Everyone seems to be in pursuit of their ancestral roots.

We find out that we're a percentage of this and a percentage of something else.

But, what do we do with all that?

Nothing?

Looking back on our roots can give us all kinds of answers as to who we are and why we are as we are.

Today we explore my Italian heritage outside Naples on Christina Cooks, the Macroterranean way.

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.

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?

Yes.

So when I was growing up, my grandparents came from a small town outside Naples called Casta La Mamada de Stabia.

And while they were very happy to be in America, I'm salting pasta water, by the way, because I'm going to cook linguine.

And you always salt your pasta water because you want to salt during cooking and you want your pasta to taste like pasta.

So you salt this and then you lightly salt whatever sauce or gravy you're making.

So as I struggle to get my linguine in the pan, as everyone does, but don't break it, let it sit, it'll do its thing.

It'll just melt into the pan.

When they came to America, they were very happy to be in America.

I'm very happy they naturalized.

But my grandfather was the rare Italian who didn't really like tomato gravy...like, just didn't like it.

Everything he ordered when we went out to eat on those rare occasions was al olio.

Everything was white gravies, white sauces.

So my grandmother developed a white puttanesca and puttanesca is a very traditional Naples pasta dish.

They say the legend is that they developed it, the ladies of the night, so that they had good energy in between clients, shall we say.

So we're going to make a white version of that.

And what we did is I have some onions just sort of sweating.

So they get a little bit of color on them because this is your gravy.

There's not going to be any tomatoes, so you have to kind of coax all of your flavor out of this few ingredients that we have.

So just a tiny pinch of salt.

Tiny, and you'll see why.

So they are nice and sort of melted and you can see that some of them have a little bit of brown on them, so there's going to be a nice, sweet taste.

So now we're going to add two whole cloves of garlic which will stay in the dish.

In Italian cooking, they don't chop and mince garlic for every dish.

That's an Italian-American thing.

Italians put in one whole clove, which may or may not stay.

Two whole cloves may or may not stay.

They don't let their dishes be overwhelmed by garlic.

In this dish I kind of I'm going to keep the garlic flavor.

So two people who eat this dish will get a surprise of a clove of garlic because there's not a whole lot else happening.

Right?

So now we're going to take green olives.

These are green olives.

They're from the Naples area, the Sicily area.

They're a very different flavor than black olives.

They're a little bit lighter and fresher.

And so we just coarsely chopped them and they're going to go in.

Now, you can see why I only added a tiny pinch of salt.

Olives are in here.

Next, we're going to add some salted capers that have been soaked.

When you use capers, you'll want to buy them in salt rather than in the brine.

If the brine's all you can get, buy the brine.

But if you can get them in salt, that's the way you want to get capers.

But you need to rinse them and soak them so you don't over salt your dish.

But now, because I have olives and capers in..no more salt.

We're going to add a touch of white wine.

If that doesn't work for you, you can add a little broth or a little more oil.

You can't use like apple juice or something like that.

The wine will cook, the alcohol will mostly cook off and it'll get very syrupy and almost sweet.

But you want to use wine if you can get away with it in your life.

And we're just going to let this cook until it thickens just a little bit.

This is your gravy.

So you don't want it to be watery and you don't want it to be overly thick.

Then the next thing that's going to sort of get stirred in are bread crumbs and these are unflavored whole wheat bread crumbs and you want to use them either toasted or un.

Toasted's going to give you a very different flavor than untoasted.

Untoasted will tend to melt.

So if you don't toast them and you stir them in now, they're going to melt, and your sauce will get kind of starchy.

If you use toasted ones, you can let them cook a little bit or you can just garnish them on top.

So we'll decide as we finish cooking and then we'll garnish the dish with some fresh basil.

So give our linguine a stir.

Most pasta that you buy tells you to overcook your pasta on the packages.

I'm sorry.

It just does.

You want to cook your pasta about a minute or even two less than the package tells you, so that the pasta becomes what we call al dente, which means to the tooth.

And al dente is important because it's the reason Italians can eat pasta and get away with it.

Right?

It's not an insulin trigger when it's a little bit undercooked and has some bite left.

If it's musha, as we say, mushy, then it's not so good.

Now you can see how quickly our gravy has thickened.

It's absolute perfection.

So now we're going to take tongs because the pasta is going to go from the pasta pot right into the skillet, because this is going to help to sort of thicken the sort of gravy that we have.

And yes, the pasta ends up all over the stove.

It's part of the joy of cooking.

And the good news is it's easy to clean.

It's just pasta.

So we're going to give this a stir.

And while it sits in this and sort of finishes cooking, this is about 90% done, finishes cooking.

Now we add the bread crumbs and then we're going to take our basil leaves and just coarsely shred them.

They're going to get stirred in and this is going to give us that Italian pasta flavor that we all love.

Now, you give this a really good stir.

You can see how the breadcrumbs are coating the noodles.

This was my grandfather's favorite, favorite dish.

And one of the things I love best about the cooking that I learned from my grandparents was in Naples, the food is very casual.

It was always a poorer city, it was always less formal.

And so the food that they cooked was very simple, very quick.

And very often they ate food from the street.

So, let's head to Naples and sample some really great street food.

Aah, let's go here.

Yeah, that's the one.

One of the greatest things about Naples is that there's this wonderful street food.

It's a lot of fried food, a lot of wonderful, authentic foods, but even as a vegan, I can manage.

Right here we have fried polenta, we have fried melanzani.

eggplant, we have fried zucchini flowers, potato croquettes, many, many things that I can enjoy.

So (speaking Italian) (Speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) Great.

Amazing.

I love the zucchini flower.

(Speaking Italian) Amazing.

Antonio, Antonio.

Of course.

Take a bite.

Wow, okay.

More street food and the market next.

So Antonio, when we talk about street food in America, we think of like fried food, fast food, like we just had.

But this is also street food because your market is every day.

In America.

It's only on a weekend.

We have a daily market.

Of course, we eat every day, every day, and we prefer eating something a fresh daily basis, right?

And in season.

So cherries in season, peaches from Sicily.

Lemons from the coast, of course, the coast.

And then look at these.

Are these little baby artichokes?

Yeah, the small one, you mean.

Yeah, that's amazing.

These are gorgeous.

Something you can also make roasted that you can also save.

(Speaking Italian) Yes, that's a fini roasted.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Into the oil and..

But it's..I didn't tell you the sandwich you're going to eat with this.

Okay.

I won't..no.

But everything is in season and everything is fresh, so.. Yeah.

Eating here in the street, as we say, is definitely not always fried food, not always junk food, but always fresh and delicious as well.

And I say this is an incredibly long tradition.

Very long.

I mean, I guess since the Greek times.

Yes, of course.

People selling food on the streets.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I guess during the Roman times was this up.

And it's suddenly very quiet.

One of the things that I love the best about Naples is the noise.

Once arrive the lunch time... Of course, once you both have it you have to cook something [inaudible].

I guess.

that's why normally the market is, especially in the morning.

Busy because then they go home and they cook lunch.

[Inaudible] They come here early in the morning.

The other tradition I love here is the long lunch.

Oh, yes.

Brilliant.

That's amazing.

But Naples was..was smaller before.

Yeah?

Yeah, basically, yes.

Yes.

I think that's we are just a little bit outside.

Yes.

On the wall of the town..

Right.

During the middle age and also the seventeenth century [inaudible].

And were there were lots of people?

[Inaudible] spread out.

There were plenty of people.

In the small city?

So in the 1656...I give you dates because that's the date of a plague.

And so before then, the plague happened, here used to leave about 500,000 people.

500,000 people in this little area?

It was smaller areas than this, but, I guess, at that time was certainly packed daily, much more than today.

Yeah, yeah.

That's my opinion I guess.

Okay.

Then, you know, after the plague, of course, a little less, but, you know..Let's go do more shopping.

Yeah, there was one... Why don't we go to my favorite kind of store?

Bakery.

The bakery!

(Speaking Italian) Look at all of this, Antonio.

This is beautiful.

We have all these beautiful breads.

If it is too much and we put some kilos on.

But anyway, we have to taste it.

If you're going to do it this way, do it this way.

We have to taste it.

(Speaking Italian) (Speaking Italian) (Speaking Italian) So what we're buying is a whole grain bread, which is very common here to find something they call it intagrale, which means the grain's whole.

So we're buying something because even anywhere you go, you can buy a healthier option than we've got in the United States.

So we're going to buy this bread and go eat it.

Thanks.

(Speaking Italian) And one last thing you should know about this entire loaf of whole grain, organic bread, less than $2 U.S. Good deal.

I'm just saying...it's a great deal.

Antonio, (speaking Italian) Oh, thank you so much.

I was starving.

have to go home.

I can't take it on the plane.

Fortunately, I will take it.

I'm sorry.

I will eat for you.

I'll miss you.

I'll see you again soon.

(Speaking Italian) Whenever you want, we are here.

I know.

Ciao.

Ciao.

So when I was a kid, the one food that could be guaranteed that I would eat was cauliflower.

Don't ask.

Cauliflower was always the hit of the day.

So joining me today is Anthony Dissen, a registered dietitian.

Anthony, I don't know about you, but I say the same thing over and over and over to clients and people who email.

Do you feel that way?

Absolutely.

They think we like to hear ourselves talk.

Okay.

So I'm going to fry rosemary.

Okay.

And what I would like you to do is dress these cauliflower steaks for the oven as you would normally.

And talk to me about cauliflower, because maybe if people hear it in a different voice, it will sink in.

They'll start to listen.

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

Here's the extra virgin olive oil.

Marvelous.

Excellent.

These are going in the hot oil.

Yeah.

Cauliflower is one of these very underappreciated and wonderful vegetables because it's part of the same family of vegetables as broccoli and kale and all those wonderful cabbage family crucifers.

Crucifers, right.

Which have all these incredible health benefits.

But cauliflower, I think, because it's white, because it doesn't look as brightly colored, doesn't get as much attention.

Exactly, right.

It's boring.

But cauliflower is incredibly healthy because it is a wonderful source of vitamin C, which a lot of people don't realize.

No, they don't.

Because it's yeah, it's not colored like a vitamin C rich.

Exactly, and It's not citrus, and it's not tomato.

So for a lot of people who think, oh, it's just sort of this boring white vegetable, it is a powerhouse of nutrition.

It is.

And like other cruciferous vegetables, it has tremendous cancer fighting properties because of this compound called Sulforaphane, that all these cabbage family vegetables have.

Say that three times fast after a glass of wine.

And what's great about cauliflower is that as it cooks, it gets sweet.

Sometimes these vegetables get a little bitter as it cooks, but this stays sweet.

Nice and sweet and it's much nicer cooked than as like a crudité.

Absolutely.

So I'm going to take that to the oven.

Just watch my rosemary.

Absolutely.

Would you do me a favor while I take this to the oven and toast some bread crumbs?

I would love to.

This is going to go into the oven until the cauliflower's browned at the edges at 350/375 for about 40 minutes.

So here's our cauliflower cooled.

Look how nice this looks.

Gorgeous, right?

You can't beat that color.

It's nice and browned.

It doesn't look boring anymore.

So we're going to put this into our serving bowl and.

All right, so you're just going to just shake the pan around so that they get a little bit browned, but not too much.

And then the rosemary we're going to take out of the skillet.

Which smells amazing.

Doesn't it, though?

Absolutely.

I mean, you can use raw rosemary for this, but there's something about fried rosemary.

It's just..I'm going to get this out of the way so nobody gets burned with oil..and then you just let this cool for a couple seconds.

And while the rosemary's cooling, I'm going to show you my favorite kitchen trick.

I'm so curious about this.

So I freeze lemons when I buy them at the store, I freeze them.

So now when a recipe calls for lemon juice and lemon zest, I never have to worry that my lemons went bad or I didn't have them long enough.

And you grate right through the the skin, through the pith, right into the flesh of the lemon.

And you get not only wonderful flavor, but this amazing perfume.

And you never have to worry about lemons like going off again.

That's brilliant.

I have an entire plastic container in my freezer just of lemons.

Because I use it so much, and this way I never have to worry because lemons, if you don't use them really often, they get that kind of mushy, dry at the same time.

And this also the lemon also goes a really long way in helping you digest the oil that we added to this, especially with the fried rosemary.

So we're just going to crumble the rosemary on to here.

And then, Anthony, if you would, take some breadcrumbs and sprinkle them on top.

Absolutely.

Okay, just like that.

So now you've got like the soft, sweet cauliflower, it's got some oil, you've got the freshness of the lemon and the crunch of the breadcrumbs, and you have this absolutely yummy dish.

And since you're my guest, I'm going to have to have you taste this.

Come on.

It's nice, right?

That is absolutely delicious.

So if you have a problem with cauliflower and you're not sure you want to cook it, you really should try this recipe.

Anthony, thank you.

I love having you.

I love talking to you.

It's been so long.

Thank you so much.

Always a pleasure.

And up next.

A cookie that you won't forget.

So with all the emails that we get to our office, some of them are very interesting questions.

This one is, how do I even begin to make a recipe that's from my family's traditions healthier?

And so you begin to look at substitutions, like if a recipe is butter heavy, you can switch to things like extra virgin olive oil.

Usually a 1 to 1.

Switch from table salt to sea salt, white flour to whole grain flours.

Instead of using cream, use a plant based milk.

They even have plant based soy creams and sour creams and cream cheeses that you can use to make your recipes begin to be healthier.

So you can look at the recipe, take it apart.

Use an egg replacer for eggs.

Use olive oil in place of an egg wash.

There are so many ways that you can take a traditional dish, make it healthier and not lose your tradition and still be able to put it in front of your Nonna and not have her think you lost your ability to cook or think.

So just use your head and move to healthier ingredients and you'll never have to lose your traditions.

So when I was growing up, the one thing that my grandmother always had in the house were cookies or biscotti, as she called them, because biscotti in Italian just means cookie.

If you go into an Italian bakery in Italy and order biscotti, they're going to ask you what kind.

But you're thinking what they call cantucci, which are the long, you know, sort of almond shaped biscuits.

And so you'll just do this who's on first thing for a while.

So she used to make these biscotti carmalotta, which we know as thumbprint cookies with jam.

And I've course vegan-ized it.

So I have in this bowl some vegan butter.

You want to soften it so that you can whip it.

And I have some coconut sugar, which is a low glycemic index sweetener, and you're going to do the same as you do for cookies.

You're going to whip these together until they're creamy.

And then I do something that most bakers don't do.

I add my pinch of salt now, so it really gets blended in and a little bit of vanilla and then whip this again.

This is a very simple cookie in that it actually doesn't matter the order in which you put everything into the bowl to mix it at all.

So once it's creamy, we're going to add to this about a half teaspoon of baking soda, two tablespoons of arrowroot.

And this is going to give the cookies texture, meaning they'll be like a little crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside.

So the arrowroot is going to do what an egg would normally do, and it's about two tablespoons.

Then you're going to take a half cup of...

I use sprouted whole wheat flour, but you can also use whole wheat pastry.

Sprouted whole wheat flour's lighter, digests like a vegetable and gives me a lighter end result, so I really, really love it.

And then sort of the star of these cookies is almond flour, which my grandmother did not use at all.

And this is about a cup.

Now, when you bake, you're thinking she didn't really measure any of that.

When you make a cookie, they're much more forgiving.

When you make a cake, you have to pay attention a little bit more.

But baking is nowhere near the alchemy science that we've been taught that it is.

It's just not.

If you have a feel for the ingredients, you love baking, you can bake.

And this is done.

So, now what we just have to do is get the batter off the mixer.

I usually do these by hand, but a mixer gives me a nice smooth batter for this.

And now we're going to take these.

I use a parchment lined sheet.

You don't have to, but I really like them because they prevent the cookies from baking..uh, burning on the bottom.

They prevent stickage, which is not a good thing.

And they also make cleanup a breeze.

You never have those baking sheets with all the black on them from the oven.

So we're going to do a whole sheet tray of these.

And when you do cookies, you want to be a little bit, I'm going to say OCD.

So, you want to make sure they're evenly spaced and even in size so that they bake evenly and then each little cookie gets some jam in the center that will bake in with the cookie.

When I do these, I use an espresso spoon because I don't want so much jam in here that the cookies burn because the jam has overflowed.

So these are going to go in the oven for about 14 minutes at 350.

And when they're nice and cool like this, you have these gorgeous cookies.

You can see that they doubled in size.

So you really want to make sure that you give them enough space on the baking sheet so that they bake well and they don't cook into each other.

And then, I don't know, I'm big on garnishing my dessert so that they look gorgeous and people really want to eat them.

Not that you ever have to fight anybody to eat dessert, right?

So what are you waiting for?

Let's get back to the cutting board and I'll see you next time.

On Christina Cooks, the Macroterranean Way.

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.

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 Christina Cooks.com and by following Christina on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

The companion cookbook, The Macroterranean Way, Volume Two combines the Mediterranean diet with the ancient wisdom of Chinese medicine, allowing us to understand how food affects us, so we can cook deliciously while creating the wellness we want.

To order your copy for $19.95 plus handling, call 800-266-5815.

Add Back to the Cutting Board and Christina's Iconic Glow, a prescription for radiant health and beauty and get all three books for $49.95, plus handling.

Call 800-266-5815.