Cooking Clean: Recipes Part 1

Nutrition is a huge part of performance that most triathletes overlook.  Training & nutrition go hand in hand, which is why I love triathlons.  Triathlon forces me to concentrate on fueling the body with high quality foods in order to recover and reap the benefits of all the hard work I put in. When I'm training there is little room for bad foods & alcohol and you need to have discipline.  I follow the 90/10, which means 90% of what I take in very healthy and the other 10% I can treat myself if needed. 

With so many artificial/processed foods flooding the market, people are misinformed and often tricked into buying the wrong types and brands of food.  Try going to the supermarket and picking bread without any "high fructose corn syrup".  Try buying deli turkey, canned foods such as lentils, soups etc. that have less than your daily sodium requirement.   It becomes hard to find healthy alternatives if you don't know what to look for. 
I have seen a shift to more healthier foods and labeling such as "low calorie, low fat, high fiber" , but sometimes this even confuses the consumer more.  Big corporations do whatever they can to promote and label a product healthy when in fact it may not be. 

The only advice I have is to be informed about the foods that you eat.  I see the difficulty in eating healthy due to life stress, long job hours, bad habits & misinformation as people get older.  The fact is a lot of people have never had a chance to feel the benefits of eating healthy because they are so used to feeling horrible all the time.  I think most people given a choice would eat natural foods and leave the fake artificial crap behind. 

Below is a couple great food I incorporate into my diet on a weekly basis.  I try to break down the recipe so you can easily try this at home:
1. Baked Brussel Sprouts & Sweet Potato:

These are two of the healthiest, best tasting veggies you can find out there and are also the easiest thing to cook.  Prep time takes seconds. 

Roasted Brussels:
1.)  Preheat oven to 400 and cook.
 2.)Cut off the end of the brussel sprouts discard, half brussels and lightly coat in Olive Oil Salt & Pepper in a pan.
3.) Cook roughly 30-45 min
4.) Key is every 10 min to shake pan/turn over brussels for even cooking.  I love to keep the flakes that fall off each brussel as they turn crisp when baking similar to eating a kale chip.

Baked Sweet Potato:

1.) Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2.) Knife the yam/sweet potato (This allows some of the built-up steam to escape from the inside of the potato as it cooks)
3.) Put some tin foil on bottom of a pan and place in the oven for at least an hour.  Depending on the size of sweet potato some may take 1.5-2 hours.  I usually cook them for as long as 2 hours as I love to eat them as soft as possible.
4.)  Once they are done you can enjoy them by slicing them in half to let them cool off.  A good addition mashing inside with a ford & mixing a teaspoon of olive oil, salt, pepper into the potato for extra taste.

Option 2:  Puree

You can also use your baked sweet potatoes as a puree to incorporate under a seafood/chicken dish or even a soup incorporating stock.  All you need is a blender.  Complete by removing skins from sweet potato, add some olive oil (experiment with 1/4- 1/2 cup, salt , pepper).  You can add spices as well if you have chopped up jalepeno or even minced garlic would be a great additional for flavor. 

Option 3: Fries

For a decent sized Yam I would cut in half length wise and then cut each half into 3rd's, which leaves you with 6 yam wedges.  You can use as many potatoes as you would like, but clearly try and cut pieces to similar size for even baking.  Preheat oven to 400-425 while you lightly coat the sweet potatoes with olive oil, salt, pepper.  Place on a baking tray and cook for at least 30 minutes or until nice and crispy.  After 15-20 minutes I would check on them and flip to other side for a nice burnt, crisp taste.


Kale Chips:
1.) Preheat oven to 225-250 degrees
2.) Cut kale from stems and chop evenly
3.) Lighly coat w/ olive oil, sea salt & pepper
4.) Bake for 15-20 min or until kale turns krispy.  Make sure to rotate/flip if needed

2.  Roasted Asparagus, Mushrooms, Zucchini with a side of Kale Chips;  When baking always lightly coat your veggies with olive oil, salt, pepper.  This is key & the flavor will come through baking & roasting for a long period of time.

3. Montauk stripped bass pan-seared & baked w/ lemon, homegrown chives, garlic over sautéed kale, vine tomato, chick peas, curry paste & onion in a lemon garlic olive oil.

When preparing fish I usually love to pan seared the fish first.  Which includes high heat and a small coat of olive oil salt pepper in the pan.  Once hot, place the fish filets in your pan & cook for a couple minutes on each side with the highest heat.  You should see each side become a light brown/crisp color.  You can cook straight through by lowering the heat & cooking for several more minutes or you can prepare the oven around 325- 350 degrees and bake the fish in a dish.  I usually let the fish bake with some minced garlic, vine chopped tomatoes/cherry tomatoes and fresh herbs.  You can add a touch of butter for taste, but it isn't necessary.  Also, topping your dish off with fresh parmesan or cheese of your choice for an extra bit of flavor.