The past few weeks have been a true edible blur around here. In fact, if I had to describe These Times of Social Distancing, I think that’s the phrase I would use. Edible blur.
Being that I’ve always worked from home, there’s not much – now – to distinguish between the days besides the fact that there are mornings when my partner, Pete, has time for pancakes and tells me so, and times when neither of us do and so we make due with something else delicious. Usually, those are weekends.
Then there are the days when the broth scrap bag in the freezer fills up (typically Monday,) and the day when we run out of bread and I need to feed the starter to make more (typically Thursday.) But beyond that we eat breakfast, do a little work, play outside, eat lunch, do a little work, eat a snack, make a cocktail, do more work, make dinner. And when I say work, for me that means cooking. I’ve never cooked so much in my life, and our dishwasher has zero chance of collecting unemployment.
There continue to be silver linings in it all, literally falling out of all these meals, snacks, bowl-and-spoonfuls. But sometimes the flow of it all just sends me into overload. And so, this past week I decided I needed a break – not only from the cooking but also from eating our typical healthy meals – to reset my system. I dedicated 10 days to a “panchakarma” cleanse, and aided by one of my favorite local Ayurvedic practitioners, used food and herbs to reset my system, my senses and my energy. It was wonderful. Here’s how I’ve spent the past week, observing the wisdom of these centuries-old food/medicine traditions.
Ayurveda believes that every element of our well-being stems back to our digestion and diet. And so, part of the seasonal cleanse of panchakarma addresses soothing, and restoring digestion to balance by eating very gentle foods. Ultimately, this means kitchari. And by that, I mean daily. In my case, only kitchari (and some beautiful green broth I’ve been playing with,) for five days straight.
If this sounds like pure torture for a person who loves food, I assure you that it’s not. If anything, eating kitchari is a wonderful reminder of just how important spices are to good cooking (there are a LOT of spices integral to kitchari,) and just how grounding a big bowl of something warm and slow-cooked is for us, in any season.
Kitchari isn’t just something I make for these cleansing periods, it’s also something I make when I need a break, am recovering from a flu, don’t want to think about a nourishing dinner for a few days, or feel like I’ve been overworking, overindulging, over-doing it.
Here’s a recipe I’ve been using to make up kitchari this week but there are a million ways to work it and make it your own, by adding spices and flavors, and swapping out seasonal vegetables. I also like to steam sauté greens for the bottom of the bowl, and I love to top with radish sprouts and more ghee for a little kick.
As you’ve noticed, in my cooking and also in the recipe below, ghee is an absolute must. There are a bajillion reasons to swap ghee in for other cooking fats.
Many cooking oils denature when we cook them at high temperatures; this changes their flavor and ultimately their health benefits. Olive oil is a perfect example. If cooked at too high a temperature, even good olive oil starts to have an off taste, and the molecular structure of its healthy fats change. Comparatively, clarifying butter by removing water creates a higher smoke point — about 465ºF (240ºC) compared to butter’s 350ºF (177ºC).
The clarifying process also removes casein and lactose, making ghee suitable for the dairy-sensitive. Since the water has been removed from ghee, it’s shelf-stable, meaning it can be stored without refrigeration for extended periods of time. (Just be sure to keep the jar away from steaming stoves, food and anything else that can introduce bacteria. If you start to detect an off flavor, scrape off the top, and store it in the fridge instead.)
Also, our bodies can’t make omega-3 fats, but ghee is full of them as well as butyric acid, a short-chain fatty acid thought to be good for your gastrointestinal tract. Most of all, ghee has a grassy, nutty, so-good flavor reminiscent of cajeta (caramelized goat milk), which makes it the perfect drizzling oil to top golden milk lattes, winter soups, breakfast porridges, grain bowls, toasts — and really anywhere you want a little boost of flavor and nutrition.
And, because it’s easy and pretty amazing, I make my own.
Butter is roughly 20% water, which means 20% of the weight of your butter is lost in the cooking process. If you start with 1 cup (454g) of butter, you’ll end up with just over 3/4 cups (170g) of ghee. Ghee can get quite pricey at the grocery store for this reason — and also because of the labor that goes into watching and tending to that big pot of clarifying butter.
From there, I scoop and drizzle it EVERYWHERE. It’s a stand-in for butter in most capacities in our house.
The purpose of slowing down for a panchakarma is to give the system a reset, and so I also chose to give my typical diet of biking, hiking, running and adventuring a little rest as well. Determined to find other ways to connect with nature, and to tap into my creative process, I headed to Growing Gardens to pick up my edible flower bundles, and to plant them on our patio.
This year, I’ve planted calendula, snapdragons, pansies, echinacea, zinnias, nasturtiums, scabiosa and dianthus. They were started in organic soil and planted in organic soil, so I feel confident they’re safe to eat. And there are SO many more that I keep reading about + obsessing over. I can’t wait to sprinkle them over salads and toasts and anywhere else I want a little color. If you’re looking to learn more about planting (or eating!) flowers yourself, this is a great little resource.
Often I’m asked about which cookbooks I’m reading. The truth is that I have over 300 in my collection, and I read them all through the year, perusing them but also reading them like others would romance novels – cover to cover. I love the way different personalities and voices cook different things, the way our histories all spark us in different ways. I always find inspiration from this collection. I’ve recently added these titles to my collection, if you’re running out of food reading:
Everyday is Saturday by Sarah Copeland
Heirloom by Sarah Owens
Japanese Home Cooking by Sonoko Sakai
A Modern Way to Eat by Anna Jones
Tartine: Revisited by Elisabeth Prueitt
Where Cooking Begins by Carla Lalli Music
And now, as I emerge from my 10 days of tuning out, the world is starting to tune in…to whatever the What’s Next Looks like. As things slowly open up, I’m finding myself sticking pretty closely to many of the cooking, sourcing and lifestyle practices that social distancing has brought about. I’m going to keep baking sourdough. Allowing broth and bread and off-beat pancake breakfasts to define the days, rather than iPhone notifications. I’m going to keep building recipes that will work just as beautifully at home as they do in camp, (pizza!) There are lots more recipes on my list to try, ingredients to use up AND many more beans to make.
On that note, Rancho Gordo has started shipping again! They have a limited selection at this time, but they hope to have more items coming their way in the coming weeks.
I think it would be pretty cool to do a “bean club” of our own, selecting a bean or bean(s) to cook, I’ll order a quantity for each of us to stash, and then we can cook through their nuances together with recipes I design + source. If you’re interested, drop me a little message!
Keep cooking along!
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