virtuous eating (recipe: dashi with true cod and baby bok choy)

I think most of us are raised with some moralizing concepts about food. Some foods are "good" for you. Some foods are "bad" for you. Adjacent to this concept of good and bad is the conventional wisdom that good-for-you foods taste bad, while bad-for-you foods taste good. Hence you will frequently see this comment on a "good-for-you" recipe: "This doesn't taste healthy at all!"

Most of us find ourselves somewhere in the middle of these battles of food virtue, "indulging" in bad-for-us while "detoxing" with good-for-us. But this has never made sense to me. My favorite foods are easily designated as "healthy." Greens. Salads. Brown rice. Fish. Mushrooms. Even though I was raised on the opposite, supposedly virtuous foods taste very good to me.

And when I consider foods that are bad for me, I don't think of butter, or steak, or potatoes. I think of Doritos. Cake from a box. Onion dip from a jar. Extremely processed things. I crave them sometimes, but the flavor is never as good as the idea of it -- whereas unprocessed whole foods, regardless of what the USDA has to say about their healthfulness, are always even better than I expect. And certainly, with Doritos, or cake from a box, or onion dip from a jar, I walk away knowing that I've done my body a disservice.

Still, it's not always easy to remember this. As committed as I am to real food, to home-cooking, I admit there are exhausted nights when I'm tempted by those frozen meals-in-a-bag. In the middle of the night, I crave the junkiest of junk food, and sometimes I give in.

It's especially easy to feel guilty about this when I hear other people explain the various ways that they avoid, and prevent their kids from eating, bad-for-you foods. They demand different cooking oils in restaurants or pass on books and article to relatives. I don't make nearly the effort. I used to work harder at it -- I used to even be quite militant about it -- but I've found that the more I fight my children, and myself, and the various friends and relatives who keep pushing it, the more miserable we all feel.

And maybe I feel particularly reticent because I spend such a long time as a vegan trying to convince people to adopt my way of life through logic and emotion. It doesn't work. If anything, it only further entrenches a person's viewpoint to try to change it. All we can do is live in our own quiet way, honoring each individual evolution. And as for children, if there's anything a parent knows, it's the allure of the forbidden.

So my kids eat junk food sometimes. I try to casually observe the 80/20 rule, though by default, it's more like 90/10. Sometimes my daughter says something really embarrassing like, "The only things I like to eat are sugar and oatmeal and sugar," and I start to wonder if I've broken her. While we were at my parents' house, they ate all kinds of things they never get at home. Limitless cookies. Juice from a juice box. Lunch meat. Supermarket eggs. And I ate them, too. I even slipped and consumed glutenous foods. So I wondered how difficult it would be to get back to normal once we got home.

But it's never been a problem. They've never asked for those things, and I've never wanted them. We're right back to our usual diet of veggies, whole grains, fruit, pastured meats, cultured dairy. So I wonder, what good would it have done to make my parents feel rejected and defensive about the food they had to offer? How confusing is it for children to hear that a food is "bad"?

So I'm trying to take a different approach. Instead of saying "no" to everything I perceive as unhealthy (and damn, but there is a lot to perceive as unhealthy), I'm trying to say "yes, but..." This means that if my kids ask if I'll make brownies, I say, "Yes, but just a quarter-pan." Seriously, a family of four does not need 24 brownies. If my kids want fries, I say, "Yes, but I could make them here at home, and you can help!"

With kids, I think it's not so much about nutrients, about tooth decay and addiction and fat content, but about habits. Would I rather my kids have the habit of swallowing everything in sight because they were never allowed to have it, or the habit of having just a bit and being able to push the rest away? Would I rather my kids have the habit of moralizing about food, and thus moralizing about themselves ("that food is bad for me, but I want it, so I must be a bad person")? Or would I rather that they shrug their shoulders, eat a little something, and then move on with their lives, knowing that the good stuff is found at home, in their own pots and pantries?

All of these thoughts went through my mind as I made this meal. This sort of thing is what many people would consider "diet food." It doesn't contain much fat; there's a bland sort of fish and some brown rice and leafy greens. But I truly loved this meal. I found it intensely nourishing and flavorful, and a relief to my body after such an indulgent season.

This meal isn't "good for you." It's just good.

Dashi is a traditional Japanese broth based principally on kombu, a type of kelp. To the kombu you can add bonito (dried mackerel flakes) or another type of dried fish. I rarely use bonito because it's quite expensive and I'm not sure of the source. Instead, I add some dried shiitake mushrooms to add a depth of flavor.

Have you ever had baby bok choy? It's one of my favorite vegetables. It has such a great texture and slightly bitter flavor that is a perfect compliment to brown rice and fish.

Dashi with True Cod and Baby Bok Choy
dashi:
4 c. water
3" piece of kombu
10 dry shiitake mushrooms
1/2 c. bonito flakes (optional)

everything else:
2" ginger, peeled and sliced
1 scallion, minced
3/4 lb. domestic true cod
1 lb. baby bok choy (about 8 heads), halved vertically
2 T. miso
2 c. short-grain brown rice, cooked
minced scallions and cilantro, to garnish

To make the dashi, combine the water, kombu, mushrooms, and bonito in a large stock-pot. Bring to a low simmer, then turn off the heat and allow to sit for 5 minutes. Strain out the solids and return the dashi to the pot. Stem and slice the mushrooms and set them aside.

Cut the cod into four equal pieces. Heat 1 t. sesame oil in a large, deep pan with a lid. Add the ginger and scallion to the pan. Add 3 T. of the dashi. Add the fish to the pan and arrange the baby bok choy and mushrooms on top.

Pan-steam the fish and boy choy over medium heat, with the lid on, for 10 minutes, until the fish flakes with a fork.

Bring the leftover dashi to a low simmer. Whisk in the miso until fully incorporated. Do not boil the miso.

To serve, pile a 1/2-cup of brown rice in a bowl. Top with a piece of cod and some bok choy and mushrooms. Pour a bit of dashi over the top, and sprinkle with scallion and cilantro. Enjoy!