and yang theory is one of the major philosophical bases of Chinese Medicine and that little black and white swirly globe actually has some very beautifully simple and yet complex meaning. Simple and yet complex, this sentence is very indicative of yin and yang theory. There is a sentence that explains why it is both : "All that is yin is yang, all that is yang is yin". This sentence is very similar to "what came first, the chicken or the egg?" in that while something may be yin in nature, it can not exist without yang. In essence there is no day without night. Thus, simple yet complex.
As it pertains to food and the body, yin is the liquid and nourishing aspect (blood, saliva, water, etc.) and yang is the energy (electric synapses, physiological reactions, movement, etc.). We need both, but sometimes you need one more than the other. Spring is the time when we're moving from a long cold spell where you were more focused on yin foods and doing yin things (i.e. eating warm slow cooked foods whilst hibernating and conserving energy) and on into a more yang time where you require the energy to literally pop your head out of the ground much like all the young bulbs (in particular for today, ramps, which are part of the Allium family and sometimes are considered wild leeks)! Garlic already has many medicinal qualities that I have discussed here before, but if you want the medicine without so much bite, then a ramp is your friend and it is only here for a few weeks before it becomes scape season, then just plain garlic bulb season.
While yin and yang theory may be flying over your head into esoteric yaya land, once you understand it, you can self-treat and balance yourself out when you need. For these purposes, you want to put a little more bite and spark into your food to wake up your digestion while your life requires you to be outside more, shedding layers of clothes, getting sun, and interacting with people more frequently. Ramps grow from March to late May and sometimes June. You can eat them raw or lightly cooked. I used the pungent white portion to stuff under the skin of a young red cockerel, and I used the sweet green leaves to add to some roasted potatoes towards the very end so they just slightly wilted and melded in. The cockerels and potatoes were served alongside young asparagus which is also just starting to pop it's head out of the ground and will continue to do so for another month or so.
Roasted Red Cockerel with Ramps, Lemon, Olive Oil, and Sea Salt
Ingredients : cockerels or chickens (approx. 4-6 lbs), ramps (ie. young garlic), lemon, olive oil, sea salt, pepper
1. Rub cockerels with olive oil, lemon, sea salt, and pepper. Make a few tiny holes and also loosen the skin around the neck and bum of the cockerel - slip in the white portion of the ramp under the skin. Slice lemons and place in cavity. Place one whole ramp in the orifice of the neck. Let the cockerels sit for 1 hour to 24 hours (overnight).
2. Pre-heat oven to 250 degrees F. Place cockerels in uncovered, breast side down. Roast for one hour at this temperature. Raise to 300 degrees F and roast for 1.5-2 hours more (depending on the size of bird). Cockerels should come out browned and crisp but juicy inside, with a lovely hint of sweet garlic flavor.
How do you use yin and yang theory to treat yourself? If you are feeling excessively yin (lethargic, sluggish, tired, slow, damp, cloudy-headed), add more yang foods into your food (red meat, liver, bones, leeks, chives, scallions, garlic, carrots, lotus, radish... pungent and bright foods). If you are feeling excessively yang (hot, flushed, anxious, wired) add more yin foods into your diet (pork, chicken, almost all vegetables except the particularly pungent ones and those listed above).
If you want more recipes using ramps go here or here. Ramps have a long history of culinary and medicinal use in the U.S., especially in the south. There is even a ramp festival held every year in Tennessee called the "Cosby Ramp Festival". Apparently in the Appalachian region of the U.S. ramps are thought to ward off winter ailments, which is perfectly in line with the Chinese Medicinal use of adding some yang energy into your food to bust out and get ready for summer!
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Butternut Squash Soup with a Hint of Spice
(recycled from 1/5/2011)
Yellow and sweet. The color and taste which treat the digestive system in Chinese Medicine. If you're feeling anything like I am at the moment, your digestive system could use a little tender loving care after the whirlwind that is November through December with Thanksgiving followed by one Christmas party after another. Instead of making daunting New Year's resolutions by starving yourself, this soup will soothe you and your stomach without breaking the scale further.
Right now root vegetables, gourds, and tubers are in season. And, eating in season is the best way to truly eat medicinally. Butternut squash tastes precisely as it has been rightly named. Buttery (without butter), sweet, and meaty in it's own right. This soup takes no longer than 30 minutes to make and you can freeze batches of it if you plan to reheat whenever you need a little more tender loving care for your stomach, which is precisely what the Year of the Rabbit (coming up on February 3) is all about, gentle and soothing after the fire of the Year of the Tiger.
Ingredients: 1 medium or large butternut squash, 1 white onion, 1 garlic clove, 1 leek, 1 tbspn tomato paste, salt, pepper, curry powder (or use a combination of cumin, tumeric, dried chile), 1 tsp fresh ground ginger, cilantro, plain yogurt (my preference is Greek yogurt), chicken or vegetable stock, 1 bay leaf
Directions:
1. Peel squash and slice through the center, de-seed (you can keep them to toast and eat if you wish). Chop into large squares.
2. Slice onion into moon slices, wash and slice whole leek, mince 1 garlic clove, mince up 1 tsp of ginger, have all other spices and ingredients on hand.
3. Saute onion, leek, and squash until they both get a little soft and have color (about 5+ minutes), add minced garlic, 1 bay leaf, 1 tbspn tomato paste, 1 tbspn curry powder or aforementioned combination of spices (you can add this to taste), keep cooking all together until it's well mixed then add 2 cups of chicken or vegetable stock.
4. Bring to a boil and cook for 10-15 minutes until the squash is soft, add 1 cup of plain yogurt (if you wish to have a thicker creamier soup, add 1 cup of coconut milk instead). Boil together another 5 minutes, pull out bay leaves and then let the soup cool for a few minutes before blending together (either with an immersion blender or in a regular blender, in which case you would need it to be at room temperature).
5. Reheat and serve with a garnish of cilantro if you wish and a sprinkle of crunchy sea salt.
Yellow and sweet. The color and taste which treat the digestive system in Chinese Medicine. If you're feeling anything like I am at the moment, your digestive system could use a little tender loving care after the whirlwind that is November through December with Thanksgiving followed by one Christmas party after another. Instead of making daunting New Year's resolutions by starving yourself, this soup will soothe you and your stomach without breaking the scale further.
Right now root vegetables, gourds, and tubers are in season. And, eating in season is the best way to truly eat medicinally. Butternut squash tastes precisely as it has been rightly named. Buttery (without butter), sweet, and meaty in it's own right. This soup takes no longer than 30 minutes to make and you can freeze batches of it if you plan to reheat whenever you need a little more tender loving care for your stomach, which is precisely what the Year of the Rabbit (coming up on February 3) is all about, gentle and soothing after the fire of the Year of the Tiger.
Ingredients: 1 medium or large butternut squash, 1 white onion, 1 garlic clove, 1 leek, 1 tbspn tomato paste, salt, pepper, curry powder (or use a combination of cumin, tumeric, dried chile), 1 tsp fresh ground ginger, cilantro, plain yogurt (my preference is Greek yogurt), chicken or vegetable stock, 1 bay leaf
Directions:
1. Peel squash and slice through the center, de-seed (you can keep them to toast and eat if you wish). Chop into large squares.
2. Slice onion into moon slices, wash and slice whole leek, mince 1 garlic clove, mince up 1 tsp of ginger, have all other spices and ingredients on hand.
3. Saute onion, leek, and squash until they both get a little soft and have color (about 5+ minutes), add minced garlic, 1 bay leaf, 1 tbspn tomato paste, 1 tbspn curry powder or aforementioned combination of spices (you can add this to taste), keep cooking all together until it's well mixed then add 2 cups of chicken or vegetable stock.
4. Bring to a boil and cook for 10-15 minutes until the squash is soft, add 1 cup of plain yogurt (if you wish to have a thicker creamier soup, add 1 cup of coconut milk instead). Boil together another 5 minutes, pull out bay leaves and then let the soup cool for a few minutes before blending together (either with an immersion blender or in a regular blender, in which case you would need it to be at room temperature).
5. Reheat and serve with a garnish of cilantro if you wish and a sprinkle of crunchy sea salt.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Mushroom Medicine
(recycled from 5/17/2011)
Mushrooms have been used as medicine for millennia. Their DNA most closely resembles human DNA (as opposed to a plants DNA), lending them a strong biological and sometimes also a mythical link. Mushrooms will pop up above and below ground and can have stems or simply manifest as a puffball mushroom sans stem (used to staunch bleeding in Native American medicine or for sore throat in Chinese Medicine, they are known as Ma Bo).
From the Chinese medicinal cooking perspective, mushrooms (all types) have a wide and incredible healing capacity. They are cool and sweet in nature; decrease lipid (fat) levels in the blood; treat liver disorders (hepatitis, cirrhosis, liver cancer, or general liver toxicity); treat excess phlegm (in cases of congestion in the lungs); increase immunity (some are stronger than others, the Ling Zhi variety fares best for this); help to reduce tumors; and promote appetite (again, think cancer and a decreased appetite here).
Morels (Morchella esculenta) have been shown in particular to increase immune function in humans. They tend to grow around white ash or elm tree's and will show their faces sometime in the Spring, anywhere from April to early June, depending on where you are in the world and if they happen to grow there. If you are lucky enough to be where they are, you can find them in farmers markets where savvy mushroom foragers will share their bounty. They are only found growing wild and have not been cultivated to date (much like truffles). Though there aren't many mimics of morels, when foraging for them and any mushroom, you should always beware as a poisonous mushroom can not only make you very sick but can also kill you.
The most common morels are the yellow (M. esculenta), white (M. deliciosa), and black morels (M. elata). You may also find the half free or spike morel (M. semilibera) earlier in the season. Often morels live in symbiosis with the trees they grow by where they will provide the tree with water and the tree in turn will provide sugar which the morel will feed on. Their appearance in the Spring in conjunction with their immunity boosting capabilities after a long winter is yet another perfect example of how eating medicinally goes hand in hand with eating seasonally.
(spike morel, usually shows up before yellow and black morels)
Mushrooms have been used as medicine for millennia. Their DNA most closely resembles human DNA (as opposed to a plants DNA), lending them a strong biological and sometimes also a mythical link. Mushrooms will pop up above and below ground and can have stems or simply manifest as a puffball mushroom sans stem (used to staunch bleeding in Native American medicine or for sore throat in Chinese Medicine, they are known as Ma Bo).
From the Chinese medicinal cooking perspective, mushrooms (all types) have a wide and incredible healing capacity. They are cool and sweet in nature; decrease lipid (fat) levels in the blood; treat liver disorders (hepatitis, cirrhosis, liver cancer, or general liver toxicity); treat excess phlegm (in cases of congestion in the lungs); increase immunity (some are stronger than others, the Ling Zhi variety fares best for this); help to reduce tumors; and promote appetite (again, think cancer and a decreased appetite here).
Morels (Morchella esculenta) have been shown in particular to increase immune function in humans. They tend to grow around white ash or elm tree's and will show their faces sometime in the Spring, anywhere from April to early June, depending on where you are in the world and if they happen to grow there. If you are lucky enough to be where they are, you can find them in farmers markets where savvy mushroom foragers will share their bounty. They are only found growing wild and have not been cultivated to date (much like truffles). Though there aren't many mimics of morels, when foraging for them and any mushroom, you should always beware as a poisonous mushroom can not only make you very sick but can also kill you.
The most common morels are the yellow (M. esculenta), white (M. deliciosa), and black morels (M. elata). You may also find the half free or spike morel (M. semilibera) earlier in the season. Often morels live in symbiosis with the trees they grow by where they will provide the tree with water and the tree in turn will provide sugar which the morel will feed on. Their appearance in the Spring in conjunction with their immunity boosting capabilities after a long winter is yet another perfect example of how eating medicinally goes hand in hand with eating seasonally.
(spike morel, usually shows up before yellow and black morels)
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Winter Hash
(recycled from 12/17/2010)
If you live anywhere near where I do and are beginning to feel the effects of the wind, cold, dryness, and lack of sun, then you are likely in need of something warm, nourishing, and colorful on your plate! Immediately. There is never a more significant time than now in the midst of this chilling season to begin paying attention to getting all those colors on your plate. You simply aren't going to get enough vitamins and minerals if you work in an office, come home when it's dark already at 4 p.m., and to top it off when you are outside the only bits of you the world can see is your eyes and nose (therefore the sun isn't going to bless you with it's nutrients)!
In Chinese Medicine, eating with the seasons as well as eating the colors and tastes of the five elements is essential to balanced health. Given that it is winter, you want to eat warm to counteract the effects of the cold. Winter is also a time when your kidneys and lungs are more susceptible to damage and illness and can manifest in symptoms such as : cold hands and feet, arthritis, painful joints, lower back pain, dry cough, colds, flu's, skin dryness, and general malaise. If you go by the five element chart (which I discussed here) the lungs pertain to the color white and the spicy flavor, and the kidneys pertain to the color black and the salty taste. While these particular organs are more susceptible in the winter, you shouldn't neglect the other major organ systems in Chinese Medicine : the liver (green & sour), the digestive function (yellow & sweet), and the heart (red & bitter). If you are wondering what it means for an organ to pertain to a taste and a color (and if you haven't gone here already), this is part of the Traditional Chinese Medicine nutritional theory whereby you treat certain organs and systems with specifically colored foods and tastes. A daikon radish is a perfect example of a white and spicy food which can benefit the lungs. Sometimes you won't find one food that satisfies both the color and taste of an organ system, in which case you might combine a color with a taste (perhaps a white radish with a sprinkle of chile flakes to open up the lungs).
A very simple way to make sure you're getting all the healthful benefits of vitamins, minerals, colors, and tastes is to make sure you eat a variety of (naturally occurring) colors every day. This winter hash is a perfect example of this. You can eat it as a side dish, you can use it to stuff something (a chicken or turkey perhaps? or a mushroom as I did recently), you can have it with eggs, and you can also just eat it alone. You can absolutely stray from this version of the recipe if you don't like carrots and prefer parsnips, or something along those lines.
In this particular Winter Hash, I used onions, leeks, carrots, yellow potatoes, sea salt, black pepper, cumin, and chile flakes. I cooked it all low and slow until it comes together into this beautiful melded hash that is both sweet and salty with a lovely spice along the edeges.
Ingredients Needed (winter vegetables preferable) : 1 onion, 1-2 leeks, 3 small yellow potatoes, 4 carrots, cumin, chile (fresh or flaked), sea salt, black pepper.
1. Slice up onions and leeks (leeks may need extra rinsing as they carry a lot of dirt). Begin to saute them slowly in olive oil until they just begin to cook.
2. Peel and cut up carrots and potatoes (parsnips or turnips would be great here too). Add to pan and turn up heat ever so slightly so it all begins to sear a bit, then turn it low again.
3. Add 1 tsp of cumin, a sprinkle of chile flakes (or more if you want more kick), salt and black pepper to taste.
4. Cook on low heat for about 30 mins to 1 hour (depends on how much you are cooking). At the very end turn up the heat once again for a few minutes to give it more caramelizing and color without burning.
(If you mince up the ingredients very finely you can use them to stuff mushrooms with, put a slice of pecorino on top and bake at 400 degrees F for 10-15 minutes.)
If you live anywhere near where I do and are beginning to feel the effects of the wind, cold, dryness, and lack of sun, then you are likely in need of something warm, nourishing, and colorful on your plate! Immediately. There is never a more significant time than now in the midst of this chilling season to begin paying attention to getting all those colors on your plate. You simply aren't going to get enough vitamins and minerals if you work in an office, come home when it's dark already at 4 p.m., and to top it off when you are outside the only bits of you the world can see is your eyes and nose (therefore the sun isn't going to bless you with it's nutrients)!
In Chinese Medicine, eating with the seasons as well as eating the colors and tastes of the five elements is essential to balanced health. Given that it is winter, you want to eat warm to counteract the effects of the cold. Winter is also a time when your kidneys and lungs are more susceptible to damage and illness and can manifest in symptoms such as : cold hands and feet, arthritis, painful joints, lower back pain, dry cough, colds, flu's, skin dryness, and general malaise. If you go by the five element chart (which I discussed here) the lungs pertain to the color white and the spicy flavor, and the kidneys pertain to the color black and the salty taste. While these particular organs are more susceptible in the winter, you shouldn't neglect the other major organ systems in Chinese Medicine : the liver (green & sour), the digestive function (yellow & sweet), and the heart (red & bitter). If you are wondering what it means for an organ to pertain to a taste and a color (and if you haven't gone here already), this is part of the Traditional Chinese Medicine nutritional theory whereby you treat certain organs and systems with specifically colored foods and tastes. A daikon radish is a perfect example of a white and spicy food which can benefit the lungs. Sometimes you won't find one food that satisfies both the color and taste of an organ system, in which case you might combine a color with a taste (perhaps a white radish with a sprinkle of chile flakes to open up the lungs).
A very simple way to make sure you're getting all the healthful benefits of vitamins, minerals, colors, and tastes is to make sure you eat a variety of (naturally occurring) colors every day. This winter hash is a perfect example of this. You can eat it as a side dish, you can use it to stuff something (a chicken or turkey perhaps? or a mushroom as I did recently), you can have it with eggs, and you can also just eat it alone. You can absolutely stray from this version of the recipe if you don't like carrots and prefer parsnips, or something along those lines.
In this particular Winter Hash, I used onions, leeks, carrots, yellow potatoes, sea salt, black pepper, cumin, and chile flakes. I cooked it all low and slow until it comes together into this beautiful melded hash that is both sweet and salty with a lovely spice along the edeges.
Ingredients Needed (winter vegetables preferable) : 1 onion, 1-2 leeks, 3 small yellow potatoes, 4 carrots, cumin, chile (fresh or flaked), sea salt, black pepper.
1. Slice up onions and leeks (leeks may need extra rinsing as they carry a lot of dirt). Begin to saute them slowly in olive oil until they just begin to cook.
2. Peel and cut up carrots and potatoes (parsnips or turnips would be great here too). Add to pan and turn up heat ever so slightly so it all begins to sear a bit, then turn it low again.
3. Add 1 tsp of cumin, a sprinkle of chile flakes (or more if you want more kick), salt and black pepper to taste.
4. Cook on low heat for about 30 mins to 1 hour (depends on how much you are cooking). At the very end turn up the heat once again for a few minutes to give it more caramelizing and color without burning.
(If you mince up the ingredients very finely you can use them to stuff mushrooms with, put a slice of pecorino on top and bake at 400 degrees F for 10-15 minutes.)
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Kitchen Medicine
I'm going to be missing in action for a little while here. I have to pool all my resources and energy into finishing a big project, soon to be unveiled, and it requires all my attention.
Before I leave (and I will return before you know it), I wanted to share some recent colors in the market. As well as some old and new medicinal cooking tricks. There's so much to digest (literally and figuratively) since my move to Chongqing as per the medicinal cooking that there isn't enough room on here to share it all!
For those that aren't TCM practitioners and reading this, if you don't know about the five elements and how that correlates to medicinal cooking as per TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) then it's important for me to briefly lay it out as it's the building blocks upon which the cooking begins. I discussed it in a post a few months ago here. Above is a picture of foods and their correlates, and below is a list of the basics. At first glance it's so simple and beautiful, and then you begin to realize that it gets all intertwined and a bit wild like a creeping banyan tree's roots which climb all over each other. For example, you might wonder if red and bitter treat the heart and small intestine, then a red chile would make sense? It's red and bitter. But it's also spicy, which falls into the category of the lung and large intestine. Don't over think it too much. As a layman you don't need to decipher it to that degree. If you're designing a treatment plan for a patient with a serious chronic (or acute) illness, you will of course need to be more fastidious with the plan. However, if you are just simply eating in a normal way, to be healthy, to be preventative, and to enjoy your food while you have a go at it, then just think this simply : colors and flavors correlate to particular organ systems.
Black & Salty = Kidneys & Urinary Bladder
Red & Bitter = Heart & Small Intestine
White & Spicy = Lung & Large Intestine
Yellow & Sweet = Digestive System (Stomach & Spleen)
Green & Sour = Liver & Gallbladder
You will do no harm by thinking in this way and you will definitely hit all your target vitamin, mineral, and all that other jazz that they like to throw out at you in today's nutritional requirements dialogue. Sometimes you wonder, how did we survive before when we weren't measuring out calories, B12, saturated fat, unsaturated fat, carbohydrates, sodium levels, vitamin D, etc. etc. etc. There is a time and a place for that, of course, and that's mostly in the classroom not in the kitchen. It's confusing and makes you, me, all of us riddled with a subterranean angst wherein more often than not, you miss the point of the whole thing. Interestingly enough, every week an article will pop up expounding on a new study with the news flash that (something you could have derived from the chart above) actually does good for one of the organs linked to the flavor and color.
The next level of TCM medicinal cooking theory is that everything is broken down into warm, hot, cool, or cold. This too gets a little confusing. Or coRnfusing as a friend loves to say. You might initially only think in terms of a hot soup versus a cold cucumber, and while this is true in terms of being warming (soup) and being cooling (cucumber), you might not think of how some meat's are hot (beef), some are warming (chicken), and some are cooling (crab), though you can eat all of them warm. There is the thermal nature of a food (cool/cold/warm/hot) which is what I am referring to here, and then there is the way you eat it (cold or warm). Suffice it to say, it's a lot to memorize and in the case of cool/cold/warm/hot, the best way to approach this (unless you want to dive into the academics of it) is to know your constitution and then be conscious of how you eat according to that. If you tend to run really hot, and have a red flushed face more often than not, then avoid heat-inducing foods that might exacerbate your condition. If you run cold, and are weak and lethargic with loose stools, don't go on a raw cucumber binge. Having said that, I will mention that in TCM you do rely on the general premise that eating warm foods (as in the temperature - such as a soup, not necessarily the thermal nature as in beef or chiles which are hot) is important for good digestion.
I learned a new thermal tidbit last week, which is common layman's knowledge here in China. Oranges are cooling and tangerines are hot. The interesting thing is that people know this here, and they abide by it. If they run hot, they don't go wild for clementines (considered to be in the tangerine category) in this season. If you have insomnia or red inflamed acne, you might want to watch out too!
And lastly, a cooking tip I learned as per fresh water fish (any non ocean fish) : take your fish, do what you need to do it (keep it whole and gutted or filleted) and submerge it in water with vinegar (not too much, a tablespoon for a medium size fish will suffice) for 24 hours in order to cleanse the blood of the fish, sweeten it's flavor, and help it to hold it's integrity in the cooking process. If you're on my facebook page, you've heard about this tip twice already, so apologies for the repetition!
And with that, I will be crawling into my office to peck away at the final stages of my project. If I don't get here before the holiday madness, remember to drink something bitter after a meal to help you to digest all the goodies you'll be partaking in and see you in 2012!
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Mountain Yam - Shan Yao
If you haven't already met, I'd like to introduce you to the Mountain Yam (Shan Yao). This is one of the most prevalent TCM medicinal herbs that is also commonly used as a food in a variety of dishes such as soups, hot pot (Huo Guo), stir fried dishes, and grated or sliced raw (the raw version is used often in Japanese cuisine). Shan Yao is usually found dried in the U.S., while you can still use this version in soups, hot pot, and cooked dishes, you can not use it raw unless it's fresh.
Shan Yao tastes a little like a creamier and earthier tuber, it has a thicker consistency that is almost a little mucilaginous at times depending on how you use it. Not everyone will love Shan Yao, I do. Since I've been living back in China, I've had it as a creamy soup (with Shan Yao being the primary ingredient), I've had it in hot pot (you add it into the hot pot broth, let it cook, then dip it into your sesame paste sauce and eat it) and I've had it cooked into a broth based soup.
Shan Yao is used in TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) as an herb to : (courtesy of Kamwo Pharmacy) 1. tonify (i.e. aid or supplement) the spleen and stomach, especially in cases of deficiency where there are symptoms such as fatigue, loose stools, weak digestion, or lack of appetite. 2. tonify lung qi and yin (i.e. supports lung function and moisture), examples of issues with this would be chronic wheezing or coughing. 3. tonify the kidneys (i.e. supports kidney function) when there is deficiency symptoms such as weak or sore lower back, spermatorrhea, vaginal discharge, or frequent nighttime urination. 4. treats 'wasting and thirsting' disorder (i.e. similar to diabetes with frequent urination, excess hunger or thirst, with possible emaciation.). Shan Yao (as per Tom Leung, Kamwo's owner, as well as a TCM herbalist and pharmacist) works particularly well as an astringent in cases of diarrhea, frequent urination, excess vaginal discharge, or excess sweating.
When I bought the fresh Shan Yao all the way at the top of this post, I was hiking with a lovely lady who shared the following (Japanese) recipe for mountain yam (Yamaimo in Japanese) :
Peel outside layer of Shan Yao/Yamaimo, wear gloves if you want to avoid itching, put yam into a water/vinegar solution so it doesn't yellow and to kill the oxalates which cause itching, slice up as you wish (thin or thicker), add soy sauce, wasabi, and shredded nori. Eat with rice or as is.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Perfect Persimmons: The "Other" Apple
I didn't eat my first persimmon until 2002. I remember this because it was an event, that's how delicious persimmons are. I had been wondering what is that odd looking orange'ish-yellow tomato that's not a tomato sitting amongst all the fruit in China Town in NYC. Well, as it turns out it's a delectable piece of fruit that is sweet, but not too sweet, pliant yet still crunchy (unless it's really ripe, then it is a bit like a tomato/mango), and it has a hint of sour to hold itself up from becoming too cloying. Anyway, it's irrelevant what it tastes like to me because taste is subjective. It's good.
Persimmon is also a TCM medicinal food (referred to as Shi Zi, 柿子) that is used to treat inflammation in the gut, (hot and dry) lung ailments, and if slightly unripe it has astringent properties which cause not only your mouth to pucker up but also restrain diarrhea, coughing and/or vomiting blood, and reduce hypertension (P. Pitchford). Persimmons are cooling, sweet, and target the lungs and digestive area. They can moisten the lungs while at the same time reducing phlegm. In addition, you can use the calyx and fruit stem for treating hiccups.
Though I am not always a huge fan of breaking foods down into micro nutrients and hailing them as the next "super food", I was happy to see that persimmon's got a little media attention in 2001 in the Science Daily "A Persimmon A Day Could Be Better For Your Heart Than An Apple" having been found to contain "significantly higher concentrations of dietary fiber, minerals and phenolic compounds - all instrumental in fighting atherosclerosis". Eating one a day is supposedly enough to fight atherosclerosis according to the study conducted by the department of medicinal chemistry in the School of Pharmacy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel mentioned in the article. A persimmon a day keeps the doctor away?
Persimmon's are originally from China but spread to Korea, Japan, Brazil, Israel, and on from there, reaching the United States in 1856. There are over 40 different kinds of persimmons, some of which are more astringent than others according to the degree of pollination and the amount of ethanol produced in the seeds (if you are like me and have tried a persimmon that is sweet and crunchy one day only to bite into a soft, ripe, super mouth-puckering one the next day and wondered why, this is why!). In Japan to remove the pucker in a persimmon they place them in former sake curing casks and let them rest there for a few days. Or you can alternately (not having access to a sake cask) just let them ripen naturally to further remove tannins, though if they are of the kind that is more susceptible to this, then there is not much you can do. The puckering is of course indicative of a higher level of astringency, increasing it's ability to treat conditions such as dysentery, diarrhea, and spitting or coughing up blood. Apparently, the Native Americans had their own medicinal uses for the persimmon as well: as a poultice for warts, in the treatment of bloody diarrhea, and as a mouth rinse in the treatment of thrush.
Persimmons are in season right now (from October - December) so if you can find them somewhere, stock up! Keep them around to keep your heart healthy, or to treat that dry cough from too much artificial heating this winter, or simply just to enjoy!
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Congee : Digestive Healer
Congee is by far one of the most prevalent examples of medicinal cooking's marriage with commonplace kitchen knowledge in Chinese and Asian culture(s) at large (in Thailand it's Khao Tom, in Japan it's Zohsui or Kayu, in Korea it's Jook/Juk, and so on). Everyone eats it. You learn about it growing up. You learn about it in TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) school. They serve it on the street, they serve it in the posh hotels, they serve it at school. You know when to eat it, and what to add to it to cater more specifically to your current needs.
Chicken is more tonic for the qi (energy) and blood. Sweet potato will add to the digestive function. Da Zao (red dates) also come to the aid of the energy and blood. Gou Qi Zi (wolfberries) improve eye function while working on the liver and kidneys. Huang Qi boosts the immune system. Pickled and fermented green vegetables work on the liver and digestive function. A splash of chile sauce opens up the lungs and fights off a cold. Fresh scallions dropped over that hot tasty soup right before ingesting, fights off that cold even more than that chile sauce (or in combination thereof!). Ginger boosts the digestion, combats nausea, warms you up, and fights colds (too). There are endless combination's for congee, in fact so many that Bob Flaws, a well known author and scholar of Chinese Medicine wrote a book called "The Book of Jook" with a whole slew of the different recipes for congee (or in his case, the referenced jook). Call it what you may, it works, and it works well.
If you're of the digestively compromised faction (of which there are many), congee is your best friend. Eating warm is also of the essence in this case. Your digestion is like a furnace, if you put ice on that furnace, it will not stay "lit" and in turn cook your food for you so it can be transformed into the miconutrients and energy we so love to discuss in biomedical nutritional terms. The base for congee is simple and you can also quite simply just eat the base without anything else. You cook rice in water, at 1 part rice to 4 to 5 parts water, depending on how soupy you would it to be. Bring to a boil on low heat for at least 1 hour. Imagine that it's helping your body by breaking it all down beforehand so you don't have to do so much work once it goes in. Then decide what your flavor is going to be. Is your stomach a little extra sensitive? Add some ginger. Want a little more flavor and energy? Add chicken (cook it with the bone). While I have been enjoying the Chinese congee with a few pickled mustard greens, a sprinkle of salted peanuts, and a splash of chile sauce, I am a huge fan of the Thai Khao Tom, perhaps from growing up there or maybe because it has a little more panache to it.
Here is my recipe (an amalgam of many versions of Khao Tom learned throughout the years), it is great if you're sick, fighting a cold, having digestive troubles, or you just want to eat something clean and simple :
Thai Khao Tom
Ingredients : rice (long grain or short grain, your call), 1 chicken breast or 2 thighs on the bone, tang chai (pickled shredded cabbage - can be easily found in many Asian stores), scallions, cilantro, garlic, fish sauce/nampla, rice vinegar, Thai bird chiles or other fresh chiles, ginger, sesame oil
(serves 2)
1. Bring to a boil 1 cup rice with 5 cups water, 5 thin slices of ginger, whole chicken breast/or thigh(s) with bone (added immune system boost), 2 teaspoons of tang chai, splash or two of fish sauce (or use 1+/- tablespoon of sea salt if you don't like fish sauce), and 3 whole sprigs of cilantro with the cleaned roots still attached. Cook for 1 hour.
2. Take chicken out around 30 minutes and shred meat off with fork, place bones back in soup to continue boiling.
3. Chop 3-4 cloves of garlic up and fry quickly until lightly brown in sesame oil, set to side in a small bowl.
4. Chop fresh chiles up and place 1 tbspn. in a small sauce bowl with fish sauce and another tbspn. in a small sauce bowl with rice vinegar.
5. Chop up cilantro and scallions, also place in a bowl to the side.
6. Once soup is cooked, serve in a bowl, top with shredded chicken, chopped cilantro and scallion, a bit of crispy garlic, a bit of vinegar and/or fish sauce (depending on your taste and needs).
*Some people add crispy fish, some people cook Khao Tom with ground pork or shrimp, there are again, endless varieties. Have fun playing with it.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Fresh Chickens in Chongqing
I am only 3 days into properly and officially living in Chongqing so there isn't a whole lot to report on through the fog of jet lag still clouding my mind during the days. BUT, I will say, one thing I am considering to do very soon is pick a chicken (or a duck) at the local grocery store to have freshly butchered for us. I know many (or maybe just some) of you will cringe at this. It seems barbaric perhaps? But, I don't know which is more barbaric, the illusion of the shrink wrapped chicken breast in plastic at your local chain grocery or the acknowledgement of where it comes from? I choose the latter. I do have to figure out if these chickens are jacked up on hormones, and while they weren't uber crowded in their final destination, it does bother me on some level that they have to sit there watching us while we choose their fate. They didn't seem overly large by any means (in fact, they looked like a normal size free range chicken does), so fingers crossed they aren't too tainted. Living in Chongqing, I'm not sure how much choice I will have except to eat less meat if that is the case. Which is fine.
In Chinese Medicine, chicken is gently warming, blood building, and easier to digest than beef if you have a compromised immune system or digestive capability. Here is a recipe I posted a while back for chicken adobo.
Chicken is often used to make medicinal soups with a combination of herbs, depending on what you want to target. Gou Qi Zi, Da Zao, Dang Gui, Huang Qi, all these herbs and more can be found floating in a simple chicken stock (made with the bones) in most of the restaurants and homes in China. When I was last here in July we had the opportunity to drink one of the most spectacular 8 hour triple steamed chicken stocks with fritillaria bulb (Chuan Bei Mu) and pear I have ever had. That soup in particular targeted lung and throat dryness, which is something I could use right about now as my throat is reacting rather strongly to the incessant smog.
Making chicken stock with herbs is a great way to eat your medicine. Here are a few suggestions for targeted maladies via chicken stock/soup :
With Chuan Bei Mu and Pear : lung and throat dryness, difficult to expectorate phlegm
With Gou Qi Zi, Da Zao, and Huang Qi : for qi, blood, and yin deficiency (can manifest as constitutional weakness, fatigue, dizziness, short or absent menses)
With Dang Gui : blood stasis, irregular menses, dry constipation
*you can link to each herb by clicking on it above and it will take you to a well respected New York City TCM pharmacy (Kamwo Pharmacy) where you can learn more via their herb index
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