Healthy eating has an image problem.

It's complicated, right?

Tough to change your style, tastes like an old rice cake.

Nah, it's simple, delicious, and so easy.

I'll show you how as I take you 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'll whip up fabulous dishes made from seasonal whole ingredients.

Will everything be plant-based?

Yeah.

Will it be amazing?

Yeah.

We're gonna talk today a lot about how you get started.

I hear it all the time.

What do I do to begin to cook this way?

It all looks so nice, but it's complicated.

Except that it's not.

We're gonna put together an entire meal today in about a half-hour, okay?

Not including cooking times.

So we're gonna start with lentil soup, and lentil soup is a staple in our house and should be a staple in every single house.

Let me tell you about lentils.

They did a study of obese people with type 2 diabetes, and they discovered that one-third cup of lentils every single day helped to significantly lower their LDL, raise their HDL, and if that's not enough, the folate levels in lentils allowed their homocysteine levels to stay stable so they completely reduced their risk of heart attack and stroke.

I mean, not to nothing, but pretty low.

Anything you can do to reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke, you should probably do.

And the good news is, lentils are delicious.

And they cook quickly, so you have no excuse not to make them.

So let me show you this really simple soup.

We're gonna start by taking whole garlic cloves.

Now garlic is more than just a wonderful flavor.

Garlic is anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antifungal.

In World War II, they used garlic when they ran out of antibiotics to help to treat diseases in field hospitals.

So we're gonna smash it, which releases the essential oils, and just finely mince it.

The more coarsely you chop the garlic, the lighter the flavor.

So if you want a strong flavor, you really chop it.

We're gonna put it right on top of the onions.

This does two things: Eliminates a dish and it also helps us to not burn the garlic.

So, now we're gonna take extra virgin olive oil.

The pan is not on the heat yet.

I like to preserve the flavor of olive oil, and to do that you need to start with the oil in the pan before you turn the flame on.

Then you turn on the flame when your aromatics are ready, and they go right in.

And what did you not hear?

Oops, no sizzle.

That's because there's no sizzle.

The oil's not hot yet.

But I want to taste olive oil, so I don't care about the drama of sizzle in my own kitchen.

So we're gonna let the sizzle build, and then you'll get the flavor of olive oil when you taste the soup.

It's amazing, it's such a difference.

So while that's happening, we're gonna clean our cutting board.

Remember to clean your cutting board every time you dice or cut a veggie, because you don't mix your flavors, your board stays orderly, you don't get overwhelmed.

When there's stuff everywhere, you're like, "Oh, I don't know what to do next."

Clean your board, just clean your board.

Take a breath, drop your shoulders.

It's just dinner, okay?

You're making soup.

So we're gonna take the celery, and you cut it, leaving the top part still attached to itself.

And you're gonna cut it.

And as thin as you cut these spears is as small as your dice will be.

Now you just run your knife along it, relax, don't hold your knife like you're white-knuckling a flight.

Hold your knife, if your knife is sharp it'll slide right through like these vegetables are melted butter.

And then you hear the sizzle building, hear it now?

Oh yeah, that's what we want.

So now this is gonna go in right on top of the onions.

We're gonna add a tiny pinch of salt.

You don't want to salt a bean soup too early.

If you do, the beans won't get tender and they'll be like little bricks.

Now we're gonna take and just sort of stir these around so they can sweat.

Don't have your flame too high so things burn.

And you just want to sweat the onions until they're sweet.

You just want them to open up their flavors and not smell that really strong onion-y smell that you smell, right, when you first put up onions to sauté.

There's nothing better than the smell of onions and garlic, I will say, but...

So now we're gonna dice a carrot.

And when I dice carrots, I usually just take off the top and bottom that might be dry, and then to stay safe I cut the carrot in half.

I'm using the whole thing.

And then I cut it into spears.

Don't peel your carrots.

No peeling of carrots.

You don't need to lose that fiber or that vitamin C. And look at the work I just saved you.

And nobody will know that you didn't peel your carrot.

You just wash it.

When you dice a carrot, you think anybody's gonna examine your soup and go, "Ah, I don't think that they peeled the carrots.

I don't think I want this soup."

Not gonna happen.

So, I'm gonna dice the carrot.

It's gonna go in.

One more tiny pinch of salt.

One little stir.

And now we'll add corn and lentils.

So the lentils go in, these are dried lentils.

Make sure you rinse your beans so they don't taste dusty.

And then a little bit of organic corn to give us color and texture and make the soup look happy.

Then we add water.

You want to add four cups of water for every cup of beans.

You can eyeball it if you want, but if you add more water your soup is too thin, if you add too little water your soup is too thick.

You're gonna cover it.

You may or may not add a bay leaf.

If you don't digest beans well and you get musical when you eat them, then put a bay leaf in.

You don't have to.

It gives it a nice Mediterranean flavor.

I'm pretty loose when it comes to them and I don't always use them.

Then you're gonna cover it, you're gonna let this cook for about 30 minutes.

The lentils will get soft, and then we'll come back and finish it off.

And now let's find out what really should be in that pantry.

-Can a vegetable be a fruit?

-And fruit can be a vegetable.

-What?

It can be both?

-(distorted audio).

-(distorted audio) fruit.

-I don't get it.

(male) I am so confused.

(Christina) If I get one email about this, I get a thousand.

How do I set up my kitchen so I can cook?

Well, grab a pen, get a piece of paper.

I'll wait.

Okay, now.

You gotta have a well-stocked pantry and fridge if you're gonna succeed in cooking healthy meals.

And it doesn't take a lot.

In your dry good pantries, I even brought my notes so that I don't miss anything for ya, you want to keep brown rice, quinoa, millet, pasta, and some rolled oats.

This way you can get all your grains whenever you need them.

You want to keep lentils, red lentils, they cook really fast, chickpeas, and black beans, along with some canned beans.

I'd be lying if I told you I didn't have canned organic beans in the pantry for those nights when you think, "I have 20 minutes to get dinner on the table.

What do I do?"

So that'll keep you stocked in your pantry, right?

Then you need to have extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, sea salt, black pepper if you use it, any spices that you might use, some vanilla if you're a baker, and that'll set up your pantry in a way that you can always cook in terms of condiments.

If you move to the fridge, you want to have cabbage, carrots, leafy greens, zucchini, whatever's in season in your fridge in small amounts so you can cook.

And then on the counter, I keep potatoes, onions, tomatoes, and citrus, 'cause you don't want the sugars to become unstable by going in the fridge and out of the fridge.

Keep things like berries in the fridge, but otherwise your fruit can stay on the counter.

It also enforces the idea that you will eat them because they're right there.

So don't be confused.

And I am gonna go and finish the soup.

♪ So now it's time to season the lentil soup.

And what we've done is cook it till the lentils are tender, so now you need the boil to reduce so that we can add the miso.

Miso's a Japanese product that they say the gods sent to us to bring us to enlightenment.

All I know is it's the greatest probiotic ever.

It helps you to digest, it helps to restore good gut bacteria.

But in order to use it, you want to not boil it and you need to take a little of your hot broth.

And then you just dissolve the miso in here.

Now there's no magic to this.

You just keep stirring it around until there's no big lumps of miso so nobody bites down on some big salty chunk of something.

And then you want to just stir it back into the soup, and it's gonna help you to digest a little bit better.

So the protein of the beans and the probiotic action of the miso is gonna make this like the perfect soup.

Stir it back in.

Rinse the cup out, give the soup a stir.

It only needs to simmer for like a minute.

This is not a big cooking thing.

Now we're gonna garnish it with fresh herbs.

I'm gonna take some parsley, some fresh basil, and some fresh rosemary.

And just give it a little bit of a rough chop.

You always garnish your soups, and you garnish soups not only to give it a little bit more flavor, but you garnish because it helps you to digest, right?

The soup's been cooking, it could be a little bit heavy.

This brings a little bit of freshness, right?

So now we ladle.

Let's take our soup.

Nice hearty serving.

Especially good on a cold day, but also really good on a hot day.

It helps to keep you cool.

Garnish with a little bit of our fresh herbs, a little drizzle of extra virgin olive oil to give you a little bit extra flavor.

And you have pretty much the perfect lentil soup.

♪ If I hear it once, I hear it a million times.

How do I know what knife to use?

Well, my answer's a little esoteric, but go with me.

You'll know the knife that's perfect for you when you hold it in your hand.

So buy your knife from a kitchen shop where you can hold them, because it will slip into your palm and you'll be like, "Yup, it's you and me, baby.

This is the knife."

Now, there are only a few kinds of knives to choose from, so it can be overwhelming.

So you have to decide what kind of cook you are.

If you're fast and you like a light knife, you want to go with something that's ceramic.

Even their bread knife is light, and I like to call them fast.

Then you might go with a lighter Japanese knife, which is also stainless steel.

Some people like a really heavy German knife because it helps them to work like with harder veggies faster.

This is very big for me, but some people like a big knife.

This one was designed to have-- to sort of complement, if you will, people with carpal tunnel, or to prevent carpal tunnel, so it's also a great knife.

And then there's a paring knife.

Everyone says they need one.

I hardly ever use a paring knife.

Whatever I pick up, that's the knife I use.

Now once you have your knife, don't throw it in the drawer with all the junk.

Take care of it like you would your toothbrush.

And then you want to keep it sharp.

So you want to keep it sharp by getting what's known as a steel.

You want to get a steel that has a rough texture so that it actually sharpens the knife.

This was my dad's, he was a butcher.

He knew how to sharpen knives.

So if you're afraid, which many people are in the beginning, you take your steel and you set it on your board and you kind of hold it down.

And you take your knife at a 20-degree angle, like this, and you--equal times you run your knife along it.

And this'll give you a nice, sharp edge.

When you get braver and more confident, you take it, you see this little guard here?

You're not gonna get cut.

You take your knife.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

Equal times because you have a double-sided knife.

Then you wipe your knife off on your apron or kitchen towel and you're ready to go.

When you're cooking, you want to, what we call, hit the steel every time you start to cook for the day, and it'll always keep your knife sharp.

And a sharp knife will prevent you from getting cut.

Surprising but true.

So that's the deal with knives.

♪ So the job of soup in cooking is to help you digest the rest of your meal a little more efficiently, and also set you up for what the meal is.

So if it's a really hearty soup like the one we're making, which is a lentil soup with lots of veg and it's got protein, I usually will finish my meal with something lighter like a salad.

But not just any salad.

No wilted lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes in our house.

This is a little bit of work, but it's so worth it and does so much for your digestion.

We're gonna start by making the dressing.

We're just gonna make a quick sort of basic vinaigrette.

You're gonna take a shallot, or a piece of a shallot.

Now a lot of people don't cook with shallots because they're harder to peel, but they're so sweet and you can use them raw in a dressing.

A red onion or a regular onion is gonna be much too peppery and strong, you're not gonna want to eat that dressing.

So we're gonna just really finely chop the shallot.

I mean, you don't have to, you know, food process it, but you don't want big chunks either.

This is gonna go right into our salad bowl.

I am probably one of the laziest cooks on the planet.

If I don't have to dirty a dish, dirty a utensil, or dirty an extra spoon, I don't.

So make your life easy.

Go right from the board right in.

So now we're gonna take some walnut oil.

You can use almond, pistachio, hazelnut, whatever floats your boat.

Some red wine vinegar to give it a little bit of acid.

And remember that your ratio is three or four parts oil to one part acid, whether it's lemon or orange, whatever.

Now we take some extra virgin olive oil.

A few squeezes of salt.

You may use pepper in this if you like.

Not a fan, so I don't really use it.

And then a tiny bit of brown rice syrup because the greens that we're using are a little bit more bitter and we want to sort of take the edge off that bitterness.

And then all we'll do is take a whisk and just pull the dressing together until it's emulsified, meaning that it's not separated.

And as soon as that happens, the dressing's done.

Now, you haven't broken a sweat yet, so this is not that much work to make a salad.

So now we're gonna take and get our greens ready, and the first thing we're gonna use is a Belgian endive.

And Belgian endive comes to us, here's a surprise, from Belgium.

And it was discovered by a botanist in 1862.

I know, useless information.

He was putting chicory in his basement for the winter and discovered this little sprout growing out the end.

So he decided to try forcing it like you force a lily.

So as he did that, this beautiful sprout grew.

And it has a delicate bitter taste.

They actually wrap them by hand, each one, because they bruise so easily.

They don't have a long shelf life, so when you buy them at the market don't buy like a dozen.

You buy a couple.

Because once they bruise, they become not so cool bitter, okay?

Then we're gonna take some radicchio, also bitter.

And I'm gonna explain to you why we're using all these bitter greens.

It's not to offset the rice syrup.

It's actually to help you digest the rest of the meal.

Anything that's bitter, like endive, arugula, right, all of those bitter greens help you to digest more efficiently.

And when you digest more efficiently, you can manage your weight and you are a happier camper because your liver is happy.

And when your liver's happy, then everyone around you is also happier.

So we have some baby arugula, some baby spinach, because it's delicious, and then the star of the show: escarole.

When you buy escarole, you have to be sure to get into all the leaves and wash the sand out, 'cause it grows in sandy soil.

And you want to cut off anything that's brown on the bottom, because anything that's brown doesn't give you anything, and also the bitterness will just be way too much.

You just want to slice this into ribbons.

You're gonna pop it in.

Now, if I were someone who likes to dirty things, I would use these tongs to mix this.

But I tend to use the best tools I have, which are my hands.

And we're just gonna go in here and we're gonna toss until the dressing coats the leaves and they're shiny.

And the way you know you haven't made too much dressing, 'cause we tend to err to the side of pouring the whole bottle over it, is there's no pool of dressing in the bottom of the bowl.

When there's no pool and your leaves are shiny, you did it.

So now what we'll do is just take our salad, put it into a beautiful serving bowl so that when you put salad on the table it's got bright colors, it's shiny with dressing, everybody's a happier camper.

And then just before serving it, you'll take some toasted pine nuts, hazelnuts, whatever, sprinkle them over top so that as people serve the salad they'll mix in.

You don't want to mix them in too early or too soon or they just become soggy.

And what you want is that crunch, you want the bitter greens, you want the lovely dressing with the little bit of sweetness, and this is gonna come together as like the perfect bite of salad, not to mention the fact that if you use walnuts or any kind of nuts, if you look at the results of the Seventh-day Adventist study, people who eat nuts on a regular basis live about 10 years longer than people who don't.

So, ya might want to consider getting nuts into your diet.

And I'm gonna dig into this salad in a little while.

♪ So in my world, no meal is complete without dessert.

It's just the way it is.

I grew up in an Italian household, we always had dessert, we always had a little something after you finished a meal.

This meal was light, right?

We had a hearty soup, a nice salad.

So we want to finish it with something light as well, but still satisfy that craving for sweet that many of us have.

We're gonna do some poached pears, and we're gonna balance those pears with some flavors so that you can sort of have your pear and eat it too.

Now pears in an of themselves are a beautiful thing.

They are very high in fiber, more than other tree fruit, to the point where people with type 2 diabetes can enjoy a serving of pears, and the fiber helps them to keep their blood sugars balanced.

So pears are a beautiful thing.

So we're gonna poach them.

and the way to do that is you're gonna slice the bottom off.

And you're doing this just so that the pear sits, is sort of stable, and also allows the moisture to get up inside and cook the pear.

So once they're in your pan, then we're gonna take some ginger, some fresh ginger.

Now, I like ginger.

Ginger's gonna balance the sweetness, give you a little spice to it, and really balance the sweetness.

Now you do not have to peel ginger.

You can if you like extra work, but the peel on ginger actually forms to keep the ginger from drying out.

When you first buy spring ginger, if you can ever find it, there is no skin at all, it's pink.

And this forms as the ginger sort of matures.

So you don't need to peel it, but if it floats your boat, go ahead.

We're gonna drop those in.

Now I like ginger, you may use as little or as much as you like.

A whole cinnamon stick will go in, and then we'll zest some lemon.

The lemon will actually make the pear seem sweeter, right?

You get that little bit of flavor from the lemon zest.

So if you're gonna zest, as I hope that you will, please use organic citrus, otherwise you're grating pesticides right into your lovely poached pears.

Ew.

Okay.

So now we add liquid.

Some water to about half cover the pears.

And a little bit of brown rice syrup because you want a little sweet.

And it's about a couple tablespoons maybe, if I had to measure, which I'm not a big fan of.

And then these are gonna come to the boil.

And this is where the magic happens.

Once you put the pears up to boil, then you're gonna let them come to a nice sort of low boil, they don't have to be a rolling boil like you're making pasta, just a nice light boil.

So once the pears boil, you take a piece of clean cheesecloth, right?

Cheesecloth you can find in any supermarket.

It's made for making cheese, obviously, but many, many kitchen uses.

We put herbs in them as a bouquet and drop it into soup.

But for this we're gonna use the cheesecloth to hold the pears down.

And what they do is keep them submerged under the liquid.

Then you tightly cover, turn off the heat, and as soon as this comes to room temperature, the pears are perfectly cooked every time.

Not too mushy, not hard in the center.

They are done to gorgeous perfection.

♪ So once this comes to room temperature, it takes a little while, maybe about 30 minutes, then you're gonna take off the lid, take your cheesecloth off, and carefully, carefully, by the stem, you can use tongs if you like but then you run the risk of abrading the skin of the pear, and you just arrange the pears on a plate, right?

But we are not done yet.

Then you're gonna take the ginger out and the cinnamon stick.

You wanna get these out of the water.

Because you're gonna take this liquid and you're gonna reduce it down to create a syrup, okay?

And it takes a few minutes to do that, but you gotta make sure you take all the ginger and the cinnamon out.

And then once it reduces down it gets thick like a syrup, right?

And you just pour this gently over the pears to create a sauce.

Oh, but, baby, we are not done yet.

Now you have some boiling water over here.

We add a little bit of brown rice syrup to sweeten it up.

You're gonna take this boiling concoction, whisk it up a little bit to mix the rice syrup in, and you're gonna pour this over non-dairy chocolate chips.

I use non-dairy, dark, stevia-sweetened chocolate chips.

And now you're gonna whisk until these are smooth.

And when I do this, I always think, "I need this to get smooth really fast," 'cause I don't really care about the pears anymore.

All I'm smelling and imagining is the chocolate.

And so you just whisk until it's smooth and shiny and like satin.

And as soon as that happens under the magic of your whisk... Just gonna pour this gently right over the pears, just sort of coat them with a lovely chocolate coating.

And that is how you serve poached pears.

So what are you waiting for?

Get Back to the Cutting Board, 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.

And 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)