Video: Crispy-Skinned Sea Bass, Roasted Cauliflower and Parsley Knife Pesto

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I put this video together last fall with my new, but already deeply cherished friend Meredith Carlin. Meredith heads up the original programming production team for ulive (it’s a rabbit hole of addictiveness…consider yourself warned), so I was beyond lucky to have her guiding me along the process.

It was my first time on camera and, wow, I did not know just how hard it would be. Respect for anyone who has made a career doing it. There is a steep learning curve but I’m already excited to put together another.

For now, I hope this inspires you to get out to your farmer’s market and then into your kitchens. You’re more likely to find asparagus or mushrooms than cauliflower this time of year, but use this technique as your template and vary your veggies according. Let me know how it goes!

xo L

Crispy-Skinned Sea Bass, Roasted Cauliflower and Parsley Knife Pesto

Serves 2, with BIG servings of cauliflower

Ingredients

For cauliflower

  • 1 medium-large head cauliflower (any variety works but try romanesco, cheddar or another specialty variety if it’s available)
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • For parsley knife pesto
  • ¼ cup toasted almonds
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • 1 cup packed parsley
  • Zest of 1 lemon, divided
  • Juice of ½ lemon, saved for the end
  • Salt, pepper and extra virgin olive oil to taste

For sea bass

  • 2 sea bass or trout fillets (If it’s whole, have your fish guy cut it into fillets for you)
  • 1-2 tablespoons Wondra
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 1 tablespoon neutral tasting, high heat oil like grapeseed, vegetable or canola oil

Directions

To make the cauliflower:

  1. Preheat the oven to 425-degrees F.
  2. Meanwhile, break the cauliflower into small florets. The largest should be no bigger than a golf ball. Don’t let any cauliflower crumbs go to waste because these will get extra crispy and delicious.
  3. Divide the florets and crumbs between two sheet pans.
  4. Drizzle each pan with 1 tablespoon olive oil and about ¼ teaspoon each salt and pepper. Use your hands to massage the oil, salt and pepper into the cauliflower. You want every nook and cranny to be well-seasoned.
  5. Roast cauliflower in top and bottom third of preheated oven for 30 minutes until very golden brown, tossing the cauliflower and swapping the placement of the pans halfway through.
  6. Let cool on roasting sheets while making knife pesto and crispy sea bass.

To make the knife pesto:

  1. Pile all pesto ingredients – ¼ cup toasted nuts, 1 minced garlic clove, 1 cup packed parsley, and zest of ½ lemon – onto a cutting board. Using a chef’s knife, chop it down together until it is cohesive pesto, but still chunky enough that you can see it contains almonds and parsley. There really is no right or wrong here though, so make it how you think you might like to eat it.
  2. Reserve while making the crispy sea bass.

To make sea bass (or trout) and assemble dish:

  1. Pat fillets very well with paper towels to get them as dry as possible. Using the back of your cleaned chef knife, scrape the skin side of the fillet to remove any excess moisture, wiping your knife with a paper towel after each swipe. This is almost like squeegeeing your fish.
  2. Now that the fish is extra dry, sprinkle it lightly on both sides with salt and pepper. It isn’t a thick piece of fish, so season lightly!
  3. Dust the skin-side of your  fillets heavily with Wondra. Over the sink so you don’t make a mess, blow off any excess Wondra flour.
  4. Place your prepped fish aside while you ready your equipment and finish assembling the roasted cauliflower and parsley knife pesto.
  5. Heat a heavy-bottomed skillet, preferably cast iron over medium-high heat for a few minutes to get it good and hot.
  6. Meanwhile, combine the cauliflower and knife pesto. You can do this on one of the cooled sheet pans to save yourself from needing to clean a separate bowl. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper if necessary. Feel free to add a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil if it seems dry.
  7. Once fish skillet is hot, add 1 tablespoon of neutral flavored oil and it heat up until it is nearly smoking, about a minute. At this time, add your  fillets, skin side down, pushing down on each  so that the skin makes full contact with the hot pan. (If you don’t do this, it will buckle and not get as crisp.)
  8. Cook for 3 minutes, all the while pushing down gently with your spatula.
  9. After 3 minutes, flip the fillets and turn off the heat and let the fish finish cooking for 20-30 seconds in the pan’s residual heat.
  10. To plate, place one fillet on each of two serving plates and pile high with the roasted cauliflower and knife pesto. Finish by zesting the second half of the lemon between the two and give them both a good squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

Enjoy!

How to Breakdown a Squash

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What We Eat: Squash

Time to shake things up. Up to now, I haven’t shared a single post about cooking – recipes, tips, how-to’s, etc. – which is pretty crazy.  My love of being in the kitchen is what got me into the nutrition field in the first place. And it is a lot easier to make eating well a priority if the healthy food you are cooking and eating actually tastes good. I should be showing you how to do that! So from here on out, I’m going to be sharing a lot more of this type of stuff. It’s fun for me, and hopefully useful for you. Let me know if you’re into it.

First up, how to breakdown a squash. It struck me the other day that if people are limiting themselves to the pre-cut butternut squash at their local Whole Foods, they are missing out on lots of the delicious varietals that don’t come conveniently pre-disassembled. Kabocha, delicata, spaghetti…so many options, each of which have a slightly unique taste and texture. My favorite happen to be the types with edible skin (delicata, kabocha, acorn), because they are quicker to prepare (less peeling) but also because I love the contrast of the soft dense flesh and crisp, almost crunchy skin.

There is no right or wrong way to cut up a squash (or maybe there is according to Thomas Keller, but not for us mere mortals). Just keep in mind that if you want to keep all of your fingers intact, a sharp knife is a total necessity and creating a flat surface to stabilize the squash is always better than trying to cut through it while balancing the round surface on your cutting board.

How do you cut your squash? Whats your favorite variety and how do you prepare it?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eYvCLvXRSI[/youtube]

It’s Okay to Fail

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What We Eat: Success

In making healthy diet changes, you will fail. I know, I know, I sound like a negative Nancy (very out of character), but hear me out. Understanding this could be the key to helping you develop lifelong positive habits instead of throwing in the towel prematurely.

Adopting any new behavior is a process. It starts way before we actually actively make a change. Ground zero is when we are uninterested, unaware or unwilling to make the change. Step one is beginning to consider it. Step two is deciding to make the change and preparing to do it. Step three is making it. Step four is maintaining it. The final step? Step 5? Relapse! Failure! Falling off the wagon! Whatever you want to call it, research consistently shows that setbacks are the rule rather than the exception.

In my opinion, setbacks are especially expected with food-related changes because there are always times (as there should be) when we let go of our perfectly healthy diets. Maybe it’s because we’re celebrating a holiday, or maybe it’s because we’re stuck on a weeklong company retreat and we don’t get to choose what we eat. What really defines “successful” or healthy eating is not whether we never eat the wrong things or overindulge, but how quickly we recover from it to get back into our healthy eating routines. Over time, by making the duration of our setbacks shorter and shorter, our so-called relapses are really just lapses. Lapses, especially planned ones, are no big deal!

Setbacks can also be useful because they give us “data.” By investigating the situation surrounding our setbacks, we can better understand our weaknesses and create a plan to better overcome them next time. Think of them as learning experiences. Get curious, not guilty.

Example: “Wow, that’s interesting that as soon as work got hectic, not only did I stop cooking for myself but I also went back to my old ways of ordering burgers, nachos, whatever I darned well please, while eating out. Am I using food as a way to reward myself at the end of the day? Could I replace that with another non-food-related reward? What would it be? If I am going to be eating out a lot, how can I order something that might be similar to what I’d prepare for myself at home? Maybe I could check out menus online beforehand so I have a game plan.”

Setbacks give you the opportunity to be more successful in the future.

So the next time you “fail,” be kind to yourself. Take a little time to think about what led up to your setback, whether it has lasted a night, week, month or year(s). Create your game plan to get back on track and start immediately. All it takes is a few healthy meals strung together to change your mindset.

And to end with one of my favorite quotes, remember, “perfection is the enemy of progress.”

The Thing About Carbs

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The thing about carbohydrates is not all carbohydrates are created equal. (Not all proteins or fats are created equal either, but let’s save that for another blog post.) Carbs come in every variety, from very health enhancing to less so. That’s why any diet that banishes them entirely will, yes, cut out a good amount of play food. But it will also lead you to miss out on lots of important nutrients (honestly, the details of which don’t matter), and unnecessarily eliminate foods that are truly enjoyable. So let’s break them down…

What foods contain carbohydrates?

  • Fruits
  • Vegetables
  • Whole Grains
  • Legumes (aka beans and nuts)
  • Dairy (this one surprises people sometimes but lactose is a carb)
  • And every food derived from the above (e.g. juice, sugar derived from the sugar cane plant and all other caloric sweeteners, potato chips, breakfast cereals, snack foods like crackers and cookies, breads from white to whole wheat, pastas, etc.)

“Complex” carbs versus “simple” carbs

We’re often told to choose “complex” carbs (carbs that have three or more sugar units strung together) and to abstain from “simple” carbs (carbs made up of only one or two sugar units). But let me give you an example of why this blanket recommendation doesn’t work. White bread, made up of starch, is technically a “complex” carb. Apples, made up of glucose and fructose, are technically “simple” carbs. Few would argue that white bread is a healthier choice than an apple. It’s not.

White bread is made with white flour. White flour is made by removing the healthiest components of a wheat berry: the fiber, nutrient-filled bran and germ. What is left–the energy-filled endosperm–is then ground into a fine dust. Essentially, even before we take our first bite of toast, a great percentage of our bodies’ digestion has already been completed by outside processing. So the “complex” carbs in white bread are very readily absorbed and quickly converted into sugar in our blood streams, what doctor’s call blood sugar or blood glucose.

An apple is made from, well, an apple. When we eat it, besides the obvious fact that our teeth have more work to do to ready it for swallowing, our GI tracts also have to work harder to separate the “simple” carbs from the fiber, water and other nutrients packaged with them. This, among other reasons, leads to slower absorption and conversion of the “simple” carbs of the apple into blood sugar. Rest assured, our bodies will absorb all of the good stuff, it just takes more time. More time is a good thing.

Why it matters whether our blood sugar increases quickly versus overtime

Blood sugar fuels the activity of our bodies’ cells, but it can’t get into them without some help. Insulin, a hormone made by the pancreas, acts as a key to open up cell doors and let blood sugar in. Because our bodies don’t like a ton of sugar hanging out in our blood stream, a surge in blood sugar from foods like white bread leads the pancreas to release a corresponding surge in insulin. All of the sugar is quickly ushered out of our blood stream and into our cells. Before you know it, the highway that is our blood stream is free of sugar. This wouldn’t seem like a bad thing, but our bodies actually prefer there to be a little blood sugar traffic. If there is no blood sugar available to cells, what would happen if all of a sudden our bodies needed more energy? So, low blood sugar triggers additional hormonal responses in our bodies – hormones that make us hungry. This explains why most of us feel starved only a few hours after having a muffin for breakfast.

Alternatively, when we eat foods like apples that are full of nutrients like fiber that take longer to break down, our blood sugar rises slowly and steadily overtime. Correspondingly, our pancreas releases insulin slowly and overtime. There is a steady flow of light blood sugar traffic in our blood stream. When insulin moves some blood sugar into our cells, a little more blood sugar merges onto the highway from our GI tract to replace it. This translates to our blood sugar rising and falling slowly and overtime. Why is this so great? Our bodies tell us that they are satisfied for longer.

A better way to think about carbs

So, here is a clearer carb recommendation: Eat carbohydrate foods that have undergone as little processing as possible the majority of the time –

  • Fruits
  • Vegetables
  • Whole Grains
  • Legumes (aka beans and nuts)
  • Low fat milk and yogurt

– and the ones made by processing them, less often –

  • Juice, even smoothies
  • All sugars from white to agave to honey
  • Traditional snack foods like potato chips, pretzels, crackers
  • Bakes goods like cookies, cakes, doughnuts
  • Breakfast cereals
  • Breads from white to whole wheat
  • Pastas and white rice
  • Etc.

The former are like time-release energy/fullness pills and the latter are like fast-acting energy/hunger-inducing pills. Maybe this means you choose to do an 80/20 split, or 90/10, that’s all up to you. The good news is there’s no good reason to give up carbohydrates.

Nutrient and Caloric Density: Cracking the nutrition code for good

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If I had the eyes and ears of the world and only 10 minutes to share some of the most important concepts in nutrition, I would attempt to explain nutrient and caloric density. Horrible, horrible names but important ideas. The good news is that the devil is NOT in the details. A broad understanding is all you need to answer most nutrition-related questions.

Before we get into it, I bet these concepts are things you already get intuitively. Let’s see:

Question 1: Both the five Starbursts and medium banana below are about 100 calories. Of these two, which do you think is the healthier choice? Why?

What We Eat: Starbursts v BananaAnswer 1: If you guessed the banana, you’d be right. Clearly, there is way more good stuff (vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, etc.) per calorie in the fruit than in the fruit candy. This is what is termed “nutrient density.”

Question 2: You’re trying to maintain your weight. Would one-cup granola or one-cup oatmeal be the better breakfast choice? Why?

What We Eat: Oatmeal v Granola

Answer 2: Guess oatmeal? Ding, ding, ding! Considering the same volume of oatmeal has about a third of the calories of granola, you could fill your tummy equally with less calories. This is what is termed “caloric density.”

So, Nutrient Density = the amount of good stuff  (vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, etc.) in a specific food per the amount of calories it provides.

  • High nutrient density = lots of good stuff per calorie (aka “superfoods”)
  • Low nutrient density = little good stuff per calorie (aka “empty calories”)

And, Caloric Density = the amount of calories in a specific volume/weight of food.

  • High caloric density = lots of calories for small amount of food
  • Low caloric density = few calories for a large amount of food

Want to see how this should play out on your plate day-to-day?

Healthy Eating Plate
Those geniuses from Harvard think of everything.

So now, tell me and be honest, do you get it? Let me know because I am practicing for when I have those 10 minutes of the whole world’s attention.