As the weather gets colder, people enjoy eating warm and hearty dishes to combat the cold and warm up, and the home-cooked dish "Dongbei Luandun" (Northeastern Stew) is perfect for this.
Today's "Dongbei Luandun" features ingredients like tomatoes, eggplants, pumpkins, green peppers, green beans, cabbage, and potatoes, along with mushrooms and tofu puffs that are characteristic of Northeast China. It's a nutritionally balanced dish that many housewives know how to make.
With nearly ten different ingredients in just one dish, it highly aligns with the nutritional principle of dietary diversity. Moreover, the variety of colors—red tomatoes, purple-blue eggplants, orange-yellow pumpkins, green peppers and green beans, white cabbage and potatoes, and black mushrooms—also fits the healthy nutrition concept of eating 5 to 7 different colored foods daily.
Generally, vitamin C in food is sensitive to heat and easily destroyed, making it unsuitable for stewed dishes. However, tomatoes contain a special enzyme that minimizes the degradation of vitamin C during cooking. Additionally, tomatoes are rich in lycopene, a fat-soluble compound that is better absorbed and utilized by the body when heated and in the presence of oil. Therefore, adding tomatoes to this stew is an ideal match.
Particularly noteworthy in this dish is the purple-blue eggplant. Among all colored foods, purple-blue ones have the strongest antioxidant effects. They are unparalleled in helping to alleviate stress, delay or even reverse certain types of damage to the aging brain, and improve memory. You should therefore add more purple-blue foods to your diet. More remarkably, both tomatoes and eggplants contain a remarkably high amount (700 micrograms) of bioflavonoids. Bioflavonoids can prevent the oxidation of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), help slow the tendency for blood platelets to clot, and strengthen the arteries and capillaries in the heart. They regulate blood pressure and heart function, help prevent heart disease and stroke, inhibit the spread of cancer cells, prevent cataracts, and increase the strength of capillaries to prevent their rupture, leakage, and bleeding. Those with easily damaged or bruised skin, varicose veins, bleeding gums, nosebleeds, women with a history of habitual miscarriages, and those suffering from hemorrhoids should consume these foods regularly.
In this "Dongbei Luandun," the lycopene from tomatoes, the beta-carotene from pumpkins, the bioflavonoids from tomatoes and eggplants, and the vitamin C from green peppers are all powerful antioxidants. The mushrooms are rich in B vitamins and minerals, and the tofu puffs provide high-quality protein. This combination offers a variety of nutrients and antioxidants, greatly benefiting the enhancement of the body's immunity and resistance.