Kind: captions
Language: en
hey everyone welcome back to the gut
check series i am particularly excited
about today's episode we are joined by
chef and zoe ambassador dan churchill
dan's a super cool guy he's a founder of
charlie street which is a farm to table
fast casual restaurant in new york city
nolita and additionally he actually has
been putting recipes online to help
improve your health your life and your
overall kind of bodily and mental
performance today's uh conversation is
going to be focused on food and
nutrition
specifically this idea like how we can
easily create
something that everyone enjoys that
actually is good for our health
specifically our gut health and that
recipe is going to be his famous sweet
and sour eggplant
so uh
dan uh tell us what you got in front of
you
yeah mate thanks so much for having me
uh so today guys we've got to like
honestly the way i'm looking at this is
we've got a classic stir fry dish um
with a bunch of vegetables
accompanied by a paste or a marinade you
guys can create together i'm gonna put
put that on some wonderful just uh you
know brown rice so to make it simple
it's uh it's it's it's super tasty sweet
and sour eggplant but we're just going
to break it down to a way that is just
shows you how simple cooking with
vegetables truly is and
hopefully get people in improving some
of their plant power points each week
you know what i mean
yeah well let's get started what are
what are the ingredients you have in
front of you so here we have eggplant we
got some i call this a capsicum mate but
we i know a lot of people would refer to
this as a pepper uh we've got some red
onions
lemon garlic ginger some chili flakes
tomato paste
and also some olive oil along with some
just a classic
ap flour here and so i think the best
way to kind of get this into fruition is
you always start in my uh i was brought
up a lot with southeast asian cooking as
well mate and a lot of the the way you
do your basic um stir fry is you start
with your ginger your garlic and also
you have some onion too so the first
thing we're going to really do mate and
how's your mortar and pestle down oh you
cook as well mate so do you do you work
with a mortar and pestle at all i i i do
uh you know i i've had a mortar pistol
since i went to medical school
that thing's got had a lot of has a lot
of use for it i i i can tell you i never
ground a single pill right mortar pestle
is what the pharmacist uses sure right
like it's on the leg it's like like on
the logo of some pharmacies but actually
it's seen plenty of of garlic now by the
way you know we're we're here talking
about gut health right so yes uh
that when we eat food we think about our
mouth which is where all the flavor
explosions occur we think about our
stomach which is where you know we fill
up our stomach and then we most people
just kind of assume that you know
whatever happens is kind of a black box
of nutrition but what we now know
is that while our bodies absorb a ton of
these um nutrients like vitamins and and
minerals and things like that the real
value of of food actually are in these
bioactives and the fiber uh and the
bioactives get into our bloodstream and
they also go down to our lower gut which
is filled with healthy gut bacteria 39
39 trillion healthy gut bacteria and
i'll tell you some amazing things as
you're as you're working is that garlic
which is the first thing you um
mention in ginger
they both actually help to right size
the good bacteria growing in our gut and
by right sizing the good gut bacteria
the good bacteria does us a big favor so
i i say our gut bacteria
we
we shelter our good bacteria in our gut
and our colon we give them room and
board so we give them a space to live
and then we feed them and they pay us
back all right they pay their rent by
releasing metabolites called short chain
fatty acids to get into our bloodstream
and for garlic and ginger both do this
uh it lowers our cholesterol and
actually lowers inflammation in our body
so just the two ingredients that you
like started with out of the gate
already good for our gut
that's all we want mate it's exactly
what we want feed the gutter there's
health healthy dietary fiber build up uh
obviously those short chain fatty acids
made you by the way do you have a
favorite sugar chain fatty acid i i've
got one um he's got like i call him the
thor
of short chain
legendary so so
they can make it you know they could
make a uh they could make a uh they have
online gamers looking for the fake the
most powerful short chain fatty acid but
butyrate by the way
i studied urate in the lab and it turns
out the butyrate not only lowers
inflammation um but it also signals to
your blood vessels so you have a better
circulation as well and i remember when
we were first looking at butyrate it
actually is a powerful way to cut off
the blood supply to cancer so you can
starve a tumor in the lab with butyrate
alone so just think about like the
untapped potential of gut health
it's crazy it is crazy and
i think about recipes that we've been
doing for forever right i think we
always start with onion and garlic in
pretty much all our major recipes so the
fact that you're highlighting here that
a lot of these dietary fiber benefits in
just the first two ingredients
just shows how powerful plants truly are
and a lot of time unfortunately like
when we go to these processed foods they
don't incorporate some of these whole
based ingredients and so i think that's
what you and i are super reliant on is
trying to find ways like you you talk
about a lot of disease like we're trying
to find ways to make
eating more plants so much more
accessible so and not in a way that's
too uh you know
we don't want people to feel like oh
it's too hard it's too you know it's too
this is to that just by simply adding
those first two ingredients you're
already doing wins you're retreating
already
already ahead of the game i just saw you
stir in some tomato paste right yeah so
just to bring you guys as we were
talking about the legendary in this
awesome mortar and pestle
we have ginger and garlic as you saw a
little bit of olive oil to help
lubricate also has some great great
polyphenols in there as well but we'll
talk about that later we have some mint
and some basil all right so we
essentially have a nice herbaceous
savoury note along with those garlic
which is a profound amount of umami
tomato paste also has a lot of umami in
it as well and making sure you get a
good one is is pretty essential now when
it comes to sweet and sour you've got a
lot of the sour coming from the acidic
ingredients but to get the sweet we need
some natural not refined but natural
sugars that's where we use a nice little
maple syrup and you don't have to go
overboard with it you'll also notice
if you caramelize onions
to the point where you're doing a nice
uh nice heated moderate temperature you
will not have it burn which is a bad
problem but also you actually get a
sweeter tone so you won't need to add as
much sugar to your ingredients and when
i say sugar i mean even just whole place
whole food based sugar because you get a
nice sweet effect anyway so you br you
bring it that's why they call them sweet
onions right i mean like exactly uh
vidalia's bermuda onions they're
particularly good um
you know the the thing that's really
amazing is that when you
um watching you cook i'm already
salivating because i know what's in that
mortar and pestle is going to taste
really good but i'll tell you things
that um i'm also looking at putting on
my
scientists and food as medicine hat i
have a colleague in canada where they
produce a lot of maple
syrup uh and in canada they have like 50
100 different kinds of maple syrup lots
of growers and just like wine
where the trees grow can make a
difference to terroir actually makes a
difference the species of the tree of
the maple tree makes a difference and
they they actually compared side by side
different types of maple syrups to find
the maple syrup that has the most
anti-angiogenic cancer starving
properties um which i when i saw that i
was like
it's so amazing that we can actually
compare
foods to find the best kind like
tomatoes um what kind of tomato paste
did you want to use you said you got to
find a good one i'd love to know
yeah so honestly i i don't make it too
hard but you got some really good brands
and the best brands are honestly from
italy in my opinion just because i love
the the soil that i know that the
tomatoes are grown in but i don't want
people to go too hectic on that i think
honestly just get a nice organic one
organic is generally tough like
you know you you would trust that
compared to your classic uh juice tomato
paste it's you know from the store in
that in that sense but if you really
want to go out there and find like any
any anything from italy is always got a
really nice volcanic soil and as you
said earlier it all starts at the soil
farmers as much as we should be
championing and more they can only do so
much with what they have and that's the
soil and the climatic conditions those
ingredients are grown in so
you know you touched on a really good
point there is like
we love you and i love talking a lot
wine for a number of reasons you've got
the benefits of reservation all these
kind of things we talk about with uh you
know longevity but when it comes to like
it's really interesting we talk about
antioxidants and i don't want to shift
too much here but we're talking about
the flavor profile and the i guess the
the components within uh say red wine
compared to say
a coffee bean so there's there's there's
i guess wine notes and they are all
related to receptors and they're related
to their respective polyphenol
compounds now we always talk about with
web with wine oh this this smells like
the sea this you get all these notes
right now a master smelly yeah has done
such a wonderful job and is tremendous i
don't know how they can do it but
to let you guys know how amazing
antioxidant rich like why we say cacao
is such a rich antioxidant and obviously
the same with our coffee beans while we
i recommend having black coffee
is because it is has four times the
amount of
profile it has 800 flavor notes and
those flavor notes are respectfully with
antioxidants so like and that goes down
to again where the where they're grown
and the same with like tomatoes
obviously if you if you're grown in a
situation where the compound of the soil
is not in its best state the top sale is
terrible it's not getting enough vitamin
d it's not getting enough water it's not
nutrient rich therefore the tomatoes or
whatever's grown there is going to have
insufficient amount of the same benefit
obviously the flow-on effect just
continues so i'd only go on tangent for
too long no no actually what you're
talking about is really important you're
you're talking about this whole profile
spectrum
and you know as a chef
you your
uh talent is to bring out the flavors
but actually in our bodies our bodies
also have receptors beyond our taste
buds and our uh and our olfactory or
smell organ
and all those receptors are deep in our
body deep in our gut
the more you actually
stimulate
those receptors inside the body the more
your body's defense systems we got five
health defense systems angiogenesis stem
cells microbiome dna which is what
antioxidants work on and immunity the
more diversity we eat
especially when plant-based foods you
know they talk about i think tim spector
talks about eating 30 plants a week the
more diversity we eat we're built for
diversity we are not built to eat the
same thing i mean if you really think
about it if you had to eat the same
dish in a dog bowl every single day
it would be incredibly boring and that's
why i love the fact that chefs
and
doctors who are in food and medicine can
kind of join forces uh uh
and
plants eating plants
not boring
it lights up your health uh and
there it is food is good for the biology
so talk about what's in that pan and
what did you do yeah exactly i love the
fact you are you brought the fact that
your your job is to help provide the
research and get the message out there
my job is to make it more approachable
and exciting and tasty for people to
actually adhere to what you're talking
about so here we have just some eggplant
searing off in the pan
i do this beforehand to get a nice
little golden color now this has been in
here for about a total of five minutes
all right medium-high heat i'm using
extra virgin olive oil people say you
shouldn't cook with high heat extra
virgin olive oil if you get a good
quality extra virgin olive oil i'm
saying one that hasn't got anything
that's uh remotely
i would just say um if it's the trusted
brand and you probably pay a little bit
more for it but you use less it's got
less of those compounds that will become
carcinogenic at a high heat at a smoking
point so yes you can work with extra
virgin oil at a high heat now i'm just
coloring those so now we're going to do
is remove these from the pan and then
i'm going to add in our onion
and color that as well so get a nice
little caramelization on that but i
loved how you brought up plant-based
diversity and obviously as you note and
this is in your research we talk about
the fact that obviously increasing at
plant diversity just by simply eating a
more diversity range of plants is the
key right so for example i look at
i look at food in colors
so my job is to find ways to people eat
more color right so i always say if
you're always having greens
make sure you get some reds if you're
always having yellows get some eggplant
color i would say it's probably a
or a deep purple but the idea behind
this and we know this through studies
the colors are associated with
pigmentation those pigmentations are
related to those fighting chemicals
right absolutely and you know by the way
eggplant is one of my favorite uh foods
most people don't know that you can
actually get about five percent of the
fiber which is good for gut health from
an eggplant so five percent doesn't
sound like a lot but actually every
little bit counts especially when it's
packaged in something really really
tasty now uh most uh the time when you
cook with eggplant you you don't peel
all the skin off you cook it with the
skin right
that's part of the joy of eating
eggplants that purple skin has a natural
dye called anthocyanin and those
anthocyanins reduce inflammation they've
been studied they improve vascular
health they help your blood vessels stay
healthier and they improve your immunity
as well it's the same purple color
that's in a purple potato and a
blueberry and so here's another way to
get some of that dye that natural
healthy dye right into your bloodstream
and right down to your gut and helps
your gut bacteria
and i love anthocyanin it's a it's such
a wonderful thing for us like it really
is and the other thing to that is like
i look at
that's why i think one of easy ways as a
consumer looking going how do i know if
i'm getting enough of the dietary fiber
from eggplant or just in general like
the
pretty sure it's 28 to
28 grams of fiber is the minimum
recommendation for ideal you recommend
this daily impact now personally i think
it should be more than that but let's
just start by getting to that point
because we know that too many people do
not sufficiently get dietary fiber if we
look at dietary fiber and i'm only work
i'm only saying this is based on people
like yourselves work right so this is
something that you could probably speak
highly to but dietary fiber is alone a
key indicator of how
you know insufficient or deficiency is
showing how much chronic disease is
occurring as a result so simply by
eating more plants and by each plant
including dietary fiber the more of
these we get the higher dietary fiber we
get and ultimately that alone will
demonstrate a reduction in some of these
truly lifestyle related chronic diseases
that we can be reducing
right and by the way that dietary fiber
also reduces
uh obesity
and specifically it prevents you from
growing what they call visceral fat so
the versatile fat you know like when
most people want to lose weight it's a
tire around your belly uh you know the
beer gut but actually the visceral fats
the really dangerous of this packed like
underwear in a suitcase around your
organs deep in your body
that's the stuff that'll kill you so you
could be a skinny person have a ton of
this visceral fat and the more fiber you
eat the gut bacteria makes these short
chain fatty acids um and by the way
diversity is also part of the gut
bacteria so one way we measure health of
your microbiome is not actually
necessarily counting every single
bacteria it's really just seeing how
rich and diverse it is we want diverse
neighborhoods you're in new york city
you want to have this rich potpourri of
different cultures and different peoples
and every you know different colors i
mean you know it's a rainbow right you
live in a city
that's what we want in our gut to we
want diversity and eating diverse foods
and with fiber encourages gut diversity
as well
matt you hit on the head oh
this is like re this is why
i love the fact that i get to speak to
someone like you about this because
you know
for me it's like my as we said earlier
my job is to find ways to get people
excited to eat more of this right
whether it's showcasing how fun cooking
is and tossing the pan or seeing the
beautiful colors you see inside the pan
now and just to bring you guys up to
speed yeah all we've done is we seared
our eggplant one side each for about
three to four minutes i've then added
our red onion and our peppers to the pan
that's just doing its thing right now
now as that softens i'm then going to
add that paste that we made earlier into
the pan and along with our eggplant stir
that together and that's going to be how
simple our stir-fry is so when you break
this down to steps and if you're in your
own home or in your apartment or
whatever it is all you've done is you've
created a paste which you can make in
bulk and then set aside to be used
throughout the week and then
you've essentially heated vegetables and
olive oil added your paste and then
cooked off some rice which you can also
reheat for later on as well and you have
that available for you and if you if you
cook it if you if you cook it in bulk
how do you store it do you just put in a
jar and cover it up in the fridge yeah
great great question so like i put it if
i'm working with the the marinade the
marinade will keep for at least a week
if you have it in this tight sealed jar
all right so put that in your fridge
make sure it's in in the fridge with a
tight seal jar um with the rice nice
make sure it cools down with the lid off
first so it doesn't get any extra heat
to generate bacteria
and then once it cools down outside you
can then put it in your fridge uh and
that will then be able to keep for some
time so like i would make sometimes on a
busy week i know i've got a lot of
shoots or the teams you know needs me on
a line or whatever
i would uh i would
probably cook enough grains like barley
uh rice or even whole grain pasta for
you know five days and it would just be
easy for me to go home and reheat some
veggies use one of my sauces and then
i've got you know my meal done pretty
simply
i love the fact you mentioned barley
because you can serve this sweet and
sour eggplant on rice and barley any
kind of whole grain um barley by the way
has been studied in a really amazing way
the uh an italian group made pasta out
of barley whole barley whole grain wow
and they fed it in their lab
to mice that were actually having
problems with their circulation and they
found that actually if you eat barley if
they feed them the mice barley they will
actually start to regenerate their
organs from the inside out so
barley is all great and that probably
also involves gut health
so again what would that be associated
with then what would be the component of
the barley that would help the
regeneration of those organs yeah well
you know among different bioactives is
beta d glucan which is the same
uh soluble fiber it's a fiber good for
the gut um it's also the same
also in mushrooms so it's found in
barley as well
in high concentrations
i bet that i bet that is a spoonful of
umami you got there thank you mommy
right there that's it i love how you
touched on that as well it's like part
of my job is again to find flavor and i
love to educate people on the component
of flavor in general so you've got
you're sweet you're sour you're salty
you're bitter and then this other
beautiful savory paste uh savory no um
so uh everyone listening in if you're
gonna be cooking at home it's like
i often find people
don't have a season they're like they
make something to a recipe or you know
they don't um they think something's
done and a lot of this comes down to
education and trial and error to be
honest but what i would say is like
salt's a good thing we do need it
getting a good quality salt is fantastic
for everything from you know obviously
our hydration uh obviously the balance
of osmosis as well like you don't be
having too much salty foods and a lot of
that comes from obviously noting how
many processed snacks and things you are
having because there's a tremendous
amount of salt in that but when you when
you're seasoning your food you order you
don't want to taste the salt
salt's job is to bring out the flavor
now the simple way to think about this
is you have salt oh sorry you've got
moisture
and you've got flavor when you season
with salt salt's job scientifically is
to bring out the moisture so if we take
add salt and we have moisture and flavor
and we add salt to bring out the
moisture we're left with
flavor concentrated flavor which is what
its job is the problem is do we add too
much salt and particularly early on the
cooking process i'll tell you that in a
second it gets too salty and we taste
salt and like oh it's too salty that's
when you've gone too far now two notes
when you are seasoning you want to do
that at the end reason being is through
to the natural instincts of evaporation
you lose moisture and when you lose
moisture along with adding salt it's a
double it just double down on the amount
of salt you're adding in the purpose of
it so add salt to the end all right you
never want to taste the salt you just
want to taste an egg like a tomatoes
extra sexy flavor and then so here's the
way of tasting it so you taste it but
it's kind of there but i think it needs
more add some salt okay oh i taste it
but it's not sticking around for too
long okay so if it's not sticking around
for too long you need the flavor profile
of acid all right so the job of say a
lemon is that you don't necessarily want
to taste lemon you want to taste the
flavor profile for the entirety
of when you're enjoying it to your mouth
so if it's if it's uh if it's not there
at the start you add more salt if you
need to stick around for longer add in
some lemon juice some red wine vinegar
some rice wine vinegar anything acidic
in nature even tomatoes already have
acid in them and umami that's why
whenever you add a tomato based sauce to
a dish you get packed full of flavor for
the umami and also the acid as well i i
i love how you're talking about this uh
in terms of blending
different flavors to bring out something
that is more than the individual parts
and if you think about the colors you
mentioned colored earlier so tomatoes
red lemon is yellow you bring those two
things together you get orange right and
another is orange and and each color
brings down something different from the
other one
now lemons actually the lemon juice is
got a lot of vitamin c it's got um
citric acid all the all these things
that are uh really good for you man that
look that like that that i'm sure that
lights up the flavor lemon
lemon zest also is good because there's
something called limonene in the zest
and and if you're gonna use skin
this is the reason to buy organic
because it's really difficult to
actually wash pesticides off of skin and
there's still lots of value in the skin
like the eggplant skin or the lemon skin
that's correct if you are going shopping
and people ask well i can't buy organic
i can't afford it and that's like that's
totally fine let's let's look to when
you when you're purchasing you know your
food let's let's think about the things
you're going to eat the skin on and try
and focus your attention organically
towards those all right let's limit to
those things as well and just become
more understanding of where a lot of the
fiber is just underneath the skin so
like no you're getting your bang for
your buck on that
the hardest thing as we know is telling
people this is going to by eating these
things now it's going to help them you
know 5 10 15 20 years down the track but
some people like i'm not motivated by
that that's totally fine uh but yeah i
guess that's the one of the ways you
just like look you're gonna save
millions of dollars on your medical
bills simply by having this so in the
short term yes in the long term it's
much better
well you know the the immediate
motivator is what you've got in your
left hand there in that pan
that is something that i cannot wait to
try myself
mate i gotta get you i can't believe i
missed you new york i'm gonna get you in
this kitchen so you can smell it next
time you're down here
i also want to see what what else are
you hiding in that kitchen that i should
be looking at
we've got a lot of meals and a lot of
fun and games here and now i'm inspired
as as you and i chatted off camera i've
got to go
find some very very special things to go
uh you know have in my space so just as
i finish this off i've got this
beautiful soft eggplant up here i can
put some more sauce on
and that's uh honestly you've got this
is delicious and one of the best things
about eggplant is just how it holds is
such a beautiful centipede dish right i
just i absolutely love it so yeah my
buddies uh
show that can you show that to us
yeah man i'm just gonna take a look at
that it's uh
it is
wow that looks like now see that that
would be an awesome lunch or dinner and
you're saying that you can make enough
so you can actually uh
do it up again the next day
and if
if for whatever reason eggplant's not
your thing that sauce you made could be
used for other vegetables that you could
heat up
cook up much in the same way in order to
be able to create something really
amazing and if you're not if you're
not a vegetarian or a vegan you could
probably use that sauce for other
proteins
as well by the way you could probably
use tofu with that as well
100 i love the fact that you did touch
on the like the versatility here and you
know
in the other day i don't want people
following recipes feeling they have to
follow the recipe i want people to be
inspired to know okay knowing that i'm
making something i love it's also good
for you based on some of the stuff i've
seen so if you go to the store and say
they're out of eggplants because there's
an eggplant just everyone loves eggplant
cool think about how you can take the
same principles that we've done today
and swap with something else simply
tossing the pan same with making a sauce
for anything
and everybody watching this you know
something i want to call out is uh chef
dan
didn't use any more space or any more
tools than almost anybody has in their
own kitchen even if you've got a little
galley kitchen and a tiny little
apartment you know in a city someplace
um you can actually knock this uh baby
out well listen this look meal looks
delicious i cannot wait to try the
recipe and you're going to share the
recipe with us and this has been a great
conversation about everyone's favorite
topic i mean who doesn't talk about food
so i hope everybody watching this
gets that recipe tries it at home and
feels more energized to incorporate
plants lots of plants lots of flavor
lots of bioactives to be able to really
stimulate and help our gut health and by
the way our gut is connected to our
immunity so if our gut is healthy our
immune system is healthy and if there's
one thing we learned in the last 18
months it's just how important it is for
us to have good strong immunity so
with that i want to thank uh you dan um
and uh can't wait to try that and uh
look forward to sharing with the world
thanks dr mate pleasure and uh looking
forward to having you and taste this
meal directly with me absolutely