Food, Culinary And Recipe Blog

Sweet Ending

Dessert would be so much more enjoyable if you don’t have to worry about what it’s doing to your waist line. Now you can have your kulfi and eat it too. For every 100 gm
of sugar you replace with a 10 gm sachet of zero calorie Sugar Free Natural Diet Sugar,
you’ll see 400 calories vanish from your favorite desserts.

Strawberry Kulfi

Ingredients

2litre skim milk , 4 tbsp skim milk powder,1tbsp cornflour,50 grams sugar free Natural Diet Sugar 10 fresh strawberries, chopped pinch of elaichi powder.

Method

Boil milk in a non-stick kadai. Reduce heat. Keep stirring, and simmer till milk reduces to half its original quantity. Add Sugar free Natural Diet Sugar to milk. Mix milk powder in a little cold water and add to the boiling milk. Keep stirring for another 5 minutes. Dissolve corn-flour in a little water and add to boiling milk. Simmer 2 minutes. Remove from fire. In a separate pan, stew strawberries with remaining Sugar Free Natural Diet Sugar till it attains a thick syrupy consistency. (You can also use bottled strawberry syrup or preserve in the off –season, in which case no additional sweetener needs to be added. Cool and add to the milk mixture. Pour into kulfi moulds and freeze for at least 3 hours.

On a cold day, there is nothing quite like a steaming hot baked dish being brought to your table – sizzling away seductively as the sauces within bubble with joy.  The rosemary scented chicken with couscous is one such dish. Rosemary flavor is a perfect match for steaming chicken with its rich flavor.

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken
• 2tbs fresh lime juice
• ½tbs soy sauce
• 1tbs fresh rosemary
• 1tbs chopped and peeled fresh ginger
• 1tbs minced onion
• 5tsp olive oil
• 1 cup couscous
• ¾ cup boiling water
• 3tsp butter

Preparation:

First of all – prepare the couscous and then pour boiling water on the couscous in a bowl. Stir in butter and set aside for 10 minutes. Heat an oven to 500 degree F. Whisk all the ingredients with 3tsp oil in a small bowl. Blend and season.

Now brush a 9-inch diameter baking dish with the remaining oil. Put the chicken in it, , pour in half the sauce and coat on both sides. Roast the chicken for 25 minutes, take it out again from the oven, top with remaining sauce and bake again for 10 minutes. In a serving plate, place the couscous. Put the whole chicken on top and pour the cooked juices on the chicken and serve to your admiring guests or family members.

There is often a misconception that baked dishes are necessarily bland. But that is not true as they can be as spicy as one likes it to be.

Another great baking dish can be made of lamb – known as “Baked stuffed escalope of lamb.”

Ingredients:

• 500gm boneless lamb fillet
• Olive oil as required
• 2 ½ cup bread crumb (from French bread with crust)
• ½ cup melted butter
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 10 fresh spinach leaves
• Ground nutmeg, a pinch

Method:

Cut the lamb into six portions and with a streak hammer beat each piece and flatten into a thin escalope. Keep it aside. Cook spinach in a large pot of boiling salted water just until wilted, for about 30 seconds. Drain and cool briefly. Squeeze the spinach dry, chop finely and place in a bowl. Add nutmeg. One can also add half cup mascarpone and half cup cream cheese to it if he or she wants. Season it.

 Heat the oven to 450 degree F. Brush the baking sheet with olive oil. Sprinkle the escalope with salt and pepper. Mix bread crumb and melted butter. Top each escalope with bread crumb mixture and spinach mixture. Transfer the escalope to a baking sheet. Bake until 12 minutes. Transfer to plates and serve.

Spoiled Food

Food may be spoiled from various reasons:

• contamination with bacteria or parasites(vegetables contamination with infected cattle manure, meat contamination during slaughtering, poisoning with Staphylococcus aureus bacteria by infected food worker, drinking infected water);
• contamination with heavy metals (lead, mercury) if vegetables are raised beside a high-traffic road or industrial zones;
• ciguatera fish poisoning: big tropical fish (tuna, barracuda) accumulate ciguatera toxin by eating small fish which have ingested ciguatoxin from reaf algae; occurs mostly in Caribbeans, Australia, India;
• innappropriate storing (leaving a raw peace of meat on room temperature for 1 hour may cause enable enough bacterial overgrowth to cause food poisoning);
• exceeded expiration date: overgrowth of bacteria or yeasts, chemical change of food.

Irritant Foods

Food Irritation Due to Excessive Ingestion

• alcoholin excess may temporarily impair intesinal mucosa and hence absorption
• spices may stimulate peristalsis
• legumes (beans, peas, lentils): gas is produced by normal intestinal bacteria when they break down cellulose from legumes

  

  Beans

   Picture 1. Legumes, like beans often cause gas

• sweets: gas is produced by intestinal bacteria when a lot of sugars is delivered into intestine
• artificial sweeteners: High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), sorbitol and other polyols (polyols are sugar alcohols, on labels you can recognise them by -tol ending); they may drag water into intestine and get fermented by intestinal bacteria thus cause diarrhea
• fruits: fibers and fructose (read bellow) may cause diarrhea and gas

Problematic Foods in Food Intolerances

Fruits and Vegatables

As surprising as this may sounds, but fruits and vegetables commonly cause digestion problems. A healthy person can absorb only about 25-50 g of fructose (fruit sugar) per serving. When this amount is exceeded unabsorbed fructose reaches the colon, where bacteria degrade it and produce gas. Unabsorbed glucose also causes diarrhea. A person with fructose malabsorption can absorb fructose in amount lower than 25 g per serving.

Fruit and Vegetables

 Picture 2. Fruit and Vegetables cause diarrhea and gas in fructose malabsorption

Fruits to avoid in fructose malabsorption: apples, pears, plums, cherries, honeydew melon and all dried fruits, including prunes, raisins, figs and dates. Fruit juices, compotes, jams and marmalades are also problematic.

Vegetables which may be problematic in fructose malabsorptin: tomatoes, cooked carrots, cauliflower, artichokes, chicory.

Honey

A person with fructose malabsorption should avoid excessive amount of honey, which contains fructose.

Wheat (and other cereals)

Wheatcan cause bloating and diarrhea in persons with fructose malabsorption. Some children (also some adults) are allergic to wheat.

Wheat, barley and rye contain gluten which triggers small intestinal inflammation, which can lead to chronic diarrhea. This genetic disorder is called celiac disease (details - link 2 in references).

Milk

Milk is not considered to be a healthy food, mostly because of its highly saturated fat.

Milk

Picture 3. Milk causes diarrhea and gas in lactose intolerance

The other common problem with milk is milk sugar - lactose. Persons with lactose intolerance (details - link 3 in references), which may develop in any person at any time, get diarrhea and gas after drinking even small amount of milk, other dairy, and many commercial products with lactose. Cow’s milk is also a common cause of milk allergy in children.

Soy

Soy is another common cause of allergies in children. Soy sauce usually contains fructose, which is problematic in fructose malabsorption. Fibers from soy may cause bloating.

Fish, Shellfish, Peanuts, Tree-nuts

Fish, shellfish, peanuts, and tree-nuts are common causes of allergies in adults.

Foods to Limit in Peptic Ulcer /Gastric Reflux

In gastric reflux, the following foods should be limited:

• meat, eggs, milk, nuts, oils: these foods are rich in fats and proteins, which stay for a long time in the stomach
• vinegar, alcohol, vitamin C, aspirin, ibuprofen: all these items are acidic

Foods Causing Smelly Gas

Fats

Fats cannot be properly absorbed in a gallstone which blocks the biliary duct, in pancreatic disease and in some small intestinal diseases.

Sulphur-rich Foods

Rotten-eggs smelly gas may result from intestinal bacterial fermentaion of the following foods:

References:

1. CAUSES OF DIARRHEA:
   http://www.allhealthsite.com/category/diarrhea/
2. CELIAC DISEASE:
   http://www.allhealthsite.com/28/chronic-constant-diarrhea/#celiac-disease
3. LACTOSE INTOLERANCE:
   http://www.allhealthsite.com/28/chronic-constant-diarrhea/#lactose-intolerance

• 1 small cucumber, finely sliced ,
• 3/4th cup bean sprouts, blanched and drained,
• 2 cups shredded Chinese cabbage, blanched and drained,
• 4 cups coconut milk,
• 1 cup fish stock ,
• 2 fresh hot red chillies, slit open and deseeded ,
• 2cm fresh ginger, chopped,
• 4 spring onions, chopped,
• 2 cloves, garlic, sliced, Salt, to taste, Lime juice, to taste,
• 500gm fresh rice noodles,
• 500gm medium-sized prawns, shelled and deveined

Preparation Method

Arrange the cucumber, bean sprouts and cabbage in individual dishes and set on a tray as accompaniments. Bring the coconut milk to boil in a medium-sized pan and add fish stock, chillies, ginger, spring onions and garlic. Let it boil, and then simmer for about 10 minutes. Add salt and lime juice. Rinse the noodles in warm water and divide between heated serving bowls. Add the prawn to the pan and simmer for about 3 minutes, then divide between the bowls, and strain the hot curry gravy over it. Serve the tray of prepared accompaniments with the curry.