TEN7 Heart Healthy Cook-Along

TEN7 recently kicked off the first of a quarterly series of virtual team building events that have a culinary focus. It’s a fun way to gather and connect about something so many of us love - food.

Our first event was focused around National Heart Health month in February, featuring two heart healthy recipes for the team to all cook together. One was a vegan massaged kale salad with berries, mango, nuts, and an easy lime vinaigrette. And the other was my take on miso soup that’s more of a stew, and is pumped up with beans and leafy greens. The miso is doing some heavy lifting, bringing flavor and probiotics. By omitting the katsuobushi (dried, shaved tuna, aka bonito flakes), the miso soup recipe is also vegan.

Both recipes are fine tuned to be as heart healthy as possible, and are both dairy-free and gluten-free. It can sometimes be hard to find recipes that are truly healthy, yet crowd pleasing, but these sure hit the mark! Everyone’s soup and salads looked fantastic. Folks subbed ingredients where needed, asked questions, shared their feedback and their results.

We’ve been polling the team to see what other culinary topics they would be excited to learn about, so we can target the series to what’s most exciting for the team. On the docket may be things like: meal planning, batch cooking, how to use up that extra garden or CSA produce, and I even plan to share some tricks that I learned while cooking in restaurants that I still use at home, today. We may even talk about how to enjoy food at home when you don’t like to cook.

We’ll be doing a deep dive into Salt in June, complete with a virtual team salt tasting, where I’ll guide the team through salt's various textures, origins, salinity and myriad uses. Stay tuned for more on that!

The goal is to have community-building doldrum busters that bring the distributed team together for fun, non-work related things from time to time.

It’s not only fun for the team to learn a new skill, but also, as a former professional cook & owner of a food business, admittedly, it’s also incredibly rewarding to be in a role where I can bring all of my skills to the table. With community builders like this, TEN7 is the antidote to burnout!

We welcome you to share in the heart health by trying out the recipes for yourself. Please enjoy, and tell us what you think!

Massaged Kale Salad with Berries and Lime Vinaigrette

• Prep time: 20 minutes
• Cook time: 0 minutes
• # of servings: 4

Ingredients

• 2 bunches of kale, any kind, or two 5 oz. clamshells of baby kale
• 1 ripe mango
• 2 cups mixed berries, your choice, washed (I like blueberries & strawberries, but any will work)
• ½ cup dried cranberries
• ½ cup roasted, salted sunflower seeds
• 2 TB avocado oil (or any non-flavored oil)
• ½ tsp honey (or maple syrup if preferred)
• Juice & zest of 1 lime
• Pinch of kosher salt
• Optional add ins: diced peach, plum, pear, apple, walnuts, pistachios, pepitas, poppyseeds, hemp hearts, chia seeds

Instructions

1. Wash and rinse kale well (unless you bought pre-washed kale). Remove excess moisture with a salad spinner, or pat dry with paper towels.
2. Cut kale or tear into bite size pieces and place in large bowl (if it isn’t already torn into the right size). “Massage” it with your hands until it turns vibrantly green throughout, approximately 3-4 minutes for regular kale, or 1 minute for baby kale.
3. Whisk juice and zest of one lime, oil, honey, and salt in a small bowl. Taste and adjust seasoning if needed. Drizzle over kale and toss to coat.
4. Peel the mango and discard the peel, then peel the rest of the mango, letting the mango shards fall into the bowl of kale. If you don’t have a sharp enough peeler, you can also just dice up the mango. Frozen, thawed mango chunks will also work just fine. You may want to cut those chunks in halves or quarters.
5. Reserve 1/3 of berries for garnish. Add rest of berries and cranberries to the dressed kale. Toss lightly.
6. Sprinkle sunflower seeds right before serving, and garnish with remaining berries. Enjoy!

Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days, though it's best enjoyed right away.

Miso Soup with Beans and Greens

• Prep time: 20 minutes
• Cook time: 15 minutes
• # of servings: 6

Miso Soup Ingredients

• 6 TB light or white miso (though any miso will do)
• 12 oz. tofu block, medium or firm
• 3 quarts dashi broth (see recipe below, or you can buy dry packets of dashi you simply add water to, such as HonDashi)
• 1 cup wakame (seaweed)
• ½ can kidney beans, rinsed
• ½ can chickpeas, rinsed
• ½ bunch collard, kale, or other leafy greens
• 1 cup mushrooms
• 4 scallions
• 1 clove garlic

Dashi Broth Ingredients

• 12 cups water (3 quarts)
• 2 pieces kombu seaweed, 2”x4” each
• Approximately 20 grams Katsuobushi also known as bonito flakes, or dried, fermented, shaved tuna

Instructions

1. Make Dashi: Put kombu and water in pot, heat until just before boiling (look for bubbles around the edges of the pot). Add katsuobushi if using, and let water boil for just 30 seconds before turning off heat. Let steep for 5 minutes. Strain with fine mesh strainer or cheesecloth into another vessel.
2. Mince garlic. Cut tofu into 1/2 inch cubes. Thinly slice mushrooms. Chop leafy greens into bite sized pieces. Slice scallions, separating whites and greens. Cut scallion whites thinner than the greens.
3. Place wakame in bowl, add 1 cup of dashi broth to begin to revive and rehydrate.
4. Ladle 1 cup of dashi broth into another small bowl. Add miso, and whisk until smooth. Set aside.
5. Pour remaining strained dashi back into the pot and back on the stove over medium heat.
6. Add garlic, beans, scallion whites and mushrooms to the pot and stir as everything comes to temp. Add in the tofu, leafy greens, wakame and the liquid the wakame was sitting in.
7. Bring just barely to a simmer, approximately 10 minutes, just enough to get everything hot. Remove from heat, stir in the miso mixture and scallion greens. Don’t allow soup to boil once miso is added, as it loses its flavors and aromas and probiotic benefits. Ladle into bowls. Enjoy!

Best enjoyed immediately, as seaweed will continue to absorb broth. You can always add more water if you need, to thin it back out the next day. It keeps for up to 5 days, refrigerated. Dashi broth can be made ahead. If you prefer a less chunky soup, you can easily decrease the amount of wakame, mushrooms and tofu while maintaining the remaining ingredients.