peppers – Clinical Alimentary

Ratatouille is a really healthy dish and the best way to make it is to roast each of the vegetables separately. This might appear to be a bit of a faff, but it does ensure that you can taste all the individual flavours in the dish. It is a dish for those days where you feel like pottering about in the kitchen and have time to prepare a meal. I find cooking relaxing and I enjoy it – but it is also worth mentioning that some people don’t enjoy it at all and find meal preparation a chore, there is tinned ratatouille available but most will contain onion which is a fructan’s, so if you can tolerate fructan’s by all means have the tinned variety instead. (I don’t have an issue with tinned vegetables – they are perfectly acceptable and contain good sources of nutrition.)

The above infographic from Compound Interest https://www.compoundchem.com/ shows the colours of peppers and how this develops with ripening. Yellow and red peppers are the sweetest so are best for this recipe. Note that I have not removed any of the skins from the roasted pepper – this is what I would call a faff and why would you want to remove a source of fibre from the dish? The Mediterranean diet is good for health and this classic French provencale dish is a Mediterranean stew that ticks all the boxes.

Ingredients

1 courgette
1 aubergine
2 packs of mini sweet peppers or 300g yellow or red bell peppers
1 tin tomatoes
1/4 teaspoon of asafoetida
3 tablespoons oil
1 tablespoon dried oregano
a few springs of fresh thyme (or a tablespoon on dried)
1 teaspoon of sugar
Salt

Method

Wash the vegetables and chop
Add each vegetable to it’s own tray, drizzle with olive oil, thyme sprigs and season with salt.
Add the trays to the oven and roast until soft on gas mark 6/200 degrees C. Watch carefully to avoid burning.
Whilst the vegetables are roasting add a tablespoon of oil to a pan and fry the asafotida for a few seconds to release the onion flavour then add the tin of plum tomatoes and mash them. Add the teaspoon of sugar to reduce the acidity of the dish and then add the oregano. Reduce the tomatoes by boiling to a half in volume.
Combine all the ingredients and serve.
Serves 4 and tastes lovely with fish!

Please watch and share ‘Living well with IBS’ (irritable bowel syndrome), a film made by Vicky Grant, a researcher at the University of Sheffield, and Gemma Thorpe, a professional filmmaker. Vicky has lived with IBS for over 30 years; here she talks about her experiences and the experiences of others, as portrayed through the storytelling workshops she runs through the Knowing as Healing project.

One of the recipes developed for the video is the one below – a perfect choice for meatless Monday!

Ingredients

150g of wheat free couscous
200ml of boiling water
60g of green olives
60g of hazelnuts*
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of mild paprika
10-12 strands of fresh coriander
Grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
4 slices of wheat free seeded bread
4 teaspoons of garlic infused oil
Five orange peppers.
Salt to taste.

Weigh out the maize couscous and add the boiling water and cover – leave to stand for 5 minutes.

Add the oil to a pan and add chopped hazelnuts and add cumin, cinnamon and mild paprika and toast the nuts.

Mix the nuts and spices with the couscous and add chopped olives.

Wash and cut the peppers in half fill each with the couscous.

Crumb the bread and add lemon and fresh coriander and sprinkle this mix on the top of each pepper.

Use aluminium foil to cover the peppers while they cook and cook till pepper is soft 20-10 minutes at gas mark 5 or 190°C. Remove aluminium foil for the last 5 minutes to toast the breadcrumbs. Watch out for other recipes soon!

*Hazelnuts do contain some FODMAP but are used in very small amounts in the recipe – if you wish you can omit them if problematic or if you are on the exclusion part of the diet.

Serves 10 – serve with some Low FODMAP salad as a light lunch