I’ve travelled numerous times to “blue zones” – places on our planet where the chances of living to be over 100 are highest. Examples of such zones are the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, the Japanese island of Okinawa, the Greek island of Ikaria and the eastern mountain regions of Sardinia.

In the book, The Blue Food (currently only available in Swedish), chef Niklas Ekstedt and I explain the health secrets of the people living in the blue zones. 

The steamed crispy vegetables with olive oil and nuts is just one of our so called “blue zone recipes”. We’ll leave it up to you if you want to serve this recipe as a full dinner, a snack or as side dish to fish.

Steamed, Crispy Vegetables with Olive Oil and Nuts
(4 servings)

2 heads of broccoli
1 cauliflower head
1 head of romanesco
1 pointed cabbage (a.k.a sweetheart cabbage)
1 cup of spinach
1 lemon, grated peel and juiced
1 pinch sea salt
¼ cup pistachio nuts
¼ cup olive oil

Boil plenty of salted water in a large saucepan. Clean and cut broccoli, cauliflower and romanesco into bouquets, and then cook the vegetables in the salted water about 1 minute (the center should still be crispy). Cool in ice water. Do not pour out the salted water! Clean the pointed cabbage (remove the outermost leaves if they are not fresh). Boil the entire cabbage in the same salted water for about 1 minute. Remove the cabbage and place it in ice water. Pull off the outermost layers that are softly cooked, set them aside and then repeat the process until the whole head is picked.

Rinse the spinach. Boil ¼ cup of water, lemon juice and grated lemon zest in a wide saucepan. Add in all the vegetables and continue steaming under the lid until they are warm. Drizzle olive oil over and serve with chopped pistachios and sea salt.

This is a guest post. The opinions expressed are the writer’s own.