Building Mind-Blowing Taste and Flavor
IF THERE’S ONE QUESTION I get time and again when I’m teaching people to cook, it’s this: “How can healthy food taste great?”
Now, I’m not sure why that question is foremost in people’s minds, though it’s certainly reflective of a conundrum deep-seated in the American psyche, a myth promoted by well-meaning parents during our childhoods (“If you don’t eat your veggies, no dessert!”) and marketed by manufacturers of seemingly more exciting junk foods, but no matter … I’m here to not only tell you the truth, but show you the truth:
Great, brain-boosting foods taste fantastic.
All they need is a little love, and I have just the simple tool that provides all that and more. It’s called
FASS—which stands for fat, acid, salt, and sweet. By using basic pantry staples—olive oil (fat), lemon (acid), sea salt (salt), and Grade B organic maple syrup (sweet)—you can, just as cooks have been doing for centuries, learn to perfectly balance the five known tastes (salt, sweet, sour, bitter, and savory) in any dish.
I’ll explain how in a moment, but first, let’s look at your taste buds and taste in general. Both are fascinating topics, and appropriate for a brain book since all taste sensors lead, directly or indirectly, to the brain. I say indirectly because—get this—there are taste buds throughout the body. A story published in the journal Nature noted there are taste buds to be found in the gut, pancreas, lungs—even in sperm.
While we don’t know the function of all of these below-the-throat taste buds, there have been some spectacular discoveries. Sugar, for example, receives a so-called “second tasting” in the gut. The taste bud receptors there, when they sense sugar, set off the release of glucose (aka sugar) into the cells. In turn, that releases insulin into the
bloodstream to control sugar metabolism. From a culinary and physiological viewpoint, what’s important to note is that artificial sweeteners also set off this reaction in the
stomach, despite their reputation for not inducing “sugarlike” reactions anywhere other than the taste buds of the mouth. So that diet soda is hitting your gut as if it were the real deal.
How does this affect the brain? A couple of ways. Keeping blood sugar low may be important for everyone, not just diabetics or people with insulin resistance (aka pre-diabetics). A 2013 study published in Neurology found people with consistently lower blood sugar levels did better on memory tests. Conversely, higher blood sugar levels made the proteins in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease more toxic. It used to be thought that the presence of the proteins themselves (called beta-amyloid proteins) were responsible for dementia; now the focus is shifting to the damage beta-amyloids cause to the blood vessels of the brain in the presence of high blood sugar.
One thing that’s clear: the brain wants to know what it’s tasting. In fact, it has backups for backups to make sure it doesn’t miss a single molecule of taste. Consider that researchers estimate we have anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 taste buds in and around our mouths, mostly on the top of the tongue but also underneath and on the roof of the mouth. There are up to a hundred taste receptors on each bud, so it’s thought that each bud can sense a wide variety of tastes. There are also three major nerve “roadways” that each are capable of delivering taste sensation to the brain.
That’s just the delivery system. On the receiving end, scientists have found unique areas in the brain that correspond to tastes such as salt and sweet and savory—or, as the Japanese call savory, “
umami.” It’s possible, even probable, that the brain separates tastes to different regions for a reason; for example, bitterness, which from a survival viewpoint often meant poison, may relate to the part of the brain that deals with aversion—as in “avoid at all costs”—while sweet may be hardwired to sections of the brain devoted to cravings and the need for energy.
But taste is just one part of the equation. The other is
smell, which when combined with taste is thought to create the perception of
flavor. (If you don’t believe this, consider the last time you had a serious cold that clogged up your nose. Betcha food was flavorless, yes?)
When hunger occurs, the brain sends a signal to the olfactory (smell) bulb located right behind the nose, essentially cranking up our ability to smell food. Scientists long wondered what the receptors for smell were; turns out they’re part of the brain’s endocannabinoid system (don’t try pronouncing it; you’ll only twist your tongue). Why is that cool? Because the same system in the brain is tied into memory and emotion. So all that talk about food = love and feeling good (I like looking at the positive emotions) isn’t just talk; it’s science. And the next time a real estate agent has chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven of an open house, you’ll realize it’s the cookies you love, not necessarily the house.
So now that we’ve hashed out smell and taste and flavor, the trick is making it all work for you in the kitchen. That’s where FASS (remember FASS?) comes in. FASS acts like a culinary compass, allowing you to hone in on the exact taste you’re looking for by manipulating a meal’s fat, acid, salt, and sweet content. Those four factors are what
I call taste and flavor carriers, so let’s take a moment to consider each of these players and what they bring to the pot and the plate.
• FAT (OLIVE OIL): Fats serve several purposes. Think of fats as waves on which all the tastes surf. Fat becomes the transport mechanism carrying tastes all over the mouth and across the taste buds. That’s vital, especially as we age and the sensitivity of our taste buds begins to wane. Fat also satiates; without it in a dish, you’d never feel full. It slows down the release of sugars into the bloodstream. And it increases the bioavailability of fat-soluble vitamins in other foods.
• ACID (LEMON JUICE): Acids make food pop, brightening any dish. They also act as the starting gun for your salivary glands, calling them to action, which improves your digestion. As with fats, acids also reduce the rate at which sugar is released into the bloodstream, lowering the glycemic load.
• SALT (SEA SALT): From a cooking perspective, salt serves a vital purpose: it breaks down fibers, notably in vegetables, releasing the inherent taste of a food (that’s why, if you want a veggie to release its natural sweetness, you have to use a bit of salt). On the palate, salt gives the perception of taste moving toward the front of the mouth.
• SWEET (MAPLE SYRUP): Sweet is a natural counterbalance to sour and has the ability to tame a dish down if it’s become too spicy (see
the chart FASS Fixes in the Kitchen).
Why these foods? I’m glad you asked. Not all FASS is created equal. There’s good FASS—the foods I use, which nourish the brain—and bad FASS, which is what you’ll often find in processed foods and which isn’t good for the brain or the body. There’s a chart of good and bad
FASS, but for now let’s look at the good FASS.
For oil, I always prefer extra-virgin olive oil. It’s the staple of the Mediterranean diet and it may be, in large part, why there’s such longevity in that area of the world. Extra-virgin olive oil is the least processed of the olive oils, has a great ratio of monounsaturated to saturated fat, and has anti-inflammatory and anticoagulation properties.
For acid, I stick to lemon juice or a close citrus cousin such as lime or orange. These flavors aren’t overpowering, as is vinegar, but really allow me to add a little pizzazz to a dish that otherwise might be blah.
With salt, I always, always, always use sea salt. Unlike bleached, refined table salt, sea salt has nearly eighty different minerals.
As for sweet, I primarily go with Grade B organic maple syrup. I know that’s a surprise to some people, but it’s a lot healthier (notably rich in zinc and manganese) than refined sugar and far mellower and more full-bodied, meaning a little goes a long way.
Cooking is as much a head game as anything else. I’ve seen many people come into the kitchen for the first time, and for lack of a better phrase, they’re already psyched out. They’ve convinced themselves that if they make one wrong move they’ll wreck the dish. That leads to culinary paralysis-by-analysis, sort of like an ice skater who is so worried about taking a tumble that he ties himself in knots throughout his performance. To be able to flow freely and beautifully—whether in the rink or the kitchen—you must give yourself permission to be fully present and responsive to changes as they occur.
The best way I know how to teach people to be present is to cook up a pot of soup. There’s something about starting with water and adding ingredients one by one that pulls them in, as the heat from the flame begins to work its magic on the elements in the pot. As the smells begin wafting up, there’s something almost hypnotic taking place; you can see people want to taste what’s going on, but they’re hesitant, like a kid wondering whether she can step into her father’s workshop when Dad isn’t present.
I say, step right in and taste, taste, taste! That’s what cooking, real cooking is all about, knowing that you’re in charge of the taste, as opposed to the taste being in charge of you. As a tool, FASS is the great fixer, a culinary Swiss Army knife that allows you to adjust flavor on the fly.
What’s this mean in the real world? Let’s go back to the soup example. Often, as the soup builds, I’ll purposely throw off the flavor by, say, adding too much salt. I’ll then invite my students to come up and taste the soup. They’ll make the inevitable stinky face, and you can see the words form in their mind—This soup is ruined. It’ll have to be tossed.
Ah, but no. The soup isn’t toast, it’s just out of balance. If you’re old enough to remember analog car radios, you know that the station would sometimes drift, but you could fine-tune it and knock out all the static with just a slight turn of the dial. Similarly, it’s easy to rebalance a dish and make it sing true by using a FASS fix. In the example I just gave, all it takes is a spritz of lemon to neutralize the oversalting. What’s amazing is seeing the look on a person’s face when they employ FASS, take a quick taste, and realize they’ve not only avoided a culinary disaster, but also brought a dish back into perfect form.
Nearly anything that goes wrong with a dish—too bitter, too salty, too sour—can be fixed by FASS, but FASS isn’t only about rectifying mistakes. It’s also the way to, as I say, take a good-tasting meal completely over the top. FASS can act as the perfect finishing agent, the proverbial cherry on top of the sundae. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had people taste a dish and say, “Hey, that’s good,” to which I reply, “Okay, fine, but what do we have to do to take it to ‘yum!’?” What’s wonderful, and, I think, innate within the brain, is the ability to access and articulate what taste is missing to hit that “yum” button. With a certain amount of practice, I’ve seen even kitchen newbies verbalize what FASS factor needs to be tweaked to reach yum, and when it happens you can see their confidence blossom.
To me, the fun part about FASS is its simplicity. I’ve had colleagues taste a dish I’ve made and say, “Wow, that’s really seasoned well! What did you use?” When I tell them,
they’re like, “You only used lemon?!” They’re expecting some exotic spice, and while I do use spices and herbs extensively (see
Spicy Solutions), FASS is as easy to use as lemon or, say, a drape of mape (as in maple syrup).
FASS is a starting point for culinary creativity. As you gain more confidence, you’ll find you can expand on the basic flavor carriers. In this book, for example, I’ve gone beyond olive oil at times when it comes to including a healthy fat. I may use ghee (clarified butter), or a nut cream such as walnut or cashew cream, or an avocado. For an acid, instead of reaching for a lemon, I might choose a balsamic or rice vinegar, or use sauerkraut in a dish. For sweet, there’s raisins and dates, or a caramelized onion or roasted tomato.
The point is, once you realize you need a certain flavor carrier, there are plenty of healthy, delicious, delightful options out there. FASS will get you started; where you finish is limited only by your imagination.
FASS FOR FLAVOR AND BRAIN HEALTH
| |
EXAMPLES |
FUNCTION |
HEALTH BENEFITS |
| FAT |
avocado, butter, coconut oil, ghee, nuts, olive oil, sesame oil |
Distributes flavor across the palate. |
Increases satiety. Makes foods high in brain boosting fat-soluble vitamins more bioavailable. |
| ACID |
lemons, limes, orange, vinegar |
Brightens flavors. |
Increases absorption of brain-boosting minerals and stimulates digestion. |
| SALT |
sea salt |
Brings out the flavor of foods. Moves flavor to the front of the tongue where it’s best perceived. |
In balance with potassium, facilitates energy production and cellular metabolism. |
| SWEET |
dates, grade b maple syrup, honey, blackstrap molasses, raisins |
Tames harsh, sour, or spicy flavors. Rounds out or harmonizes flavors. |
Increases sense of pleasure. |
FASS FIXES IN THE KITCHEN
| PROBLEM |
FASS FIX |
| Too sweet? |
Add lemon juice or another acid. |
| Too sour? |
Add maple syrup or another sweetener. |
| Too bland? |
Add salt. |
| Too salty? |
Add lemon juice or another acid, which will erase the taste of salt. |
| Just needs a spark? |
Add fresh lemon or lime at the end of cooking. |
| Too harsh? |
Add ⅛ to ¼ teaspoon Grade B maple syrup. |
NATURAL VERSUS PROCESSED FASS
| |
NATURAL: BRAIN BOOSTING |
PROCESSED: BRAIN ZAPPING |
| FATS |
• butter
• coconut oil
• ghee
• grapeseed oil
• extra-virgin olive oil
• sesame oil
|
• corn oil
• cottonseed oil
• elaidic acid (trans fat)
• interesterified fat (industrially produced/ unnatural)
• saturated fats that replace trans fats
• meat and egg products (factory-farmed)
• partially hydrogenated vegetable oils
• soybean oil
|
| ACIDS |
• grapefruit
• lemons
• limes
• oranges
• organic vinegars
|
• artificial food colorings and preservatives
• benzoic acid (used as a preservative)
• citric acid (not bad if naturally occurring, but artificially produced 330 and E330 citric acid additives are made using sulfuric acid and may contain sulfites and mold not filtered out in production, causing asthma and hyperactivity)
|
| SALT |
|
• autolyzed yeast extract (flavor enhancer and source of hidden gluten)
• disodium guanylate
• disodium inosinate
• monosodium glutamate (MSG)
• sodium benzoate
• sodium bisulfite
• sodium nitrate
• sodium saccharin
• sulfur dioxide
|
| SUGARS |
|
• acesulfame potassium
• aspartame and other artificial sugars
• corn syrup
• cyclamate and cyclamic acid
• dextrin
• dextrose
• fructose
• high-fructose corn syrup
• maltodextrin
• saccharin
• refined white sugar
|
Settling a long-lasting controversy, scientists and gourmands have finally come to an agreement over the last few years that umami is indeed a basic taste—perhaps the way we taste amino acids (aka proteins). The word umami is Japanese for “savory,” and it’s used to describe how certain foods lend a (pick one) meatiness, brothiness, weight, or gravity to a dish.
Scientists find umami fascinating because it appears to be sensed by the parts of the taste buds that pick up
glutamate (if that sounds familiar, it’s because monosodium glutamate (MSG) is an artificial flavor enhancer that imparts umami, most notoriously in Chinese-restaurant food). Glutamate has an important role as a neurotransmitter; not only does it appear to play a part in memory and learning, but in digestion as well. There are glutamate receptors in the stomach, and it’s thought that when you eat a food with glutamate, a signal goes through the glutamate receptors along the vagus nerve to the brain that it’s time for digestion to begin.
When you’re looking to introduce umami into something you’re cooking, you’re in luck; there are a surprising number of foods that can impart that savory feel, that sensation of heft and heartiness. These include tomatoes, sweet potatoes, anchovies, and more (see list, below).
For my money, umami-rich foods are major flavor boosters, which is why many of them are in the recipes in this book. They add a must-have dimension to a meal’s taste and texture. Whenever you can get an umami food into the mix, go for it!
UMAMI-RICH FOODS
VEGETABLES: Carrots, mushrooms, potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes
Spicy Solutions
Cooking is a little bit like working out: keep your workout routine the same and pretty soon the body gets used to it and plateaus instead of getting stronger. Similarly, taste buds fed the same food day after day will fatigue; what once was a striking, stimulating taste will no longer trigger that same intensely pleasurable response.
What you need are new stimuli to throw your taste buds a curveball and keep them engaged. Where you’ll find something new is in the use of herbs and spices. From a brain health perspective, many herbs and spices, teaspoon for teaspoon, contain huge amounts
of anti-inflammatories and antioxidants, as a quick review of
the Culinary Pharmacy will reveal. If we’re talking taste, their influence is just as powerful on both the mouth and the nose. Recall that flavor is the combination of both the sense of smell and the sense of taste; nothing turns that on more than the so-called aromatics: herbs, spices, and members of the allium family including leeks, garlic, shallots, onions, and chives.
Another interesting aspect of herbs and spices is that they invigorate both appetite and satiation. So you’ll want to eat as soon as the first hint of spice hits your nose, and you’ll dive in with taste buds energized to the max, but you’ll also step away from the table sooner (and happier) than if you hadn’t employed herbs and spices. If you’re new to the aromatics game, fret not; see the chart below for a comprehensive list of
global flavorprints and the aromatics upon which they are built. Using herbs and spices will up your game and keep kitchen boredom at bay. This I guarantee.
GLOBAL FLAVORPRINTS
| REGION |
INGREDIENT |
| Asian |
cardamom, chiles, cilantro, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, cumin, curry powder, garlic, ginger, mint, mustard seeds, nutmeg, red pepper flakes, saffron, sesame seeds, turmeric |
| Mediterranean |
basil, bay leaves, fennel, garlic, marjoram, mint, nutmeg, oregano, parsley, red pepper flakes, rosemary, saffron, sage, thyme |
| Middle Eastern |
allspice, cilantro, cinnamon, coriander, cumin, garlic, marjoram, mint, oregano, sesame seeds, thyme |
| Moroccan |
cilantro, cinnamon, coriander, cumin, garlic, ginger, mint, red pepper flakes, saffron, thyme, turmeric |
Developing Your Culinary Mind
They say in life that you shouldn’t sweat the small stuff. So it goes in the kitchen. Many people are amazed to find that stepping into the kitchen is actually a relaxing, almost meditative experience. There’s a flow that takes place, an engagement of the mind that leaves us feeling refreshed and connected, as though all our senses were taken on a adventurous sojourn. Food and cooking demand that you be in the present, a place where yesterday’s follies and tomorrow’s peccadillos hold no sway. But to be fully present, it helps to learn a few tricks of the trade as a way of turning your kitchen into an inviting space filled with culinary gifts that feed the soul.
A lot of the art of developing your culinary mind comes down to
time management. First, that means committing the time to get the job done. Fortunately, once you get past the learning curve, far less time is involved than you might imagine. You might well find you even have more time on your hands than you would if you were schlepping out to restaurants for meals.
There are four basic elements of time you need to budget for, and they often don’t happen concurrently: planning time, shopping time, prep time, and cooking time. (There’s also clean up time, but unless you’re living alone, that’s time I always delegate to someone else. If they’re going to enjoy the fruits of my labor, they can wash a few dishes and pots.)
Just ask TV or film producers, and they’ll tell you that every minute spent on planning time (aka preproduction time) saves ten minutes when the cameras finally begin to roll. Similarly, you’ll save lot of time in the kitchen if you plan your meals beforehand. So, where to start?
I suggest browsing through the recipes in this book to get an idea of what strikes your fancy. Make a list of the ingredients. At first, you may have to shop for all of them, but quite quickly you’ll find that you’ll have many of the staples (notably the
herbs and spices) in your pantry, cutting down on shopping time.
Regarding shopping time, yes, once in a while you’ll find yourself doing a major shop. But more often, especially if you know which recipes you want to prepare, you’ll find a quick fifteen-minute trip sometime during the day will suffice—just enough time to pick up a fresh piece of meat or some vegetables.
Prep time is where you’ll save the most time and most of your sanity. There’s nothing worse than coming home hungry and looking into the fridge only to see a forest of uncut veggies. That’ll make you slam the door shut and reach for the phone to call the nearest Chinese restaurant for delivery. No, the right time to prep, especially vegetables, is as soon you get them home. A quick trim works wonders for taming veggies into workable components that are ready to cook—and that take up far less space in the fridge.
Everything you prep in advance is like a deposit in the culinary bank. There’s nothing better—or more stress-relieving—than knowing you’ve got most of the components for a meal all ready to go. The whole idea is that making a meal shouldn’t feel like a competition where you’re rushed to get shopping, prepping, and cooking done in an impossibly short amount of time (in other words it shouldn’t feel like Top Chef, where you’re afraid the gong is going to go off halfway through your work). Cooking, the best cooking, almost invariably results from being relaxed rather than rushed.
Make It Ahead Strategies
I love passing along tricks of the trade. Think of this section as the Cliff Notes version of getting the most out of your prep time, and in turn, maximizing the number of recipes you’ll try in the book. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the numerous ways you can save time with ingredients by
planning ahead. Now go to it!
Culinary Choreography
The best way to choreograph
cooking time is to work from the outside in, the outside being whatever will take the longest time to cook or can be made in advance, down to those items that only need a few minutes of stove time or need to be served immediately. If you want a visual for this process, think of those Russian matryoshka dolls that nest one inside another.
I’ll use
Roasted Ginger Salmon with Pomegranate Olive Mint Salsa and
Ginger Scented Forbidden Rice as an example. Here, the salmon takes the longest time to prepare and cook: it spends 20 minutes marinating and 15 minutes in the oven. But here’s how to ensure you don’t have wasted time. While the salmon marinates, you prep your rice (5 minutes) and get it on the stove, and, while you’re there, turn on the oven to preheat for the salmon. Once the rice is on the stove (30 minutes), you turn your attention to prepping the pomegranate olive mint salsa, which takes around 10 minutes. So here’s the picture so far; the salmon is marinating, the rice is cooking, the salsa is being made. When you finish the salsa, it’s pretty much time to move the salmon to the oven. Once done, this leaves you 10 minutes or so to pull together a salad. If the dance is done just right, the salmon, rice, and salad will all finish around the same time, with the dollop of salsa all ready to go.
And that’s for feeding four to six people!
If you’re wondering how you’re going to memorize all these dance moves, my response is, “don’t bother.” Seriously. Eventually, the timing will come naturally, but every cook I know uses a series of timers at first (and many never lose the habit). Especially if you live in a house full of distractions, timers can be your best friends, keeping you on track no matter what the interruption.
Your mom used to say “a place for everything, and everything in its place.” Well, at least
my mom did. That’s a good rule of thumb to apply to the kitchen. Organizing a kitchen is an absolute must if you really want to enjoy cooking. Believe me, I know … kitchens attract stuff. All kinds of stuff, some of which has nothing to do with cooking (newspapers, mail, coloring books, keys, sunglasses, flotsam, jetsam, the works). Then there’s the stuff that actually belongs in the kitchen, but like wayward bunnies, somehow manages to multiply and take over your drawers. Not long ago I did an overhaul of my own kitchen and pulled
everything out of the drawers and cabinets. I nearly burst into tears. No wonder
there was clutter. Did I really need a
dozen vegetable peelers? Or three cherry pitters? No, I didn’t, and neither do you. Here’s what you do need within arm’s reach of the stove:
• 1 pair of tongs
• 1 Microplane
• 1 wooden spoon
• 1 spatula
• 1 large knife
• 1 set of measuring cups
• 1 set of measuring spoons
There, that has a shot at staying pretty neat and tidy, doesn’t it?
Another thing to organize is your herbs and spices. Put it this way; if those ingredients are waaaaaay back in a dark cabinet, you simply won’t use them, which will be a huge disappointment to both your taste buds and your brain (brains love herbs and spices). If you’re fortunate, you’ll have a pullout spice rack or one that can live on the wall or counter near the stove. Failing that, put your herbs and spices at the front of a cabinet. That way, they’ll always be ready to use on a moment’s notice.
A lot of people think they need a large space to cook efficiently. I disagree. I’ve done hundreds of demos on the road, and all I usually have is two folding tables, a power strip, and a garbage pail. The key for me is in knowing where everything is before I start—pots, pans, utensils, cooking oils, seasonings, oven mitts: the lot. If you want to achieve kitchen clarity, make sure everything you use regularly has a dedicated spot, and stick to it. After a while you won’t even be thinking twice about what’s where; it’ll always be there when you reach for it.
Reducing Recipe Reading Anxiety
Many cooks, myself included, work intuitively, adding a pinch of this, a dash of that.… Being intuitive is all good and fine, and quite useful when it comes to creating a recipe, but as for re-creating it—as in, writing it down—well, Houston, we have a problem. I used to cringe when, after I made a meal for people, they would ask the dreaded question: “Do you have a recipe for this?”
I would politely scrawl some hieroglyphics on a napkin, hoping that would appease the interested party. Then, more than a dozen years ago, I was handed my first cookbook project, and out of necessity, I had to learn how to write a reproducible recipe. It was critical that these culinary blueprints set the stage for consistent outcomes and success in the kitchen. In order to embrace this new language of recipe writing, I had to understand the formula. It all starts with the ingredient list.
This is the part where, if you’re like me, you may get a little anxious. One, two, three, six, ten—YIKES!!!
How many ingredients? Once upon a time, I would glance at an ingredient
list, get that glazed look in my eyes, and want to run out of the kitchen. Not a viable option for a cook. So I developed a system—at first for myself, and now for you—for breaking down a recipe so you won’t feel anxious when you cook your way through this book.
First, as I’ve mentioned, I recommend that you skim the book and see what recipes seem appealing. As you do, you’ll find a common theme. There are certain herbs and spices and pantry ingredients that weave a thread throughout the recipes. Next, stock your pantry so you have some of these ingredients on hand, that way you’re three-quarters of the way to having everything you need to create some yummy dishes.
Below are the ingredients for
Cozy Lentil Soup with Delicata Squash (found) to illustrate my point. The ingredient list looks long; however, close to half of the list is comprised of spices (shaded in red) and three other ingredients (in blue)—olive oil, vegetable stock, and lentils—that could easily be in your pantry and/or freezer. Once you have the pantry items separated out, you can see the other ingredients are basic vegetables (shaded in green), including onions, carrots, and celery, which can live in your refrigerator already chopped and ready to go. Kale and delicata squash may well be the only ingredients you’ll need to nip in to the market for.
| Sea salt |
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil |
| 1 teaspoon curry powder |
8 cups Classic Magic Mineral Broth or store-bought organic vegetable broth |
| ½ teaspoon ground cumin |
1 cup dried green lentils, rinsed well |
| ½ teaspoon ground turmeric |
1 yellow onion, diced small |
| ¼ teaspoon ground coriander |
2 carrots, peeled and diced small |
| ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon |
2 celery stalks, diced small |
| Pinch of red pepper flakes |
1 medium delicata squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into ½-inch cubes |
| |
1 cup tightly packed, stemmed, and thinly sliced kale |
Followed as written, the recipe will yield delicious results. And it is also—like so many of the recipes in this book—both forgiving and flexible, and you can look to the variation and cook’s note for ingredients to swap out, or to find helpful tips and suggestions. If you don’t have a specific ingredient, that doesn’t mean you can’t make the recipe. No kale? How about arugula, spinach, chard, or skipping it all together? The same with the herbs and spices. If you don’t have cumin, turmeric, or coriander, just add another teaspoon of curry powder.
With growing kitchen confidence and skill, you can let the recipes be a blueprint where your own culinary creativity can thrive. As you get more experienced, look for foods that have similar tastes and textures; this will expand your ability to successfully substitute and come up with recipes of your own. You’ll even be able to write them down, sans hieroglyphics.
As a cook, I’m often asked about the importance of eating organically. The answer has three parts. The first deals with taste: organically raised foods, to my taste buds, always have more flavor, and it’s especially notable with animal proteins. If you’ve never had grass-fed beef or pasture-raised organic eggs—oh, my, are you in for a treat.
Second, and this is where we get into the brain health part of the equation, organically raised foods are consistently more nutrient dense, and often have more favorable nutrient profiles, than non
organic foods.
Third, and also related to brain health, there’s the question of what
pesticides do to the brain. Unfortunately, research on the subject is scarce. However, enough has been uncovered to put pesticides in the “when in doubt, leave it out” category. For example, certain pesticides have been associated with Parkinson’s disease, and the European Food Safety Authority announced that two types of pesticides might “affect the developing human nervous system.”
Fortunately—and this is where I give a hearty cheer—organics are more plentiful (and less costly) than ever before. As their popularity has soared, organics are making their way on to more and more supermarket shelves. Of course, there’s always the farmers’ market, which is my favorite place to seek out foods that are grown ethically and sustainably.
You may, from time to time, find yourself in a position where you have to purchase conventionally raised produce. Though the list is a bit of a moving target, there are foods whose cultivation generally uses minimal pesticides and/or leaves a minimal pesticide residue, and there are foods that bring a heavier chemical load to the table, and should be avoided. The easiest way to keep track of which is which is to access the website of the Environmental Working Group, which put out lists such as “the dirty dozen” (avoid!) and “the clean fifteen” (eat up!) at
www.ewg.org/foodnews/list.
