Prawn stir fry

A fairly regular contributor to my FODMAP free diet has been the prawn. This recipe is light and tasty and simple - curry leaves are amazingly easy to find if you've got your eyes open for Asian supermarkets/stores. Buy a batch and then freeze. They work just fine, and you can crumble them easily if you're inclined. Also, green peppercorns, same thing.

Again, I'm using the frozen ginger because I was heading to bed early for yesterday's Day Of Running Around. Plus, I needed the skin on my thumbs. (I'm not good with graters)
 
This was supposed to make enough for one but it actually ended up being two's worth. Oops. Hubby had it sans prawns with his chicken.

Ingredients
Raw king prawns for two
1x courgette, cut into thin batons
1x yellow pepper, sliced
1x block of frozen ginger, or a half-inch of fresh ginger, grated with juices
1.5 tbsp fresh curry leaves
1x red chili, finely sliced
1x stem of green peppercorns
(if fancied - sprinkle of the Japanese quick seasoning Nanami Togarashi, which as far as I can tell is fairly FODMAP-friendly... please correct me if I'm wrong)

In a large chef's pan or wok, heat a little oil on a medium/high heat. Add the ginger and swizz around until melted, add the chillies, curry leaves and green peppercorns. When softened a little, add the courgettes. After a while, once they've sweated a little, add the peppers.

Continue to stir and when you're near the end of their cooking time, add the prawns. Keep folding and moving the contents until everything is cooked through and the prawns are good and pink.

If you fancied the seasoning, now's the time and a couple more stirs. Otherwise, you're done.

Lazy, cheat suppertime

I've just had the LONGEST day. A terrible night's sleep, up at 5.30 and on feet till 6pm running through and around a London cultural landmark. I'm SHATTERED.

So with a near-empty fridge, I've just knocked up a 30min meal mostly made up of ignoring.

It was YUMMY.

4x wheat and diary-free frozen fishfingers (Sainsburys)
8 leaves of sage
Three parsnips
Handful capers
Olive oil

Put chopped parsnips in pan with water, bring to boil and cook until soft, drain and set aside. Put some oil in the pan you just used in readiness.

Meanwhile, in a frying pan, add olive oil and heat, add sage until spitting, remove sage and set aside whilst adding fishfingers. Turn frequently.

Turn the other pan on, and add capers for a while. Swizz around.

Using a hand blender, blend the parsnip and add a little oil for blade movement. Put onto your plate and drizzle the caper oil over it. Pepper on top.

When fishfingers are cooked, plate up next to sage.

Add grown-up ketchup.

Put on jumper husband refers to as 'posh slanket'. Consume in front of Buffy with glass of alcohol because it's been *that* sort of day.

Thoughts on adjusting a favourite.

I have a favourite staple, fall-back recipe. If people come over, I can make it with my eyes half-shut, and if I need any ingredient I can be sure to find it at the nearest corner shop. I can have conversations whilst making it and everything.

I love the recipe so much, that on our wedding day the order of service we'd made had the recipe on the back (as well as the other half's famous truffle one). Friends still make it. And, hilariously, it's not even mine. It's available all over this fair isle under the name of Penne alla Giardiniera at Carluccio's restaurants.

The problem is, it involves the following items:
1. Pasta, giant penne
Fixable - use wheat free. Not so easy to find giant penne in WF, but penne fine. Sorted.
2. Courgettes x2 grated
Win. I can have these, and I love them.
3. Butter x lots
Erm...
4. Red chillis x1
Ok, back on solid ground here. Fine.
5. Grada Padano cheese x LOADS
Ah.
6. Garlic. The original recipe says x4.
Bugger.

Do you see why I love it? You boil pasta, you get another pan with butter melted, chuck in chilli and garlic till soft then the courgette until soft. Drain pasta, add to pan with courgette, chuck in mountains of cheese, mix, serve. THAT'S IT. Add some pepper if you like.

So how the hell can I ever make this for myself again?

The magic of lemon, capers and olive oil turning buttery only seems to happen with the fish. It's nice with pasta, I'd definitely recommend it as a low FODMAP meal, but it's not the above party in your tummy.

I think it's the garlic and cheese that are the kickers.

So I'm on a bit of a mission to find a replacement simple-amazing pasta dish. I will note any progress.

Booze.

This is utterly irrelevant.

I'm not saying this wine will change your life. It won't. It's a perfectly serviceable rose* wine, and very pleasant when very cold. With savoury food it's maybe a little sweet. Might be nice for a picnic where you're heavy on the choux treats**, perhaps.

But - OH MY GOD ISN'T THE BOTTLE DESIGN TO DIE FOR.

At some point, I'm going to have to think of a way to display some of the more random bottles I've collected over the years. I'm sitting next to a bottle for rose syrup from an Indian supermarket in Tooting which doesn't seem to have had its design last amended since the late 40s.

It's technically food.

Carry on.

(*Blogger won't let me add an accent, I don't know what that's about...)
(**Damn it. Make that sorbet.)

Warming salmon

Spicy salmon with fresh greens

This one turned out surprisingly well. There was just one cheat involved, and that was a sudden craving for blue cheese. It's on the side, so you can ignore that. If you're really avoiding garlic, then I guess the chorizo would maybe present a problem, but it's small enough amounts not to bother me too much here. It's really for the flavouring - I've heard that garlic-infused oil can be a neat trick to get around the onion family issue, so I guess you could use that with some smoked paprika instead.

Ingredients (serves 2):

3x small uncooked chorizo (or half a proper one), sliced

2x salmon fillets, skin on

Thyme, a handful

Lemon half

2x pak choi, sliced

Spinach - 2-3 good handfuls

1x red pepper, sliced

1x red chilli, chopped without seeds

Sea salt (Maldon-style, not rock)

olive oil

Take the salmon fillets and rub thyme into both side of the fillet. Salt the skin side well (makes it crunchy!)

Add a good amount of olive oil to a medium frying pan (big enough to take 2 fish fillets!). When warm, add the chorizo and turn until just cooked and coloured - place the chorizo on a warm plate but keep the oil in the pan.

In a large saucepan (we have a 'chef's pan' - I have no idea what it is but it's brilliant for everything), add some olive oil and add the chilli when warm. When the chilli begins to soften, add the peppers and turn occasionally.

Back to the other pan. With the heat on and the oil hot, add the salmon flesh-side down. It will spit a little, but that's likely the thyme.

In the other pan, add the pak choi and remember to stir. Cover if possible between those stirs.

Turn the salmon over when the pale pink starts creeping up. The mission now is to let it cook through to the middle on the skin side, giving you crisp skin and a moist middle.

In the veg pan, add the spinach and a good squeeze of lemon. Stir occasionally. Turn off the heat when all are cooked with still a little crunch (note: depending on how good you are at timing, you may want to start the veg earlier, though this will make the veg softer, but that's nice too).

The salmon will be nearly done - chuck the chorizo back in for a quick warm and a brown. Put everything onto a plate and enjoy.

I also had a load of lemon and herb olives, so they got put on the plate too. And the naughty bit of blue cheese.

Magic butter fish with NO BUTTER. And courgettes.

So, here's one that's become a staple for me. It's basically corgettes and white fish, but it comes out buttery and delicious, despite involving no dairy at all. Clever. I usually cook it all in one pan which works out really well for flavour, keeps the fish moist, and saves on washing up too.

The Courgette (or zucchini) bit
Glug of olive oil (a little extra virgin olive oil added in makes it richer)
2x courgettes, grated
1tsp of pulped ginger (I use the little frozen blocks)
Half tsp of chopped red chilli
goodly sprinkle of capers to taste
Fresh lemon half

In a large pan on a medium heat, heat the olive oil until warm then add the ginger, chilli and capers. When they've infused the oil well (but not taken any colour) add the courgette. Swish around, and leave for a minute, before swishing around again. Add a small squeeze of lemon and set the remaining lemon aside - you'll need it for the fish. The courgettes will begin to appear glassy and take up less of the space, and that's time to add the fish to the pan (if you're cooking the together, of course).

The fish bit
White fish fillet (I used cod as it's on offer - but sustainably sourced apparently. Haddock and tilapia would work too)
Smoked paprika

Add the fillet to the pan, and sprinkle some smoked paprika on top. Add a squeeze of the lemon, and give the top side a little rub. Remember to keep turning the courgette alongside (though if it browns, it's actually more tasty, just less pretty). When you begin to see the opaqueness creep up the sides of the fillet, turn over and repeat the smoked paprika/lemon process. The fish is cooked when you try to pick it up and fail - it should end up moist, almost still a little glassy inside, flaky and by no means dry. Don't let it overcook!

Transfer the lot to a plate, and consume together. And be surprised. Because some kind of magic happens and it tastes like buttery sauce has been sneaked in there somewhere.

Magic.

Note: the photo is a temporary one from my phone - I'll be making it again soon and will take some proper photos! I also had some polenta that day and some roast tomatoes.

Whoops.

I've been very neglectful of this blog, but I do have a fairly good reason.

In February I went for a run. Before I started it in earnest, I slipped on a decorative bridge. I got a nasty bruise and a bit of a limp. A week later the pain became excruciating, and I took myself off to hospital. It turned out I had torn the cartilage in my left knee, and needed an arthroscopy. I got stitched up, then spent the following weeks doing physio exercises and not much else.

Then I went on honeymoon.

So now I'm back, and will continue to list the recipes as and when I find a new one. I've got a couple to add from before, so I'll start with these.

Sorry about that.

Fish fail

Well, I'll post both the successes and failures. This *should* have worked, but I used far too much ginger - though the fish flaked up nicely.

Ingredients:
Fillet of white fish (I used cod, responsible type, mind, but I reckon any white fish would do), sliced thickly
Pak choi
Red pepper
Ginger sliced into fine matchsticks (amount to taste)
Oil
Five spice (husband usually makes from scratch, but packet today, which meant fennel seeds - technically suspects)

Wok fry the ginger in a little oil, before throwing in the peppers. Whizz them around then chuck in the pak choi, repeat whizz, then sprinkle over as much Five Spice as you like. After a while of folding the mix over the heat, chuck the fish in and continue turning. As the fish cooks it will flake and mix around the veg. Once cooked, remove from heat and serve hot.

Note: stop cooking the moment the fish appears opaque, preferably a little before. You want juicy, flaky bits, not dried out fried clumps...

The beginning.

Whilst this diet is new to me, the experience isn't.

When I was a kid, I used to get a lot of tummy ache. Not the slight grumble that meant you could try and cadge an afternoon off lessons for the school nurse, but the kind that got me sent home from looking so peaky. This all changed when I was 11.

I swear it was in a Geography lesson, and I do not have a clue why they would show it in a Geography lesson or even why they'd even show it, but they did indeed show us a video of a pig being slaughtered. In a Geography lesson. Obviously, being quite impressionable young things, everyone in the class became vegetarian overnight. Not many others stopped seeing the nurse as a result. Whilst my classmates were back in McD's in a week, I stuck with it, later stopping chicken in addition to the initial beef and pork. Whilst this frustrated the hell out of my mother, cooking two meals to suit my brother and I, it did stop my stomach aches. I stayed with fish and seafood because, to be frank, I'm not giving that up for anything. Ever.

So, skip forwards - uni years (ringing my best friend from halls to ask her how long to boil a potato through to cooking French rustic flatbread with caramelised onion topping in my third year) I'm still not eating meat, and as the brackets there showed, getting better at cooking.

As an aside, I met my husband. Who is an AWESOME cook. And food is our big thing - not quantity, but certainly not artfully arranged nonsense (though that has its place). No, good food, cooked fresh. Allegra McAvedy and Nigel Slater are the heroes of our house, and rightly so. So, food is desperately important to us. Which makes the next bit so hard.

About ten years later, the problems started again. I hadn't reintroduced the meat (well ok, chorizo occasionally, but seeing as I hate bacon, that's my only meaty weakness). I just started getting bloaty, painy, and many more unpleasant things I'd rather not go into just now. I get fobbed off by a few nurses, until out of spite (another time) I insist on seeing a doctor - who, as the last patient of the day, decides I'm a puzzle and asks me twenty minutes of questions. He decides to send me to a gastro specialist.

Examinations, cameras, blood tests and more lead us into the expected answer. IBS. Well, at least it's not coeliac, but instead of being sent on my merry way (as I'd half-suspected), I get given this:

PICTURE TO FOLLOW

It's terrifying. How do people live without garlic. Or onions. Or, for that matter, nearly everything on this list. And then I went online, and discovered some recently updated FODMAP dietary details. And they said no avocado (amongst other things, but this was my main takeaway from this, frankly).

So, here's a list of what you can't have. There's no definitive list of what you can, and what do you mean you want meal plans? And don't eat meat? And can't eat soya as part of this diet?

I decided, seeing as I've had a week on this diet, to start writing down all the recipes I've knocked up with what I can have on the exclusion part of the diet. In a week and a half I start I introducing the naughty list foods, to see what are actually triggers,and what things I will simply have to live without.

I love food, and I don't want to give that particular fancy up for anything.

I will start on this tomorrow - promise.

And now the responsible bit. For now, please note that there are several irresponsible articles online advising this for weight loss. No. This diet is not designed for that, it's to see how your digestive tract deals with having all known irritants removed. My doctor prescribed it. Seriously, I'm waiting for blood tests. This is official business, people.

But I sure would like to know what you're cooking with if you're having the same problems.