Bolognese sauce

 We've just got a juicer - or rather the other half has. It's supposed to aid weight loss as you are meant to chew up all sorts of vegetable matter in it to make juice.

It's certainly high-powered and cleverly designed. It has twin blades and seems to be able to chew up anything into a gritty sort of juice. Unfortunately some of the fresh vegetables you can juice leave a rather bitter taste. That may well aid weight loss as it's a real appetite killer.

So it occurred to me I could use it to make a proper Bolognese sauce to go with my pasta. That is a sauce that  feels like it's been made with tomatoes.

If you remember the story of my pasta sauce, I started by trying to make it like Bolognese. I chopped a range of vegetables - mainly red cabbage and leek - as finely as possible, sometimes adding Golden Delicious apple or banana for a sweet and sour effect.

To do this you have to fry the vegetables before the fish or separately from the mince.

So I've ended up with a delicious pasta sauce containing a variety of vegetable, fruit and fish together with soy sauce. It is delicious but some complain it's a little salty. And it's not Bolognese as the vegetables and fruit are stir fried and not pulped.

So for my first effort with the juicer I didn't use a base oil. I juiced red cabbage, leek, shallot and white cabbage and banana, put it in the pan and added soy sauce and tuna. It was disgusting and there was too much of it. The juicing of vegetables leaves a very bitter and unpalatable taste.

I tried again and this time I fried some sardines first and added the soy sauce first. Then I added the vegetable juice. That tasted a lot better and looked like Bolognese sauce also.

It's still nothing like a substitute sauce yet and I could not serve it to guests and pretend it was Bolognese. Next time I will try apple instead of banana.

That's if there is a next time as this really is not as tasty as what I was doing before with stir fry.

RAS

Coleslaw indigestion

 I've eaten coleslaw for quite some time and have eaten supermarket coleslaw provided it doesn't advertise itself as containing onions.

After all it is basically cabbage and carrot and both are ok so far as I'm concerned. It can be made with mayonnaise and cream. Mayonnaise is a bit iffy, as it is usually vinegar and egg. Egg is fine of course, if not better than fine. Vinegar is not - but I assume the quantities are so low it can't cause harm.

So it's better home-made with the ingredients controlled. Some commercial coleslaw contains onion, which I never eat unless its shallott. Theoretically onion should not cause too much harm because the lists all say its low in salicylate - but not entirely free of it.

About a week ago we had a meal of supermarket coleslaw and supermarket cooked chicken, which was meant to be plain chicken.

That night I had such severe indigestion I nearly dialled 111. That's the National Health Service non-emergency out of hours number. I was advised to call it by one of those questionnaires you fill in for NHS Choices, the questionnaire it flashes up if you say you have pains in your chest. Yes, you can imagine they take no chances.

Yes this was real indigestion, under the rib cage, not in the bowels, crippling pain, rising up the right side of the rib cage. No question of it being a heart attack but I'd worry about problems like stomach ulcer.

Anyway it lasted no longer than 12 hours. I went for  a swim the next day and that seemed to burn it off.

Today we had the same coleslaw with our meal. It is branded as being cabbage and carrot coleslaw. I don't see why they should add onion as I would have thought it would simply make it more expensive to prepare. And, yes, now I have stomach pains coming and going, just as I write. Not as severe as last time, I hope, but the night is young.

It's not even obvious why indigestion of this kind should be caused by  salicylate - except that we know that salicylate causes a reaction in whatever tissue it comes into contact with. Could that cause ulcer?

And I come back to the issue that it may not even be salicylate. A doctor friend of mine once suggested that other syndromes, specifically sulphite (sulfite), might cause similar reactions. I'm not even fully convinced that there isn't some gluten intolerance. Remember I originally thought it was a wheat allergy and abstained from wheat products for six months until tests proved it was not.

Ah well, I'm going to have to break the news I can't eat coleslaw.

* I've now checked the small print ingredients and it does contain onion together with white wine vinegar.

RAS

Cabbage and canaries

I was thinking that red cabbage might be the canary of our civilisation. Or possibly that its mysterious absence from the shelves is linked to the German e.coli outbreak. The Germans, I believe, love their red cabbage. I cannot think of any other reason for its disappearance - and  nobody has been able to suggest an explanation apart from e.coli.

Anyway tonight I found some in Tesco's - there were two red cabbages on the shelves. They were organic. But that's good news. They say you should mix red, orange, green and yellow fruit and vegetables in your diet to get a full range of nutrients. Well, red cabbage is the only red fruit or vegetable I can eat.

So maybe the canary has not croaked yet.

RAS

Where's all the red cabbage gone?

Does anyone know? Red cabbage is a staple of my diet. It is in fact pretty well the only red fruit or vegetable that I can eat, which is supposed to be salicylate free.

For several weeks now it has been unobtainable in the main supermarkets. I checked tonight in Asda again - plenty of white cabbage but no red. Where on earth has it gone? Is it some kind of seasonal thing? Are the Germans using it as a salad substitute. It is a mystery.

RAS

Tomato, tuna and tummy

I tried my home-made tuna and tomato sauce. As I'd got a supply of tinned tomatoes I made the rest of the family a bolognese sauce at the same time. I cook  for others like Beethoven wrote music - I have no idea what it tastes like and cannot taste as I go along. It's all pure guess work.

We also obtained a pack of shallots - which are allowed but we very rarely use. It was the last pack in Tesco's and reduced in price to 75p. I feel I could do more with them - can you pickle them like onions?

That was about two weeks ago and I may still be suffering. I had severe tummy-ache for several days following the meal. The Italian restaurants must be using a magic ingredient that counteracts the tomato - perhaps olive oil? This needs to be investigated further. I used about a third of the tin of tomatoes on myself and gave the rest to the others.

So I cannot recommend tuna and tomato as a way of getting tomato into the diet. However in case you have to cook bolognese sauce for the rest of the family when they refuse to share your sardine/mackerel/tuna and cabbage sauce, here is what I did:
brown mince in rapeseed oil;
stir fry some leek, cabbage and shallot in separate frying pan (and that formed the base for my own meal);
add the fried vegetables to browned mince, along with tin of tomato;
add a liberal dose of Italian herbs;
add a little bit of soy sauce;
add two beef stock cubes;
simmer and add some water from the pasta saucepan. If still too runny add a little flour to thicken.
I did not taste this once but they assured me it was delicious - and I did not catch them making faces behind my back.

RAS

Fish pasta sauce

 I promised to list all the recipes I've put together and then discovered I had never posted some of them.

So here is a simple and quick fish-based pasta sauce:

start cooking your pasta

• chop white cabbage and leek;
• stir fry in saucepan until white cabbage starts to brown;
•  add tin of fish - sardines or mackerel are best but tuna is manageable;
• add parsley;
  
• stir until it simmers;
• add milk, also yoghurt, cream or cheese if you wish;
• simmer and stir until pasta is ready.

Delicious!


RAS