(eerie music) (thunder crashes) Quick, lock the door, lock the windows.

We never know what could be lurking outside.

We live in challenging times, but if everything scares the pants off you, maybe there's more to it.

There is, and it begins with your kidneys.

Let's shake off the fear that threatens to overwhelm us by going 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.

Is it all plant-based?

Mm, yeah.

Is it all delicious?

Mm, yeah.

So can we talk about your kidneys?

Everybody's afraid of everything.

Everything.

We're afraid of our shadows.

We have seven locks on our doors.

We're afraid to talk to new people.

We're afraid, right?

We're afraid, as a culture we're afraid.

Well, in Chinese medicine, it all comes down to your kidneys.

When you're afraid, it's because your kidneys are weak, right?

You have a hard time standing up for yourself.

You have a hard time speaking for yourself, right?

You're afraid to talk in front of people.

Well, that kind of never goes away.

Neither does fear of death or taxes, but that's another show.

So, we have to take care of our kidneys because they are the hardest-working, most underpaid organ you have.

They filter blood, they get rid of toxins in the body, they balance moisture.

And we do every single thing we can to beat them up.

We don't drink enough water.

We drink coffee, soda, black tea.

We drink things that dehydrate us.

Even though they're liquid, they can be dehydrating.

We go on wild diets, we eat too much salt, we eat added salt.

Our kidneys are saying, "Please give me a break."

But we never do.

And if you struggle with diabetes and high blood pressure, those two conditions, uncontrolled blood sugar and uncontrolled blood pressure, damage the blood vessels in the kidneys, making matters even worse.

It's why 10% of the population suffers with kidney problems.

We're gonna solve that for you, and it all begins in the kitchen.

Now this recipe has a few steps, so settle in.

It's gonna take a little while to make, but a dish that's made in the oven helps to strengthen the middle organs, the lower body, and the kidneys, because it brings warmth into the body, okay?

So stay with me.

We're gonna take shallots.

I like them because they're sweeter.

If you don't want to peel them or somehow you don't want to use them, use onions, red or yellow.

I really like shallots because they give me a flavor that I like.

It's a little bit sweeter than onions, and sweeter makes you feel more relaxed.

They're gonna go into a pan with a little bit of avocado oil.

Not much oil, because we're gonna use some oil in the biscuits.

So we're gonna just start simmering those.

The next thing to go in is winter squash.

Now this is a winter squash.

So, when you split a winter squash, you want to take the seeds out of both sides and then store it without the seeds, otherwise your squash will go sour.

So just clean it out.

And then we're gonna use just a quarter of this whole squash, so I'm gonna split it lengthwise.

And then I'm gonna cut it a little bit differently because this is gonna be in the oven, so I don't want the veggies to be too small so they get too soft too fast.

I don't want to make a puree, I want to make an oven sort of stew that has some texture.

And butternut squash helps to regulate blood sugar.

It's an amazing thing, Mother Nature's amazing.

Then we're gonna take a sweet potato and do the same thing.

Cut it into nice, big chunks.

You don't have to peel it.

Keep everything together.

Look how easy I made your life, you're not peeling anything.

So, yeah, this dish has a few steps, but you're not peeling anything.

Look at the time you saved.

You want to try to get your pieces to be similar in size so they cook evenly.

We're gonna add a little bit of soy sauce now to start to bring out flavor of the veg.

(sizzling) These are dried chestnuts, dried chestnuts are amazing.

They are--you dry them and cook them and then they get soft.

You can also buy them already cooked.

These are cooked in a package.

You can buy them frozen or shelf stable, you just have to look for them.

They're a little bit of a specialty.

Why are they in here?

They're in here because they're a fruit, but they also are so nutrient dense that they nourish the kidneys, they keep you warm, and they give you a sweet taste without adding any fat.

So they go in.

And the next thing we have are Brussels sprouts.

Now, the Brussels sprouts we want to cook in a relatively quick time in the oven, so we're gonna cut them in half lengthwise.

If they're really small, you can use them whole and just tip the bottom off, either way's fine.

I kind of like them halved in this dish because they look prettier.

That's gonna go in.

And we're gonna use a little more soy sauce so that these are just gonna simmer.

Sometimes the most simple things confound me, like soy sauce bottle tops.

Why do I struggle?

I don't know, but I do.

We're gonna add a tiny bit of water so the vegetables can simmer.

And we're just gonna let those cook.

And they have time to cook here because we're gonna leave them cooking while we make the biscuit topping.

Okay, just gonna clean off the board so that we don't have chaos.

When you're working, clean your area, because chaos in the kitchen makes you not wanna cook, right?

So try to keep your area as neat as possible.

So now we're gonna take a mixing bowl and all of our dry ingredients that we need to put together these biscuits for the topping of this hotpot.

So, okay.

We're gonna measure a couple of cups of flour.

More or less, right?

You want to make about six biscuits.

When you take flour from a container or from a bag or however you're measuring out flour, don't just scoop it if you're using whole grain flour.

This is whole wheat pastry flour.

You can also use sprouted whole wheat.

But either way, you want to keep air in the flour.

So you want to take it out with a spoon, and don't do that thing where you, you know, drag the knife along the top.

You take all the air out of your baked goods.

So trust me on this one.

And I saved you another step.

So we're gonna use about one and three-quarter cup flour.

And that's gonna go in.

And then we'll add to it baking powder and baking soda.

Baking soda you use half the amount of baking powder.

So we use about a teaspoon and a half of baking powder and about three-quarters of a teaspoon of baking soda.

You want to use half and half.

The baking powder will help it to rise, but the baking soda gives it like a boost.

A little pinch of salt for flavor.

Some dried basil because you want these to taste like herbed biscuits.

It's one place where I use dried herbs.

Usually I use fresh, but in this case it won't work so well.

And then we're gonna mix it.

And when you mix, you can sift or whisk, whatever, I don't do any of it, I don't do any of it.

I don't sift, I don't whisk.

I just mix it up, okay?

Now we're gonna add some avocado oil.

You're gonna add about a quarter cup, which is about four tablespoons.

And you're gonna start to mix the flour mixture and the oil to create the texture of like a wet sand or peas, right?

You don't want it super oily, otherwise your biscuits will be heavy.

And when it starts to come together, then we're gonna slowly start to add water, and I mean slowly.

'Cause you can very easily go from a great biscuit to a little lead balloon.

Because if you make this too wet, then you start adding flour and suddenly it's not working out so well.

Then you're gonna clean off your spoon.

You wanna get all the dough in there.

And you're gonna mix in some walnut pieces.

And you can do this with a spoon or you can do it by hand.

When it comes together, like this...

Right, it's still a little bit dry, now you get in here with your hands and you bring it together.

You don't want to touch the dough too soon.

If you touch the dough too soon, then the oil from your skin makes it heavy.

And you can see it wasn't together and now it's completely together.

But you can see there's some dryness to it, and that's what you want.

Now we'll take some parchment paper and a rolling pin.

Here's the part where people always panic.

It's so easy.

Did you see how quick that came together?

You're gonna just turn this out.

And you're gonna make a nice disc.

You see how it's kind of like a little crumbly and dry?

You should be able to roll this out on parchment.

This just keeps your work area neat.

You could do it right on your board if you want to, but then there's more cleanup involved.

And as I've told you before, I'm the world's laziest cook.

So, if your dough isn't too wet, you can do this.

You see how it's not sticking to my rolling pin?

That's 'cause the dough is right.

So you gotta make sure your dough's not too wet.

If you feel like your dough's a little sticky and you still want to do it this way, just flour your biscuits a little bit.

And you want to roll it out enough so that you get enough to get about six biscuits to cover the vegetables.

Okay.

That's it, right?

We haven't even broken a sweat yet.

So now we're gonna take a little bit of arrowroot powder.

And arrowroot's like cornstarch or like kuzu, it's just a thickener.

And what we're gonna do is use it to glaze our vegetables so they have a nice shine to them and in the oven they create like a gravy in the hotpot.

So you add a little bit of water.

And you can use a spoon to do this part.

It looks very polite.

At home I use my finger to make sure there's no lumps in the arrowroot, so, but I'm gonna be polite today.

So now this goes in.

And now you stir the veggies.

And what'll happen is, you see how it's all sort of cloudy?

This'll clear and create a beautiful sauce.

And if you use too much arrowroot, it'll get like a glue.

Then you need to add a tiny bit of water to loosen it up.

But this is perfect.

So now these veg go into our baking dish.

Okay?

You kind of make them even, so you have a nice even layer of veg.

They are not cooked, so don't for one second think, "I'm out, they're cooked."

They're not cooked, they're still hard, it's gonna go into the oven.

Now you take--you can use a biscuit cutter, a flan ring, or a water glass.

And you're gonna press it down into the biscuit dough and make your biscuits.

Now, these are vegan, right?

They have no eggs or nothing to help them rise except a little bit of baking powder, so don't turn the glass, go straight down.

And when you go straight down, you get that wonderful light airy biscuit that you want in a dish like this.

And you just want your biscuits to cover, sort of, your filling.

You want some of the vegetables to peek through.

And if you have to re-roll your dough, you re-roll your dough.

But usually you can get a good mix of pieces and discs.

This is a very homey, rustic dish.

Once you have your biscuits on top, then you're gonna take a brush.

And you're gonna dip it into what's left of your avocado oil and you're just gonna give the biscuits a light brush.

And this is just gonna give them like a little bit of a shine.

If you forget to do this, it doesn't matter.

But it's a really nice sort of finish to do.

And then this is gonna go in the oven at 350 for 30 to 40 minutes.

When the vegetables are tender and the biscuits are browned and puffy, you'll know it's done.

So I'm just gonna go put this in the oven.

I'll be right back.

♪ So, here we go.

The vegetables are soft, you can see it's a nice sauce.

Look at this.

We're gonna take a biscuit and just scoop some of this into a dish.

This is perfection.

If you're cold all the time, cold hands, cold feet, this is the dish for you.

I'm just saying.

♪ So keeping your kidneys healthy means, of course, dishes like we just made, but it also means using a variety of vegetables to gather energy and keep, for lack of a better expression, fire in the fireplace, right?

So now we're gonna use a vegetable that you may or may not be familiar with.

This is called a daikon.

And a daikon tastes like a red radish, but it's--or an icicle radish they call it, it has that peppery taste.

But its job as a root vegetable is to cleanse the kidneys and livers and intestines so they do their job better.

And when you cook it, it becomes less peppery and a little more sweet.

So we're gonna cut it into chunk pieces, and you do that just by turning the daikon like 90 degrees.

You want nice big chunks, because even though it's a hard root veggie, it has a lot of liquid, so it gets soft quickly, okay?

So we're just gonna use a little bit of it.

Daikon is not one of those a little is good so a lot must be better.

You won't ever see a headline, "They died from too much daikon," but you will find that you feel a little tired if you eat it too much, or you pee a lot.

And so you want to use it maybe once or twice a week to keep your kidneys strong.

So, in this pan I have sectioned shallots, carrots, and Brussels sprouts, all designed to keep the lower body strong.

And then in its own section goes the daikon.

This is called sukiyaki style cooking.

And what it means is that each vegetable will retain its own character and nourish the whole body head to toe.

So the next thing to go in is dried shitake mushrooms, which are different than the fresh.

They do the same thing.

Lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, balance blood sugar, help the body dissolve fat.

But dried ones do it more effectively and more deeply in the body.

So we're gonna take them.

And because they're dried, the stems can be bitter.

So we're just gonna take the stems off.

Just to preserve the flavor of your dish.

If you want to leave 'em on, leave 'em on, take a chance, but I usually take the stems off of dried shitakes.

And then they go right back in the water because they are gonna go right in the center here with the mushroom water, because it'll give you that lovely mushroom flavor.

Then we're gonna take some mirin, which is a Japanese cooking wine made from rice.

But they add salt to it and ferment it a long time so it's no alcohol and it's a very sweet taste, like a sherry, but it doesn't produce acid in the intestines because it's made from grain and not fruit.

So, a little soy sauce.

I try to season this dish only once at the beginning.

And then a little water to just cover the surface, bottom surface of the pan.

And then this'll cook for about 30 minutes covered.

After 30 minutes... ...it will look like this.

The vegetables are tender, the mushrooms are soft.

And then you just take it with a slotted spoon.

I usually reserve any liquid that's left over and use it in a soup.

Now you get to mix, but be gentle 'cause the vegetables are soft.

And now you just take your veg right onto a serving plate.

This is a wonderful side dish, and it's really delicious, kind of sweet and a little bit savory, so that the people that are eating it have no idea how great it is for their kidneys.

This dish--this dish alone will make you fearless.

♪ Okay, and finally, we come to minerals.

For your kidneys to really be strong, you need to eat minerals.

And I don't mean salt on your French fries.

I mean minerals.

So we're going to the ever-dreaded sea vegetables.

Don't call them seaweed.

Seaweed means unwanted.

Weeds are unwanted plants.

Trust me, you want sea vegetables.

This is hiziki, or hiziki, depends on how you want to say it.

This is it dried, which is how you buy it in packages, like this.

And then you have to soak it.

And the reason you soak it is otherwise you can't regulate the moisture in the recipe.

So you need to soak it for like five or 10 minutes.

You will not be using the soaking water.

You will, however, be pouring the soaking water on your plants in your house and get super green leaves.

So, it's loaded with minerals, but it's a little too salty for us to eat.

So what we're gonna do is take some avocado oil.

I use avocado oil because it's a high-heat oil, it's a very mild flavor, and I'm using soy sauce, and extra virgin olive oil and soy sauce are like the two north ends of a magnet.

I just don't care for those flavors.

If you want to use it, use it, but I like avocado oil for this.

And we're going to add to this oil some leeks.

You can use onions, but I really like leeks.

You can use scallions.

But leeks are very nice and light and give me a good, light flavor.

Just put some leeks in there.

Tiny bit of soy sauce.

And we're gonna let these sweat a little bit.

And just begin to wilt.

You can hear the sizzle built like that under this avocado oil.

Now, when you cook vegetables with hiziki, you have to kind of put the vegetables on top of the hiziki, otherwise they all turn black and your dish doesn't look beautiful anymore.

So the next thing to go into this is the actual soaked hiziki.

You just want to squeeze it lightly and put it on top of the leeks.

You don't squeeze it like it's an upper body workout, guys, just a little squeeze to get the excess liquid off it.

And then save this water to pour on your plants.

You can also, because it's loaded with keratin, you can take this soaking water and rub it in your hair from root to tip, wrap your hair in plastic, and then wash it, and you have really lustrous hair, but you have to wash it, otherwise seagulls will circle when you-- yeah, so just wash it.

We're gonna add a tiny bit of water.

So the leeks don't burn underneath the hiziki.

And now for sea vegetables to be really delicious, you want to season them at the beginning and never again.

So we'll add some mirin, which is a Japanese sort of a cooking sake.

You can also use white wine, you can use apple juice, whatever floats your boat, and some soy sauce.

(sizzling) Be light with soy sauce because these are sea veggies, they do have salt.

The next thing to go in are matchsticked winter squash.

You want the vegetables to be finely cut in this dish so that they look beautiful.

And then we're gonna matchstick a carrot.

And the way you do that is you cut the vegetables into oblong pieces.

If your knife is sharp, they kind of fall on top of each other like fallen dominoes.

This is the way I julienne.

You can julienne the classic French way as well, but this is a little more efficient and gives me a finer matchstick, which is what I want here, I want a really tiny one.

So then you rearrange your veg so that they're overlapped, but not too overlapped, 'cause now you have to move fast.

So once you have your veggies ready... You take your knife, you hold the veggies down, and you just run your knife along the carrots.

And if you don't go quickly here, I never tell you to rush through cooking, but you gotta kind of move here, otherwise they lose their shape, they slip.

And it won't be that much fun.

This is a really impressive cutting style to do in front of your friends, by the way.

And these are gonna go right on top of the squash.

Now don't stir because you want to keep the color, so don't stir.

So now the last thing to go in is corn kernels.

Now we're gonna cover this and it's gonna simmer for about 20 to 25 minutes.

And after that time is up... ...your hiziki looks like this.

The liquid is gone, but you can see you still have the color on your veg, right?

It's perfect.

And nothing turned black, it's beautiful.

So now we're gonna make a nice sesame dressing.

You don't have to do this part, but if you're cooking for people who aren't used to eating, you know, sea vegetables, you might want to make a dressing.

So we're gonna take some sesame tahini.

It's a really simple dressing.

Remember to buy a tahini that pours like a liquid.

If it's like peanut butter, it's either old or not so much fun.

A little bit of mirin for sweet taste.

A touch of soy sauce.

Some brown rice syrup to kind of lift the dressing a bit.

And to add some, for lack of a better word, sparkle to your sea veggies, the juice of a lemon and the juice of a lime.

Just of one lemon and one lime.

Just squeeze it right through your fingers so you don't get pits into your dressing.

So the dressing is very loose.

You don't need to add water.

You've got all this citrus juice in there.

And then you're just gonna get a nice, creamy sauce.

Matt, take a look at this.

It's loose but you need a whisk to get that nice sort of creaminess.

You see how that is?

Normally a sauce like this breaks because it's oil and water.

But if you whisk it together, it's perfect.

Okay?

Now, you take your hiziki over to your serving area, add the sauce.

Give it a stir.

So you just mix this sauce in.

And then I like to use tongs to serve hiziki because it's like spaghetti, you know?

It's kind of got this, um... ...like long texture to it.

And it's just really beautiful and dramatic.

And you can see by cooking the vegetables on top of the hiziki, you ended up with the vegetables holding their color.

So now the dish looks appetizing instead of, you know, this black dish of something, and people go, "Wow, black food, how appealing."

But it really is delicious.

So it'll be sweet and savory.

And we'll just take a few sesame seeds and garnish the top.

And you have a dish that's packed with minerals like calcium, magnesium, potassium, folate, all the things your kidneys need to stay healthy.

So, what are you waiting for?

Let's get Back to the Cutting Board and cook.

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 ChristinaCooks.com.

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 800-266-5815.

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 800-266-5815.

♪ (bright music)