Japanese Cabbage Salad

There are two dishes that guarantee I am eating cruciferous vegetables and particularly white cabbage without gusto and without complaint.

One is Mexican Tacos with chopped cabbage slaw.

Two is the Japanese cabbage salad in a Japanese restaurant.

Both elevate white cabbage to something exotic and delicious, one with lime and salt and the other with a deeper aromatic umami flavour.

I wanted to recreate the salty, tangy sesame taste of Japanese cabbage salad at home and set about pulling the flavours together.

The humble cabbage is a superfood for midlife women as it contains a compound that helps to eliminate excess estrogen from the body. It is helpful to have in your mind, multiple ways that you enjoy cruciferous vegetables, ready for when you notice an uptick in hot flashes in your body and for that last hoorah of excess estrogen many women describe right before they enter full menopause.

So easy is this recipe that it is almost not a recipe at all! It relies on store cupboard aromatics, vinegars an oils to pull together the sweet, salty, sour punch to the taste buds found in this restaurant salad.

It was a cold February day and I chose to serve my Japanese cabbage salad with a small cutlet of local pork, beaten thin with a rolling pin and breaded by dipping in a beaten egg and Panko breadcrumbs. I fried my cutlet in avocado oil to make Tonkatsu pork and cabbage salad and served white rice and a small bowl of miso soup as a side.

This recipe is as much about pleasure as it is about the health benefits of cruciferous vegetables in supporting the elimination of excess estrogen for midlife women. It is about encouraging you to eat cabbage and to bring the pleasure of something you loved in a restaurant back into your home.

Ingredients

1/2 medium white cabbage sliced thinly
3 tbsp mayonnaise (Japanese kewpie mayonnaise gets you extra points!)
1 tbsp Apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp Maple syrup
2 tsp Tamari soya sauce
2tsp toasted sesame oil
2tsp Mirin (optional)

Instructions

Add all of the ingredients except the cabbage to a large bowl and whisk together to form a highly flavourful mayonnaise
Add the cabbage and combine to make a Japanese slaw.
Serve with Fried chicken or pork and rice.

Red Cabbage and Apple

I am on a mission to encourage midlife women to embrace the humble cruciferous family of vegetables and to include them in their menu rotation on a regular basis. We are talking, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, bok choi, Kale, collard greens, Brussels sprouts, watercress, rutabaga, turnips, radishes and arugula.

Get them in your belly!

We know from the science that cruciferous vegetables provide our liver with the compounds it needs to breakdown excess estrogen in the body which reduces our uncomfortable symptoms of peri-menopause and protects us from breast cancer.

The fibre found in cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower and kale also supports a healthy microbiome. Emerging research points to the microbiome as playing a hugely important role in packaging estrogen metabolites safely, to be removed from the body. The link between breast cancer and an altered gut microbiome has long been established and there is also evidence to show that a healthy gut microbiome supports our healthy body weight at midlife and reduces the amount of inflammation in our body.

The fibre in cruciferous vegetables protects us from colon cancer and is protective of our heart health, the number one cause of death for women.

Let’s do this thing and eat more cruciferous veg!

Studies show that in the UK only 9% of people get enough fibre daily and that drops to 5% in the USA. The majority of the fibre intake in both of these countries comes from grains in the form of pasta and bread. This is an indicator of the extreme lack of vegetables in our diet and attests to the fact that what we think is normal and healthy in our diet is deeply damaging to our immediate menopausal health and long term to our longevity.

We have drifted so far from foods that build health and it is delicious recipes that will draw us back.

This recipe for Red Cabbage and Apple is easy to prepare and contains the sweetness and the pectin fibre of apple along with the health benefits of red cabbage.

Red cabbage contains additional polyphenols in their gorgeous purple colouring which offer us further protection from coronary artery disease and inflammation.

The non-negotiable ingredient in this dish is the spice, star anise, which takes the flavour to the next level.

This side dish is perfect with chicken sausage and mashed potato and can be refrigerated and reheated through the week. I paired it with scrambled eggs and mushrooms to make a delicious blood sugar balancing breakfast!

This side would also be perfect with my Turkey and Herb Breakfast Patties either at breakfast or for dinner!

Ingredients

1 large red cabbage quartered and thinly sliced
1 red onion diced
2-3 apples diced
2-3 cloves garlic
2 tbsp coconut oil
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
3-4 whole star anise
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Using a large knife quarter the red cabbage and remove the core
Finely chop each of the quarters
Core the apples and dice
Dice the red onion
Finely chop or crush the garlic
In a large pan with a tight fitting lid, add the coconut oil and melt over a medium heat
Add all of the chopped vegetables and stir until the onion starts to soften
Add the star anise pieces and stir until you can smell the spicy aroma
Add the apple cider vinegar and tightly seal the lid onto the pan, turning the heat to low
Braise the cabbage and apple in the pan with the soice for 15-20 minutes until all of the ingredients are cooked through
Add salt and pepper to taste

If you want to take your relationship with red cabbage further ;) try my recipe for Red Cabbage Sauerkraut

Roasted Cauliflower, Pistachio and Pomegranate Salad.

It is hard to emphasize the importance of cruciferous vegetables to women going through hormonal change.

Let’s take a step back and reacquaint ourselves with what is happening inside our bodies…

As we move through peri-menopause, our chill and juicy hormones of progesterone and estrogen begin to deplete. This is not a smooth curve down to our ovaries retirement, but is full of spikes and crashes of hormone. We are living animals and the organs of our body do their utmost to function to the best of their ability. As they splutter to a halt our ovaries can gather the building blocks for manufacturing estrogen only to spurt an excessive amount into the bloodstream. We can go from zero to 60 from one week to the next and our health needs to be good enough to handle these changes so we experience the least amount of symptoms and can roll with them with grace.

The organ helping us out here is the liver. Our liver grabs excess hormone from the bloodstream and deconjugates, or breaks it down into compounds that can be easily removed from the body via our poop. The magical daily detox!

If you have constipation, you are going to have issues with feeling excessive symptoms of hormonal change.

If you do not like vegetables or fibre in your diet…think standard American diet where 95% of people are deficient in fibre, then you are going to experience excessive symptoms of hormonal change.

The food we eat changes our experience of menopause.

Cruciferous vegetables support us by offering the body fibre and a healthy serving of a compound called 3,3-Diindolylmethane. This is the compound that gives cruciferous vegetables their cabbagey smell. It also helps the liver in its process of breaking down hormone. You have the fibre for the poop and the fuel for grabbing and smashing up the hormones that are driving you crazy with symptoms.

Eating cruciferous veg regularly in your diet, throughout menopause means you have constant liver support, reduced constipation and a reduction in your hot flashes, mood swings, breast pain and bloat.

Cruciferous vegetables are all those in the cabbage family.

Think red and green cabbages, kale, cauliflower, collard greens, broccoli and Brussels sprouts.

We wouldn’t want to just eat boiled cabbage…that would be punishing! But this Cauliflower Salad with its burst of Middle Eastern flavour is something you are going to want to ladle onto our plate.

For this dish I roasted a stunningly beautiful, lime green, romanesco cauliflower but a regular white cauliflower or broccoli would be great too.

The roasted veg is paired with nuts, pomegranate seeds and the warming spice blend Baharat from Turkey. Think black pepper, cardamon, cloves, paprika and nutmeg.

The beauty of using nutrition as your first line of defence against menopausal symptoms is that as you nourish your body with these gorgeous crucifers, you are also protecting your heart health, preventing colon cancer and introducing an easily absorbed plant based source of calcium into your diet…as well as delighting your taste buds.

Ingredients

1 medium cauliflower or 1lb of broccoli
5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
5 tbsp raw pistachios or hazelnuts
1/3rd cup pomegranate seeds fresh or frozen ( approx 1/2 a pomegranate)
2 sticks celery sliced on the diagonal
1/3rd cup roughly chopped parsley
1 tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
1 tsp Baharat spice mix.
1/2 tsp sea salt

Instructions

Toss the cauliflower or broccoli in 2 tbsp of olive oil
Roast in the over a 400F /200C for 20 minutes.
Add the pistachios or hazelnuts for the last 5 minutes of roasting the cauliflower to toast them and bring out the flavour.
Meanwhile chop the celery and parsley and prepare the pomegranate seeds
In the bottom of a bowl whisk the remaining 2 tbsp of olive oil, 1 tbsp of Balsamic vinegar, the Baharat spice mix and the salt.
Add all of the ingredients to the bowl and toss in the dressing.
Serve with roasted chicken or salmon.