Masterchef inspired Fish in Sweet and Sour Broth

Ingredients:
250g white fish fillet (tarakihi/ snapper/ lemonfish/ gurnard/ etc)

fish head and bones or chicken frame
1 handful celery leaves
1 small onion, chopped
6 cloves garlic
3 stalks lemongrass
1/4 pineapple cubed
lettuce
rice noodles or spiralised courgettes
2 pieces tamarind slices
1 bird's eye chilli (optional)
2 tomatoes
1 bunch Vietnamese mint
Piece of ginger (if using fish head)

To prepare the broth:
If you purchased the fish to fillet, you will have the head and frame available.  Heat a medium saucepan and brown the fish head and bones with ginger.  Then add 3 cloves garlic, 2 stalks lemongrass, celery leaves, tomatoes, onion, tamarind, Vietnamese (all except a few young leaves)  and chilli and chicken frame.  Add 1.5L waterand salt to taste.  Bring to a boil.  Simmer on low heat for 1 hour.  Strain out broth.

(if you do not have the fish head and frame, simply replace with some chicken stock)

To prepare lemongrass oil:
Chop finely 1 stalk of lemongrass.  On a very low heat, add olive oil to a pan and fry chopped lemongrass.  Allow the herbs to infuse into the oil in a glass jar or bowl until ready to use.

To prepare garlic oil:
Chop finely remaining garlic.  On a very low heat, add olive oil to a pan and fry chopped garlic until golden and fragrant.  If you are on a low FODMAP diet, you can still use the lemongrass but skip the garlic.

To prepare the fish:
Slightly season the fish with salt.  Pan fry on medium heat for 2 mins on each side.

To prepare the courgette/ rice noodles:
If using courgette, spiralise vegetables and put on the base of bowl.
If using rice noodles, soak noodles in warm water for 10 minutes until it has softened.  Drain. 

Strain the lemongrass out of the oil and toss courgette or rice noodles into the lemongrass oil.

To serve, add fish pieces, lettuce, pineapple and ladle broth into the bowl.  Add fresh Vietnamese mint to garnish.  Spoon some garlic oil on.

Serves 2.

Breast Cancer Prevention

In New Zealand, 600 women die of breast cancer every year.  On a daily basis, 9 women are diagnosed with breast cancer.  Whilst you may have heard of lots of news in the media regarding breast cancer being related to your genes, there are lots of things you can do to work on breast cancer prevention and for that matter cancer prevention.  Don’t be disempowered!

Here are some contributing factors that increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer and what you can do to mitigate those factors: 

1.  Age – Due to increased estrogen levels relative to progesterone and increased cumulative estrogen, a woman’s breast cancer risk increases with age.  Hence decreasing estrogen levels by clearing the pathways for estrogen metabolism and using skincare and bodycare products that do not unnecessary chemicals will decrease the xenoestrogen burden.  The other supply of xenoestrogen is plastics!
2. Fat cells make estrogen – especially postmenopausally.  If you are overweight, losing weight will decrease your breast cancer risk and if you have had breast cancer, decreases the risk of recurrence!
3. Lack of physical activity – exercise improves insulin sensitivity, and decreases body fats.  Get physically active 5 days a week for 30-40 minutes.
4. Consumption of processed carbohydrates – spikes on blood sugar levels from carbohydrates feeds cancer cells.  Limit refined sugar and carbohydrates and eat a rainbow of vegetables with some protein. Phytonutrients from plants have cancer fighting properties.  Cut that alcohol out - it converts to sugar!
5. Stress- this is a driver of many diseases, not just breast cancer.  Stress weakens your immune and digestive system.  Given the importance of the gut microbiota in maintaining a healthy immune system, you need to manage stress through learning to say ‘no’, allocating some ‘me time’, doing enough relaxation or activities that you enjoy, allocating time to eat – it is so important to be able to digest and absorb your food rather than eat on the run and have compromised absorption and making sure you have enough fibre, colours and macro and micronutrients in your meal.

Get out and get some sunshine and vitamin D - if your vitamin D is low, you are at higher risk of breast cancer.

Why Detox?

We live in an increasingly chemical laden world with many new chemicals infiltrating our soil, air, water and food supply.  A toxin is a substance that can interfere with cellular function and have a negative impact on our short and long term state of health.  We have all been made to be able to detoxify a certain level of toxins.  How much we can detoxify depends on our capacity to detoxify and toxin exposure.  The higher the exposure and the lower the capacity to detoxify, the higher the toxic burden on the body and the more negative health outcomes we get.  Excess toxic load can show up as resistant weight gain, skin breakouts, digestive problems, fatigue, headaches, other aches and pains in the body, brain fog, poor cognitive function and mood swings.

Doing a detoxification means supporting the elimination systems to detoxify as well as reducing or minimising ongoing exposure to those toxins including:

• Consume fresh seasonal fruit and vegetables, at least 5 cups a day;
• Avoid packaged and processed food;
• Eliminate foods containing gluten, dairy, added sugar, artificial colours, flavours, additives, flavour enhancers and hydrogenated fats
• Recreational drugs like caffeine, tobacco and alcohol

When doing a detoxification, include herbs and nutrition that support the detoxification process, as well as keeping well hydrated through enough pure filtered water, getting 30mls of fluids per kg of body weight.  This can be in the form of herbal teas, water and soups.

Including calming daily practice such as yoga is an useful addition to a detox regime.

The other area a lot of chemicals are hiding is in your bathroom - body and face care products as well as household cleaners.  When you are detoxing, make sure you are also reviewing what you are putting on your body topically and inhaling in the cleaning agents you use - detergents, bathroom and toilet cleaners and air fresheners.  Full article on this in the next blog post.