Christina Cooks: Back to the Cutting Board

Oh, I hear you.

Here she goes again, talking about heart health.

Well you're right.

I'll talk about it again and again and again with 1 in 5 deaths resulting from heart disease and 80% of heart disease preventable, I'm going to talk about it till I'm blue in the face, because it's so easy to solve.

Let's change the way we think about food and how we feel and live our healthiest life, today on Christina Cooks.

Funding for Christina Cooks is provided by: GreenOnyx, producers of Wanna Greens A tiny but nutrient dense fresh green vegetable.

Wanna Greens can be added to any meal, snack or dessert.

Fresh greens.

Wanna Greens.

Additional funding provided by Finamill.

The flavor of freshly ground spices and dried herbs with refillable, swappable pods.

Finamill.

And by Mauviel, creators of copper, stainless and steel carbon cookware for professional and home cooks.

A story of passion since 1830.

And by Suzannes Specialties Offering a full line of alternative, vegan and organic sweeteners and toppings.

Suzannes Specialties.

Sweetness the way Mother Nature intended.

And by Jonathans Spoons.

Individually handcrafted from cherry wood, each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

Additional funding provided by: Hi, I'm Christina Pirello, and this is Christina Cooks, where each week we take fresh, seasonal ingredients and whip them into amazing dishes.

Will they all be plant based?

Yeah.

Will they all be delicious?

Yeah.

I know you've heard me talk about heart health, and you're probably, like, rolling your eyes already.

Shes talking about it again. I'll talk about it forever if I have to, if it helps change things.

But there's more to heart health than whether or not you eat beans and grains and vegetables.

Heart health also has emotions tied to it.

So if you're stressed out all the time, your arteries constrict, your blood pressure goes up, adrenaline floods through your blood, your fight or flight kicks in, but then there's no bear chasing you.

So now your kidneys have to step up, cleanse the now toxic adrenaline from your blood to calm you down.

If this continues day after day after day without you managing stress, you become exhausted.

Your kidneys become exhausted.

You get dark circles under your eyes.

You look terrible, so you feel terrible.

It's a mess.

So the best thing to do is learn to manage the emotions that drive your heart crazy.

What we're making today are lentil...

I don't want to call them meatballs, but lentil... spheres, lentil croquettes.

Lentils have been clinically proven, of all beans, to lower cholesterol, reduce blood pressure and help with overall heart health.

More than any other bean or pea.

So we're cooked lentils and we mashed them partially mash them, in this gigantic bowl.

and they're going to become our sort of croquettes.

But they need something to go with them.

This is kind of, you know, so we're gonna take some extra virgin olive oil into a skillet.

I'm generous with olive oil and use really good olive oil, because that's where the heart health benefits are.

If you're buying the vat for four dollars in a big box store, you're just getting fat and calories.

Real olive oil, estate olive oil, is worth the investment for your heart.

That's where the polyphenols come from.

And all of the energy that creates a healthy heart.

What goes into our olive oil is a whole clove of garlic.

That whole clove of garlic will not live in the gravy, but it will help to flavor the oil and garlic helps to contribute to heart health, helps to clean veins and arteries.

It's antibacterial.

Antifungal.

It's not only delicious and dramatic, it's amazing.

So while the garlic begins to simmer in the oil because it's really good oil, so you don't want to heat it until there's an ingredient in there.

We'll continue to mash our lentils and add to it sauted diced onion, olives, and sun dried tomatoes.

You have to flavor the lentils so that they have good taste.

In go the olives.

We continue to mix.

And interestingly, we're going to flavor these with a little soy sauce.

And you're thinking Okay, that's a little weird. But it's not.

It's going to give the meatballs, if you will, some nice mysterious umami.

And once you have those ingredients mixed in, just checking on our garlic over here.

Now we'll add some breadcrumbs.

Add them gradually because you want this to be like Goldilocks.

Not too dry, not too wet, just right.

And you can stop with the fork and use your hands after a while if you like.

If this mixture feels too dry, you can add a little water.

You need it to hold together.

Back to the garlic.

Now the garlic can go away and in goes diced canned tomatoes.

Now you can enjoy that sizzle.

And some crushed red chili flakes which are optional.

You don't want to use them don't use them.

But in our house, in my world, there's not a lot of dishes that don't have that spice.

There's just not.

A little salt.

To flavor them.

And we're just going to let this simmer for the time it takes us to make the little lentil meatballs, because it's not a long cooked gravy.

So now let's see how we feel about this mixture.

So now you're going to make little meatballs.

And they're going to go into a pan that can go into the oven.

And they're not huge.

Let's not make them, you know, tennis ball size.

We'll make about six or eight and some of the lentils will fall off.

It's okay.

These are not perfect.

They're rustic.

Look at the lovely simmer happening on those tomatoes.

I usually don't lower my heat too low when I make a quick gravy like this, because I want it to reduce and I don't want to have to use tomato paste and blah blah, blah blah blah.

In the other pan I have cooking, I'm going to whisk it to make sure it stays loose.

Not just any polenta, but polenta made from chickpea flour, olive oil and salt and water, of course.

And you're thinking, Wait, isn't polenta made from corn? It is.

But when you make it from chickpea flour, it's really smooth and yummy, just like polenta.

But it's all protein because chickpea flour is basically good ground up chickpeas.

So two more meatballs and these are going to go into the oven.

You can pan fry them too.

But they're nicer and denser if you do it in the oven into the oven for 20 minutes until they're nice and golden.

So here's our lentil meatballs cooked and ready to go.

Let's check our gravy.

Spectacular.

Let's check our polenta.

It's all creamy and fragrant and smooth.

I'm going to take.

Some polenta.

And plate it right down the center like so.

It stays really beautifully loose.

If you let this cool, it will in fact set up like polenta.

But I'm not really a big fan of set polenta, because then you have to do something else, like pan fry it.

I like it really loose and soft.

Then we'll take some of our gravy on one side, like so.

Just like this.

Then carefully place three lentil meatballs and to make sure that we get everything we need some bitter greens.

We know it in our country as broccoli rabe.

In Puglia, it's known as cime di rapa. Same difference, but it's a little more wild there.

There's less broccoli florets on it and more of a bitter green final touch.

A little bit of fresh wolffia on our polenta.

And you have a protein rich, calming, beautiful, satisfying meal that will not harm your heart.

(gentle music plays) So I'm here today with Rakesh Shah, who's a doctor of cardiology at Saint Mary's Hospital in Pennsylvania.

And we've known each other for a while now.

- Quite a bit.

- Hi, Rakesh.

Nice to see you.

- Good to see you again.

I know that you and I talk about heart health a lot in terms of food and all of that, but what I want to talk to you about today, or what I want you to talk to me about because I'm not an expert, is the impact of stress.

Stress is inevitable.

No matter what you do, there is stress around.

The message I try to get to my patients is it's not the stress itself, it's how we deal with the stress, which really increases your risk of having a cardiac event.

There's good documentation that the way you potentially handle your stress can really adversely affect you.

So give me your top three ways that people can, in their day to day life, manage stress better.

Forget food.

I'll handle that part.

Right.

I recommend yoga, tai chi, meditation.

Those are my top three recommendations for my patients.

And people don't have to devote an hour, right?

- No they dont.

- Ten minutes?

- Ten minutes.

Yeah.

- Okay.

Ten minutes with meditation, It's a great way to step away from the world.

You're here, and all of a sudden you're not in the world right now.

And it's a way to get way to get away from everything.

Everything that we do in life.

We're putting energy into the world.

This is a way of refocusing that energy - With a new and calming... - Its filling your tank again.

Exactly.

And now you know.

(Italian music plays) So when people think of Polignano a Mare, they sort of think of the seaside.

When I think of Polignano a Mare, I think of carrots.

These carrots are tricolore, tri-color.

This is Modesto, who is the farmer who grows these incredible carrots.

And he was just explaining to me that the colors come from the fact that we're so close to the sea behind me, and the soil has minerals that create these three colors, but they start out the lightest first.

The most yellow is the youngest, then they become orange.

And finalmente, finally, this beautiful rose colored carrot.

Each year the carrots just replant themselves.

So this is a crop that's unique to Polignano?

Yes.

So nowhere else do they grow these beautiful, beautiful carrots.

And what I love about them is the minerals are great for intestinal health, which determines the quality of your blood, which determines how your heart functions.

And since that's what we're talking about today, these are some of the greatest vegetables to create heart health.

So they use the greens in salads because they're so tender.

And I can't begin to explain to you the perfume of these carrots.

And when you clean them, you said to me earlier, how do you clean?

- You were telling me earlier.

- The first clean is with a hand Okay.

(Speaking Italian) Everything cleaned by hand, each carrot.

Yes.

And they stay three, four hours in the water.

- Okay.

And, finish washing 10 or 20 carrots at a time, because it's very crunchy.

- Ah, it's very, like, fragile.

- Yes.

At home when you bite into a carrot in the US, it's hard.

Like hard.

These are so... look at that.

They're so soft and so sweet.

The best way to eat these carrots is raw after they're cleaned.

But of course you can cook?

- Yes you can cook.

- And become better.

- But the best is no cook.

Yes.

- The best is not cooked.

So you could use them in salad, as a snack.... - Yes.

- Yeah.

So Modesto, I'm going to take these carrots, may I?

Posso?

Oh yes.

Sure.

Back to my villa to prepare us some lovely dishes.

Grazie mille!

- Grazie.

- Thank you for having me.

But before we go back to the villa, we're off to Polignano a Mare, the city, to see why It's absolutely one of the most special places on earth.

When people think of Polignano a Mare, they think of Domenico Modugno.

No?

(singing) Volare... Now you got it?

(crowd singing Volare) Okay, that was cool.

But now let me show you what Polignano is really famous for.

Come on.

(Italian music continues) Polignano a Mare dates back to prehistoric times.

Singing aside, it's a really historic city.

They say that Julius Caesar was the father of Polignano a Mare.

People come from all over the world for the overlook, The beach, the view of Polignano behind me.

It's one of the most beautiful places on earth.

I could stay at this fence and overlook the ocean for the rest of my days.

But then there are those carrots to deal with.

So it's time for me to head back to the villa and cook.

Enjoy the view.

(Italian music concludes) (gentle music plays) We're back at the villa and we're going to make my version of a tiella.

It's very different than the traditional tiella, but it's also quite similar.

So usually a tiella in Puglia has cozze, or mussels.

What we did instead was saut crimini mushrooms or any mushroom you like with a little bit of wakame seaweed.

Or you could use nori.

and by sauting them in olive oil until they're really well cooked, maybe five minutes stirring with the seaweed, you'll flavor the mushroom to taste a little bit like the sea.

Now we can add the rest of our veggies, which is some red onion or any onion you like.

When you're substituting ingredients like I did for, you know, mussels.

I use some sea vegetables.

Don't just substitute to substitute, substitute with something that's going to give your dish something besides flavor.

In this case, I've added minerals by using a sea vegetable, so I used a little soy sauce along with the mushrooms to give them some color and a little more umami.

So now I'll season the rest of the vegetables with salt.

Now we'll let the onions simmer, and we're going to add some red pepper.

Another little pinch of salt.

When you season a little bit at a time like this, adding a pinch of salt every time you add a vegetable, what you create is depth of flavor.

The peppers will taste like peppers, the onions like onions, the mushrooms like mushrooms.

So you don't want to season all at once in the beginning, and you don't want to season all at once at the end.

Next we'll go in a little bit of eggplant, just a small amount cut into chunks.

When we add the eggplant, we'll need to add a little bit of liquid because eggplant can be like a sponge when you cook it.

And whether you soak it or don't soak it is your choice.

I usually soak it at home, but the eggplant here is very different and so fresh that I have not found the need to soak it at all.

Tiny bit of salt.

And now for my liquid so that the eggplant can begin to stew once it's coated with oil like this, a tiny bit of white wine, you can use broth, you can use just water.

But white wine is going to give me some sweetness.

And it's also going to flavor the eggplant.

Eggplant doesn't taste like much.

Next some potatoes.

Another little bit of salt.

And you can see the eggplant has begun to release its juices with just that tiny pinch of salt.

And now we'll wait for it to sort of suck it up again.

And now the star of the show Polignano carrots.

And we're going to do what's called a roll cut.

So we're starting with the least sweet of them, which then matures into an orange carrot and becomes sweet.

They were so lovely, weren't they?

And then finally the strongest of the Polignano carrots, the red, which is actually the carrot, as you heard us say, that reseeds and becomes the new crop of carrots.

Look at that.

That is so gorgeous.

I mean, just look at that carrot.

Oh!

I know I get very excited about food.

Sorry.

Last bit of salt.

And now we're just going to let these stew and we're gonna let them stew uncovered.

It doesn't matter whether they cook evenly because this is going to go into a crust into the oven.

And right before we do that we'll add the greens because I don't want them to overcook.

So now we're going to make the crust.

This is farro flour.

You can use sprouted whole wheat.

whole wheat pastry, whole wheat could be a little heavy.

But this is farro which is a soft wheat, lower in gluten and local to this region.

And I love using it when I find it at home, I use it there too.

We're going to add a tiny bit of salt, which helps to make it more digestible and a little bit of leavener, just to give the crust some lift.

It's optional.

You don't need to do it.

Oil, for fat.

I'm using a third of a cup.

Generous.

I'm always generous with olive oil, especially in Puglia.

When they say a little olive oil, they mean a lot.

And then we're just mix this together, right?

You can sift if you like.

I'm not a sifter.

I'm not a whisker.

I just do it this way.

When you make a pie crust, you want to mix the fat.

Whatever it is, if it's butter, vegan butter or oil, you want to mix it until it's pulled together like this.

And you don't see any white powdery flour, because now you can add very little liquid to pull your crust together.

You add your your water slowly because it's better to mix now and have your crust come together than have it be too wet.

And then you have to add flour because then you end up with a tough pie crust and there's nothing worse.

Okay, so you see how this has come together with not even a couple tablespoons of water.

And it's because farro flours so soft.

That's one of the reasons.

So now you pull the dough together in your hands.

But you see it's not on my hands.

It's just a perfect, perfect soft dough.

So what you want to do is press your dough into a circle because your pan, which is oiled, is circular, and you want to preheat your oven to 350 Fahrenheit.

Always preheat your oven when you're baking, whether it's a cake, a pie, whatever.

And you kind of do this to get the rolling out of the way and a little bit less.

And you do that because if you over-roll your dough, it can become fragile and tough.

So I tend to press into a pretty big disc.

And you'll see why.

And you're just going to turn the dough and roll it from the center out.

When your dough is rolled, you strip off one piece of paper.

This is just an old pastry trick.

Flip it and strip off the other side.

This way it doesn't stick to the paper.

Lay your pan in the center.

And let the crust hang over the side.

Peel your paper away.

Okay, now you take your crust and you kind of leave it hanging over.

You want some of that excess.

And if you tear your dough, you simply repair it by putting a piece of dough in there.

Take a piece from here.

Patch it.

Try not to stretch the dough too much when you press it into the pan.

I try to keep all of the dough if I can when I make this, because we're going to fold the excess over, almost like a galette.

Now we'll take some greens.

This is a form of chicoria, and the stems are quite bitter, so I'm taking them off.

Chicoria is, again, a bitter green.

so, good for the liver, makes you happy, makes everyone around you happy.

Tiny bit of salt.

We raise the heat and we stir it just until they wilt because this is going to go into the oven.

Bring our pie crust where you can manage it.

And now you'll take your veg.

Pop it in here and you want - see how beautiful the vegetables are?

What I don't want to do is cover this with a second crust.

I mean, you can, but the beauty of this is to take your crust and sort of pull it in at the edges and just make like a rim around the tiella.

So you see it?

Many people make a double crust.

So if you make tiella, and I'm not making it in the way that you make it, Im making it the way I make it, which is why it's called my tiella.

And so you pull this crust up around the edges.

The pan is well oiled.

Then we take a tiny bit of olive oil.

Drizzle it around the crust.

And this is going to go into the oven for about 35 minutes at 350.

And the results will be spectacular.

(gentle music plays) I don't know about you guys, but I love it when a plan comes together.

Look at this tiella - perfect golden crust.

You can see it's flaky like a pie crust.

The vegetables are perfectly cooked.

I cannot wait to eat this.

So, what are you waiting for?

Let's get back to the cutting board and I'll see you next time on Christina Cooks: The Macroterranean Way.

Funding for Christina Cooks is provided by: GreenOnyx, producers of Wanna Greens Organic and sustainable, Wanna Greens are grown in a completely closed, indoor environment.

At Wanna Greens, we believe in the benefits of fresh greens for people and the planet.

Additional funding provided by Finamill.

The flavor of freshly ground spices and dried herbs with refillable, swappable pods.

Finamill.

And by Mauviel, creators of copper, stainless and steel carbon cookware for professional and home cooks.

A story of passion since 1830.

And by Suzannes Specialties Offering a full line of alternative, vegan and organic sweeteners and toppings.

Suzannes Specialties.

Sweetness the way Mother Nature intended.

And by Jonathans Spoons.

Individually handcrafted from cherry wood, each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

Additional funding provided by: You can find today's recipes and learn more by visiting our website at christinacooks.com and by following Christina on social media.

Learn how to add delicious plant based dishes to your daily diet with the companion cookbook VegEdibles.

Featuring more than 80 easy-to-make recipes To order your copy for $32.95 plus handling, call 800-266-5815 or visit christinacooks.com.

Add Back to the Cutting Board and get both books for $55.95 plus handling.