Tag: #dairy-free

Potato Wedges

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Potato Wedges by The Fat Foodie

Potato Wedges by The Fat Foodie

Fact: There’s nothing better than a homemade chip.

Second fact: Fried chips have been sold in Britain since 1854, but they’ve actually been eaten in British homes for centuries.

Third fact: Homemade chips taste way better than a frozen ready-prepared chip ever could.

Fourth fact: Homemade potato wedges are unbelievably easy to make. So, let me show you how…

I made my family lentil ragù the other night, but because I’m following the FODMAP diet (to help manage my IBS better) it wasn’t suitable for me to eat. I was then faced with the decision about what I was going to make for my own dinner. I had a bag of potatoes in the fridge (which are fine to eat for FODMAP followers) so I figured that a plate of potato wedges would go down nicely while also serving as a nice side to go with the lentil ragù the family were having.

Potatoes are packed full of vitamins and minerals. In terms of vitamins, you’re talking about getting a healthy portion of vitamin C, E and K, B6, and folate. Their minerals include calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium and zinc. That’s better for you than a plateful of starchy wheat-based pasta any day, isn’t it really?

I had two varieties of potato in the fridge, not for a particularly exciting reason, it was just that they were left over from two separate bags of potatoes. My point is that the blend of two varieties lent a nice variation in texture and flavour to the potato wedges because some of them were really sweet and firm whereas others were dry and floury. For such a plain plate of food, it truly was a celebration of the humble potato.

I cut my potato wedges by hand with paring knife, but you can buy really clever potato chip makers produced by companies like Lakeland which make it really easy to make perfect chips. Equally, you could use a tool such as an Easy Grip Potato Slicer which is much cheaper and would give you uniformly cut potato wedges. I’m happy with oddly shaped, non-uniform potato wedges personally though, so I’ll just stick to using a plain old knife.

You don’t need me to tell you what to serve potato wedges with, but I had mine with a tin of mackerel in spicy tomato sauce and it was a delicious meal. The potato wedges had far more flavour to them than any frozen chips I’ve ever had (even the expensive upmarket ones). If you fancy more exciting potato wedges you could add a teaspoon of smoked paprika to your seasoning before you pop them in the oven which will give them a smokey, BBQ sort of flavour. Whether you pep up their seasoning or not, these potato wedges were sweet and crunchy around the edges, but soft and fluffy in the middle, just like any good potato wedges should be.

Ingredients:

Enough potatoes for the number of people you’re going to be feeding (I normally go with around 2 medium sized potatoes each)

Sunflower oil

Salt and pepper

Method:

Preheat your oven to 200C/180C Fan/400F/Gas mark 6.

Peel your potatoes and cut them through the middle into halves and then into wedges. I normally get around 8 wedges from a medium sized potato.

Place on a non-stick baking tray and coat them lightly with sunflower oil. (Only use enough so that they’re just lightly coated because you don’t want them swimming in oil.)

Season generously with salt and pepper and place in the oven.

Raw Potato Wedges About to be Baked by The Fat Foodie

Raw Potato Wedges About to be Baked by The Fat Foodie

Once your wedges are golden brown and soft when pierced with a fork, remove from the oven and serve.

Freshly Cooked Potato Wedges by The Fat Foodie

Freshly Cooked Potato Wedges by The Fat Foodie

Potato Wedges by The Fat Foodie

Potato Wedges by The Fat Foodie

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Beef Madras (serves 4)

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Beef Madras by The Fat Foodie

Beef Madras by The Fat Foodie

Now that spring is creeping in, with its sporadic sunny, but chilly days it’s tempting to get work done in the garden. However, I know fine well that if I’m going to be working in the garden all day the last thing I’ll feel like doing when I get in is cooking a decent meal from scratch. I think a hot bath to take the chill from my bones (helped along by a warming glass of wine or two) will be a much stronger calling. So it was with a great deal of foresight that I prepared this beef madras in the slow cooker before I headed outside the other day.

The beauty of using the slow cooker to cook a curry is that it allows the spicy flavours to permeate into the casserole beef throughout the whole day while the slow cooking process also tenderises the meat. As a result, you’ve got a wonderful meal to come home to after a hard day’s work with very little effort and minimal prep work involved.

Upon tasting this beef madras, I discovered that it was a bit on the spicy side for my family so I kept my (dairy-free) portion aside and added lactose-free double cream into the rest. I don’t mind quite a generous amount of heat in my curries, but the addition of the cream seemed to be a resounding success with my family because it tamped down the heat of the chilli in the curry while adding a luxurious richness. Equally, you could omit the madras curry powder and use a garam masala curry powder instead, which will add flavour, but not heat.

If you like meals that involve very little work to prepare and curries with plenty of body and flavour then this beef madras is definitely one for you to try.

Ingredients:

450g diced casserole beef
360g of tinned chopped tomatoes
2 tsps hot Madras powder
1 tsp (heaped) ground turmeric
2 vegetable stock cubes
1 tsp salt
200g red bell peppers (diced)
60g desiccated coconut
1/2 pot lactose-free double cream (optional)
Serve with basmati rice
Method:
Set your slow cooker on low and put the beef, chopped tomatoes and desiccated coconut in.
Put the stock, Madras curry powder, salt and ground turmeric in a jug and add around 100ml of hot water to it and stir before adding to the slow cooker. Stir until everything is mixed together.
Leave the beef madras to putter away all day. About twenty minutes before serving add your diced peppers. Taste to see if you need to add any more salt. Make your rice.
When you’re ready to eat, serve as it is or add double cream (or a dairy-free cream) if you feel it’s a bit too spicy or if you just want to make it richer.
Serve with rice, naan breads or poppadums and fresh coriander.
Beef Madras by The Fat Foodie

Beef Madras by The Fat Foodie

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Blueberry Muffins (makes 12)

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Blueberry Muffins by The Fat Foodie

Blueberry Muffins by The Fat Foodie

I really fancied a sweet breakfast muffin yesterday morning and after I remembered that I had frozen blueberries in the freezer I decided I’d make blueberry muffins. These are really easy to make and don’t take very long at all to cook, making them a real winner for a lazy Sunday morning ‘get up, make muffins, go back to bed to eat them with the Sunday papers’ kind of breakfast.

I don’t like blueberry muffins to be too sweet (especially breakfast muffins). There’s nothing worse than feeling as though you’re eating cake for breakfast as opposed to what is actually quite a healthy and nutritious bake. These blueberry muffins contain chia seeds which are packed with protein, fibre, iron, antioxidants and Omega-3 fats. The inclusion of blueberries also adds not only a healthy dose of vitamin C to the nutritional content of the muffins, but folate, potassium and fibre too. So, they’re not as guilt-inducing as you’d think and they’re certainly better for you than a lot of the sugary cereals that we’re all so familiar with.

I baked some of my blueberry muffins with sunflower seeds and some without, but I preferred the ones with the sunflower seeds on top because along with adding texture they added a lovely toasted nut flavour to the muffins. I’d love to experiment with these muffins in future. I’m particularly intrigued by the thought of trying them with fresh raspberries and brambles baked into them when the autumn bounty comes around.

These blueberry muffins are delicious enough and moist enough to be eaten on their own, but after tasting a bit of one I opted to have mine with vegan butter and jam. It’ll be entirely your own choice, but either way you’ll have a delicious breakfast muffin to tuck in to.

Blueberry Muffins by The Fat Foodie

Blueberry Muffins by The Fat Foodie

Ingredients:

200g gluten-free plain flour (I use Dove’s Farm G/F flour because it’s made with low FODMAP ingredients whereas many other gluten-free flours are made with high FODMAP options.)

100g brown sugar

1/2 tsp salt

100ml rice milk (or normal milk)

2 chia eggs (2 tbsps of chia seeds mixed with 6 tbsps of cold water and soaked for half an hour before using) (or 2 normal eggs)

1 tsp xanthan gum

1 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

200g blueberries (they don’t have to be frozen)

50g sunflower seeds

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200C/180C Fan/400F/Gas mark 6 and lay out 12 muffin cases in a muffin tin.

Keeping the blueberries and sunflower seeds aside, put all of the other ingredients in a large mixing bowl and whisk until combined.

Stir the blueberries into the mixture.

Divide the mixture between the 12 muffin cases and then sprinkle the sunflower seeds over the top of the muffins.

Bake for 30-35 mins or until a skewer poked into the middle of them comes out clean.

Leave to cool slightly before serving with butter (or vegan alternative) and jam.

Blueberry Muffins by The Fat Foodie

Blueberry Muffins by The Fat Foodie

Blueberry Muffins by The Fat Foodie

Blueberry Muffins by The Fat Foodie

Blueberry Muffins by The Fat Foodie

Blueberry Muffins by The Fat Foodie

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Dairy-Free Diet to Low FODMAP Diet

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The Fat Foodie

The Fat Foodie

Hello there!

I thought I’d add a little blog post here to update you on the progress of my dairy-free diet, or lack of progress on the dairy-free diet, which would be a more accurate description really. I went onto a dairy-free diet at the beginning of January in an attempt to try to get my IBS symptoms under control. My GP confirmed (through blood tests) a long time ago that I am allergic to dairy, so I knew that continuing to consume it wasn’t doing me any good. I figured that the continuing problem with IBS was being caused by my dairy consumption so I cut it out. With the exception of the occasional thing that I haven’t realised had milk powder in it, I’ve been dairy-free for a long while now, but the IBS remains.

A while ago I made the mistake of eating a generous portion of onion rings and was up all night ill. I’ll spare you the grisly details, but I was in a lot of discomfort to say the least. I’ve known for ages that onions were a problem for me to eat, but I’ve never really taken it seriously and have continued to use them in my cooking. However, after being ill all night I returned to bed with a cup of peppermint tea and decided that I needed to find answers as to why my body was having this reaction so frequently. At around 4am that morning I discovered the low FODMAP diet.

Monash University researchers discovered that in the majority of cases, IBS was triggered by particular types of carbohydrates called FODMAPs:

Fermentable: (In which the bacteria in your gut breaks down undigested carbohydrates to create gas)

Oligosaccharides: (which include Fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) which are found in wheat, rye, onions and garlic and Galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) which are found in legumes/beans and pulses)

Disaccharides: (found in lactose products, such as milk, cheese and yoghurts)

Mono-saccharide: (which is fructose, a carbohydrate found in honey, apples, and high fructose corn syrups)

and Polyols: (Sugar polyols, such as sorbitol and mannitol, which are found in some fruit and vegetables and are used as artificial sweeteners).

Now, I know that’s quite a lot of science to digest (pardon the pun), but bear with me.

I’ve mentioned before that I work in a book shop and since the beginning of the year I’ve occasionally put FODMAP diet books out on the shelves or sold them to customers, but they’ve been in such low quantities that I didn’t really take much notice of what they were or what the FODMAP diet was. Let’s be honest, there are so many diet books out there it’s unlikely that I’m going to look in depth at them all.

However, when I started looking into the low FODMAP diet in the early hours of the morning I realised that there could be something in it. Also, by that stage I was willing to give anything a try that could possibly stop my abdomen feeling like an end of season battle scene from Game of Thrones.

Essentially there are low FODMAP foods and high FODMAP foods. The low FODMAP foods contain carbohydrates which are easy for the body to digest, whereas the high FODMAP food carbohydrates cannot be digested properly and will therefore create diarrhoea and gas. Monash University suggests that under the supervision of a nutritionist you should dedicate two months to only eating low FODMAP foods. After that time period, high FODMAP foods can start to be introduced into the diet in small quantities to see how well your body can tolerate them.

I’m not doing the low FODMAP diet under a nutritionist, but I’ve been using The Complete Low-FODMAP Diet book which has been invaluable, as has The Low-FODMAP Diet Cookbook because it’s helped me discover meals that are suitable for me to eat. I’m also going to treat myself to Emma Hatcher’s book The FODMAP Friendly Kitchen Cookbook which came out at the beginning of the year and contains some amazing low FODMAP recipes. She also has her own blog She Can’t Eat What?! which has great low FODMAP recipes on it.

Monash University also have a FODMAP app that you can download which contains a brilliant explanatory guide, a comprehensive list of low and high FODMAP foods, a collection of low FODMAP recipes and a shopping list creator. I’ve found it very useful indeed. I also found this website which lists low FODMAP foods and high FODMAP foods (both of which correspond with the Monash FODMAP app at the time of writing).

My friends, at the time of writing this I’ve been on the low FODMAP diet for a week and I feel ten times better already. My constantly bloated, rumbling, painful tummy is starting to disappear, as have the painful IBS spasms that I put up with for so long. On the third day of being on the low FODMAP diet my partner woke up and said “Wow! Your stomach wasn’t making whale song noises all night long!”, to which I replied a curt, “Thanks, I think!”.

I guess the point of this post is simply to let you all know that from now on my food will continue to be dairy-free (because that’s a definite in my life now), but it’ll also be incorporating gluten-free, low FODMAP diet food too. But you can bet your bottom dollar it’ll still be damn tasty!

See you in the next blog post!

Love, Jane  XXX

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