To me, food has an element of pleasure, but mostly it is a tool.
I get all the nutriends that I need to have a lenthgy and healthy life. So, I try to pack as many usefull foods into my recipes. And yet I also try to make delicious... It is the element of pleasure, we shouldn't forget it.
What I had today for lunch exemlpifies this approach. A dish with many ingredients that are useful to us and some techniques that make the dish delightful to the mouth.
It is a recipe that I adopted from a Greek chef named Lefteris Lazarou, he is probably the best seafood chef in Greece.
Fish and a puree.
Let's see the ingredients.
Pagasius fish : 200 gr
Avacado ripe : 120 gr
Broccoli : 150 gr
Goat yogurt : 240 gr
Beet : 50 gr
Olive oil : 2 tablespoons
Garlic and ginger to your taste.
Spices : salt, pepper, curcumin, oregano and whatever else you want.
For added taste layers some nutritional yeast and fish oil.
We begin with the broccoli.
We boil it for 2 minutes max . If you cook it more it looses most of its useful nutrients.
Then we put through cold water to stop the cooking process. This is called blanching. It helps vegetables to preserve thier color. Here we don't care about that because we will blend it, but it is crucial not to cook for more than 2 minutes.
We put all the ingredients to a blender.
We blend and season to taste.
For extra flavor, you can add more olive oil or fish oil or nutrition yeast or whatever else you want.
Now let's cook the fish. But first, you dry it. This is important since you don't want to boil it...
Then a trick I haven't seen before and this is the reason that chef Lazarou is one of the top chefs around...
Instead of cooking the fish directly to the pan, you use some parchment paper. This way it will not stick nor burn...
Cook it until it is done and serve it ...
Fish with broccoli and avocado doesn't sound appealing, to be honest, but the puree was very delicious with the acidity of yogurt to balance the creaminess of the avocado. Fish was cooked quite nice.
I overly enjoyed the dish and I was happy since it was my first attempt. Next time I will heat the puree and it will be perfect.
The dish has 1000 Kcal if you keep track ...
And until next time ...
Be healthy, smile and blog !!!