Tag: Digestive Disorders

It’s National Barbecue Week!

How about trying a vegan low fodmap burger during National Barbecue Week! This is a very tasty vegan burger that is not too hard on the digestive tract for people with IBS.

Ingredients

120g of cooked red and white Quinoa

1 chopped roasted red pepper

30g chopped peanuts

1 courgette

4-5 sprigs chopped fresh thyme

2 teaspoons of garlic infused oil

Salt + Pepper to taste

Method

Grate the courgette finely and squeeze out the excess water from the vegetable

Mix all ingredients together

The burgers are delicate, so it is better to put them on a square of greased foil to cook them on the barbecue.

Using a crumpet ring or metal cutter, place the cutter on the foil then fill to the rim with recipe mix and press mixture together, then remove the cutter to leave a circular burger.

Cook on the barbecue till fully cooked through – remember disposable barbecues take longer to warm up and cook food.

once cooked place them in a vegan gluten free, pitta or wrap.

Serve with skewered roasted green peppers.

Makes 3-4 burgers

Enjoy!

Food safety is really important when having a barbecue to prevent food poisoning – often a cause of IBS please see the link for food standards agency for further details on how to keep your friends and family safe http://www.food.gov.uk/news-updates/campaigns/barbecue

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Easy like Sunday morning

Fancy a cooked breakfast occasionally and finding that your IBS symptoms are getting in the way? Then perhaps try this version, which is lower in fat than a ‘good old fry up’ and lower in fodmaps and therefore shouldn’t be too hard on your digestive system. Choose a wheat free bread that is <3g/100g of total fat, if you can. If you choose a bread that is lower in fat you can save calories, help your symptoms and the dish would come in at around 320 Kcal per portion – not too bad for a tasty breakfast! The added herbs gives the dish a nice flavour and added some vibrancy to the dish. If you choose a different aged ham or salami then check the label to ensure it doesn’t contain any fodmaps such as onion and garlic and is a lean meat. I found I didn’t need to add any salt to this dish as the ham provided plenty.

Ingredients

1 slice of wholegrain wheat free bread

1 slice of Serrano ham (trim any excess fat)

1 egg

Chives and thyme to serve.

Method

Add the bread to a plate and top with the Serrano ham, you can warm the bread and ham if you wish before you use it, but I didn’t bother.

Dry fry the egg or use a little 1 Kcal spray oil to the pan if you don’t have a non stick frying pan.

Cook the egg – then add on the top of the ham and sprinkle with chopped herbs. This works just as well with poached egg or scrambled – depending on your preference! Serves one.

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Pickled vegetables – Low Fodmap

I am a real fan of Ottolenghi’s work, his recipes are delicious, but unfortunately they do contain lots of ingredients high in Fodmaps, so not that great for people with IBS. This weekend however was a bit different – a recipe suitable for the Low Fodmap diet was published in the Guardian magazine. I have tweaked it a little, because I feel that if you are posting a recipe it needs to be referenced to the original source and modified – this is the only time I have, so far. The recipe was for pickled baby turnips – I have added baby turnips and radishes (for colour) and a little Worcestershire sauce into the pickle mix. This mix will last a few days in the fridge but no longer, as thorough sterilizing techniques have not been employed.

Ingredients

Pack of baby turnips (you can use standard turnip around 200g chopped)

5-6 Radishes

1/4 of a carrot spiraled and cut into short lengths

1 stick of fresh turmeric (you can use powdered but this will likely cloud the pickle liquor)

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

2 teaspoons of granulated sugar

120ml White wine or rice vinegar

175ml Water

1 teaspoon of salt

Method

Chop the turnips and radish into quarters, wash thoroughly.

Pour the water, Worcestershire sauce and vinegar into the pan and add the sugar.

Warm and dissolve the sugar and heat to a rolling boil.

Take off the heat and cool. Add the vegetables, turmeric and salt.

Add to a jar and refrigerate.

These vegetables taste great with cold cuts of meat – don’t be too concerned that they contain a little sugar to counteract the sharpness of the vinegar. You will not be eating the pickling liquor, so it is really not a great amount of sugar that you will be adding into your diet.

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Chocolate, Courgette and Pecan Cake – Low Fodmap, gluten free

It’s Bank holiday weekend and as usual the weather is dismal, at least it’s not snowing like last week – time for some baking to lift the mood. How about a cake with some vegetables? Not something you fancy? It is worth trying this cake, the courgette adds some moisture to the gluten free cake and you really can’t taste it – so why not give it a try? Now as usual this cake is for a treat only, despite it containing a vegetable 😉 – I am not suggesting you have cake every day – neither am I suggesting you be a total nutrition evangelist and avoid it for the rest of your life. It is not too sweet and very rich in flavour, so a small piece is all you will need to get a chocolate hit. It does contain a large amount of fat too, it would still be classed as high fat, if you have IBS, again a small piece is advisable. This gluten free option is certainly not going to lead to weight loss! It is a great option for a celebration, so you can share it with others and not be tempted to have more than one piece!

Ingredients

  • 250g of plain gluten free flour
  • 200g icing sugar
  • 65g of good quality cocoa powder
  • 2 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda
  • 1 tablespoon of baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon of salt
  • 4 eggs
  • 350 ml of vegetable oil
  • 100g pecan nuts
  • 2 grated courgettes

Method

  • Warm the oven to gas mark 4, line a cake tin with parchment.
  • Grate the courgette.
  • Chop 50g of the pecan nuts and add to a bowl.
  • The other 50g of pecans, save for decorating, choose the best looking ones.
  • Weigh out the dry ingredients into the bowl containing the pecan nuts.
  • Crack the eggs into a bowl and add the oil, mix well.
  • Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix using a hand blender.
  • Add the courgettes.
  • Mix well.
  • Add to a 7inch cake tin lined with parchment.
  • Cook in the oven for 90 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the cake comes out clean.
  • Trim the top of the cake flat and turn it over for decorating.
  • Add some sugar to a pan and cook till it caramelizes, dip in the pecans and cool.
  • Add the rest of the caramel to the top of the cake and cool.
  • Serves 10-12

If you are a coeliac check your cocoa powder, baking powder and and bicarbonate of soda is gluten free. The cake is low fodmap but occasionally people with IBS can have a problem with chocolate despite this fact. It is very difficult to provide an ‘IBS’ friendly recipe that will suit absolutely everyone. If anyone tells you different be suspicious, IBS can result in numerous food intolerances, remember only 70-80% are successful with the low fodmap diet, suggesting that other food might be problematic for some – or food isn’t actually the problem.

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Cod with caper and olive sauce

Flavourings such as capers can be included on the Low Fodmap diet and are especially important when onion and garlic are not available in the range of flavours that can be used to develop dishes. Capers are a delicate taste and one that I certainly did not appreciate when I was younger. I remember very well taking a jar of capers to a party when I was a teenager and not one person who attended the party liked them. But perhaps this was because I had stated to absolutely everyone in my eagerness – taste these, aren’t they really disgusting? Perhaps this preconditioned everyone else that of course capers are MEANT to taste dreadful, perhaps not too surprising that everyone else thought so. However when we are younger we have more taste buds therefore we taste more acutely and this is thought to be as a result of the higher energy needs of children enabling them to prefer and seek out energy dense foods. Bitter and sour notes in food are avoided – we only start to appreciate bitter notes in food when we are in our early twenties. As my taste has developed as I have aged I now really relish capers – they go rather well with fish and are better eaten warm and add a depth of flavour. I noted a very similar effect of olives, and do now love their saltiness and rich flavour. We also can develop aversions to foods and food aversion might be psychologically conditioned – a learned behaviour. If we experience sickness during a time when we are eating we can develop a strong aversion to that food, it is common that people undergoing chemotherapy can develop aversions to food. This can happen if strong negative emotions are developed during eating also, the food a ‘reminder’ of the episode therefore avoided.

Development of taste matures as we age, capers are an acquired taste, but one that will expand the range of dishes available to people following the Low Fodmap diet. Taste is a very complex sense – why not challenge yours and make this recipe?

Ingredients

2 pieces of white fish

1 egg

Gluten free flour for dusting

2 tablespoons of capers

1 Lemon (juice only)

1 tablespoon of oil

1 tablespoon of green olives

Salt and pepper to taste

(serve with steamed kale and new potatoes.)

Method

Mix the egg with a fork and add to a flat plate, add the flour to another flat plate with a small amount of salt and pepper.

Dip the fish fillets into the egg first, then the flour.

Fry in a small amount of oil till the flour is golden and then remove the fish fillets and cook for ten minutes in an oven till cooked through (timings will depend on how thick the fillets are.)

Add capers, olives and the juice of the lemon to the pan and warm through. You should not need to add salt to this sauce as the olives and capers add plenty of saltiness to the dish

Serve the fish and pour over the capers and olives, serve with green vegetables (I used kale) and boiled new potatoes in their skins for added fibre.

Enjoy!

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Rhubarb cordial

Rhubarb is one of my favourite vegetables – yes you heard right – it is a vegetable, a stalk, but with a glorious colour and taste. It marries very well with ginger. Rhubarb has an anecdotal use as a laxative in herbal and Chinese traditional medicine but paradoxically it is also suitable for a low fodmap diet. The leaves contain high levels of oxalic acid and are toxic so not to be consumed but the stalks are very popular around the Calder valley – perhaps because we are not too far from the rhubarb triangle.

What about the chemistry of rhubarb – well Andy Brunning of Compound Interest has produced the following excellent graphic.

The-Chemistry-of-Rhubarb

I can find no RCTs for the use of rhubarb as a laxative or its use to assist in ameliorating any symptoms in IBS so I can only assume that the anecdotes are just that but the information in the graphic is very interesting, non the less. But what about recipes – to make a rhubarb cordial and puree see the recipe below which makes around a pint of cordial.

400g of rhubarb

1 inch stick of ginger

Adequate water to cover the rhubarb in a pan

Sugar or sweeteners (not polyol based) to individual taste.

Wash and slice the rhubarb stalks, peel and chop the ginger and add to a small pan. Cover with water and cook till very soft. Add sugar (I used just enough to remove the tart taste.) Pass through a sieve or blend. then cool and add to a bottle – I used the one in the image it once contained rhubarb liqueur. The pureed rhubarb that remains in the sieve can be used to add to lactose free yoghurt as a breakfast fruit puree. Store the cordial in the fridge – you can either drink it cold or warm. Sweeteners will work just as well in the cordial and for those ‘nutrition evangelists’ that decry sweeteners as toxic- we have NO evidence that they are harmful and if they are used to reduce energy consumption for weight management or for diabetes management, then that surely has to be a benefit?

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