We struggle with vegetables.

Marketing, even cartoons tell us that vegetables are, well, gross.

Well, I'm here to tell you it just isn't true.

But with 1 in 10 Americans getting enough vegetables in their diet, I know I have my work cut out for me.

So let's fall in love with vegetables and live our healthiest life, today, on Christina Cooks.

Funding for Christina Cooks is provided by: GreenOnyx, producers of Wanna Greens A tiny but nutrient dense fresh green vegetable.

Wanna Greens can be added to any meal, snack or dessert.

Fresh greens.

Wanna Greens.

Additional funding provided by Finamill.

The flavor of freshly ground spices and dried herbs with refillable, swappable pods.

Finamill.

And by Mauviel, creators of copper, stainless and steel carbon cookware for professional and home cooks.

A story of passion since 1830.

And by Suzanne█s Specialties Offering a full line of alternative, vegan and organic sweeteners and toppings.

Suzanne█s Specialties.

Sweetness the way Mother Nature intended.

And by Jonathan█s Spoons.

Individually handcrafted from cherry wood, each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

Additional funding provided by: Hi, I'm Christina Pirello and this is Christina Cooks, where each week we take fresh seasonal ingredients and whip them into amazing dishes.

Will they all be plant based?

Yeah.

Will they all be delicious?

Yeah.

We're going to make, today, an amazing, nutrient-dense dish that's served over pasta that will light your fire.

Nutrient density is sort of the forward-thinking trend in healthy eating today.

We've gone from organic, which we still revere, regenerative agriculture, which we all should be doing, to nutrient density.

What does that mean?

Nutrient density means that there's more to a calorie than a calorie.

Nutrient density means that you're getting so much more bang for your buck.

Minerals, vitamins, fiber, all sorts of nutrients that are jammed together in smaller amounts of food.

Tthink a fresh orange versus a bowl of ice cream.

The orange is more nutrient dense than ice cream, and yet both are fun.

So let's start our gravy.

This is our puttanesca sauce, which means it's spicy and a little bit salty.

But the star of the show is not the gravy.

The star of the show is actually the cauliflower, but we're going to start the gravy cooking before we add the cauliflower.

So we have extra virgin olive oil, a little bit of chili pepper.

Some smashe garlic, but in big giant chunks.

Leave it in.

Take it out when it's cooked.

Doesn't matter.

Your choice.

Some capers.

And some finely chopped olives.

Now, in a traditional puttanesca, there's also anchovy.

Not in my world.

You may do that if you're not a vegan or vegetarian, but otherwise no.

Then we add some diced red onion.

You may use whatever onions you like.

You can use, shallot, onion, yellow onion.

Doesn't matter.

I happen to like red onion because they're very sweet and a little salt.

Not much.

We have olives and capers, so be mindful of the amount of salt that you add to this dish.

I'm going to let this start to saute until we hear a sizzle.

Because it's extra virgin olive oil.

No sizzle until it builds.

Now we'll take our cauliflower and begin to break it.

You can cut it or you can break it.

I tend to release some of the florets and then break them.

You'll need about two cups of cauliflower in this dish, and you want to break the florets to be really tiny.

You're almost, crumbling it off the stem to get little bite sized pieces so it cooks relatively quickly.

This is not a long cooking dish.

You also have to pay attention to what's happening in the skillet, because now you can hear the sizzle.

So, so far, every ingredient in this pan is nutrient dense from the garlic and red onion.

and red onion is higher in magnesium than regular onions, garlic, which is anti-fungal and antibacterial.

Capers and olives, which are loaded with a compound called pantothenic acid, which ancient Romans believed these two foods made them live forever.

And it's actually the pantothenic acid, which contributes to longevity.

But they didn't really know about pantothenic acid.

They cared, but they might live forever.

So now we have our broken cauliflower, and that can go right on top of our sautéing capers, olives, garlic and onion.

Don█t know now if we need much more.

Let's do a little bit more.

You can also, like I said, chop the cauliflower.

But this kind of keeps your florets a little more whole and it█s prettier, in the resulting dish.

and if you like, if you take nothing else away from everything that I say, people eat with their eyes.

So if your dish is pretty, they're more likely to try something, even if it's a way that they don't normally eat.

Some canned diced tomatoes.

Give the dish a stir.

I█m going to add a touch of water.

So this creates a really sort of gravy-ish gravy and allows the cauliflower to steam.

And since we put some salt, let's just season it with a little bit of black pepper to give it a little bit of depth of flavor.

And then this is going to cook for about ten minutes depending on the size of your cauliflower florets.

You want to cook it covered until the cauliflower is really really really tender.

So ten 12 minutes and then you'll see how the sauce looks.

So after 20, 25 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes...

It all depends on how small your cauliflower was.

You have this beautiful bubbling sauce.

It should be a little bit runny but starting to really come together.

The cauliflower should have a nice sort of rosy hue to it.

We're just going to spoon this on top of our cooked pasta.

This is actually Pugliese fusilli.

a cut of pasta unique to Puglia You can find it in specialty stores in the US.

But in Puglia, it's everywhere.

Just going to mound that on top.

Now in the north of Italy they usually don't stir the gravy in, they leave it on top.

This is the south.

I should stir it in.

But it's really pretty looking like this.

So I'm going Northern style.

Sorry, Nonna.

And then a touch of wolffia.

Let's go meet with Anthony Dissen, a registered dietitian who can talk to us a lot more specifically about what nutrient density really means in our day to day health.

(gentle music plays) So I'm here today with Anthony Dissen, who who's a registered dietitian in educational... -That's right.

-You're not in private practice.

You work in education.

I'm in public health education.

Okay.

Oh, great.

So we're going to talk today Anthony, everything in the news right now.

We've moved, it seems, from organic to regenerative agriculture, all of which is great.

And we should keep talking about it.

But now it seems the new █ I don't want to call it a trend, I'm going to say direction █ is nutrient density.

What does that mean?

And what are we looking for?

Nutrient density, basically as a way of understanding how much nutrition a food is given.

Not looking at it from volume like per tablespoon or cup, but rather per calorie.

Because we eat for energy, we're eating calories from food, and we want to make sure that for every calorie we're eating, we're also getting a lot of micronutrients like vitamins and minerals with that.

So we're nourishing ourselves with energy and with the micronutrients we need.

So you're not people aren't going to look at their label and see that.

It's the actual item that they're concerned about.

That's right.

So so nutrient density is going to come to them in the form of, I'm guessing here, she said with her voice dripping in sarcasm.

-Whole foods.

-Yes.

The more unrefined, the more nutrient dense.

Absolutely.

Because usually if we can leave a food minimally processed, we're going to keep more of the fiber, we're going to keep more of the pulp.

If it's a vegetable or fruit, we're going to keep more of those components of the food that give us fiber, that give us micronutrients, that give us antioxidants.

Where more of the food has been processed, that tends to be stripped away.

So we're left with the food that gives us a lot of calories, but we've removed those micronutrients we need to make it a more complete food.

So we want to stay away from things that are enriched, right?

Absolutely.

-Because that█s fake.

-Because ussually... absolutely.

It█s not going to be as close to what we could have had otherwise nd it's going to have gone through the ringer quite a lot.

And the whole grain is always better, even then, whole grain flour.

-Absolutely.

-Even though we use it.

Whole grain is always going to be the better way to go because there's still things that have to be removed to turn it from a grain to a flour, and it just takes a little bit more of what we could have gotten from that food if we'd left it in its whole state.

And now you know.

(Italian music plays) Here I am in a small village of Oria, and in it we find Masseria Palombara, which is a restaurant, wellness spa and cooking school.

I'm here with the owner, Angelo Lippolus.

So, Angelo, tell me, how did you come up with the idea of restaurant and wellness?

I know you have an organic garden and everything is local.

-Yes?

-Yes.

So, we received, the building of the masseria from, came from the family from five generations.

But everything was abandoned for a long period.

So, more or less ten years ago, we decided to make a restoration of everything.

The building is 700 years old.

-700 years old?

-Yes.

It's organic?

It's sustainable?

Yes.

And restored.

So it seems to me it's a win win, win, win win.

-Anything else I should know?

-Yes, of course.

Because I forgot to tell you.

Everything here is restored in the Masseria, because we have a carpenter and all you can see here from the table, the furniture, everything is restored in the masseria.

bcause the last concept we have is the singularity.

So everything.

There's no waste.

It's a circular motion.

They've restored their own wood.

They have their carpenter right here on premises.

The staff is all local.

The gardens are organic.

There's a wellness spa.

Angelo, thank you for doing this.

And thank you for having me.

I'm so excited to cook here.

Let's go to the kitchen.

Thank you very much.

(Italian music continues) I'm so excited to be here at Masseria Palombara con chef ██ teacher Rebecca Peretti who teaches here, teaches cooking here.

And, today she and I are going to make a very simple Melanzana eggplant dish from cucina povera, which in my view, is “cucina intelligente.” Chef... que facciamo?

What are we making?

(speaking Italian) What type of bread is this?

Pane nero.

So this is pane, it's called pane nero.

So it's made from a mix of grains and seeds, but it's fermented, a sour dough So.

So what Rebecca is doing is breaking up the bread into, like, very coarse pieces.

It's been soaking for█ until it's soft.

Un'ora.

About an hour.

But you need ██when you have whole grain bread like this, it needs a little while to soak so that it's very tender.

This is like we're making a stuffing.

So you take stale bread and you soak it.

Okay.

(speaking Italian) Okay, so that's enough.

(speaking Italian) So we're going to put a little bit of salt.

Basta.

-Si.

-Okay.

Okay.

Now we take each eggplant the eggplant were... (speaking Italian) So the eggplant were fried, cut in half scored and fried.

And so now Rebecca is taking the filling, the stuffing, the inside of the eggplant out into the bread.

And that's going to become part of the stuffing, which is amazing.

So you just lift this out, leaving the skin of the eggplant for us to stuff.

(speaking Italian) Okay I'm (speaking Italian) Yeah.

So these are eggplant variety from their garden right here at the Masseria.

And this is as big as they get.

It's organic and it's a special variety of small eggplant that's tender and sweet.

of small eggplant that's tender and sweet.

Okay.

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) So now we're adding some torn basil leaves.

Remember, as I've said a million times, don't slice the basil with a knife.

You tear it with your hands.

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) So you have to mix the stuffing with your hands, because that's the only way you'll combine it and get it homogenous with the bread and the eggplant all together, so that you can get a stuffing that's smooth.

So as she's mixing the eggplant, what she's doing is squeezing it so that the eggplant and the bread become one.

They just become one unit in life.

And now we.... (speaking Italian) So now you take the stuffing into each eggplant piece.

Pretty abbastanza abundant, yeah?

Really put a nice... make sure you put enough.

This is, this is a lovely, lovely dish.

And you want to make sure that you have a nice amount of filling.

Cosi, like this?

Now, what's next?

(speaking Italian) So now we top it with a little bit of fresh tomato, like, tomato sauce.

like, tomato sauce.

Normally a recipe like this would have cheese on top, but since I'm vegan and don't eat cheese, we're adapting.

so now we're going to take some bread crumbs.

Sprinkle.

We're just going to sprinkle these on top.

And these will give us when we finish it with lovely Pugliese olive oil.

This will give us the nice crunchy top that will be similar to if it was topped with cheese.

Locale?

Local?

(speaking Italian) This is their olive oil from the masseria.

And you give a nice generous what's called a fille, a line of olive oil onto each one.

Okay.

So this will go into the oven at 350 to 375 for 10 to 15 minutes.

And then it's completely done.

It's a quick bake because everything in it is cooked.

And then when it comes out of the oven, how does it look?

And there you have the perfect cucina povera dish that anyone can enjoy.

Rebecca, grazie mille - thank you for having me.

Magnificent dish.

Our love affair with vegetables continues with a roasted vegetable dish that's combined with chickpeas and tomatoes to make a fabulous stew.

We're going to start by making the chickpea mixture first.

Take a generous amount of really good olive oil.

Otherwise, don't even bother.

We're going to take two cloves of garlic or three.

These are nice big ones.

And what I'm going to do with this, instead of my normal procedure of taking them out I'm going to peel them, put them in hole and leave them in hole.

So I have to peel them.

Pop the skin off.

Into the oil.

Pop the peel off into the oil.

It'll still give me a nice mild flavor, but I'm actually not going to take it out of this dish because I want this sort of the stimulation that you get from garlic, that lovely flavor, and also that little bit of a lift to the energy of the dish.

Next goes a little bit of red onion, maybe a quarter of a red onion.

And we're just going to cut the onion into little chunks.

It goes right in.

Pinch of salt.

And we just stir these around until the onions start to get coated with oil.

You don't have to worry about them becoming translucent because red onions are quite sweet.

Which is why I love them with all my heart.

Now goes in some chickpeas.

These are almost cooked maybe 90% of the way, and they're going to finish in this pan.

The next thing to go in.

Is pureed tomatoes.

And a little bit of tomato almost like a broth.

So the chickpeas can cook and stir this around.

It's going to simmer uncovered because I want the chickpea and the tomato sauce to thicken.

So we're going to cook this uncovered.

Next we'll get our roasted veg ready.

We're going to start with more red onion.

If you start with one kind of onion and this is kind of my thing, you don't have to do it.

But if you start with one kind of onion I kind of carry it through the dish.

I guess you don't have to.

Maybe it's my own thing, but I really like when you do that.

So do it that way.

Okay.

Next goes in some eggplant.

We're just going to cut the eggplant into chunks, slice it into strips and then across.

Not too small because you're doing a roast in the oven.

If they're too small they'll turn to mush.

So not too small, not too small.

Not too big, like Goldilocks.

Just right.

Okay.

Next.

Red bell pepper.

Again into chunks.

And again I didn't roast this and peel it because it's going in the oven to roast.

So this is the one time you can get away with not roasting your pepper before using it if you want to.

Of course you can.

And then the last thing is a little bit of potato cut into small chunks.

So you've got tons of veggies.

This whole dish will be vegetables and protein.

Some extra virgin olive oil.

Some sea salt.

Use a nice white sea salt.

You get a nice sweet taste and it doesn't overwhelm the dish.

Some cracked black pepper.

And now we mix.

And once the salt has sort of been distributed throughout the dish.

And the vegetables are coated with oil.

We're going to cover this with foil.

Now, in my house, when I use foil, I make sure that the foil doesn't come in contact with the veggies.

Because if you notice when you take foil off a dish, it's all black in the center on the dull side, and that means that alkaloid went into your food.

If your dish is so full that the foil will touch your food, put a piece of wet parchment paper, oven paper, on top and then put your foil.

But since we're not touching, we're going to just cover this.

And these are going to go into the oven for about 30 to 35 minutes at 375 uncovered and then ten minutes more to brown.

And then they'll get mixed into our chickpeas.

Wait till you see this dish.

So our vegetables are perfect.

They roasted to lovely perfection.

These are going to go into the skillet on top of the chickpeas and the tomatoes.

Season with a little more salt to finish it.

Store this all together.

Mamma mia!

This dish is amazing looking and smelling.

So we're going to put this in like this.

Get the big chunks of garlic.

Just make sure if you're eating this with someone you love that you both eat big chunks of garlic so that it's your compatible.

And you can see it's a very, very, very juicy dish.

So you take a big chunk of bread like this, you dip it into the gravy and you enjoy.

So what are you waiting for?

Let's get back to the cutting board and I'll see you next time on Christina Cooks: The Macroterranean Way.

Funding for Christina Cooks is provided by: GreenOnyx, producers of Wanna Greens Organic and sustainable, Wanna Greens are grown in a completely closed, indoor environment.

At Wanna Greens, we believe in the benefits of fresh greens for people and the planet.

Additional funding provided by Finamill.

The flavor of freshly ground spices and dried herbs with refillable, swappable pods.

Finamill.

And by Mauviel, creators of copper, stainless and steel carbon cookware for professional and home cooks.

A story of passion since 1830.

And by Suzanne█s Specialties Offering a full line of alternative, vegan and organic sweeteners and toppings.

Suzanne█s Specialties.

Sweetness the way Mother Nature intended.

And by Jonathan█s Spoons.

Individually handcrafted from cherry wood, each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

Additional funding provided by: You can find today's recipes and learn more by visiting our website at christinacooks.com and by following Christina on social media.

Learn how to add delicious plant based dishes to your daily diet with the companion cookbook VegEdibles.

Featuring more than 80 easy-to-make recipes To order your copy for $32.95 plus handling, call 800-266-5815 or visit christinacooks.com.

Add “Back to the Cutting Board” and get both books for $55.95 plus handling.