[Upbeat pop music] DIANE KOCHILAS: Have you ever thought about food as medicine and medicine as food, in the ancient and modern sense of the concept?

That what we eat, has a direct effect on our overall health?

DR.

WILLIAM LI: The food that we eat, in fact, is a form of medical health that we actually participate in three times a day.

DIANE: I'll speak with Dr.

William Li, bestselling author of "Eat to Beat Disease" and cook up a healthy array of recipes: nutrient rich pan shaken Brussels sprouts with mushrooms.

This is my kind of cooking.

Complete protein garlicky, fresh and dried bean salad.

Bean-licious!

It's really good.

And an immune boosting creamy broccoli and cashew soup.

It's hard to believe there's no dairy in this, no heavy cream or butter.

Join me on My Greek Table as we cook up the healthy and delicious flavors of longevity.

♪♪ ANNOUNCER: My Greek Table with Diane Kochilas is made possible in part by... The Fillo Factory.

Grecian Delight Kronos, A family committed to better eating.

The National Hellenic Society.

And by the following... DIANE: The idea of food as medicine is as old as Greece itself.

Indeed, Hippocrates, of Kos, the father of Western medicine, is said to have been the first to formalize this concept and coin the phrase, "Let food be thy medicine and medicine, be thy food."

Implying that not only do specific foods possess inherent therapeutic qualities, but that what we eat; a holistic, balanced view of diet, in other words, is the foundation of good health and long life.

[Beans clattering] This is an idea that I grew up with, not only because of the inherent healthfulness of the Greek diet, but also because of my roots on the Greek island of Ikaria.

Long isolated and surrounded by rough waters with no natural ports and little historical significance, Ikarians developed a culture of self-reliance with their natural environment, providing everything from wild and cultivated food- [Snipping] Smells so good.

To a wide and varied folk pharmacopeia.

Knowing what foods to eat and what herbs to drink to soothe the specific ailments is still a living tradition, woven deep into the Greek psyche and kitchen.

But eating a balanced and varied diet, mostly plant-based, is also a daily practice on the island and beyond.

Today, science has corroborated many of these ancient, or at least traditional Greek beliefs about food as medicine.

Eating fresh, unprocessed, plant forward foods, the basis of the Mediterranean diet can boost the immune system, fortify gut health, sharpen the mind and support overall good health.

This way of eating and living is easy and accessible to all with simple recipes that rely on everyday ingredients and a little knowledge about what choices to make at every meal.

I'm very excited to be talking to Dr.

William Li today.

He's one of the world renowned experts on the connection between diet and health, and the author of a best selling book called "Eat to Beat Disease."

DIANE: Hello, Dr.

Li from Athens.

The idea of eating to beat disease is also something that the ancient Greeks were very in tune with.

But what new scientific insights have emerged to validate that ancient wisdom?

DR.

LI: You know, as I was doing my research, thinking about how the body is hardwired in the modern technology term, it turns out that we already have everything we need to be able to maintain health throughout our entire lives.

And the wonderful news is that the foods that we eat, and I think the ancients somehow intuitively knew this, the ingredients actually contain substances that mother nature imbued, uh, our gardens, you know, when we eat those substances, those natural substances, they light up, they support, they foster our own health defenses.

So, this is really, food as medicine is really not the concept of replacing medicine, but the food that we eat, in fact is a form of health, uh, medical health that we actually, uh, uh, participate in three times a day.

DIANE: If I were to tell you I'm making a recipe that is a couple of parts antioxidants, a couple of parts, vitamin K and vitamin C, a couple of parts vitamin E, what would you think?

That's what I'm making here.

This really delicious, very easy Brussels sprout and mushroom dish.

I'm just cutting through the larger Brussels sprouts so that they all cook around the same time.

The first thing I'm gonna do is heat up my olive oil.

I'm gonna teach you how to say Brussels sprouts in Greek because it sounds almost funny.

We say, lachanákia Vryxellón can you say that?

What we want on the Brussels sprouts is to cook them for about eight to ten minutes.

I'm gonna shake them around a little bit and I wanna get some nice color on that.

The next ingredient is also really important for good health, and these are just everyday button mushrooms, white mushrooms, and some darker ones, Creminis.

We never wanna wash mushrooms because that makes them soggy.

They're like sponges.

They soak up water and you don't get such a nice texture at the end, but you definitely want to wipe them clean.

I can hear the Brussels sprouts singing in my frying pan.

The idea for this dish actually came from a very traditional recipe from Cyprus, not for Brussels sprouts, but for potatoes, uh, where you actually shake them back and forth in the pan.

So I kind of took that idea and reworked it with Brussels sprouts, which are one of my favorite vegetables.

I'm gonna cut the larger mushrooms.

[Chopping] DIANE: Let's see what's going on in this frying pan, I hear some activity in there.

[Sizzling] And we wanna just shake that around a little bit.

[Sizzling] So they're starting to get nice and brown, which is exactly what we want.

Cover goes back on.

Next up, fermented garlic and this ferments over the course of a couple of weeks.

It turns into this charcoal black color.

It's very sticky.

It has a wonderful, almost like candy kind of aroma to it.

It's really, really good.

So I'm just gonna chop it up a little bit.

The next thing that goes into the Brussels sprouts are the mushrooms.

And I'll get the garlic in here too.

[Sizzling] DIANE: A little star anise.

It has the flavor of Ouzo, which I really like.

A little bit of fresh thyme, and I just use whole thyme sprigs, little bit of Greek sea salt.

And just a touch of black pepper.

And the last ingredient is just a little piece of orange zest.

And that looks very pretty.

And I shake it all around.

I'm just covering this so that the mushrooms lose a little bit of volume and start to exude their own liquid.

And then I'm gonna add the white wine in just a couple of minutes.

[Sizzling] DIANE: The mushrooms are getting cooked.

Shaking everything around.

A little bit of white wine and the only reason I use dry white wine for this is because I don't want there to be a darker color in here.

Red wine would make this a bit darker.

[Sizzling] DIANE: And we're almost done.

This is gonna take a few more minutes.

This is done.

[Scraping] Some nice bread would be great with this.

It's very Mediterranean, it has all the ingredients for health and longevity, and I know it's gonna taste great.

I have a few last finishing touches: a little bit of smoked sea salt, which I just love because it adds this, you know, barbecue kind of flavor.

And then a little feta cheese.

And you can serve this up as a totally vegan dish too.

I think we're good there.

Some pomegranate seeds.

This is one of the most antioxidant rich fruits you can have in your fridge.

And just because I'm Greek, a little Ladaki, and now it's time to dig in.

Mm, let's taste the mushrooms.

Let's get a little bit of mushroom here.

I would take this over a steak any day of the week.

The Brussels sprouts are super sweet because they've been cooking and caramelizing a little bit.

The mushrooms give this genuinely something that feels like meat on your palate.

And all the beautiful flavors in here are melded perfectly.

The orange is very, very subtle.

Mmm.

It's really good.

If Hippocrates were alive and sitting across my kitchen counter, this is exactly the kind of dish I would wanna cook for him.

Um, it's brimming with nutrition and it's the perfect example, literally, of eating good food for good health.

DIANE: I cooked up a dish of Brussels sprouts and, and mushrooms, and I used white mushrooms and cremini mushrooms.

Is it a healthy recipe?

You know, is there, are there, what are the good things about all those ingredients cooked together?

DR.

LI: The Brussels sprouts are part of a family of vegetables known as brassica.

DIANE: Mm-hmm.

DR.

LI: This includes broccoli and kale and many of the other green healthy vegetables.

They contain sulforaphane.

It's a powerful anti-inflammatory.

It improves your metabolism and it also boosts your immune system.

So that's a core ingredient that's very beneficial.

Mushrooms, they contain dietary fiber.

The dietary fiber feeds our gut microbiome, healthy gut bacteria, which then help pay us back for being fed by lowering inflammation, improving healing, and uh, also support our metabolism.

And, uh, the bacteria can even text message our brain in order to be able to help our brain release neurotransmitters that make us feel better, put us in a better mood.

Greek food is a, uh, and Greek culinary traditions are just, uh, sort of like a bullseye to be able to get the right stuff, uh, into your diet every single day.

DIANE: When we think about eating for health, the one thing we've gotta have as part of our diet, are beans.

I'm making a really nice recipe today, which calls for both fresh and dried beans.

I'm gonna steam the green beans and I'm just getting the last ones ready here.

Uh, cutting off the tips and just cutting them in half.

I wanna get the steamer basket into my pot of boiling water.

[Clanking of metal] I want them to be al dente, you know, maybe four or five minutes.

I'm gonna just start mixing everything else together.

I'm using two different kinds of dried beans in this salad.

Cannellini beans and kidney beans.

And these are both canned, actually, which is totally fine.

Let's see what's going on with the green beans.

Oh, they look just about ready.

We don't want them to lose too much color or to be too limp.

So I think I'm gonna take these off.

Just rinse them in cold water so I can stop the cooking process a little bit.

[Shifting of green beans] [Bowl clanks] These are nice and cooled down, and I just wanna make sure the last of the liquid, the water's out of here.

And I think this can go right into the dried bean mixture here.

Ready to add the onion and scallion.

Lots of nice colors in this bean recipe.

And the next thing that goes in here are the herbs.

And today I'm using fresh parsley.

You could really use any herb you like in here.

If you're a fan of cilantro, you can get that in here.

You could put basil in here.

Uh, mint would be very nice.

[Chopping] This is going right into the bowl here.

And next up, fresh dill.

If I were in my kitchen in Ikaria, I might be using wild fennel because that grows all over the island, especially in the springtime.

The idea is that this is very flexible.

It's a matter of what you like.

It's a matter of what you can find at your local market, what you grow.

So, just to make my life a little easier, I'm gonna mix this by hand before I put the dressing in it.

Time to make the salad dressing.

Very simple dressing of cider vinegar.

You can also use simple red wine vinegar for this.

Lemon juice would also work.

Let me get my mustard in here next.

And honey.

A little salt.

I haven't salted the beans at all.

Canned beans tend to have a little bit of sodium in them, so you wanna be a little careful on the salt in this recipe.

A little bit of black pepper.

And I like to add a fresh garlic clove to this.

One of my favorite ways to do that is just to work it on a rasp.

You get a more puréed, end result when you do that.

I'm gonna whisk this altogether with extra virgin Greek olive oil and what we're looking for here is an emulsion, which means the acid and the oil combine and, and end up as a smooth liquid.

And that's what we're looking for, no separation.

And this is going into the bean salad.

I'm gonna toss it and get it served.

[Scraping of bowl] I'm just gonna mix everything together.

It's nice to let this marinade for a bit, just for the flavors to develop, but you can also eat it straight away.

In my family, we eat beans, uh, several times a week.

And I guess I taught my kids to eat beans from the time they were little.

And now they're cooking for themselves and they also cook beans a few times a week.

Let's taste this healthy salad.

Mm!

Bean-licious!

It's really good.

What brings it all together is the punch from the Dijon mustard, but also that creamy garlic.

It's got wonderful Mediterranean flavors, uh nice fresh herbs and it incorporates the number one longevity ingredient throughout the blue zones, which is, as you guessed it, beans.

DIANE: This is a question I have whenever I hear nutrition advice.

Okay, make beans a regular part of your diet.

What does that mean?

DR.

LI: So, as a researcher, I've been working on this idea of doses of foods for health benefit; because if food is medicine what is the dose?

The clinical studies are where the rubber meets the road, where you get the real data on people.

So for example, there was a study from the University of Toronto that looked at men who had, uh, were overweight or obese, uh, and they wanted to use beans to be able to actually improve their metabolism.

So what was the dose to achieve that?

Well, it was five, cups of beans a week.

For about a month, they could actually lose one inch around their waistline, um by burning away harmful body fat.

And they also lost some pounds as well.

Now, does that mean that everybody needs to eat five, uh, uh, cups of beans, uh, a week?

No, but by eating diversely and every time you eat, every shot on goal that you have, so to speak, is actually an opportunity to include some of these healthy ingredients.

DIANE: What about nuts?

That's an important part of our diet here in Greece.

DR.

LI: Like a bean, great source of dietary protein, great source of dietary fiber.

Uh, it's got some healthy fats in it as well, and it's great for, uh, it's very, uh, versatile as an ingredient.

I'm a big fan of tree nuts when it comes to health.

[Lyrical guitar music] DIANE: I love soup.

It's so soothing and I especially love to make vegetable soups like this broccoli soup I'm making now, which calls for an old technique using nuts as the thickener.

And today I am gonna be using raw cashews as the thickener in this soup.

What we'll end up with is a very, very creamy, end result.

I'm just prepping all the vegetables first.

Chopping the celery, let's do the fennel next.

I'll use the stalks in the soup as well, because they'll be cooking for a while and they'll get nice and tender.

We can just do a rough chop on this.

Everything's gonna get puréed at the end.

[Chopping] Adding a little extra virgin Greek olive oil.

I'm going to add the onions first.

[Sizzling] Next, the carrots.

The fennel and celery go in around the same time.

These are the flavors of longevity.

They're everyday ingredients and a lot of plant-based goodness.

You can get such an incredible variety of food, literally from soups to nuts.

I wanna let this vegetable medley soften up a little bit in the olive oil.

I have ginger here.

We want about an inch.

And the ginger will also be puréed with everything else, so I don't have to grate it.

I can just chop it.

It will eventually soften up and be part of the whole overall, velouté.

The vegetables are just about ready for the next addition, which is the ginger and garlic.

All of these ingredients hold their own in terms of healthfulness.

Each one contributing something nutritionally dense to the overall soup.

The potatoes go in next.

[Sizzling] A little star anise, one of my personal favorite seasonings.

I love the almost licorice aroma of it, and it goes really nicely with vegetable dishes, especially something as earthy as broccoli.

It just kind of gives it a whole other dimension.

I'm gonna get the broccoli ready, next.

I'm gonna use the entire head right down to the stem because this will also soften up as it cooks.

[Chopping] I just wanna get the broccoli, uh into pieces that could be amorphous pieces because it's all gonna be cooked together and puréed.

You can also use the stems in salads by just peeling off the tough outer part of them and then shredding them.

They're really good in coleslaw or in what we call láchanou saláta in Greek.

I'm adding the broccoli to the mix.

I'm tossing everything together just to coat everything in the olive oil.

I'm gonna season it with a little salt and pepper.

Next up: some vegetable stock.

And we wanna reserve some of the stock just to thin the soup if it needs to be thinned.

And I'm going to cover this now and let it simmer until the broccoli is nice and tender.

[Tapping] [Lid clanking] I'm gonna make the nut thickener that goes into the broccoli soup next.

And I'm using cashews and a very beloved Greek herb, fresh dill.

Just wanna get some of that chopped up here.

And the whole idea of this is to have a soup that's thick and creamy without using dairy, without using milk or heavy cream.

So the cashews are a good option for that.

They're also very nutritious.

There are a lot of micronutrients in cashews and they're really good, like all nuts for bone strength.

I want to get them started before I add everything else, [Grinding] we want to grind them to coarse crumb.

I'll get my dill in here next.

A little Dijon mustard.

[Scraping] [Tapping] A touch of vinegar.

And a little fresh lemon juice.

A little salt.

A little pepper.

[Whirring of food processor] Let me see what this looks like.

It's perfect.

It's a coarse nut paste and that's exactly what we want.

And that's gonna be the thickener in the broccoli soup.

Let's see what's going on with the soup.

Ah, that looks totally ready.

I just wanna fish out the star anise from here.

I'm gonna purée the soup.

And this is a really useful tool to have in the kitchen, an immersion blender.

[Whirring of hand blender] What we're looking for here is smoothness.

We want everything in here to be perfectly puréed.

It has a little bit more, uh, puréeing to go, but I wanna get the nut mixture in here.

It's very, very dense and that's what we want.

This will add, not only texture, but also vibrancy to the broccoli.

[Purr of hand blender] It looks a little thick to me, so I'm gonna dilute it with the vegetable stock that I have.

[Purr of blender] [Banging] [Scraping] This looks perfect.

It's creamy, but not stodgy.

Now we can garnish this with a little dill.

Just a little bit of extra virgin Greek olive oil.

You can never go wrong with that.

Now it's time to taste.

Mm, that's good.

It's soul soothing.

The broccoli is very pleasant, very present.

Um, I'm getting all that beautiful vegetable mixture in here.

I can definitely taste the star anise, but what I really love about this, is not only the thickness that the cashews impart, but the acidity that the vinegar and lemon juice add to this.

Everything's in perfect balance.

It's hard to believe there's no dairy in this, no heavy cream or butter.

It's very, very satisfying.

This is my new longevity soup.

Really delicious, very healthy, very Mediterranean, and very easy to make.

♪♪ DIANE: For recipe links and information about My Greek Table , visit my website, DianeKochilas.com.

ANNOUNCER: Diane's cookbooks, "The Ikaria Way" and "Athens: Food, Stories, Love" are available to purchase online at DianeKochilas.com or call the phone number on the screen.

My Greek Table with Diane Kochilas is made possible in part by... The Fillo Factory.

Grecian Delight Kronos, A family committed to better eating.

The National Hellenic Society.

And by the following... ♪♪