Bambuddha Leaves: Heart friendly finger food with asian pesto

A few years ago we had a short trip to San Francisco where a rather dry conference was brightened up massively by my bright-spark of a colleague suggesting that we all stay at the Hotel Phoenix. The Phoenix is a day-glo, 1950’s motel-style hotel famous for being the residence of choice for passing bands and other arty types. Such a hip venue was a little daunting at first (boy did I feel like I’d bought the wrong clothes) but the hotel had such a party atmosphere and the staff were so friendly that we had a fantastic time. Even more cool than the hotel was its then newly opened cocktail bar/restaurant, the Bambuddha Lounge. Numerous items from the asian-fusion menu were sampled but the thing that has stayed in my memory was the Eight Element Salad. A big bowl of finely chopped delicacies were mixed at the table, (I remember lime, ginger, garlic, chilli, peanuts, coconut and sesame seeds) and we were left with a pile of verdant greenery with which to parcel them up. The greenery was apparently la lop leaves and the end result was a very invigorating (and slightly surprising) mixture of crunchy, sweet, sour, fiery and citrus.

When Ilva and Joanna had the splendid idea to host an event on heart friendly finger food I was immediately filled with enthusiasm; heart health is such a vital part of nutrition and choosing what to eat that I’ve hardly got a post that doesn’t mention it in some way! After my initial giddiness I realised that for all my healthy-eating talk I actually had very little in the way of finger food in my repertoire. Surely such a worthy event deserved better than my usual standby nibble of chopped veg and houmous? After a bit of pondering I decided to create a heart-friendly homage to that eight-element salad; soft spinach leaves filled with a vibrant asian pesto and topped with fresh spring onion, pepper and cucumber. I still have no idea what a la lop leaf is (I’m pretty sure you can’t get them round my way) but a humble spinach leaf is more than up to the job and creates a pleasing boat shape, curling safely round its cargo when you pick it up.

Until a few years ago we thought that the key to a healthy heart was to eat low-fat. Eating less fat is still an important part of the picture but we now know that it is the combination of fats in your diet that makes a huge difference the levels of artery clogging LDL (bad) cholesterol in your blood. Saturated fat is out, polyunsaturated fat not so great (though useful when it comes from oily fish) which leaves monounsaturated fat as the flavour of the day. So, all those saturated fat rich finger foods (pastries, crisps, cheeses, charcuterie) should be making way for nibbles based monounsaturated fats (nuts, seeds, olives, olive oil). These little beauties will hopefully go someway to redress the balance; the fat in them is from the olive oil and cashew nuts, both choc full monounsaturated fat. Replacing saturated fat with monounsaturated fat in this way helps to lower the aforementioned ‘bad’ cholesterol levels. And then of course there are all those veggies in there which are also busy lowering cholesterol levels at the same time as providing antioxidants (also anti-artery clogging) as well as helping to keep your blood pressure nice and low. Phew.

I was pleased to see that Illva and Joanna have put really high quality links on the blog they have set-up to host this event (including the American Heart Association, British Heart Foundation, British Nutrition Foundation). There’s a lot of rubbish out there! All of this stuff with fats etc is particularly confusing and hard to keep up with so I’d like to add another suggestion if I may; the Food Standard’s Agency has some very easy to digest information on its Eat Well Be Well site.

I hope you enjoy these if you try them! Getting rid of any leftover pesto is no chore; we’ve had ours with stirred through noodles, stir-fried veg and prawns and in a wrap with some leftover chicken. It should keep in the fridge for a few weeks – pour a little bit of oil over the top to keep it fresh.