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Ostara Egg-Salad w/ Home-made Mayo + Food Enzymes

April 3, 2015 By Lauren

eggsandwich

Easter is named for Ostara–goddess of fertility, rebirth, light.  Many of our modern ways to celebrate Easter–with colored egg, grey bunny–are derived from older ones, with the egg and the hare as major pagan symbols of fertility, of the new life and new cycles that come with the arrival of Equinox, of Spring.

Red eggs, later, to symbolize the death and resurrection of Christ.  Later, still, hot-pink, baby-blue, lime-green.  My mom would buy 1 dozen eggs each, for my brother and me, and one of my most salient memories of the season is a week’s worth of hard-boiled eggs.

And egg-salad.  Because what else does one do w/ 24 cooked eggs?

This is a simple recipe, upraised by an ingredient that can be a bit intimidating:  mayo.  No, not Hellman’s.  I’m talking about home-made, creamy, enzyme-rich mayonnaise.  Once you’ve been converted, there’s no turning back.

Food Enzymes Demystified

When I say that mayo is an enzyme-rich condiment, what do I mean by that?

There’s a lot of talk about food enzymes these days, especially in raw food circles.  You’ve probably heard the claim that as cooked food (anything brought to a wet-heat above 118 degrees F) is denatured enzymatically-speaking it should be avoided in favor of raw foods, or foods that have all their enzymes intact.

What, exactly are enzymes?

Enzymes are complex proteins that act as catalysts in nearly every biochemical process that takes place in the body.  (p. 46 Fallon).

To put it simply, enzymes are the vital force that keeps our bodies, well, functioning as such.

The three main classifications of enzymes are metabolic, digestive, and food.

Our body makes metabolic and digestive enzymes from nutrients.  Metabolic enzymes help us to breath, to talk, to move, to think as well as affecting our behavior (p.46 Fallon).  Digestive enzymes are made by our pancreas and act as a digestive aid.

Food enzymes are enzymes our body doesn’t make.  Enzymes that we obtain through (you guessed it) food.  Like digestive enzymes, they aid digestion, initiating its processes and helping to fully break-down and assimilate nutrients in food.

There are three categories of food enzymes: proteases, for digesting proteins, lipases, for digesting fats, and amylases, for digesting carbohydrates.  I like to think of food enzymes as “helper” enzymes without which our pancreas would have to bear the majority of the enzymatic load.

Food enzymes are, indeed, ample in raw foods.  A diet composed of cooked foods, exclusively, leads to an over-worked pancreas with an inhibited function in regards to enzyme-production.

Less enzymes=less-digestion=less nutrients and, as posited by enzyme researcher and enthusiast Dr. Edward Howell, a shorter life-span, greater risk of illness and a lowered resistance to stress of all kinds. (p. 47 Fallon).  Dr. Howell, enzyme lover that he is, even formulated the following  Enzyme Nutrition Axiom:

The length of life is inversely proportional to the rate of exhaustion of the enzyme potential of an organism.  The increased use of food enzymes promotes a decreased rate of exhaustion of the enzyme potential.

Or, in other words:  more enzymes = more life

More.  Life.  Who wouldn’t want to sign up for that?!

referencing

So, if raw foods contain maximum-enzymes, remind me why we’re not all raw foodists again?

Gladly!  I’ve even broken it down into 3 easy parts:

#1.  Enzymes activity depends on the presence of adequate amounts of vitamins and minerals–including magnesium, manganese, copper, iron and zinc.

Vitamins and minerals are made more bio-available through cooking and cooking also neutralizes naturally occurring toxins in plant foods.

Take spinach, for example.  Raw spinach contains a high amount of oxalic acid, a compound that binds to certain nutrients–including magnesium, iron, copper and zinc–and blocks their absorption.  Cooking not only neutralizes oxalic acid, it also increases spinach’s mineral content.  Win/Win!

#2.  Enzymes don’t exist in abundance in many fruits and vegetables.

In fact, the list of plant foods high in enzymes is short: extra virgin olive oil and other unrefined oils, raw honey, grapes, figs, and tropical fruits including avocados, dates, bananas, papayas, pineapples, kiwis and mangoes. (p.47 Fallon).

Let’s continue using spinach as an example.  Spinach is far more nutritionally beneficial when you focus on its high vitamin and mineral content, instead of only thinking about its (low) enzyme content.

Plant foods like grains, legumes, nuts and seeds are rich in enzymes but also contain enzyme-inhibitors.  These are deactivated by sprouting, soaking in warm, acidic water, and fermenting however the nutrients found in these foods are far more bio-available after cooking.

#3. Raw food can be hard on the digestive-system. Folks with a sensitive digestive system–with IBS, Crohns or another auto-immune-disorder, anxiety, and so on–often don’t fare well on many raw foods.

This is where raw-condiments, like yogurt or home-made mayo, lacto-fermented carrots or sauerkraut, come into play.  Those with sensitive digestive systems can supplement their primarily cooked foods diet with enzyme-rich raw or fermented condiments.

egg-salad

This home-made mayo is filled with the fat-digesting enzyme lipase.  What better condiment to use in an omega-3-rich egg-salad?

And what better way to celebrate this fertility-season with something that provides a pathway to more life?

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Ostara Egg-Salad with Home-made Mayo

Recipe adapted from Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian"

Ingredients

    For the mayo:
  • 1 yolk from pasture-raised egg
  • 1 tablespoon dijon mustard
  • 1/4 cup of extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • pinch salt
  • For the egg salad:
  • 4 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and diced
  • couple spoonfuls of pickled carrots or gherkins, diced
  • 4 tablespoons home-made mayo
  • pinch of salt

Directions

    For the mayo:
  1. Add yolk to medium-sized mixing bowl and whisk in mustard. Start adding oil very slowly and whisk. It is important to only add a small amount--I'm talking drops--at first. Your mayo won't coagulate if you add your oil in too quickly. Keep adding drop-by-drop and whisk, add and whisk until your mixture starts to thicken. At this point you can add a bit more oil all at once.
  2. After oil has been all whisked in, add lemon juice and pinch of salt and whisk together. Taste and adjust seasoning.
  3. Voila! You've just made mayo. This will keep in the fridge 2 weeks.
  4. For the egg salad:
  5. Mix all ingredients together and enjoy!

If you'd like to make your mayo last longer, just add 1 tablespoon of whey at the end and let sit out for 7 hours before refrigerating. This will last several months in the fridge.

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References
Fallon, Sally, 1999, 2001. Nourishing Traditions. Washington, DC. Newstrends Publishing Inc.

Filed Under: Animal, Egg, Lunch, Recipes, Seasons, Spring Tagged With: eggs, enzymes, lunch, mayonnaise, picnic, salad

(Grand-père) Loulou’s Smoked Trout & Endive Salad

March 15, 2015 By Lauren

fera

Loulou says:

My grand-père Loulou used to say, “Une année c’est comme une glace à l’eau, ça fond vite.” (A year is like a popsicle, it melts quickly). 

Twice a week, (the original) Loulou was making my lunch.  It was like an institution.  I was the last of the grand-children, so he was already well-trained and already nostalgic, I think, about ending this cycle with me.  Everything was well-organized–the timing to go to the farmer’s market, the butcher, the bakery for my sweet.  Every cousin was always saying the same thing after every meal, “Merci Loulou, c’était très bon.” Loulou was always eating standing up, close to his oven–as if he were being punished.  Cooking seemed something very serious to me, at this time.  Once, I had to stay because I wasn’t eating my salad, so finally I kept my salad under my tongue and went to the bathroom to spit it out.

But all that’s just surface.  Loulou & I were best friends. That’s true. My after-school snack was a time when our generational gap was disappearing. 

I often go through his recipe book and this salad was the first thing I made that I had never tried from him.  That’s what makes it so special to me.  It feels like discovering something for him–something he had meant to make, but never got around to–it feels, in a way, like keeping his spirit alive. 

It’s a good seasonal salad because it uses the first radishes of the Spring, the last apples of the Fall, smoked trout from the Winter, and the bitter endives that see us from Winter to Spring.

tricolor-5tricolor-8bowl

(The young) Loulou introduced this salad to me last Winter in the mountains, using just endives, an apple and this yoghurt-y, mustard-y dressing.  It was bitter and sweet, tart, creamy and crunchy, and I remember him saying, “You usually make it with trout.”

trout

Trout!  One of those foods I enjoy when it’s presented to me, but hardly ever seem to seek out.  Before making this salad this Saturday, even after seven-months of living alongside the biggest lake in (Western) Europe, I’d yet to really explore all the trout & trout-like (we used the unique-to-these-Alpine-climes white-fish fera in our version) possibilities here.  The smokiness of the fish is a truly lovely addition and takes this salad to next-level, all-you-need-for-your-picnic-lunch status, for sure.

I’ve finally tried this salad (the original) Loulou’s way, after a year (that did, indeed, go by as quickly as a melting fruit bar) of making it the way (the young) Loulou introduced it to me.

threecolors

And this is what’s special to me–how recipes can evolve as they’re passed from generation to generation, and how they can keep the spirit of a person, a connection or a conversation between two people alive.

Merci Loulou, c’était tres bon!

dressing

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(Grand-père) Loulou’s Smoked Trout & Endive Salad

Sometimes I feel like the descriptor "sustainably caught" is simplifying something that is, in fact, quite complicated. Aquaculture (or fish farms) can be (but are not always!) problematic and the consumption of wild, line-caught fish can be linked to aquaculture's (not always responsible) expansion. I'm not sure what the right answer is (and would love to hear your thoughts on the matter!), but we live in a region where line-caught lake fish are a-plenty so we chose some wild, line-caught fera for our version of this salad. Feel free to make adjustments (substituting roast chicken for fish, for example) according to what's available in your region.

Ingredients

  • 3 small endives, chopped
  • 1/2 sweet apple, diced
  • 2 handfuls radishes, chopped in half
  • 1/2 fillet of smoked trout or another smoked white-fish, sliced in small pieces
  • 4 tablespoons yogurt
  • 2 teaspoons grainy mustard
  • 4 tablespoons olive oil
  • juice of 1 lemon
  • salt & pepper

Directions

  1. Chop endives, apple, and radishes and place in large salad bowl.
  2. Slice fish in small, bite-able pieces and add to bowl.
  3. Mix yogurt, mustard, oil, lemon and salt and pepper in a jar and shake until emulsified.
  4. Pour over salad, mix and enjoy.
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Filed Under: Animal, Dinner, Fish, Lunch, Recipes, Seasons, Spring Tagged With: apples, dinner, endives, lunch, picnic, radishes, salad, simple, smokedtrout, spring

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