Healthy Cooking Tips – Sesame Seeds

When you buy sesame seeds, they are usually raw. Since they have a high oil content they can become rancid, so store them in an airtight container in the fridge. In fact, you should store all raw nuts in the fridge. Toasted sesame seeds are delicious: I heat a small amount in a skillet in medium heat and stir them occasionally. They are ready when they start popping. Toasted sesame seeds can get rancid faster so make small batches.

To find out about the wonderful health benefits of sesame seeds, go to the World’s Healthiest Foods site by clicking here.

Healthy Cooking Tips – Scallions

When you use scallions you can cut the roots and plant them in the garden or pot. They will grown in no time and in any place, they are really tough guys! My mom never lets any scallion root go to waste because she cooks Japanese food often.

To find out more about scallions, check Chef’s Maven blog article by clicking here.

Beautiful Blog Award

I wanted to share with you that Ann Pierce from Pierce Whole Nutrition blog has passed on the Beautiful Blogger award to me, you can find the blogs she awarded here. Ann and I were classmates at the Nutrition Therapy Institute, and while I left school to pursue culinary arts studies, Ann stayed. I think Ann will be a great Nutrition Therapist. Ann’s blog is awesome, you should check it out if you have any interest in Nutrition topics. She is a great writer and her articles are always very interesting.

Here are the rules for this award: (1) thank the person who nominated you for this award and insert a link to their blog; (2) pass on the award to about 15 other bloggers who you recently discovered and think are great; (3) contact the other bloggers and let them know they have been chosen for this award (4) say 7 things about yourself.

I will publish the list of other bloggers and things about myself later, here, at this post.

Thanks Ann!

Coconut Almond Crusted Salmon

This recipe is delicious yet very easy to make. You will need either a blender or a coffee grinder. A food processor won’t work because the amounts are very small. If you don’t have almond flour available, you can grind some almonds. I served this dish with Brilliant Sauteed Broccoli and Cucumber and Celery Salad.

Brilliant Sauteed Broccoli

I am a little spoiled when it comes to vegetables: in Brazil we have a big variety and all vegetables taste wonderful. I think broccoli in the US doesn’t have any taste … but I found out that baby broccoli tastes much better. So I am using it in this recipe. You may think baby broccoli is expensive but in the end, I think the cost ends up being the same as the regular broccoli, because you pay for the super thick stems. With baby broccoli you use everything.

This method of cooking (blanching/shocking) is very good: the final consistency of the broccoli is very nice and its color, awesome! Instead of brown sugar and red pepper flakes I just added some garlic powder when sauteing. I didn’t use Parmesan cheese either. See the original recipe here.

Cucumber Celery Salad

Although it was cold last night, I thought that a cucumber and celery will go well with the salmon and broccoli dish. Thinly slice the cucumber, sprinkle some salt on it, let it rest for a couple of minutes and squeeze well. Add finely chopped celery and season with sea salt, apple cider vinegar, olive oil and a bit of sesame oil. Top with some sesame seeds.

Lebanese Style Red Lentil Soup

I bought some red lentils a long time ago and I kept looking at them and thinking what could I do with them. I found this interesting recipe here and I decided to try it yesterday. It was delicious, and the red lentils turn yellow after they are cooked!

I served the soup with zucchini-carrot garbanzo pancakes: I added some carrots for color and seasoned it with parsley, garlic powder, fennel seeds and sea salt.

If you are in an elimination diet please skip the cayenne pepper. I used ½ the amount of lemon. For a vegan version, please substitute the chicken stock by vegetable stock or water.