There are three veggies that create wellness like no others.

Lucky for us, they're delicious, familiar, and so easy to add to our diet.

No special shops, no fancy ingredients, just food as Mother Nature intended.

Let's create day-to-day wellness deliciously as we go Back to the Cutting Board today on Christina Cooks.

(theme music) ♪ (announcer) Underwriting for Christina Cooks is provided by Suzanne's Specialties, offering a full line of alternative vegan and organic sweeteners and toppings.

Suzanne's Specialties.

Sweetness the way Mother Nature intended.

♪ Additional funding is also provided by Old Yankee Cutting Boards, designed for durability and custom crafted by hand with Yankee pride and craftsmanship.

♪ Jonathan's Spoons, individually handcrafted from cherry wood, each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

♪ Additional funding is also 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?

Mother Nature provides, so yes.

So there are three sort of specific vegetables that really can contribute to your wellness, and they're not weird, they're not unfamiliar, they are not something you can't find.

So there's gonna be no excuses.

All three of these veggies do everything from benefit digestion to help your body fight off infection, and that's never been more important than it is now.

So, this is what's happening, and every dish is so simple.

So simple that anybody could do this.

No excuses.

So the first dish we're gonna make is a split pea and cauliflower soup, and the star here is the cauliflower.

So there's curry and hot spice in this, so I kind of really like to use avocado oil when I use curry, and it's not that I don't like olive oil for cooking, I adore olive oil for cooking, but when I'm using a hot spice that's strongly flavored like curry, I don't like the competition that happens with olive oil and that particular flavor.

But it doesn't really matter.

If you like olive oil, go ahead and use it, but I'm gonna use avocado.

And then we'll add a little hot chili spice as well.

It's not a dish if there's not a little hot chili spice in it.

And then we're gonna turn on the heat.

And then we'll add some minced garlic.

The finer you mince garlic, the stronger the flavor, and don't forget, garlic is anti-viral, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, and delicious.

And some yellow onion.

You can use whatever onion you like.

I like yellow for this dish because the soup is light-colored, and I don't want anything to make it look darker.

And then we just sort of sweat these with a tiny pinch of salt.

Don't use a lot of salt, because this is a bean soup, and if you use a lot of salt when you make a bean soup, you'll make pebble soup, because the beans won't get soft.

So we're gonna stir these onions just until they're coated with the curry.

They should be a light, light yellow.

Don't worry about them becoming translucent or caramelized, you don't need that to happen, because the curry is such a strong flavor that it's gonna save you on this.

So the next thing that goes in is cauliflower, star of the show.

It's cruciferous, it's 25 calories a cup, it's loaded with fiber, and it has such great nutrients for cancer-fighting properties that you kinda can't lose.

I mean, cauliflower looks and tastes like Clark Kent, you know, of veggies, but the truth of the matter is, it's a powerhouse.

And you just want to stir it in.

You might have to add more curry like I just did, because you want the cauliflower to turn slightly yellow.

Okay, once that happens, you add split peas.

These are yellow split peas, this is gonna be a yellow soup, which is really very pretty, but you can use green, doesn't matter.

So split peas cook pretty quickly because they're split like lentils.

And that goes in.

You wanna rinse them before you use them so they don't taste dusty.

And then we'll add four to five cups of water.

So why the variety?

If you want a thick soup, you use four cups of water.

If you want a thinner soup, you use five.

So we're gonna go for five, I think, 'cause I really don't need the soup to be super, super thick, and the beans will sort of melt, and you actually won't even see them.

Give this one last little stir.

And then we're gonna cover it and bring it to a boil and let it cook until the beans are soft.

When I say one last little stir, I mean, one last little stir.

The job of soup is to relax the digestive tract so that you can assimilate food easily.

And you're not hungry all the time and it helps you to eat less.

If you're always in here, not exactly relaxing.

One little stir, cover it, and by the magic of soup, it will soup all on its own.

So this will cook for about 30 minutes, 35, until the beans melt and then we'll season it and take it to the finish.

♪ -Can a vegetable be a fruit?

-A fruit can be a vegetable.

What?

It can be both?

What happens if you swallow the seeds?

(unintelligible) -I don't get it.

-I am so confused.

♪ So we get a million emails, phone calls, and letters each week of people struggling with what they should do to not be so confused as they get started on their path to being well.

So, often I answer those questions, but every now and then, I think, "Wouldn't it be great to bring in an expert who can help you to understand some of the things you struggle with?"

So today I'm here with Dr. Vicki Bralow who runs an MDVIP practice in Philadelphia, a family practice dedicated to health and wellness.

So she's gonna answer some questions for us today.

-Hi, Vicki!

-Hi, Christina, how are you?

-I'm so glad you're here!

-Thanks for asking me!

So one of the things that I hear a lot about is people are trying to avoid sugar, as we know that they should, but they're not sure on labels whether they're getting added sugar or not, so what are some of the things they should look for?

Well, that's a great question, because I think most consumers don't really have an idea of how much sugar is hidden in our foods.

-Right, right.

-And that is one of the things that I talk to my patients about, independent of whether they have diabetes or are near getting diabetes.

-Or even if they're well, right?

-Right.

If you're well, you're healthy, you don't think you need to worry about sugar, you need to worry about sugar, because it's just poured into our foods.

So the recommendation for a female is to have six added teaspoons of sugar a day.

For a man, it's nine added teaspoons of sugar a day.

-Right.

-So what does that mean?

You look on the side of a package at the label, all right?

-And it's in grams!

-Yeah.

-Isn't that funny?

-Yeah.

(Vicki) Our entire system in the United States of America is not metric except when you look at a food label.

-Right.

-Which leads me to wonder, hm, how much do they really want people to understand what's on a food label?

-Right, exactly, exactly.

-Right, it's very funny.

So, four grams is one teaspoon.

-Okay.

-All right?

So, whenever you look at a package, if it has 24 grams of added sugar, you're eating six teaspoons, which for a female is all of the sugar that they're supposed to have for the day -that is added to their foods.

-And that's in -that one product... -That is in that one product, in one serving of that one product.

(Christina) But how do they know, when they're looking at a label, how do they know what is sugar?

(Vicki) Okay, so when they look at the label, the first thing you want to look at -is actually the sugars.

-Right.

-And it gives you the grams.

-Right.

Then you want to look at the ingredients to see what type of sugar they're talking about.

-Okay.

-If they say "cane sugar," then we're talking about the white granulated sugar.

If the sugar is high-fructose corn syrup, that's a subject for a whole other discussion, but that is also a concentrated sweetener.

And then there's maybe a hundred other types of ingredients that are sugars that people don't realize.

Honey, people understand that, molasses, people might understand that, but then you get into things like barley malt or rice syrup.

I mean, rice isn't sweet, -so why would rice-- -Count as a sugar.

-Exactly.

-So the reasons for using these different sugars and products are various.

I mean, sometimes it's for health, if it's actually a good product, because things like rice sugar keep a controlled... -Release into the-- -...release of sugar into your body, and you don't get spikes, like you do.

(Christina) So, just one quick thought on that.

So that's like a commercial product.

When you're looking at a natural label, do you have to worry or are we good?

You're not good.

You have to worry, you have to worry.

It was interesting, I had a patient in my office who only drinks oat milk, and we were talking-- -Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

-Okay, right?

So she leaves the office, she goes to Whole Foods to go food shopping, and she sends me a picture of the oat milk that she has been drinking.

And it's this green, beautiful package... -Looks very earthy.

-...non-GMO, you know, everything, plant-based, and then you turn it over, 17 grams of added sugar.

-Added--added sugar.

-In each serving.

(Vicki) In each serving.

So, yeah, just 'cause it's healthy doesn't mean that it doesn't have -a lot of added sugar.

-Great, thank you.

-Thank you, that was great.

-You're very welcome, Christina.

So read your labels, pay attention, and try not to get too much added sugar.

♪ So the soup is ready.

The peas are nice and soft, the cauliflower's soft.

Doesn't that smell great?

-Yeah!

-Yeah!

Yeah, I know!

Now we're gonna season it with miso.

We're gonna use white miso, because I don't want the soup to turn a dark color.

I want it to be a nice, beautiful yellow.

So we'll take about two teaspoons of miso, 'cause there's about four cups of water, so you kind of want to not season it too much and make it too salty.

Then, I'm gonna dip the bowl in and get a little of the hot broth just to dissolve the miso.

This is not some magic culinary whiz trick, this is just so nobody bites down on something salty.

Now, when people make split pea soup, there are two schools.

One is we serve it nice and chunky like this.

It's so delicious, and that's how I like my split pea soup... (Robert) Or!

-Hi, hon!

-Hi, dear!

(Robert) Or we stick blend it.

(Christina) You can't just immediately, like, infiltrate my soup with your desire.

-Sorry.

-Oh, wait, you are el jefe.

(Robert) Sorry, but split pea soup is meant to be creamy... -Is it?

-...not chunky.

In whose world?

-Go ahead.

-In the world of soup.

-In the world of soup!

-In the world of soup.

-Soup is just amazing.

-So, stick blend it and try not to have us all wear it.

(whirring) So when you stick blender a soup or put it in another blender, you want to try to get nice creamy, like a silky-- like a bisque texture.

(laughing) You know what I mean.

It kind of goes all over the place.

-This is as low as it goes.

-That's all right.

Keep it down in the-- keep it down in the pot, down.

Down in the pot.

And so, when this happens, when you make the soup creamy, then you kind of have a better chance of garnishing it really in a pretty way.

So we're gonna, while you're blending, I'm gonna take some parsley and chop it.

Now, when you chop parsley-- (Robert) Maybe she was right, we should have served this one chunky.

(laughing) (Christina) Maybe she was right.

Maybe she was right!

He just said, "Maybe she was right."

(Robert) Okay, all you guys, cook soup, help in the kitchen, and soup is a wonderful creative outlet, because soup can be anything.

-Well, not anything.

-Well... Start with onions and celery and carrot -and then you build from there.

-Start with a nice sofrito.

Can we do it mezze a mezze, a soup part creamy, part-- (Robert) Just about, just about.

(Christina) Ah, bravo.

(Robert) Just about.

-There you go.

-Me sta bene.

So, once your soup is nice and creamy or once your soup is nice and chunky, depending on which battle you lose or win-- smells so good, right?

Then, you garnish it with some nice fresh parsley like this and a wee drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, which just adds some richness to the first course of your meal, and this is just the greatest soup.

So, here, hon.

-Go eat your soup.

-I'm glad I could help.

(laughing) -Go eat your soup.

-Thank you, dear!

(Christina) Yes, dear!

♪ Okay, so now we're gonna work on a dish called Carrots Osso Buco.

And I know this is usually made with veal shank, but I don't really want to eat anything that's anybody's shank.

So--especially veal.

So--I mean, the worst meat ever, veal.

The baby gets taken from its mama--aye-yi-yi.

It's too much for me.

Okay, so we're gonna take some avocado oil.

Again, I'm using avocado oil, 'cause there's some really strong spices in this.

And we're gonna add some curry powder to the oil.

And the curry is kind of your choice.

It could be a lot, it could be a little.

What this does is we deeply flavor the carrots so that it's nice and rich and almost meaty.

The carrots cook real soft in the oven, a little hot spice just 'cause I feel like it.

Okay?

And in goes onion, and we take the onion, and you're gonna stand the onion up on its root end and then lay it down, and we're gonna cut it into chunks like this.

(chopping) And these are gonna go right into the oil and start to cook.

They're just gonna start to simmer.

It doesn't matter how long they cook here, 'cause this whole dish is going in the oven, so you're good.

Then you take a carrot, and instead of cutting the carrot in little tiny pieces, we're gonna cut the carrot into chunks.

So when you serve this dish, it's big chunks of carrot instead of big chunks of, you know, meat.

Okay.

You know, meat.

So these are gonna go in along with other carrots that we've cut.

I'm just gonna move them around a little bit to create a layer.

Okay, now, these are porcini mushrooms.

They usually come dried.

You can get them fresh, but in this dish, I want them dried because of the flavor.

When you dry porcinis, the flavor gets super intense, and they impart every dish you make with a meatiness.

Sorry.

(sizzling) So they go back into their soaking water and this goes right into our pan.

You move the mushrooms around a little bit so that they're sort of dispersed, and now we add a little bit of red wine.

If you don't want to use wine, just go with this like this and season it a little more strongly, but the wine is what gives it the osso buco-ness of the dish.

Is that a word?

I don't know, we'll see.

Then we add some salt.

You can also use soy sauce, it's your choice.

And then this is gonna go into the oven for 30 to 40 minutes at 350 or 375, depending on what you like, but what you want to see is that the carrots and the onions begin to brown on the edges and are very, very tender, sort of like they would fall off a bone.

♪ So once the carrots are tender, and you can do this dish with pearl onions or chopped onions, it's your call, but once these carrots are tender, they're really sort of charred a little bit.

So, like you guys know, there's a camera crew here, right?

So, Matt, this is my steady cam guy, Matt.

Matt, I really want you to get in close and show them-- see how the carrots are almost charred?

So that they really take on a meaty texture and have, like, a smoky flavor to them, okay?

So, okay, get out.

All right.

So, now, these carrots could be kind of heavy, right?

So we are gonna just chop some parsley real quick.

It could be really coarsely chopped, it doesn't have to be finely chopped, 'cause it's just a garnish.

Goes right on top.

A tiny squeeze of lemon juice, which will just lift the flavors right up so that you fall in love with this dish.

We'll give it a quick little stir.

And this dish will be the hit of any table.

We make it a lot at the holidays, but any time you make this, you better make a lot, 'cause people love it.

♪ So we're talking about the health benefits of these very common veggies, right?

But one of the best ways you can eat them is pickled, and it's so easy to make them yourself, and let's face it, fermentation is having its moment in the sun.

And when you see how easy this is, it just takes a little time where you're waiting for things, you will never buy pickles again.

So you're gonna take a good quality white sea salt, even like a flor de sal, and you're gonna add about a tablespoon of it to enough water to cover these veggies.

Bring it to a boil, simmer it until the salt is dissolved.

Then you're gonna let it come down to room temperature, that's the waiting part.

Then you're gonna take this cooled brine and pour it to just cover the veggies.

It should come to just at this rim so that there's room for air in the pickle jar.

Then you're gonna take a piece of cheesecloth and set it on the kitchen counter.

For three days in the summer, five days when it's cooler out so that they begin to ferment.

Then you take off the cheesecloth, put a lid on, put them in the fridge, and you have pickles.

♪ So now we're gonna work on a slaw.

It's a spicy Asian slaw.

And the star of the show is cabbage.

So we have boiling water, we're gonna add a little bit of salt.

You want to add a little bit of salt to your boiling water when you're blanching veggies so they taste like individual characters.

So cabbage--simple, humble green cabbage.

I told you I wasn't gonna use anything weird in this show.

Simple, humble cabbage is the greatest anti-inflammatory of all time.

We use it internally, we use it externally, we use cabbage leaves when you have a bruised or sore knee from the gym.

We eat it to get rid of inflammation in the body.

Cabbage is the man!

So, it's hard to digest when it's raw, so what we're gonna do is quickly blanch it, and I do mean quickly.

It goes in the water, it comes pretty much right out.

All you're trying to do is take the rawness off it so it doesn't take too much effort to digest it and you don't become musical when you eat cabbage, okay?

So that's gonna get set aside.

And now we'll take our carrot.

And the carrot's gonna be cut into julienne matchstick pieces, but Japanese style.

Not a classic French julienne.

So what we do is you work your way up the carrot.

And if your knife is sharp, you see how these fell like perfect little domino pieces?

Kind of flatten them out a little bit, but keep your overlap.

Then you run your knife along them.

You've gotta be quick here.

You can't, like, do this.

You've gotta really slice, or you see how that little piece flew out when I slowed down?

Yeah.

You want to keep moving so the carrots don't slip.

They go into the water, the boiling water.

You want to work with your vegetables mild flavor to strongest flavor.

So again, in and out.

This is called blanching.

Boiling, we'd be staying in there for at least a minute.

Well, not we, but the veggies.

If you're jumping in boiling water, we have a problem.

The next thing to go in are snow peas.

Now, when you buy snow peas, you have to take the end and take the little string out.

I'm lazy, I don't do it.

But if you want to do it, do it.

And again, they go in and they come out.

We want them to be crunchy.

This whole thing should taste more raw than it actually is, right, because you've blanched some veggies.

And now you're done.

The cooking part of this dish is finished.

So now we're gonna take a cucumber, we're gonna take half of it, I'll clean my knife.

You want to clean your knife and your cutting board.

And we're just gonna take and cut half-moon pieces.

Work our way down the cucumber.

And what you want to do is make sure that the cucumber pieces are thin and that they're uniform.

These are very cooling to the body and they provide moisture.

So cucumbers are not just the thing you put in salad because that's what you put in salad.

They actually serve a purpose.

They help to keep your skin soft and moisturize the body so you digest better.

When you're hydrated, you digest better.

Okay?

So they go in.

And now we're going to take radicchio.

This is a radicchio.

Radicchio looks like a purple cabbage, but it's not.

It has a delicate, bitter flavor, and it's really good for helping the liver to do its job more efficiently.

And when the liver does its job more efficiently, you digest your macronutrients-- fat, protein, and carbs-- more effectively.

And when that happens, you can manage your weight, your temperament, your patience, everything that you need for a good, healthy liver.

So now that goes into our salad.

So you've got some cooked, some raw, so it's gonna have nice texture.

And now we make the dressing that is why this is called "spicy."

So we're gonna take a mixing bowl, some extra virgin olive oil.

Carefully measured.

About that much.

Then we're gonna take some white miso for digestion.

If you don't have miso or you don't want miso, use salt, it's fine.

And we're gonna sort of mush it around in the oil to help to sort of dissolve it.

Okay?

Then we're gonna add some powdered mustard.

And I'm not using wet mustard in a jar because I want sort of a sharper dried mustard flavor.

And also ginger, powdered.

Some champagne vinegar.

I like orange champagne vinegar, but whatever you like.

Some salt.

The juice of half a lemon.

Like that.

Some scallion.

And then you're gonna mix this and pour this over the salad.

And then the last thing to go into this dish, which is the thing you want to put in right before you serve it, is some lightly pan-toasted slivered almonds.

And you just want to toast them until they're fragrant and they get maybe one shade darker.

So they go in.

We'll give this a mix.

And you don't want so much dressing that your slaw is drowning.

If there's a pool in the bottom of your bowl, you made too much dressing.

So you want to make what looks like too small of an amount for this particular dish.

Then you take your serving bowl.

Just take your quick salad right into the bowl.

Okay, so there is our spicy Asian slaw.

♪ So what are you waiting for?

Let's get Back to the Cutting Board and I'll see you next time on Christina Cooks.

♪ ♪ (announcer) Underwriting for Christina Cooks is provided by Suzanne's Specialties, offering a full line of alternative vegan and organic sweeteners and toppings.

Suzanne's Specialties, sweetness the way Mother Nature intended.

Additional funding is also provided by Old Yankee Cutting Boards, designed for durability and custom crafted by hand with Yankee pride and craftsmanship.

♪ Jonathan's Spoons, individually handcrafted from cherry wood, each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

♪ Additional funding is also provided by: ♪ You can find today's recipes and learn more by visiting our website at: And by following Christina on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

The companion cookbook, "Back to the Cutting Board," takes you on a journey to re-engage with the soul of cooking.

With more than 100 plant-based recipes, finding the joy in cooking has never been simpler.

To order your copy for $20 plus handling, call: Add Christina's iconic book, "Cooking the Whole Foods Way," with 500 delicious plant-based recipes.

To order both books for $39.95 plus handling, call: ♪