Nori Maki and Pickles

First things first. What did we eat for lunch today? Miso soup, pressed salad and nori maki which we all got to roll ourselves. The maki I made included short grain brown rice, tempeh (marinated in maple syrup, shoyu, mirin brown rice vinegar and sesame oil), green beans, matchstick carrots, avocado, wasabi and umeboshi paste. Chef Elliott made us a dipping sauce of rice vinegar, mirin and shoyu (shoyu is an “authentic” version of soy sauce). Dessert was a cherry and banana sorbet with sesame currant cookies. I think the cost of this course is worth it just for the lunch every day!

Pickles and Fermented Foods – this was the afternoon session of our day taught by chef Jill Gusman. This is something new to me but it makes sense. The human body needs health supported bacteria and enzymes to help with digestion and to produce a “healthy gut.” One of the best ways to achieve this is to eat pickled or fermented foods. If you’ve ever been to a Korean restaurant you will be served a variety of “fermented” foods prior to your main course. This happened to me last night and now I know why! The Koreans are the largest consumers of “pickles” (i.e. kimchi) in the world. This is an excellent way to combat digestion problems caused from too much processed food, too much sugar, too much stress, eating poor quality animal foods and lack of activity. According to Chef Gusman, the average American is not getting enough vitamins, minerals and probiotics and pickled and fermented foods are full of these. By the way we are not talking about Vlasic pickles here. You want to look for organic, unpasteurized foods such as kimchi, sauerkraut, pickled cabbage, carrots, etc.