Tag Archives: cod

Cleanse This: My So-called Cleanse Experience

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Who out there has tried a cleanse?

(I’ll bet a few of you nodded yes)

Who out there has THOUGHT about trying a cleanse?

(I bet many of you nodded yes and raised your hands to that question)

Green juice – not so appetizing

Cleansing has been an on and off topic in our household for at least a few years. We have fanatical friends who go on radical juice cleanses once a month (or so it seems) and family members who have committed to month-long “gentler” cleanses that include solid food and  smoothies galore, not to mention that a raw foods & fresh juice retailer opened  around the corner last year,  taunting us on a daily basis to give starvation a shot for the low price of $60 per day. All participants claim to feel fabulous afterwards: clearer skin, leaner waist lines, higher energy levels. And despite all this, I’ve shied away from it. Until…

I read about Bon Appetit’s Food Lover’s Cleanse. I fell for it hook, line and sinker over the winter holidays as I overindulged meal after meal, and gluttonously flipped through the magazine in my limited time away from the table. The principles are simple: tons of fruit and vegetables, lots of whole grains and healthy fats,   limited caffeine and alcohol, and only natural sweeteners. 3 square meals + 2 snacks per day. It’s a non-cleanser’s cleanse. Sounds pretty good for 2 weeks, right? Here’s the tough part: no dairy, no refined bread, no pasta. For 2 weeks. Ouch. But, still, a heck of a lot better than all liquid, all the time for a week, right? That green juice scares me.

Black Cod with Swiss Chard, Olives, and Lemon with Red Quinoa on the side (photo courtesy of Bon Appetit)

The magazine hooked me on Day #1’s recipe for Cod with Swiss Chard and Red Quinoa with Pistachios.  Doesn’t sound like a painful meal to consume to me. The rest of the recipes were online, along with a shopping list to help plan your meals. Hubs and I discussed, and he agreed to commit. We decided to give it a whirl, and roughly followed the plan for about 2 weeks. I know, that sounds pretty loosy-goosy, but it was a start. I probably prepared about a dozen recipes altogether from the 14 day Cleanse (thank you author Sara Dickerman), several of which I have repeated (voluntarily) since, and a few that are now permanent additions to my repertoire. I’ll be writing about these new additions in upcoming posts.

Few other comments on the Cleanse: This is not a raid-your-pantry undertaking. Quite a bit of shopping was required, which I found to be a pro and con. The cleanse took me out of my comfort zone cooking-wise, incorporating quite a few new ingredients like harissa, red quinoa, hazelnuts (who buys hazelnuts on a regular basis?), but that was also fun. From a time investment, many of the dinner recipes were time-consuming. As a huge fan of the Minimalist, Mark Bittman, I like simple meals and some of the dinner recommendations were complex, and took a lot of prep. Hubs reminded me that the plan didn’t portend to be “fast and easy weeknight recipes,” but I still thought it worth mentioning.

In the meantime, a few words about the teaser recipe that got me hooked – Black Cod with Swiss Chard and Red Quinoa.  Delicious! What a satisfying and flavorful meal – Hubs even tasted the swiss chard. I tried a few substitutes for black cod, since it is hard to come by – regular cod, sea bass. All worked fine. And the Red Quinoa with Pistachios recipe is just delicious. Red quinoa does taste different from your standard quinoa – it’s also more expensive and harder to find. This was my first dish with it and it’s worth a try.  I’ll post the recipe below for you as well. Hubs loved it, too,

Red Quinoa with Pistachios (adapted from Bon Appetit)

  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 shallot, finely chopped
  • Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 cup red quinoa, rinsed well in a fine-mesh sieve
  • 1 1/2 cups vegetable broth or water
  • 1/4 cup unsalted, shelled raw pistachios, chopped
  • 3 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint (I omitted as I didn’t have any on hand, and was delicious nonetheless)

Preparation

  • Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add shallot, season with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft, about 5 minutes. Add quinoa and cook, stirring frequently, until quinoa starts to toast and smell nutty, about 5 minutes. Add chicken broth and bring to a boil.
  • Stir in quinoa, reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer gently until quinoa is tender, 25-30 minutes (15 if using white quinoa). Remove pan from heat, fluff quinoa with a fork. Cover; let stand for 5 minutes.
  • Fold pistachios, parsley, and mint into quinoa. Season with salt and pepper.

Yield: 4 servings, or as a side dish for 2 with leftovers

 

Tuesday night and What’s for Dinner? Roasted Cod with Garlic Bread Crumbs

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Hyper-local radish toasts, Roasted Fresh Atlantic Cod from Iceland (ok, not local, but sustainable) with homemade garlic bread crumbs, and green salad with balsamic vinaigrette. The radishes are the last of this summer’s – proud to say we grew them in our recently moved raised bed. I read somewhere that radishes are the EASIEST vegetable to grow. We have had 3 or 4 failed crops until now. Clearly, I should stick to the kitchen. The cod is from Whole Foods (along with the greens), and the bread crumbs I made a few weeks ago.

This post will contain a few tips and one quick and easy weeknight recipe.

Surprisingly good: Radish Toasts

Tip #1: Radish toasts (or crostini or bruschetta if you want to get fancy) are an easy to make hors d’ouevres or starter that appears much fancier than it is (that is, if you like spicy, crunchy radishes). Slice up some baguette and some breakfast radishes, put a generous daub of butter on one side of the baguette slice, place a few slices of radish on top and sprinkle with good sea salt. Rinse, repeat, indulge. Yum!

Tip #2: You are literally throwing money out the window if you buy breadcrumbs in the store. I have seen a small bag sold for $5 or $6 in the specialty foods shop. Next time you have a day old baguette or Italian bread, don’t toss it. Hold on to it for another day or two until it is completely dried out/stale. Once it feels like a baton, take it to a box grater and go to town. It will make a bit of a mess, but grate the baguette like you would a carrot and ta-da, you’ve got homemade bread crumbs you can store in a glass jar on the shelf for months. The important thing is to make sure there is no more moisture in the bread, otherwise you’ll have mushy, and eventually, moldy bread crumbs. You can also cube it and put it into the food processor to make bread crumbs (less muscle), or make croutons out of them for your salad or soup (more effort).

Tip #3: Easy weeknight recipe that’s healthy to boot:

Roasted Cod with Homemade Garlic Bread Crumbs

  • 2 cod (or other dense white fish) fillets, about 6-8 ounces each
  • 1/2 cup homemade bread crumbs
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • few sprigs parsley, chopped (or other fresh herb)
  • Salt and pepper
  • Lemon slices (for garnish)

Instructions:

Heat one tablespoon of olive oil in small pan over low-medium heat. Once heated, add garlic and saute for 1-2 minutes until fragrant, but don’t burn it. Add bread crumbs, salt and pepper and any other spices you’d like. Sautee for 5-6 minutes until bread crumbs are toasted evenly, but again, be careful not to burn (apparently, I do this frequently). Add parsley and mix, set aside.

Heat oven to 450 degrees. Place cod on a baking dish and drizzle remaining olive oil on fillets, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place in oven. Turn 1/4 after 2 minutes, and repeat until last side is reached. Then remove baking dish and spoon bread crumbs on top. Bake cod for another 2 minutes, checking to ensure that bread crumbs are browning, not burning. Remove from oven and place on plate. Garnish with lemon, if desired, and more parsley.