Today's Recipe - 5 Spice Salmon

If you don't know what to serve for dinner tonight ...
 

The balanced flavor in this Asian flavored dish with Chinese 5 spice (a combination of star anise), cloves, cinnamon, huajiao (Sichuan pepper) and ground fennel seeds) is wonderful. This is a surprising dish that is both light, yet very flavorful. It is full of nutrition, and very easy to prepare.

Prep and Cook Time: 30 minutes
Ingredients:

• 1 lb salmon filet cut into 4 pieces
• 6 dried medium shiitake mushrooms soaked in 3/4 cup hot water for about 15 minutes (save water)
• 1 medium sized onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 TBS fresh ginger, chopped, or 1/3 tsp dried
• 1 cup vegetable stock
• 1 tsp 5 spice powder (can be found in Asian section in supermarket)
• 3/4 cup fresh orange juice
• 2 TBS molasses
• 2 tsp arrowroot
• 4 cups shredded Chinese, or Napa cabbage
• 6 scallion, chopped
• salt and white pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Soak shiitake mushrooms in 3/4 cup hot water. Slice when soft cutting out stem. Preheat broiler on high.
2. Healthy Sauté onion in medium saucepan over medium low heat for about 5 minutes stirring frequently. Add ginger and garlic and continue to sauté for another minute. Add vegetable stock, 5 spice powder, orange juice, and molasses. Simmer for 15 minutes. Strain and discard all but liquid. Place liquid back into pan, and thicken with arrowroot dissolved in a little water while simmering.
3. While sauce is cooking, simmer in another medium sized sauté pan cabbage, mushrooms, scallion, salt and pepper in mushroom water for 5 minutes.
4. Rub salmon with salt and pepper. (You can Quick Broil with the skin on; it just takes a minute or two longer. The skin will peel right off after cooking.)
5. When pan is hot, use a hot pad to pull out the pan from the heat and place salmon on it, skin side down. Return to broiler. Keep in mind that it is cooking rapidly on both sides so it will be done very quickly (usually about 7 minutes for every inch of thickness.

Serves 4 For optimum flavor and nutrition serve with:

• Cucumber, Seaweed Salad

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In-Depth Nutritional Profile for 5 Spice Salmon
Healthy Food Tip

Can I eat shrimp everyday?

Wild shrimp and organically farmed shrimp are nutrient-rich and low in calories-two of the reasons that we included shrimp on our website as a World's Healthiest Food. It's also very unusual to find a food that is rich in the same combination of nutrients as shrimp-selenium, vitamin D, and vitamin B12. Because this particular list of nutrients is often deficient in the U.S. diet, shrimp could play a unique role by "filling in the gaps" for all three nutrients all at once.
Shrimp is also a good seafood to include in a Healthiest Way of Eating since many varieties are very low in mercury levels, good news for those who are looking to enjoy seafood but reduce their exposure to this contaminant. In its excellent 2007 report (Sunderland EM. Mercury Exposure from Domestic and Imported Estuarine and Marine Fish in the U.S. Seafood Market. Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 115, Number 2), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined wild-caught shrimp to have an average of .03-.04 ppm (parts per million) of mercury. I classify any fish with mercury content lower than .1 ppm level as a fish with "very low" mercury since this level is 1/10th of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Action Level for mercury in fish and shellfish.
All of that being said, and even if a person was deficient in selenium, vitamin D, and vitamin B12, I would not recommend eating shrimp every day. We don't know enough about any individual food-or any specific food combinations-to know that constant consumption of a single food is better than variety and rotation of foods within the Healthiest Way of Eating. But we have plenty of evidence to suggest that variety is your best bet when it comes to the World's Healthiest Foods.
The other concern about shrimp is that they do contain cholesterol. Four ounces of cooked shrimp contains about 220 milligrams of cholesterol. For some people, this isn't an issue, but for others it is. Therefore, I would suggest that while you may want to include wild shrimp or organically farmed shrimp as a healthy addition to your Healthiest Way of Eating, you might want to not include it every day. I think it is better to alternate it with other nutrient-rich protein sources such as other types of seafood or legumes/beans.
For more information on this topic, see:

• Shrimp
• Weight loss diet

If you have any questions about today's Healthy Food Tip Ask George Your Question