You can also view shorter videos of Chef Hensel creating the meal’s individual components:

Salad, Grain, Salmon, Carrots, and Dessert.

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Transcript

-Hello all, Executive Chef Chris Hensel at UT Southwestern in Dallas. We have some fun, heart healthy recipes for the new year that you can enjoy at home. Me and my colleagues will be having some fun making 'em for you today.

- I'm Amy Denbow, I am a registered dietitian here at UT Southwestern Medical Center, and I'm the clinical nutrition manager. So, I love the menu for today. It has just a really great variety of heart healthy fats, antioxidants, fiber.

- [Chris] Gonna start with the salad. Craisins and almonds and a couple of different greens, a mushroom farro, which is an ancient grain. Then we're gonna move into the main entree, which is a Pacific salmon, some glazed carrots, and then we'll finish it up with some fresh berries with the local honey and a little bit of Greek yogurt.

- I love the salad dressing recipe today, too. It kinda just encompasses that principle that whenever you make it yourself, and make it fresh, it's usually gonna be a little bit healthier for your heart.

- We're gonna start with our cranberry vinegarette. We're gonna start with a half a cup of cranberry juice, any kind's fine, red wine vinegar, one and a half ounces, approximately a tablespoon. Garlic, whole, chopped, just the minced kind. About a clove or so, a couple of one-half ounces blueberries. We're gonna put it in the dressing and we're gonna sprinkle a little bit on the salad, too. Then you're gonna put a little Dijon mustard, honey, if you want, instead of the sugars, and then finish with a little salt and pepper. And then, we're gonna whisk that up into a little bit of a slurry. Kind of mush out the blueberries into a nice little emulsification. As you can see, it froths up nice. So if we put this into a glass, and then we can serve that on our salad. Now we're gonna prepare our salad. So just your normal bagged romaine will be fine, and then the spring greens. There's a ton of different kinds out there. Alex is gonna get in here and help me a little bit with the chopping or the chiffonade of the basil, and we're gonna do thin little strips. We're gonna put a little bit of almonds on top. We, about 350 for about 3-4 minutes, to get a nice brown on 'em. You're gonna take that chiffonade of basil and just sprinkle that a little bit around. What we like is the blueberry. Then we're gonna just put on there a little feta, and we're gonna put a little bit of tropical goodness on top, too. We're gonna finish it off with that cranberry, blueberry vinegarette. We're gonna mix that up just a little bit, and just drizzle that around a little bit. Enjoy. Alright, Alex is gonna show you now how to do the farro. So we're starting off with a little bit of olive oil. He's gonna first put in the onions and the mushrooms. And we're gonna just kind of get these sauteing real quick. Now we're gonna add the farro in. A little salt, little pepper, kosher salt, and a little black pepper. Let that go just another minute. The farro can be boiled, it can be steamed, it can be cooked in this pan. Gonna add a little bit of chopped parsley. You could add cilantro, if you want another herb. And then the final thing is, we'll add in toasted almonds. Mix that around. And we got it.

- The salmon, especially, I love the Omega-3s in that. Those just really can, have been shown to help reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke in some patients. And just helping to overall reduce the cholesterol levels in the blood.

- We're gonna mix in the cinnamon, the cumin, and the chili powder in a bowl with the lemon and the brown sugar. A little salt, little pepper. Mix that all up and then we're gonna basically rub the salmon with it. Easiest way, one side a little bit, and then you can just rub it on and get it ready for the saute. You just put a little bit more of the pan spray in there. So as this is going, and we've got it in the nice, hot oil, keep your pan moving. You want to keep that crust going, shaking back and forth. So let's give that a flip-over. So he's got a nice little char on there. It's gonna take approximately two, two and a half, three minutes on each side to get this nice caramelization on the crust. Another way you can do that pan seared salmon is on your barbecue, or the char-broiler. So we're gonna leave that on for about two to three minutes on each side. Alright, for the finish of the salmon, what we're gonna do is just do our little topping. So we're gonna use fresh orange wedges, the ruby-red grapefruit, keep that sucker goin'. Watch out for flames, it's gonna flame on you. So, there we go. There's some nice flame. So at home if this happens, don't freak out. If it's really scary, just keep your pan nice and low. We're gonna give that a little shake. Add a little salt and pepper. We're gonna add a little bit more lemon zest, which was in that, that rub that we made earlier, and we're gonna turn it off and take it off. It is done.

- [Amy] A healthy diet is huge in reducing risk factors for so many diseases out there.

- [Chris] Fingers are in. Little knife technique. He's cuttin' that up. Once we get those cut, then we'll move it to the stove, and we'll keep it going. Little bit of pan spray. She's going to use olive oil in this recipe. So we're gonna start, get that nice and hot. Michelle's gonna add the carrots. We're gonna cook those. Probably gonna, you're gonna cook those for a good two to three minutes. Just so they get nice and soft and tender. So a little bit of the sriracha on there. Now we're gonna add the garlic, brown that up little bit. We added about a tablespoon, a teaspoon, or about two cloves of fresh. And that's how we look.

- [Amy] Blackberries and blueberries actually have some of the highest concentrations of antioxidants out of common fruits and vegetables. So it makes it another great healthy option.

- Now we're gonna start with our fresh berry parfait. This is Michelle. She is our other Executive Chef at UT Southwestern. And we're starting off by quartering up some fresh strawberries. We're gonna kind of just layer this in there a little bit and then she's gonna add the blackberries and blueberries. It's a very simple, you can use any kind of fruit that you want. She's putting in there probably a few ounces of each. First, we're gonna drizzle it with the honey, and a dollop of Greek yogurt. Away you go. Enjoy. So we're gonna put a little bit of the farro on first. Think of it as a, this is a plate within a plate. So we're building a little bit of a picture there. Now we're gonna put our salmon, put that right across, and we'll finish that up with the sliced sriracha carrots. Just fan those out a little bit. And our favorite is add just a nice little flower at the end, and we're gonna be good to go. Alright, thank you all. Enjoy. Let us know how you do.

- What I love about today's meal, too, is that it really just shows how you can create a meal that looks really fancy and appetizing, and is great for the whole family, but also, doesn't have to take all day to make.