Spring salad of blistered artichoke hearts & rainbow chard
Spring salad of blistered artichoke hearts & rainbow chard
With recent review on home gardening & health during the pandemic, + my latest podcast interview
Hello friends,
The warm-up we experienced mid-month was a bit of a tease as I watch the rain pour down outside my kitchen window. The steady rain (soon to be snow) called for a Saturday of slow cooking with braised beef short ribs and a bright spring salad. In this newsletter, I’ll share my new spring salad recipe and explore a recent review which examined the health impacts of home gardens throughout the pandemic.
In the Kitchen
This week’s recipe was inspired by one I just came across in Sheela Prakash’s new book, Salad Seasons: Vegetable-Forward Dishes All Year. I caught her interview last week on NPR’s The Splendid Table podcast along with Michigan-based chef/author Abra Berens (I’ll have more on her latest book, Pulp, in a future newsletter). It’s a great episode, which celebrates seasonal produce and provides practical strategies for upping fruit and veg intake in the most delicious ways.
Here’s the scoop on the salad: This version features fresh rainbow chard ribbons, thinly sliced radishes, blistered artichoke hearts, and sunflower seeds for crunch. It’s best to dress the swiss chard with lemon juice and olive oil while the artichoke hearts brown in the oven. This allows the raw swiss chard to soften a bit before serving and the lemon juice (vitamin C) increases the bioavailability of iron in the greens. The olive oil is also important for the absorption of fat soluble vitamins, such as Vitamin K, found in dark, leafy greens. Artichokes are a favorite of mine as they contain a high level of a prebiotic fiber, inulin, which helps to promote a healthy gut microbiome. Whole spring artichokes can be a bit of a challenge to prep and cook, so I often rely on cooked artichoke hearts in jars. Consider making this gut healthy food a pantry staple.
Spring salad of blistered artichoke hearts & rainbow chard
Adapted from Salad Seasons: Vegetable-Forward Dishes All Year by Sheela Prakash
1 bunch of rainbow chard, washed + thinly sliced into 1/2” ribbons
3 scallions, thinly sliced (green + white parts)
1-2 small jars of cooked artichoke hearts
2-3 red radishes, thinly sliced, half-moon shape
4 tablespoons EVOO
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Flaky sea salt to taste
Freshly cracked pepper to taste
Garnish: toasted sunflower seeds + crumbled feta (as desired)
Preheat oven to 425F
Drain artichoke hearts and scatter on parchment-lined baking sheet.
Drizzle 2 tablespoons EVOO over artichokes. Season with a pinch of flaky sea salt and freshly cracked pepper as desired.
Roast for 15 mins until lightly browned. If you like them a bit crispy, consider placing under broiler for the last 1-2 minutes of cooking for a deeper brown.
While artichokes are in the oven, place rainbow chard ribbons in a large mixing bowl.
Add remaining EVOO and lemon juice to the swiss chard. Toss and coat well. Season with a pinch of sea salt and cracked black pepper to taste. Allow to rest until artichokes are cooked.
To assemble, place dressed rainbow chard on a large platter. Layer on sliced radishes, blistered artichoke hearts, green onions, feta crumbles, and sunflower seeds.
Best served slightly warmed or at room temperature.
I’d love to hear if you make this one - please leave a comment below!
What I’m Reading
I admit it. I’m a self proclaimed “nerd” when it comes to the science of food, gardening, and health. I have PubMed alerts set so that I can keep up with the latest studies published in the areas of gardening + health, culinary medicine, and nature therapy (just to name a few). Last week I came across a review from the journal Frontiers, which examined the “eco-healing functions” of home gardens and their potential impact on mental health and biodiversity during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
There is a plethora of research to support the health benefits of green spaces such as improved physical activity, improved quality of life, and reduced levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. Home gardens are a green space of particular interest to researchers as these remained accessible to individuals throughout the pandemic while access to other public greens spaces may have been limited due to social distancing policies. The diagram below highlights how home gardens can potentially mitigate the direct and indirect impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on physical and mental health.
“Natural sounds, vegetation color and shape, plant fragrance, and so on coming from a home garden can help improve mental health through sense organs by hearing, seeing, touching, and smelling. A home garden, with flowers, animals (e.g., bees, butterflies), medicinal herbs, and so on, not only has the benefits of increasing green habitats and supporting urban biodiversity (plants, animals, and soil microbiome), but also has the advantages of being accessible at any time, with nature experience (gardening) effects on cognitive functioning, emotional well-being, and other multiple dimensions of mental health.”
As a doctor-gardener, I fully support therapeutic, sensory elements (vegetation, water/sound, etc.) in garden planning. There is much joy and health to be gained through engaging the senses in our gardening experiences. Here are a few of my favorites:
Lavender - Beautiful color, fragrant fresh + dry, useful for tea
Thyme - Excellent ground cover, antimicrobial, useful earthy culinary herb
Purple Coneflower - Vertical element, flowering head bristly to the touch
All in all, I’m encouraged by papers like this and their potential to inform future public health policies for health promotion and post COVID-19 pandemic recovery.
“…a home garden and gardening can be effective approaches for people re-connecting to green environments to provide a nature experience with eco-healing effects on maintaining mental health, and it may also reduce the health burden due to COVID-induced disability and sequelae across all age groups, including neurocognitive disorders and mental health disorders.”
The article is open-source and can be viewed for free in its entirety by clicking the link below.
Source:
Front. Public Health, 11 November 2021
Sec. Public Mental Health
Volume 9 - 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.740187
In the Media
I had the pleasure of joining my friend, O’Donis Person, on the People are Thriving podcast last month. Our conversation explores my personal journey into the world of “food as medicine” through the implementation of a produce prescription program and how that changed my trajectory in medicine. If you’d like to learn more, please check out this episode:
This newsletter is a work in progress and your feedback is valuable to me. If there are topics of interest or columns you’d like featured, please connect with me and/or leave a comment. Thanks for being here!
Yours in health,
Dr. Michelle