By: Pamela Stern
Starrett Judo Club’s Coach Legros is back again with another segment of his nutrition lessons. Coach Legros teaches the children and their parents how to create meals that are healthy and nutritious, while he explains the health benefits of the items used in the meals. In this class, Coach Legros is teaching attendees how to make a Quinoa Salad.
The ingredients necessary for this Quinoa Salad are: chickpeas, black beans (canned for faster service or you can boil your beans), quinoa (cook your quinoa before class), vegan cheese (shredded), olives, avocado, lemon, vegan butter, celery, cucumber, bell pepper, red onion, basil, tomato, broccoli, sweet potato, and of course the Legrospices.
Additionally, Chef Marvin and Chef Dana of Fork Flavor come into the Nutrition classes to help teach everyone how to properly cut the vegetables safely in preparation for the upcoming lesson; in some instances, they have explained how to select the freshest vegetables.
Coach Legros explains to the class what quinoa is. He explains that quinoa is a grain and that it has been around for a long time. He tells the class that quinoa is very dense nutrient. He educates the class by explaining to them that there are six nutrients and briefly describes them. He then tells them that the only items that he will be cooking are the Quinoa and the Sweet Potato.
“Turn your oven on and put your sweet potatoes in,” said Legros. He then explains that the sweet potato is the only starch that can be eaten if you have diabetes and that anything that is sweet should be sprinkled with cinnamon.
The purpose of the cinnamon is to allow the glucose to go even slower into the body. Once you sprinkle the cinnamon on the sweet potatoes, you must spread it out and then you can put it into the oven. Legros does not use any water or oil. He then instructs the class to wash their hands and dry them.
Legros then explains that quinoa has been around since prehistoric times and has multipurpose which include: lowering your cholesterol (your cholesterol thickens your blood and clogs your arteries) He briefly describes the two types of cholesterol HDL (High Density Lipoproteins-good one) and LDL (Low Density Lipoproteins-bad one), it is a good source of magnesium and it relaxes the blood vessels. Quinoa is also a a good source of calcium. Calcium strengthens the body.
Legros tells the class that this Quinoa Salad will prevent Celiac Disease. He describes to everyone what Celiac Disease is. Celiac disease is where your body doesn’t digest wheat or grains, which is why people become Gluten Free.
He then instructs everyone to take out their super bowl and jokes that even though the Superbowl is over attendees need their super bowl for this lesson. Legros makes these classes entertaining with his jokes, which allows participants to have fun while they are learning how to cook.
He then tells them to rinse and then dry their “super bowls” and place their cut up broccoli n the bowl. He then instructs attendees to take out a jagged knife and tells them to cut up the broccoli finer into little grains and place them into the bowl. Next, he tells the class to blend their chickpeas in the blender, then he tells them to take out their cut up red onions and place it into the bowl, next the cut-up cucumbers get placed into the bowl and then he instructs everyone to stir all of the contents in the bowl.
The red pepper is the next item that will go into the bowl, and then he pours the blended chickpeas into the bowl and stirs it, next the black beans will be incorporated into the bowl and then they will also get stirred in the bowl.
Now is the time that the Legrospices will be included into the bowl but, this time there is a slight change to the Legrospices; first the cumin gets sprinkled into the bowl, then turmeric gets sprinkled into the bowl, followed by black pepper which enhances the turmeric, then Legros stirs the contents in the bowl, then he incorporates garlic into the bowl, but this time he is NOT using cayenne pepper, but he is using pepper flakes and then he instructs everyone to stir their bowls. Then Legros takes out a cutting board, a knife, and a tomato.
He explains that everyone should cut their tomato in half on the side and then into bite size pieces. Once the tomato is bite size then it can go into the bowl. He then takes the sweet potato out of the oven and turns the oven off. He then spread the sweet potato out nicely. Then he tells everyone to take out their lemon, avocado, and vegan butter.
He then scrapes some of the butter on the side of a teaspoon and puts the stove on and holds the spoon over the stove to melt the butter. Once the butter is melted, he shuts off the stove and drops the melted butter into another bowl and with a cooking brush, he brushes it into another bowl and takes another tablespoon and scrapes some butter onto it and melts it using the stove.
Once it is melted, he then puts it into the salad and stirs it. Now he pours the cooked quinoa (this was cooked in preparation for the class with Chef Marvin and Chef Dana) into the bowl and spreads it around. He then scrapes the lemon into the bowl and cuts a piece off and squeezes the lemon juice into the bowl.
He then takes the salad from the bowl and fills it into a small bowl all the way to the top. Then he takes a plate and puts it on top of the small bowl and turns it upside down. Then he takes the avocado and slices it and peels the skins off and places it at the top and puts another plate on top of it and turns it upside down and now the avocado is at the bottom and he places two olives on the top along with three basil leaves.
Bon Appetit!
Screenshots By: Pamela Stern
