Udon with Shiitakes & Braised Baby Bok Choy

Inspired by some beautiful baby bok choy that I found at the farmer's market today, here is an Asian noodle recipe that would be right at home in any homestyle Chinese, Japanese or Taiwanese meal. If you can only find full-sized bok choy, they will also work for this recipe.

Udon with Shiitake Mushrooms & Braised Baby Bok Choy

Two different styles of baby bok choy commonly available at farmer's or Asian markets:

Dry, thin, flat (top) and fresh, large, round (bottom) and  udon noodles:

Udon with Shiitakes

Cooking notes: The flavor of the noodles is best if you have a very high heat burner to use with wok cooking. I, unfortunately, do not have this at home. To try to achieve a bit of caramelization on the noodles, I preheat a large cast iron skillet instead. Even if you aren't able to caramelize the noodles, this dish is delicious. In the picture, above, I have used the flat, thin, dried udon noodles but the dish is best with the fresh, fat, round noodles.

Ingredients:

½ pound dried (or 1 pound fresh) udon noodles (large, round are best but any will work)

1 egg, beaten (optional)

1/4 cabbage, shredded

1 medium carrot, shredded or shaved into long strips

8 shiitake mushrooms, sliced thinly

1 shallot or ½ small red onion, chopped (1/4-inch dice)

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 Tablespoons untoasted sesame or peanut oil

Sauce Ingredients:

2 teaspoons low-sodium soy sauce

2 teaspoons vegetarian oyster sauce

1/4 teaspoon salt, optional

1 teaspoon sugar

2 teaspoon mirin

1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

2 Tablespoons water

Directions:

1. If using dried udon noodles, cook in boiling water for 2/3 the amount of time recommended on the package, then drain and run cold water over the noodles to stop the cooking. If using fresh noodles, just untangle noodles with your fingers (do not pre-cook). Set aside.
2. Mix together sauce ingredients; set aside.
3. In a hot wok or cast iron skillet over high heat, add 1 tablespoon of oil, shallot and garlic; stir briefly for a couple of seconds being careful not to let them brown. Add cabbage, carrot and mushrooms, stir-frying for 1-2 minutes.
4. Remove vegetables from pan and wipe out pan. Return to heat and add remaining tablespoon of oil. When hot add egg (if using) and noodles, stir-frying until heated through. If the noodles begin to stick add another teaspoon or two of oil.
5. Add veggies back to the pan along with the sauce and stir-fry over high heat until noodles just start to caramelize or until all ingredients are hot. If using a low-power burner, the noodles may never caramelize, but the dish will still be delicious. Do not cook more than 2 minutes.
6. Serve immediately. Great with braised baby bok choy. 

Serves: 4

Braised Baby Bok Choy

Ingredients:

1 pound baby bok choy (or full-sized if you can't find baby*)

Sauce Ingredients:

1 Tablespoon low-sodium soy sauce

2 teaspoons dark brown sugar

1 Tablespoon untoasted sesame or peanut oil

1 cup water

Directions:

1. Fill a large bowl with water and soak the whole baby bok choy fully submerged for about half an hour; swish the bok choy vigorously to remove as much dirt and debris as possible. Lift bok choy out of the bowl and into a colander; discard the soaking water.
2. Cut the very end of the stem off and then cut bok choy in half through the middle of the stem (the long way) so that all of the leaves remain attached.
3. In a Dutch oven or 6-8 liter stock pot*, bring sauce ingredients to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and add bok choy placing the stem ends directly into the liquid and standing the leaf ends up like flowers. Cover the pot and cook for 7 minutes*.
4. Serve immediately while hot.

Serves: 3-4

Serving suggestions: Goes well with any Chinese, Japanese or Taiwanese meals. I like to top Udon with Shiitakes with these Braised Baby Bok Choy to add some greens to the dish.

*Note: if using full-sized bok choy, cook in slightly smaller diameter pot (so that the bok choy will stand up) and cook for 10 minutes instead of 7.

When Your Doctor is Your Chef

Bloomberg News published a piece today that discusses the movement of doctors learning about healthy cooking and adding this skill to their healthcare toolkit. This is important, because as the obesity and metabolic disease epidemics continue, we realize that relying only on pharmaceuticals is not good medicine. We as physicians, and the broader medical community, owe it to our patients to have the best tools in our toolkits to help prevent and treat disease--including cooking and eating delicious, healthy food.

Delicious, Healthy Meals--Courtesy of @ChefInResidency on Instagram

For more on this, go to Bloomberg News and read "When Your Doctor is Your Chef."

Interview with Stanford Medicine's Scope Blog

Many of you know my story from reading the About the Chef-Doctor  section of the blog or reading Hoda Kotb’s book, Where We Belong: Journeys That Show Us the Way. However, if you’re a newbie to the site, or you’re curious about some of the things that I’ve been up to lately, check out my most recent interview with Stanford Medicine’s Scope Blog, “I wasn’t afraid to fail at my dream”: A physician-chef discusses her unusual career.”

Also, be sure to check back for the following upcoming posts (by popular demand) on common GI issues: GERD (acid reflux), lactose intolerance and IBS…and more recipes, of course!

Group Medical Appointments Utilizing Cooking Classes to Teach About Chronic Disease Treatment & Prevention

It's been about six months since the my co-authors and I published the journal article "Shared Medical Appointments: A Portal for Nutrition and Culinary Education in Primary Care-A Pilot Feasibility Project" in Global Advances in Health and Medicine.

This project was spearheaded by former head of the Clinical Nutrition course at Harvard Medical School, and good friend of mine, Dr. Helen Delichatsios. She is a primary care physician based at the world-renowned Massachusetts General Hospital. When I was a third-year medical student, she and I were at a conference learning about shared medical appointments (SMAs, also called group medical visits), when we began talking about how we could create a new type of SMA that utilized cooking classes to teach about healthy lifestyle, treatment and prevention of chronic diseases related to obesity, inactivity and other unhealthy habits.

Class Recipe: Veggie-Packed Fresh Spring Rolls with Peanut Dressing

Definition: Shared Medical Appointments / Group Medical Visits are when a group of people see a doctor together for one long visit rather than individuals seeing a doctor at many, separate short appointments. There are many types and structures of SMAs.

After a lot of hard work on Helen's part to figure out how to introduce a completely new style of visit into her existing clinical practice--including getting buy-in from the clinic, arranging staffing, reserving space, learning how to bill for these types of appointments, and recruiting patients--we worked together to develop content for the visits. 

Class Recipe: Healthy Smoothies

Each 90-minute visit ran like this:

1. Patients arrived, got their vital signs taken, then were escorted to a regular conference room and seated around a long table.
2. They signed a confidentiality agreement and anonymously wrote questions that they had about their condition(s) or how to make healthy changes on an index card.
3. Once everyone had arrived, Dr. Delichatsios and either myself or another assistant did an icebreaker activity with the patients.
4. There was a short (10-15 minute) lesson on a health issue important to everyone in the room.
5. Then, there was a facilitated group discuss/Q&A while I (or another chef) demonstrated how to prepare a simple, inexpensive, healthy dish.
6. Everyone was given the recipe and the opportunity to taste the food.
7. At the end of the visit, patients were given instructions about their follow-up visits or health care maintenance items that were due. If anyone had an urgent medical concern, Dr. Delichatsios had a short visit with them individually after the group class (this rarely occurred).

Class Recipe: Mexican Quinoa (or Brown Rice) Salad with Citrus Vinaigrette

We hadn't intended to write about this project for publication, but when we realized that patients loved the visits, they didn't cost any more than traditional visits, and they didn't require a special space or a lot of special equipment, we knew that we needed to spread the word that this could be done in ANY primary care clinic as it exists TODAY. Since we started the visits nearly 8 years ago, some specialty clinics and direct primary care clinics have begun to install dedicated teaching kitchens. While this is very exciting (!), we published this last year in an effort to help clinics and practitioners realize that they don't need to wait for someone to fund an expensive teaching kitchen for their clinic. If you have a conference room, table and a sink, you can run group visits and demonstrate basic, healthy cooking for patients. You also don't have to be a chef to demonstrate healthy cooking--once I went off to residency and other assistants moved on to other projects, Dr. Delichatsios took over the cooking demonstration piece of the sessions as well!

Sample Curriculum, Nutrition Topics, and Recipes for Culinary Nutrition-based Shared Medical Appointments.

For more details (and a better picture of the table, above), check out the full article.

Finally, I went on to replicate these type of appointments on my own (without the help of an assistant) in my residency primary care safety-net clinic (a clinic that treats patients regardless of income or ability to pay) with similar results. While I recommend that doctors enlist an assistant, rather than go it alone like I did, I believe that this is a great way to spend an extended amount of time providing lifestyle counseling/coaching to patients. This method also allows patients to learn from each other--both things impossible to do in a traditional primary care visit.

Have you dreamed of getting a cooking class at your doctor's office? Are you a physician who has struggled to get patients to change their eating habits? Why not try this today???

Reference: Delichatsios H, Hauser ME, Burgess J, Eisenberg D. Shared Medical Appointments: A Portal for Nutrition and Culinary Education in Primary Care. A Pilot Feasibility Study. Global Advances in Health & Medicine. 2015;4(6):22-26.

Whole Grain, White Bean and Winter Vegetable Dish with Pickled Red Onions

This delicious, hearty recipe is solidly in the winter comfort food category--and just happens to be healthy! You can use any whole grain that is earthy in flavor and a bit chewy. I prefer Kamut or wheat berries, but short grain brown rice or pearled barley also work well.

Kamut: For those of you who haven't heard of Kamut, it is the trademarked name of an ancient type of wheat berry that was originally grown in Egypt. It is high in protein (12-18%) and always organic. The taste is nearly identical to traditional wheat berries.

Many whole grains take 35-60+ minutes to cook--something I cannot wait for when I get home starving after a long day of work. To solve this problem (and avoid getting take-out), I cook a batch of some type of whole grain most weekends, portion into family-sized servings, and freeze in Ziplock baggies or freezer containers. Then, I just empty the frozen grains into a microwave safe container, cover with a plate, and heat for 1-3 minutes. This technique yields whole grains that taste no different than if they'd been freshly made for that meal! This recipe utilized whole grains that were precooked and reheated in this way.

This process is simple and shown in more detail in the Basic Techniques Series: CookingWhole Grains post which includes a cooking time chart for most whole grains.

Whole Grain, White Bean and Winter Vegetable Dish with Pickled Red Onions 

Pickled Red Onions:

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Juice of one medium or large lemon (zest lemon before juicing)

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

1/2 cup thinly sliced red onions

Ingredients for the rest of the dish:

1 Tablespoon olive oil

2 medium carrots, sliced 1/8-1/4 inch thick

1 large parsnip, sliced 1/8 inch thick

1 medium or large fennel bulb, halved then sliced ¼ inch thick

Salt, to taste

Pepper, to taste

1 can (or 1-1/2 cups cooked) white beans, drained and rinsed

2 cups cooked Kamut or wheat berries

1 Tablespoon brown sugar

Zest of 1 lemon, chopped

1/4 cup roughly chopped fresh dill

1/3 cup chopped, roasted almonds

Combine the ¼ cup olive oil, lemon juice, salt and red onions in a small bowl. Stir and set aside.

In a large skillet over medium high heat, add 1 tablespoon olive oil and swirl to coat the bottom of the pan. Toss in the carrots, parsnips, and fennel slices then season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables get somewhat browned (about 10-12 minutes).

Add the beans, Kamut and brown sugar to the skillet and cook for another 3-5 minutes to heat through. Add the lemon zest and dill; stir to combine. Remove from heat and add red onion mixture; stir and season with salt and pepper.

Let rest at least 5-10 minutes before serving.

Serve topped with chopped almonds. Serves 6-8 as a side dish; 4 as a main dish.

Makes a great vegetarian main dish, or side dish for fish or chicken.