Tuesday, September 22, 2015

The CoffeeBar Kid interviews Nadia Lim


For her fourth and latest book, "Nadia Lim's Fresh Start Cookbook", celebrity chef and co-founder of My Food Bag, Nadia Lim, wanted to take more holistic view to eating.  Playing hooky from her current bookshops/cooking events tour Nadia chatted to me at a Wellington Gastro Pub about her food philosophy and approach to food in general.  "I'm not into diets.  I like to think about changing mind-sets.  As a dietician, I was getting request from people to work out individual weekly diets and these were takes 6-7 hours each.  So I decided to wrap it all into a cookbook which also includes some dietary advice and, with the help of my good friend Michael McCormack, some simple exercise routines as well. Initially it’s for people to lose weight but it could apply to anyone who wants to eat healthier." 

 

Nadia's approach was originally born out of a concept she developed right back when she was an early teen - 'Food in the Nude' - using fresh ingredients, keeping the processed additives to a minimum.  That concept has always been the backbone of Nadia's recipes. So it's about stripping food back, I ask?  "No.  It’s the complete opposite.  It's about adding more - more vegetables, more fruit more, more fibre."  An example is her range of smoothies which ingredients like spinach, banana, lime and pineapple or Tamarillo, Berry, Vanilla and almond milk.  Yum.  Actually, as part of my research for this interview I got to try out a few smoothies and I can vouch for these recipes, personally.  The banana, berry and peanut butter smoothie is a particular favourite in our house hold.  I also took a crack at Nadia's banana pancakes - a nice alternative to the usual milk-based variety - lighter, and sweeter.  And that's another point Nadia emphasises.  "I you get regular servings of fruit and vegetables through the day (and her book does go into some technical details on this), then you're less likely to binge eat or snack on inappropriate foods like biscuits.  Her delicious version of Chicken Tikka Marsala with Spinach and Spiced Parsnip Soup are also healthy, moreish and simple to make.  My four year old and I both managed to whip these up for weekend lunches with minimal fuss. 
In her intro, Nadia offers some refreshing advice about key nutritional concepts like portion size, when to drink coffee and tea and appropriate levels of water you should drink to keep your kidneys healthy (plenty).  At the core is a series of interchangeable menus that lets you plan your eating for the week, without going to extremes.  Not a single celery leaf to be seen.

All new cookbooks offer some new discovery.  So what's new this time, I ask?  "Cauliflower 'rice' - broken down to the consistency of rice or couscous and steamed.  It's lighter than rice, less stodgy."  Also worth a crack are chia seeds, which Nadia claims "used instead of large quantities of sugar in jams.  The chia seeds have that gelatinous quality, like pectin.  So you don't need as much sugar."  They also work well as an alternative to tapioca in traditional puddings. 

I can't help asking this former Master Chef winner about the whole reality/competitive cookery culture.  After all, according to a New York Times article Americans  are blobbing out in front of the Food Network, choosing to watch rather than participate.  That's not helped by shows like 'Hell's Kitchen" and 'Cake Boss' that are more about personalities and ridiculous culinary goals than practical kitchen skills.  It seems more viewers are turning on, tuning in, and ordering out.  But was this the case here, in New Zealand?  "No," Nadia argues, "In fact, shows like Master Chef have encouraged everyone to get more creative.  And it's expanded their knowledge.  And it's really inspired children.  They want to be in the kitchen.  I know of schools where the kids have their own cooking competitions - like Master Chef."  Nadia also says that she knows of couples that are staging their own dinner parties based on a hybrid of the My Kitchen Rules TV show, where teams set up and operate a 'home' restaurant for a night.   It’s that thirst for food knowledge and participation that Nadia wants to tap into.  And along with a sound philosophy about food, nutrition and exercise she reckons you really can have your desert and eat it too.    

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