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Restaurant Detox and an Immune-Boosting Green Soup

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October 17, 2018

It’s deep autumn, and if you made it through this past summer and the Jewish holidays relatively unscathed, good for you. The endless inclement weather, media bombardment that reached an unprecedented lack of proportion — it seems for many of us, it was the summer of discontent.

I spent July and August in the swampy heat of the East Coast, which takes some adjusting to because I live and work in the breezy, tropical elevation of East Africa. It’s a challenge to adapt to a new schedule but for a chef, it’s hard to stay out of the rhythmic hum of the professional kitchen for that long. 

The average person would be thinking, “I’d love to stay out of the kitchen for any period of time,” but hear me out. Because I spent a lot of time with my parents, who weren’t too enthused by the idea of me running my crazy food experiments in their beautiful, white-tiled kitchen, we ate restaurant and take-out food much more than usual. In spite of daily 5- to 7-mile walks and regular Soul Cycle classes, when I hopped on the scale in September, I discovered I’d gained 10 pounds. It may sound funny coming from a chef and restauranteur, eating out frequently won’t leave you feeling your best, but the effects were so dramatic and instantaneous I feel duty bound to tell you. 

In my day-to-day life in Uganda, I eat at my café once a day and then, unless I’m eating at a friend’s house or infrequently in a restaurant, I’m eating food I prepare. That means the vegetables are organic as is the meat, there are no preservatives or additives in my food and, although I’m also a pastry chef, I rarely indulge in sugary treats — maybe if I’m baking a new recipe, and even then, I’ll stop at a bite or two. It’s also worth noting that I rarely sit down when I’m at work in Uganda. I wake early, hustle for 12 to 14 hours and exercise only on weekends — I certainly don’t have Soul Cycle classes here, and for security reasons, I rarely walk much (there are no sidewalks where I live,) and definitely not the mileage I was doing in the U.S. over the summer. 

According to my Apple watch, I was averaging 12,000 to 17,000 steps a day in the States, yet my daily steps in Uganda during the week tend to be more in the range of 5,000 to 8,000. Not only did I gain weight and feel awful, but I also wasn’t eating that much. When I compare my intake on a routine day in Uganda — where I eat one or two meals, a hearty breakfast after the morning rush and then a lighter but still fairly substantial dinner, I eat more in terms of volume when I’m in Uganda.

So why the weight gain and sluggishness? I’m no doctor or dietician but I think it’s related to food quality and chemicals. Foreign Service Officers at the embassy where I work often tell me they missed my food after they return from an extended home leave in the U.S., and almost all of them report weight gain. 

“After I returned to Uganda last week, despite jetlag, a lack of motivation to cook at home, and a long week ahead at work, I took the time to prepare a few simple meals if for no other reason than to feel better.”

It seems that unless you stick to fairly “clean” options when eating out, such as a good Japanese restaurant or a salad bar, most establishments in the U.S. run on a fairly thin margin and therefore can’t afford to serve wild-caught fish or anywhere near the high-quality, pesticide-free vegetables I eat from my garden and the markets here in Africa.

Restaurants rely heavily on salt, fat and sugar to make inferior quality food tasty, and there is more deep-fat frying in poor-quality oil in restaurant kitchens than you might suspect. The end result is yo-yoing blood sugar that can lead to cravings for more sugar and carbohydrates and prevent your body from knowing when to stop eating.

It’s also worth noting that I suffered a bout of bronchitis when normally my immune system is in top form and I rarely even catch a cold. Although I’m not suggesting that you never eat out, it should be noted that our food choices and stress levels have a huge effect on our health and well-being; cooking a majority of your meals gives you the most control over what you consume.

After I returned to Uganda last week, despite jetlag, a lack of motivation to cook at home, and a long week ahead at work, I took the time to prepare a few simple meals if for no other reason than to feel better. I knew I couldn’t make it through my very physical workweek unless I ate enough protein, so rather than starving myself, I made a big pot of soup with some chicken stock I had in the freezer and supplemented that with scrambled eggs, a simple roast chicken, Israeli chopped salads and a few berries from my garden. After I dragged myself to the market, I spent only about three hours chopping, prepping and organizing, and at the end of this week, I’m already 5 pounds lighter and feel almost back to my old, energetic, pre-summer self.

This soup recipe was developed in our embassy kitchen when we inadvertently burned the soup du jour during a particularly intensive prep for a lunch special. Caught with only an hour before the rush, the other chefs sent me to the walk-in fridge to scrounge up an alternative. I saw a pile of fresh collard greens that had been delivered that morning, a head of cauliflower and a bundle of kale and spinach. 

Inspired by one of my favorite Bulgarian soups, a riff on the Greek avgolemono but featuring spinach, I quickly washed and chopped the greens, cut the cauliflower into chunks and threw the whole tangle into the pot with onions and garlic. We covered it with vegetable stock and added some herbs and, at the end, a small amount of cream. When everything was soft, I whizzed it all together with my immersion blender — a tool no kitchen should be without. In less than an hour, we had a smooth and comforting soup, spiked with lemon juice both for the acidity it brings and the brightness it lends to its color. 

SPINACH, KALE AND CAULIFLOWER SOUP

6 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons butter or ghee (optional)

2 medium white onions, chopped

6 cloves garlic, minced

3 cups spinach leaves, chopped

3 cups collard greens, destemmed and chopped

3 cups kale, destemmed and chopped

1/2 cup parsley, chopped

2 teaspoons sea, salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 chicken-flavored stock cube

8 cups vegetable or chicken stock

1 medium head of cauliflower, chopped

1/4 cup heavy cream (or coconut cream)

1/8 cup lemon juice

In a medium stock pot, add olive oil and butter (if using) and fry onion and garlic until translucent and fragrant.

Add in all the chopped greens (including parsley) covering the pot and waiting for them to shrink before adding the next batch until all greens are incorporated and have begun to soften. Add salt, pepper and stock cube and then the stock and the chopped cauliflower.

Cover and simmer on medium heat until all the greens, as well as the cauliflower florets, are very soft (about 30 minutes.) Remove from heat and add cream and lemon juice and, using an immersion blender (or stand blender), blend the soup until smooth and lump free. If soup is too thick, thin it out with more cream or stock.

Heat gently to serve and garnish with fresh parsley leaves. Serves 6.


Yamit Behar Wood, an Israeli-American food and travel writer, is the executive chef at the U.S. Embassy in Kampala, Uganda, and founder of the New York Kitchen Catering Co.

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