As we leave behind the heat and humidity of summer and the drier, cooler winds of autumn begin to blow, the airy Vata dosha takes precedence as we transition to the Fall season: cool, light, dry, mobile, rough, unpredictably mobile. We soothe Vata with a diet that emphasizes the sweet, sour and salty tastes and foods that are more “grounding” : higher in proteins and fats, liquid, with warm, stimulating spices, served warm or hot; more soups and stews, and less raw food. Our menu will feature the best fruits and veggies that our farmers’ markets offer in the late harvest season, grains and legumes, to carry you well into winter!
Subscribe for more supportive programs and resources from the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts.
[Music] so I was saying about the the the cool windy condition dry conditions of autumn and we’re not quite there yet but it’s coming and I wanted to give us a a class in the season that’s coming up rather than the one that just passed so more useful to you right away so um I don’t know i know some of some of the people signed up today have done some Ayurveda study and if you have not if you have not I sent you a brief um kind of a brief description of what this is Ayurveda is the ancient uh Indian medical science primarily and under its umbrella also falls yoga and some other kinds of things um but basically it works on the principle that the universe is essentially composed of five elements and that each of us has a predominance of of certain elements we all have all five but certain ones are going to be more predominant in us and that’s largely based on your heredity and someday we’ll have a whole class on on just that but but for our purposes for cooking those principles also apply to the seasons of the year so spring summer fall and winter and they apply to the time of life and the times of life um would be infancy and early childhood going to adolescence to maybe mid early adulthood and then from later mid adulthood to your um uh silver hair years maybe that’s inaccurate for some of us so um right now heading into the autumn we are in the season that is described as wata v a ca and in that season which if you think about it on a normal you know say mid to late October day and even all the way up to a cold January day here in our latitude the weather is cool to cold and often We think of um autumn as windy when we think of falling leaves and think about what the texture of those leaves is like you know it’s like all of the moist heat of summer is gone not today but it will be and and so the leaves change color and they dry up and they they literally dry and then fall off the trees and that’s a really um useful way to understand uh Wata so you have these elemental qualities of um cold or cool and wind and dryness and a sense of roughness you know think of the texture of those leaves right i think it’s a little bit more rough of a texture so in under ioveetic principles what we want to do to nourish ourselves and stay healthy is to balance that or pacify those qualities and we consider in Ayurveda that like increases like which would mean if you don’t want to be more cold dry rough mobile and windy you don’t want to eat foods that are like that either you want to eat foods that are smooth and warm and moist and oily um so you get you get the idea and the other uh aspect that we consider is the taste of food so simply put it’s the taste it literally is the taste of the food so from the elemental perspective of the six tastes in Ayurveda which are listed on your on your paper but they are um sweet sour salty bitter pungent and astringent and again we could have a whole class just on that but but the taste that pacify or balance or soothes water are the sweet sour and salty tastes so our food choices are going to be predom are going to predominate in those tastes we’re still going to eat all six tastes because u balance and good health depends on eating all six but we’re going to emphasize the sweet sour and salty taste okay so I’m going to kind of get things going here so I I sent you I hope you did get it i sent a separate recipe for something called magic mineral broth and the reason I sent that was because we are going into soup season you know um and magic mineral broth came from Rebecca Cat uh who’s a a well-known um author nutritionist um foodie person chef who’s worked a lot with sort of mindfulbased medicine and healing work and foods um and she put together this way to make a vegetable stock that is fabulous and it uses it what’s so appropriate about it right now is it uses all of those veggies that fall under those tastes it’s predominantly sweet so it uses a lot of root vegetables you know think about um when we So when you cook a root vegetable like a perfect example would be a sweet potato when you roast it it gets sweeter right even when if you roast an onion which is pungent it gets sweeter so onion is a pungent taste but the way we’re going to cook it it’s going to become sweet um the other things that are are naturally sweet are things like the fall squashes so we’re making a soup today that uses u a butternut squash but you can use um nothing too dry like I probably wouldn’t use a kabosha squash for this but you could use the butternut the red curry a honey nut um some of those varieties okay any questions as we go I can talk about other foods that fall into these categories some of them are represented and and some are not today so uh the other things you want to know about diet in wata season is that we want foods that are predominantly cooked and eaten warm so it’s not that we don’t eat salad we can we certainly could still eat salad we probably eat that kind of thing at a time of day when our digestion is strongest which according to Ayurveda would be midday like lunchtime um we’re not eliminating that from our diet you can still eat apples and that kind of thing more as like a snack um and we’re going to cook fruit crisp that would be a cooked apple or pear today we’re using plums and peaches because we’re right in a transitional season so I wanted to use what is appropriate for the time for today um but I am going to give you our first recipe you actually do it first because it takes a while this needs to sit in the refrigerator for an hour is an energy bar um and it’s raw but it’s not like a raw piece of broccoli so it’s it’s still going to be quite digestible I promise you and it’s just something that is um meant to be used as a snack or as sort of an energy boost and what it’s made from um things like cashews and coconut oil and and almond almond or something that have to be uh almond butter yeah shredded coconut some warming spices which is a whole other aspect too is which spices we’re using today um it all just goes zipped up together in a quezin art dates so it’s it is quite sweet it also has sugar in it but the sugar I’m using today for everything is coconut sugar and the reason I’m using coconut sugar is because it has a low glycemic index so um if you are being cautious about glycemic high GI high glycemic index foods coconut sugar is a is a substitute that’s much lower as are dates actually are also low glycemic and the reason that’s true is because they’re very high fiber so I’m going to we’re going to go ahead and start with this this raw bar and I’ve got it all set up over in the poisoner here which I know it’s kind of far away from you that’s okay for for our purposes that’ll be fine so I have in here already the cashews and the dates and the sugar oh and I have to put in a little bit of maple syrup by the way I I reduced this recipe by half the sugar that was in it originally and it’s still very sweet but it’s an energy bar right so that makes sense sugar is where we get energy from that quick energy you know that boost okay so it’s going to be really really loud sorry hang on it’s just going to be loud so what I’m doing is I’m grinding up just the nuts the cashews the and the uh that maple syrup and the brown sugar the coconut sugar till it’s getting sort of like a coarse meal and then here I’ll show you so see it’s all kind of ground up into that and then I mix together everything in the second part almond but from the almond butter down in the recipe it’s already in this little bowl and you put it all together i love this this thing this takes like once you the time you use you use just measuring everything out very um very easy very simple to make put it back on all glue together just so it all just becomes homogeneous and then I have this little pan that is lined i’m using uh plastic wrap but the food’s not hot so I’m not concerned about that and it’s going to You’ll see it coming out see it’s just all sticky so when it’s like this I I considered um making it into little balls which I suspect you could do but the way the recipe was written was to put it flat in a pan to let it chill which you know so I’m I stuck with the the original intention and then you uh you’re just going to sort of make it evenly pressed into the pan and my little pan here is about a half an inch thick so if you had a a bigger pan you would um decide how thick you want it but of course the thicker it is the longer it’s going to have to chill so you just press it flat now you can see it doesn’t take up the whole pan but you can also see it’s sticky so it doesn’t matter so what I can do now is I’ll just fold up an edge so I made it so it’s kind of square you can do it however you want i mean the thickness is optional that you know all that like I said it would just take longer to chill if it’s thicker it’s maybe not quite maybe like 3/4 of an inch back here and then just kind of make it flat so I’m using just a little flat edge spatula here and that’s all there is to this one all right we’re going to be kind of jumping around between recipes just because of the process you know because some things take longer than others and you don’t just do one thing and then wait and then do the next thing so just bear with me okay I’m going to put this in the fridge see it’s just nice and tidy when it’s chilled then you cut it ready then we’re going to look at uh the beginning of the soup so I I really again this is another pretty simple recipe well very simple I think um and I love that it roasts the vegetables first before you make them into the soup we’re going to use magic mineral broth as the the uh liquid base and I make when I make the broth um I just make a whole bunch of it you know a few quarts like whatever i think I I sized your recipe at maybe two quarts um it can free it can be frozen too it’s totally fine to do that with it so we’re going to be putting the squash and the onion um in the oven to roast do you have your recipe pulled up for the soup because I want to talk to you about it a little bit so I gave you two options this this is a a Moroccan recipe for from for an Ottoi who uses the really spicy recipes but they’re also just brilliant recipes they’re interesting um they’re often just fascinating to make and he uses a product called Rose Harissa rose Harissa is a is very spicy and the rose harissa has rose petals in it but the other spices it has in it are the ones that I’ve listed here as dry spices so if you are not using rose habista I’m going to use it today just to show you what it looks like um but if you’re not using rose habissa when you put the vegetables into roast you would mix all those dry spices together and throw them on the squash and the onion to roast on it okay otherwise you’re just using that means the oven’s ready you’re just using the squash the onions and the olive oil at this point oh and some salt so go a pan little salt and this is sits in a 425 oven for takes about 25 minutes um you want them to get soft i’m doing the official toss here you can stir it you can put your hand in there or you can just go like this toss it took out the veggies with the oil um that it’ll get they’ll even get the reason you’re doing it at such a high heat they they even get just slightly gold on the edges or you know a little brown on the edges so there we go flat i used a red onion today because I thought it would be pretty you could use a yellow onion i’ve made this before i’ve used a yellow onion which is fine but I thought it would just be a pretty color you know that’s that’s important in the way we the way we digest so you’ve heard that start that saying you begin digestion with your eyes and with your nose and I think it’s really true food that is beautiful your body you know you start to salivate right you like say “Oh I really I can’t wait to eat that.” You know and that’s actually very good for your digestion not to mention that that the things in life that give us that kind of just simple pleasure um are good for our health are good for our mental health good for our physical health so in this go okay so that’s going to do it it’s it 25 minutes and we’ll be getting the stock part of that going pretty pretty quick but I have one other thing that has to go in the oven with this and I want to get it in now so I can get our dessert in so turn to your salad page we’re going to do the pears we’re making this beautiful salad that uses um roast pear pear is ripe this is like really soft and ripe this is almost impossible to to to do with ease so this pair I could eat this pair now but it’s not you know it’s ripe enough but it’s not overly soft so you’re going to leave the peel on but just pour it you’re going to slice it into about maybe quarter inch slices i gave you a fairly large amount in the recipe i’m I’m not doing that much because I don’t have a crowd to feed [Music] so I scaled back [Music] so if you’re cooking if you’re not cooking for four people or six people you know just do one pair i promise you you won’t mind having it around if you don’t use it all though it’s really delicious super simple i gave you the option of using ghee on this pair instead of the coconut oil ghee is considered Ayurveda loves ghee it’s considered a very very helpful food in that system um it is a very very helpful food but I I I’m going to use the coconut oil today because I’m kind of going more toward the um the vegan side and the coconut oil is good to use too coconut oil is warm i’m seeing on the back of the stove here so it’s just a little bit a tablespoon of coconut oil for the two pairs so less than that for the one pair in my case like half that much and then a little dollop of maple syrup the reason we’re doing the maple syrup is because it helps um first of all you know this wonderful flavor with the pear but it also uh helps in the baking you get kind of a nice um coating on the pear so just a tiny bit of maple syrup just a little and then you stir it around can you do it on a on a flat sheet with a a parchment paper lining that was true for the squash and onion too sometimes when I roast vegetables if I want them to get crispy for example if I decided I want to have a roast vegetable dish for dinner and I combine some carrots and beets and sweet potatoes and regular potatoes and onions and and that kind of thing I I wouldn’t use paper on the pan because I want them to kind of stick to the pan and brown on the bottom but in this case that is not what we’re looking for so we use a liner i I just I’m saying that just in case it seems like well how come you you know do it sometimes but you don’t do it other times so that’s that’s why it depends what what you want your final product to be like okay these go in this is going for a short time all right so we’ve got almost got the oven thing going now we’re going to do the crisp the crisp cooks at a lower temperature so I need to get those things in and out so I can turn the oven down that’s just uh just the way it is so I I had told you I’m using uh because of the season we’re right where we are right now you could do this with stone fruits and you can do it with tree fruits so stone fruits are you know peaches plums etc the tree fruits are like apples pears nectarines apricots um you can also make this with berries but of course that’s more of a summertime thing so I’m going to cut the plants into about eight here [Music] wait till you see when this comes out it is so pretty oh and it smells heavenly i’m sorry you’re not here or that I’m not we’re not together somewhere where you can smell everything okay so there’s that and then the peach I would peel i don’t always peel my peach um but these peaches are not organic i got them at the farmers market but they’re they’re not organic so I’m going to peel them the plums are organic or that’s my personal preference i I uh would suggest that you do what feels right to you so again just into chunks like eight size you don’t want them too small uh for the soft fruits if you were doing apples and pears you might cut them a little thinner but you know a soft fruit cooks faster so this last peel go I don’t add a lot of sweetener to the fruit especially if it’s you know particularly if I know it’s already really sweet like these peepers are just over the sweet already um I do add a little a little juice like lemon juice or lime juice so I happen to have a lime right here i’m going to use that that just brings up the sweetness so lime and lemon are sour right and then in the categories of taste okay and I’m going to put just a tiny little dash of maple syrup i would go like the low amount in this case two tablespoons at the most for a full pan my pan is a little smaller than a 9 by9 and then I put I do oil the inner side of the pan a little bit so here with this nice melted coconut oil I put this drizzle a little in there up the sides a bit just to make sure that everything in the end comes out nice toss the fruit and it goes okay okay so I have a layer of fruit and I’m going to let that let the fruit kind of flatten and then I have the topping just about ready to go so this is the topping all mixed together already so the oats the nuts the almond flour coconut sugar the spices there so it looks you know pretty much like a crisp topping but it hasn’t been um hasn’t had the fat added to it yet you could also use melted butter or soft butter so in this case we’re still using the coconut oil so I I uh took my measured ingredients and just mixed them around a bit and then I’m going to I’m going to drizzle over this oil and I wanted to show you this part because without the regular kind of a flour you know it it handles a little bit differently more and more some of the people I cook for prefer to stay gluten-free so um so I’m always looking for good alternatives that’s one of those things that you know for some folks it’s a it’s a requirement for their good health and for some folks it’s a preference okay so I’m starting it with the spoon but I I want you to see as it starts to soak up the oil what you want it to do is start to clump so I’m going to help it a little bit i might spoon what I’m using is a little bit small so this could use a little bit more oil i didn’t actually use a real tablespoon yeah that’s better yeah so I’m starting to get See it’s kind of holding together a little bit better when I as a my mother made apple i guess it’s probably my grandmother started it but my mother made apple crisp um when we were children you know it used to be something every fall she would make and oh my goodness I just grew up loving apple crisp i’m actually going to put a little bit of cool water here in this soup because it still feels like it could go together just a little bit there we go yeah that’s better okay so I’m just going to sprinkle this now on top of my fruit and it’s going to get a nice crisp texture to it remember it’s made with the coconut sugar so so it’s um low glycemic which means doesn’t mean that it’s okay to eat it if you’re not supposed to eat sugar uh if that’s the case just just bake the the fruit without the topping on it but it does mean that it doesn’t uh chew your blood sugar up high like regular sugar does and we’ll wipe this off i have about 10 minutes before put it in the oven we’ll just keep cruising along all right so let’s work on the red lentil doll so again I chose um I chose these red lentils for a reason that’s on the pairs i’m going to take these looking good here’s the pairs you see they’re they’re just kind of shiny they’re not really brown or anything which is fine we don’t need them to be brown also I had them on the second shelf of the oven if they’re up on the top shelf they might get a little bit golden but they’re the right texture nice that they’re soft but they’re not falling apart they’re going to cool over here so I started to say I chose this red lemon just for a reason um so foods that are soothing for wata balancing for water pacifying for water beans often um are not at the top of that list and you know I describe gonna maybe laugh when hear me say this but it’s true i describe water as windy um so here’s how water can be windy other than when you’re not talking about the weather you know how when our body doesn’t digest right we produce gas in our lower digestive system and it’s it can be very very uncomfortable um very unpleasant uh and that is that’s you know how people call you say passing wind well there you go that’s a what’s a symptom of something uh you know that you’ve eaten that has not your digestive system is not happy about generally or you know or maybe you ate too fast sometimes even we get that way if you’re talking a lot while we’re eating and so we’re almost like it’s like we’re eating air at the same time you know have you ever had that happen where you’re in a conversation you’re having a meal with people and you’re talking talking and you Yeah as you’re eating and um this is one of those things that can happen so so if you don’t have any problem digesting all legumes by all means eat any that you like it’s fine they’re they’re wonderful high in protein really good for you in many ways but if you do have a problem two of the easiest legumes to digest are the red or golden lentils and uh the other one is mung beans or what they call moon doll moon m o n g moon doll red lentils are very very widely accessible so you can find them easily so so that’s one of the reasons we’re doing red is because I wanted to give you a lentil a leum but one that’s especially easy to digest you could also make this soup this doll with any kind of a lentil you know if you prefer like the the brown or green or the pooy lentils you could use that too okay so we’re going to chop some onion again uh the fat could be ghee and if you’ve taken this any of these cooking classes with me before we’ve always made ghee i just thought I’d switch it up this time so I’m going to be using the coconut oil you could use any kind of oil i you know I’m not it’s not my intention to say that um you could use olive oil you could use sunflower oil it’s just that either ghee or coconut oil are more traditional for this for this dish so we have onion do you know the secret about chopping onions now I won’t stop you from crying it’s not that secret so when you peel your onion if you keep at least some of the peel attached at the root end it is true I have been told from reliable sources that the aromatics and the onion are concentrated at ste at the root end the other part here this is this would be the stem end right and this is the root end so it you can as you if you cut your onion in half not through its equator but from pole to pole top to bottom and then peel the skin back so you have this little handle not only are you avoiding the worst of the aromatics that the sulfurous compounds that make your eyes water um but you have a little handle to hold on to so we’re going to cut this onion fine this is a this way of cutting onion fine is one that somebody showed me and it made so much sense you go horizontally to the half with half onion down first and then you go vertically and then you just go across and you get all these fine little pieces just like that without you know it’s efficient then when you get further down you can just go back to the other other way of doing it the rest of it i’m gonna turn my and you start with a this is another again this is a pretty simple recipe um I want I’m kind of trying to simplify life over all these days you know as much as is possible and you add into uh once this goes get stirred around for a few minutes while we’re letting the oil get hot you’re going to add into it the spices and then you’re going to also have some grated ginger and garlic and I do that on a microplane this is like one of my favorite ever tools in the kitchen it’s so efficient and when you’re doing things like ginger and when you want your garlic to be more of a pastelike thing than a slice like thing it’s fabulous this is easy so the coconut oil is heating this recipe called for a spice mix called garam masula the word uh the words garam masula garam g a r a m means warming and masula is a word you’ll always see with Indian food it means taste flavor the flavor of the food so garam masula is a combination of spices that are warming if if you don’t have garam masala I gave you a list of the spices um that are in most versions of garam masula it you know it can differ from region to region uh people or people have preferences from chef to chef but uh but this is the basic one and this list of spices I was saying we would talk about spices and and we already looked at some of them the cinnamon and cardamom that is in the rubar and in the um the crisp topping and some of the different spices that’ll be in the soup but these are spices that are by Arveda are considered warming except for the black pepper in that list all the rest of the Well black pepper is warming but in a different way it’s considered a pungent spice um but it’s also helpful for digestion so it’s always a a good addition it’s even in at least a minimal amount looks like my oil is hot it’s good and then we’ll go ahead and do the garlic and ginger so just in this case I want it to be either chopped really finely or or grated two two tools I have in the kitchen in particular um that are hand tools that I just love this is one aside from my knife this this is one of them and the other is my stick blender which is electric but it’s still a hand tool unlike a knife just in that they simplify things and make it easier you can do this of course with your knife just chop smash it and chop it really fine that’s our squash it’s hot in there okay so there’s pretty hot there’s our soup ingredient coming over to cool it’s a little bit brown and golden on the edges it’s really nice just right just right and then I’m going to grate the ginger the same way you see this little piece of ginger i don’t I didn’t even feel it first of all it is organic but secondly when I do this on the microplane I don’t have to feel it because the skin part the the brown outer part stays uh mostly up above where I can just discard it and then the braided part is falling out the bottom this is awesome let’s put the oven just a few minutes to cool can you hear my onion yeah in an ideal world I think I’ i’d have cameras mounted everywhere like up here so you could see the stove but I and I you know I’m glad you said that Julie because um it smells sweet you know what I mean so it’s like if I were cooking garlic and onions in a frying pan it wouldn’t smell sweet right it would smell very pungent and in the season of kappa which is for us like late winter early spring here you see look at that the all the peel just sticks to the outside no worries um that’s a good thing to eat cuz cuz we need that but when we’re in waffle season and we’re going for sweetness that wouldn’t be the first choice we would make you know we would want the food to be overall to have a more sweet Not just flavor but but scent but aroma so right now it’s a little spin doing their thing i’m going to put this in this is the fruit crisp going in that’s going to take about 45 to 50 minutes so my onions need just another moment so masa so if you have the garam masala you’re going to um use that and if you don’t you would before you even get started I would I would just make a mixture of all these spices and you could make more than that of course this is just for this one recipe this quantity but you could make you know four times that much and put it in a glass jar which is basically what what this is um and then you have it on hand does this combination of spices seem unusual to you cinnamon along with fennel along with coriander along with cumin along with black pepper along with cardamom or nutmeg again the the one thing they all have in common except for the black pepper is they’re all considered sweet warming spices cumin is a little more pungent but not extreme so while this is just about just about there it is they’re not quite translucent yet um the red lentils I had already rinsed them so they’re just sitting here ready you always always rinse your especially with red and golden lentils you want to rinse them really well even more than you would like a a hard a firmer lentil like a green or brown or black lentil and you notice when they’re rinsing that there’s the water is cloudy coming off it so I just hold it put it in a colander under the running water on the sink you know a um a fine mesh there a fine mesh colander like this and run water through it until it starts running clear because there’s um it’s like a powdery it must be from the from the milling because these are hull these red lentils you know they’ve already had their outer covering and nothing so somewhere in that process it picks up this dust on the outside and if you don’t rinse them really really well they can get um like there’s like a scum that rises to the surface of the soup and I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with it but generally most people skim that off i would sort of think about does it cause wind i’m serious i’ve heard I have heard that said actually somewhere along the way my onions are in good shape so now they’re just they’re just translucent and getting little bits of gold color onion so I’m putting in my garlic and my ginger and that’s just going to take a very short time like seconds really maybe 20 30 seconds oh and boy oh boy if you can smell it now this is pungent to a fairly well ginger is while ginger does have a sweet taste it also has a pungent quality uh in Ayurveda the quality of potency is considered spicy hot you know like cayenne so ginger it’s not like cayenne but it it is it is spicy of course oh my goodness okay it’s already ready just you could if you could only smell it sorry there and then we’re going to put in the spices so I’ve got a tablespoon of the garam masala do you know tablespoon is three teaspoons and then a little bit of turmeric there’s a lot more garam masa than turmeric turmeric is bitter its taste is bitter so when I’m saying that we’re emphasizing sweet sour and salty we’re not leaving out the other three bitter punchy and stringent we’re just doing less of it oh my gosh i have to show you this see can I do it here look at that here it smells marvelous so the brown is from the spice not it’s not the it’s not the veggies it’s just the spice is is brown and the the aroma of it is like amazing so you’re going to now put the lentils in there may have to rerin my lentils they’re all stuck together and you stir the lentils around so that all of this gorgeous aromatic beginning stuff the spices the onions the garlic and the ginger all kind of incorporate together before you put any liquid in there mhm [Music] so here I’m just going to bring you there actually here you go let me get it right nope nope wait a minute i’m sorry i’m probably making you dizzy anyway there they are okay now it gets the water and then the coconut milk so I had turned the heat off while moving things around but back on and it’s going to get the um two and a half cups of water the tomatoes this is also a bomb for a change of seasons i don’t know that I would do tomatoes maybe in November i might but you know they’re more we think of tomato well it is they can be kind of a sweet sour taste but specifically it occurred to me to do this particular recipe now because we’re just at the tail end of summer so you need to stir the some of the little lentils will stick to the bottom of the pot you have to stir them up before you get too much liquid in you want because if they get stuck they might stay there and get burned okay add tomatoes and that’s going to get started on its way the other thing about red lentils is they cook really fast and then it also gets coconut milk so see what kind of shape the coconut milk is in now coconut milk if it’s cold like if it’s in an air conditioned store the um fat is hard on the bottom so you might need to uh homogenize it so this is because it’s warm in the kitchen that didn’t happen you see it’s all nice and liquidy i’m going to put in a little bit of salt these linels can can take some salt i’m just starting with about a teaspoon but you may well want more salt and some black pepper and then the coconut milk is going to go in i’m going to put the cover on this can get and then as soon as it comes up to a boil I’m going to open that cover a little bit so it just simmers so we are where are we at here oh we’re doing good so we still have the broccolini the salad dressing and to finish the soup plenty of time so any questions yeah absolutely absolutely you you can you can use um that magic mineral broth um any any any soup based thing you want to use in it absolutely so yes yes you absolutely could do remember it does have a flavor so for example if I cook the the the pot of veggies and water for about four hours because you know Rebecca Katz in her original recipe she says cook it for two hours
that’s never enough of me i I want to get everything out of those veggies I possibly can so I usually cook it for about four hours i mean just at a very low simmer until they’re practically disintegrated in the pot um and it has a a very distinct flavor but it’s sweet so it’s all all those root veggies and and of course the fact that onion gets sweet when it’s heated in addition um so the combo doesn’t off offer any flavor at all it just offers uh sodium and probably potassium it’s called mineral broth because it’s high in sodium potassium and magnesium it’s also if I’m not feeling good you know if I’m recovering from something or whatever boy oh boy do I want this stuff i mean it’s it’s an as an option to chicken broth as an or an alternative to chicken broth we’re gonna put we’re going to put some in our in our um squash soup but it really is very nourishing you you know think of all of that you’re you’re not only taking in all of the vitamins and the minerals from the veggies but you’re also taking in um because you’ve just cooked it at a very slow simmer you’re not like boiling it to death for four hours you know um but it’s just like all of that goodness is seeping into the water and you’re also taking in and and this again is another ayurveetic idea you’re taking in the vitality of all those veggies all those you know months in the sun and the rain and the soil and um so it always feels very healing just even by it oh excuse me sorry so uh the other thing I do with it sometimes is I dilute it so I might use half mineral broth and half water and in the case of the doll that’s probably what I would do because because it is so sweet it would add its sweetness which if I were using just magic mineral broth might be too much so I would do maybe half mineral broth and half water because I want the um all the spices to come through plus you’ve got coconut milk in there and the coconut milk is also um a sweet taste you know so it could get overwhelming very high in fiber it’s very very high in fiber same with dates so the um like sugar is glycemic well white sugar is what they would score at like 100 that’s sort of the basis right for everything else this granulated refined white sugar and things like maple syrup and honey are still very high they’re they’re they have maybe some other nutritional attributes at least a little of that and they may be slightly absorbed differently in the body but not that much i mean they’re still like in the 90s
but dates are I think in the 50s and I believe glucose or coconut sugar is in the 40s you can check that you can Google that but um it’s the fact that it’s very high fiber so glycemic index is measuring how quickly your blood sugar rises of course and if you’re eating um a sugar with high fiber and it’s not just we’re not just eating spoonfuls of coconut sugar we’re eating it with in this case with oats and nuts and all kinds of other stuff then your blood sugar is not going to go zooming so high your body is going to process it over a longer period of time so that that does not happen because of the fiber okay thank you
thank you for your question
okay let’s move on so we have our soup to finish our salad dressing let’s make the uh the dressing for the broccolini and then we’ll finish the six oh and we also have right the salad dressing the broccolini uh dressing does get heated so let’s see so I’m going to get some strips of lemon pill this is called a channel knife this tool and it creates just a strip but you can here you can do that that with a a small sharp knife too and one thing I thought might be a little interesting in addition to its flavor with this particular dressing for the broccoli is the preparation is a little bit different in it so um in this one we want to keep our our garlic and our our ginger not as a paste we want them to be in pieces so they’re really going to have a lot more oomph in their flavor so the garlic is just sliced and the ginger is julen so here I mean literally just thin thin slices of a clove of garlic or two cloves depending how much you’re making so just as thin as you can make them and then the uh ginger You will peel it for this so I just have this sharp little knife that I peel the brown skin off and then you’re going to just make it into thin strips so it it’s always easier to julian anything if you make one edge flat so you decide one edge now now it’s not roly poly same’s true if you’re julianing a carrot you know um and then or also the cut end was flat and then you’re going to go thin slices in one direction and in this case I’m going you know like as thin as I possibly can so like less than a 16th of an inch if possible and then you just kind of stack it up we’re just starting to get a little simmer in the red lines and you go very very thin the other way so they’re like boy there if they these were matchicks they’d be the thinnest match sticks you’ve ever seen okay see I’m going to make my garlic slices maybe half the size that they were here okay and then we have the the cashews so I I just picked up some already roasted cashews last time I did this I toasted my cashews on the stove top which is another way that you could do it or you could throw them in the oven like a 350°ree oven for about oh probably about 7 minutes nuts are nuts are are high in the um the Nata season diet because not only are they high in protein which is a good thing grounding for us but they’re also um high in fat so they qualify as oily so we’re going to chop these in a little bit too much here and then the the other things get uh just heated so you’re going to you’re going to be cooking your your um your aromatics i have this wonderful collection of aromatics i have lemon peel garlic ginger and then I have the cashews i’m going to put them in a little little sauté pan oh my goodness my lentils are bubbling away so for this I use the recipe calls for sunflower oil but I also use a little bit of sesame oil for the flavor but it’s not written down i mean you can that’s a choice this is untoasted sesame oil not toasted but it would be an option so we’re going to heat the oil add these in and then it’s going to get the soy sauce and a little bit of sugar again hopefully sugar it says to put salt in the recipe taste it first so you know it depends that the recipe calls for a light soy sauce then you could create a lighter soy sauce by combining if it’s not something you have in your pantry i just have regular tamari so I could combine this with a little water um and the other way I’ve I’ve done this is using cocoa cocoa aminos which are an alternative to soy sauce which work really well too so let’s see i’m going to reclaim my coconut milk dinner i’m just switching burners around for this so we can move on to the soup in a moment while that oil is getting on the back okay well ready so they go I’m going to let the let the oil get a little bit hotter there and we’ll get our soy sauce ready so I’ve got two tablespoons which I’m going to make part of mine water okay so it’s light and coconut sugar okay i’m getting hungry cooking this food y’all welcome to come over you can sit in the backyard and have a piece that needs a minute or two [Music] the broccolini um that’s going that’s going with this it’s just going to be steamed so very straightforward and the only thing with that that you may want to keep in mind And I’m I’m not going to turn the heat on under the steam you know to steam it until right before we’re finishing so not for a little bit yet um so broccolini of course the stocks come in you know all different widths and sizes right so you you do want to make them more equal sized and of course you could make it shorter you could just use the upper part of of the fuette all the the whole stem and is edible i did cut off the base of most of the stems already that we’re using today so you just can make them you know a little more uniform so in their thickness so that when you’re steaming them they’re all going to steam at the same for the same length of time because we’re just putting them all in together so I chose broccolini for two reasons at least two reasons um in part because all of these foods are are red and orange or most of it you know and I thought oh my goodness it’s like one of the ways that I always look at the table when I’m imagining what it would look like with the menu is the color what colors are there and you’ve heard the expression eat the rainbow well that that does apply to really to every meal um in terms of finding balance and there is something to be said that if you do that you’re going to naturally uh even without using any special scientific information you’re going to come up with a balance of flavors because like if you’re eating a rainbow it’s unlikely that it’s all going to be green or it’s all going to be red you know so I wanted something that would kind of offset the sweetness of everything else that we’re having here my aromatics look like they’re just about they got just a little tan yeah they’re just a little more golden so now I’m going to put in the soy sauce and let that heat for a sec oh good and my red lemons are looking like they should they were looking really like coconut milk for a lot but now they’re they’re getting going now that’s all bubbling and I’m going to put in that little bit of sugar a teaspoon of coconut sugar and that what that does not only does it add just a little bit of of sweetness to this very pungent aromatic blend um it also is going to help it thicken a little you know it’s going to sort of caramelize so it makes it a nice sauce that’ll coat the broccoli so you just let it go until the sugar dissolves and let’s get this out of the way and you see I I did it all as one thing i have it written to do it as two things which is fine you can do it that way but this works too you know I mean just given the nature of it okay we’re going to finish the soup oh yeah 11 minutes or so left on the crisp the red lentils are doing their thing they’re not quite done red lentils cook quickly unlike some others i just want to I’m going to check and see if they’re actually They look pretty soft just want to test them pretty close just another couple minutes we could put if we were using the optional spinach we’re sort of about almost at the end of the cooking time so I would put that in now so I chose the I didn’t quite finish what I was saying i chose the broccoli for the color but also because it’s a pungent taste and that gives us a little more balance in a meal you don’t want everything to be sweet you still want all six tastes represented at your meal is done take that container there it is so there there it is okay all right so finishing this up so we’re using the mineral broth and I’m going to use um half mineral broth and half water cuz this particular batch I made is very um it’s very strong i let it go for a long time you can see the color of it and then it gets the sap so I don’t know how you feel about saffron there’s not It’s it’s not as common and of course it’s it’s very expensive but oh my gosh it is just the most amazing to me um the taste profile of saffron is warming and pungent look at that little bit of saffron does go a long way you know you buy saraphin in these little teeny tiny jars very pricey so it’s a treasure if you like the taste of saffron not everybody is as wild about it but I I love it okay I’m going to get the rose parissa and show it to you and the orange so uh the orange you just may rinse off a pipe we’re doing just a little bit of Rest this time kind of a surprise you know the flavors that it’s it’s very to me it’s it’s just exciting so just like you did the other things you get the orange zest with the microplane or if you have a zestester you know like like a regular zestester that’s all going to that broth is going to come up to a simmer and then this is rose habasa middle eastern spice paste with rose petals so rose harissa it’s it’s absolutely beautiful look at the color of it now you probably can’t see the color of it very well maybe I can do a better job here look how Look at that red you can see it now i mean it’s just gorgeous so it’s made with a pepper like a red pepper and then it’s got all these other um spices also thrown in there so I’m going to throw this rose harissa in my pot and so my my soup is going to be on the spicy side there are but if you if you’re curious about you want to try rose they come at different levels of spiciness some of them are super super super spicy that you know if that’s your cultural um what you’re accustomed to you know if you’re used to eating Middle Eastern really spicy food you might like that um this particular brand which is made by Bellazoo B L A ZU is spicy but it’s not over the top which is why I got this one because I don’t mind some spiciness but I don’t want to go over the top oh my gosh can I show you this look at Look at this color here i have to show it to you look at the color and what you can’t see in it is the little saffron from this angle is the saffron beautiful maybe once I get it all put together I can get the camera in a good spot to show it to you i mean it really is gorgeous so pretty okay so we just need to bring that up to heat we’re going to throw our veggies in and and then I have done um this recipe when I first started to play with it was done uh as a pureed soup completely pureed but that didn’t really appeal me i’ve done too many burnout squash purees lately or something i I just didn’t really want a pureed soup and so I tried it uh where I just pureeed maybe a third of it and I really liked it because it gave it gives the soup some body now you could also not puree it at all um and that would be fine too it’s coming up to a sim you can add it but I really I really liked it partially pure so that’s how I’ve written for you so this is the the squash and the onion that we roasted earlier see the squash did brown a little on the bottom side so and it’s just nice and soft and the red onion the purple onion is soft all the way through i’m telling you this is like the highlight this one well maybe the crisp so we’re going to put this in the beautiful in there oh my goodness such a beautiful I think all we have left to do is finish our salad the red lent doll looks good it’s really good it’s rich so maybe you know on a day like today it’s not quite you know as I said we’re not quite in want yet we’re getting there though i woke up this morning and it was cool and there was a little breeze and I thought “Oh thank goodness it’s that’s actually a more appropriate day for my water class um that’s good and this is just going to sit and then we’ll puree it so our last thing to do is finish off the salad and then we’ll puree some of that squash so this is a really really simple dressing for the salad here balsamic vinegar and maple syrup you can’t go wrong just you know all good and I It’s good to make extra of this this is This dressing is just so yummy you’ll want to eat it again so you can always make more than you need for this one salad so better oh yeah oh yeah life is good look at that look at that i’m inviting you all for dinner okay I’m excited that’s a beautiful smells so good sweet cinnamony okay so we have the balsamic i’m going to do um half the amount that your recipe is written for because I’m not making enough salad i only did one pair so I’ll do half half of a tablespoon remember there’s three teaspoons in a tablespoon so half of a tablespoon is 1 and 1/2 teaspoon just in case it’s useful and Super simple dressing you know Dijon mustard is used mustard is used as an emulsifier in dressings that’s why you see it so often in addition of course to the somewhat pleasant spicy flavor of it but it is what emulsifies it both the oil and the vinegar and then we’ll Just do some olive oil i use a different olive oil on my salads than the one I cook with different slightly different flavors i’m going to turn the rubbing here stay let’s we’ll zip up the uh the soup turn it off so I’m just gonna pure about a third of the amount that’s in this pot so you know what i want to show it to you all right so here’s what I do this way so here’s here’s what it looks like before it’s word around so that’s the you know there it is chunky and it’s beautiful golden red color it looks like a maple tree and then I’m going to um blend that much so the the texture of of the squash you know just makes a nice It’s like sort of like what would happen with potato it’s not quite as starchy so one question that came up Katherine was your that’s your second favorite tool in addition to the microphone yes the stick leather yeah yep because it’s so easy i don’t have to haul out the big m the big Vitamix and you know get it all dirty just got to wash this part plus you know I mean it’s just easy it’s just last minute it’s really easy really makes life easy so okay get that out of the way put this back in so you see the puree isn’t that pretty i color it it’s so pretty i mean food really should be beautiful you know it really should if it isn’t beautiful you’re not going to want to eat it and then we’ll just put together a salad whatever pretty much cut it together come on leave your thing all right so the salad here it’s just at this point you’re just composing on the salad so here’s my greens this is from PTOAC organic farms and there’s my zuna and there’s a little baby spinach and there’s uh all kinds of stuff and there’s some red leaf stuff there’s some redikio that I added the redio because it’s a bitter taste and I wanted some bitter there’s probably some mustard greens in here that are young you know so they’re not tough so there’s that and then um green onion is here so we’re going to going to mix that in look at that like magic okay and then there’ll be the pears and there’s toasted walnuts chopped walnuts which are right here put some there and then here’s the here’s the little pears and I just kind of go you know cuz I like it to be pretty and I did deliberately use a stock crimson redskinned pear for the color but you could use any pear not necessarily an Asian pair that’s a different fruit but different kind of fruit but a gold pair a green pair all good all right and then do a little bit more walnut and the shove so look at the flavors you’re combining just in the salad so you’ve got the sweetness of the pear and the dressing because of the maple syrup is both sour and sweet and then you’ve got the toast of walnuts which are a little bit bitter and aringent but also they’re high in oils so they kind of they’re still very beneficial for a wata um and then you’ve got this goat cheese that is obvious obviously it’s an option but you know it’s creamy and it’s it’s a tiny bit pungent and dairy products and usually you’re talking about cow dairy products are considered sweet overall because sweet doesn’t just mean sugar it literally means taste so this goat cheese is a little more pungent than regular cows nut cheese um but you know whatever cheese you wanted to use you want to use something that is a fresh cheese rather than an aged cheese is especially beneficial to use okay and then the dressing also needs to be remulsified there we go so it’s kind of this brown because of the bust it’s so pretty and I had even I was going a little over the top here but I had also included some pomegranate arrows so here’s a pomegranate arrows are the seeds and you kind of skin so you can lift off cap like like so and then it opens you up to this world of mira I get excited about all these amazing things all these gifts we have from mother nature um and of course pomegranate is uh sweet and sour and it’s really it’s a a favorite food for Unfortunately they’re coming back into season of course that is true that it really is the foods that that are in season at the time okay so I’m going to start to put stuff on the table there’s the salad oh my gosh there’s the soup i’m hoping my bro is cooking look at that here’s our soup look now you could garnish this with um a little cilantro on the top if you like cilantro just or parsley to give it a little a little contrasting color so I’m going to have to show you all this when I get it set down and the red lentils here i need a bigger bigger counter mhm oh yes there’s something about this um you know I make lots of red lemon dolls over the course of the year but there’s this one with the tomato and the spinach just feels exactly right for right now for this transitional season that we’re in oh and the coconut smells fabulous i don’t know if I can show this to you without spilling it see it whoops i’m going to put a little cilantro in this because u you know some people don’t are not fond of cilantro that’s fine but it is a natural flavor enhancer for any everything coconut you know every savory coconut food loves cilantro so we’ll add a little flavor and color okay I’m going to show you the whole table when I get it set and then we have the broccolini coming so here’s the steamy broccolini bright green so nice and here’s it cashew soy garlic ginger dressing you could also zest a little lemon zest on it which would be great i’m gonna I’ll take a photo of all this too and I’ll send it um I’ll send it to Carla so that if you can’t quite see things here right now at the table you’ll have another chance to see it all yum yeah I know yum smells fabulous okay little lemon zest um and the and the twist okay I’m bringing the camera over i’ll try not to make you dizzy and your energy bars oh the energy bars yeah hey I almost forgot i mean I did forget they are yeah and they’re nice and solid now so here they are so you can actually um The nice thing about having them either in paper or plastic you just lift it right out of the pan see now I had noted that um if these get warm they they’ll get soft and they will uh because that coconut coconut oil starts to melt above like 70 some degrees having said that I did leave one out for a few hours yesterday because I was just curious what would happen and I I just wanted to confirm that and the um what did happen was that it didn’t melt it just got softer so for example if I wanted to take these on a hiking trip or something and here I’m just going to cut a few um because they are they are really good energy bars uh in that sense they fulfill their mission i would just u maybe cut them into like a small square and wrap it individually in in the wrap so that I could just um like instead of in a whole big mass like that or in the little tiny piece that’s going to melt even faster and and if it’s individually wrapped you could still eat it i mean it tasted great it still tasted good it was just a little softer so thank you for reminding me i would have done a lot in later uh oh I forgot the name i’ll put them on a little plate so see they’re a solid little square and they’re really delicious you don’t have to trust me you could make them yourself there we are okay got them so let’s see if I can get you a better look we’re going over to the table get a little tour of my house here okay so I’m going to see what we can do so we’ve got the the crisp over there at the end the squash soup is in that bowl the There’s the beautiful salad there’s the red lentils yeah there’s the broccolini and the crisp and you saw there’s the energy bows all right and I as I said I’m going to photo them i’ll photo the table just as it is right now and and we’ll send it to you catherine what a feast yes you want to come over for dinner seriously maybe in touch other comments questions for Catherine no
i mean any Yeah that’s a question
i have a question yeah um
Okay
on one of the recipes you said you could use any kind of oil and most of the recipes you specify coconut oil is it can you substitute in all the rest all the recipes for the coconut i would prefer it for the doll either coconut oil or ghee uh just in terms of so uh just in terms of flavor more than anything but you could also use like a sunflower oil olive oil would kind of be the long flavor for the doll um for the squash soup you could use any oil you want
okay okay thank you
olive oil would be good in that one for the salad dressing I would use an olive oil unless you for some reason you don’t eat olive oil then just use something light and for the broccolini we used the sunflower oil which is my go-to alternative to olive oil or coconut oil i use sunflower oil um and I added a little untoasted sesame oil there because I like the flavor of it thank you
the coconut oil in the in the energy bars it is important because because it solidifies so you couldn’t use another oil there it would never get it would never solidify um and in the in the fruit press uh I would use I would use butter if you don’t want to use coconut oil because again I think it’s important that it has that texture that as it cools it gets solid we’re so grateful Katherine to be able to spend this afternoon with you i It’s h I’m just sitting here drooling well I I hope I hope since we aren’t actually in the same room together I hope that you are inspired to to try one of these things or two you know cook it please
absolutely plan to on the agenda
well thank you so very much for giving giving us your time
thank you
all of you it wouldn’t be the same without you so we’re so grateful that you chose to to join us this afternoon thank you and I hope it is useful
so thank you thank you thank you all for joining us we’re so glad to be able to welcome you today and hope you’ll be back again soon for another cooking class or some of the other programs that we offer at Smith Center
all right bye everybody
bye bye bye bye bye [Music]