Veggie recipes for person on medical diet.

funkey_monkey

Hi,

I'm on a diet (medical reasons - not choice) which results in me having predominantly veggie diet. Although, it is really a low protein diet - hence dairy, pules and meat are normally off bounds in any significant amount.

I would like to get some ideas for a few recipes which I could make to make my food more interesting. Normally I eat potatoes and boiled veg (carrots&turnips, cabbage usually) for dinner - with possibly a bean burger or some beans/peas.

However, I'm trying to expand, but as I cook for just myself I find that it is more difficult to motivate myself to expand my menu.

I've managed to make a coconut Thai style curry, but it is not the best in terms of presentation and sometime the sauce is very watery. Recently in my Indian takeaway I had a Naz-Ratan curry which was amazing - I think there were even brussel sprouts in it! I would like to try something different to the coconut curry - I also like Dansak and Patias. However, I'm put off by the amount of ingredient required to make these dishes.

In terms of pasta sauses I usually end up softening 1/2 onion, 1/2 pepper and some muchrooms in a pan before adding a packet of passata. It tastes okay, but is not very adventerous and is gettign quite bland.

My fajitas are rubbish - 1 onion, 1 pepper, muchrooms and a bit of chilli fried in a pan and then some Old El Paso powder added. It can taste a bit average at times.

Any ideas as to how I can add even a few dishes into my skillset? I've looked at veggie cooking courses but I could not find any here in my city.

The recipes for my diet I find even more bland as they omit any sources of protein which in some instances means omission of taste!

Thanks.

Satori Rae

Sorry for such a long post but give this recipe a try , me and my partner tryed this the other day and it is amazing, may I suggest the BBC website for veggie recipes they got some amazing ones on there and if you need any more drop me a message Happy eating!!

Spicy avocado wraps
Ingredients
½ x 300g pack Quorn chicken-style pieces , sliced
generous squeeze juice ½ lime
½ tsp mild chilli powder
1 garlic clove, chopped
1 tsp olive oil
2 whole meal wraps
1 avocado, halved and stoned
1 roasted red pepper, from a jar
few sprigs coriander, chopped
Mix the vegetarian, chicken-style pieces with the lime juice, chilli powder and garlic.
Heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan then fry the pieces for a couple of mins, while you warm the wraps following the pack instructions or if you have a gas hob, heat them over the flame to slightly char them. Do not let them dry out or they are difficult to roll.
Squash half an avocado onto each wrap, add the peppers to the pan to warm them through then pile onto the wraps with the chicken-style pieces, and sprinkle over the coriander. Roll up, cut in half and eat with your fingers.

Frito

Have you looked on cookforlove.org? It's a (US I think) website for the PKU community and has many low protein recipes.

Satori Rae

Oh and del passo kits can be muck you are better of buying ingredients separately

funkey_monkey

Not sure what has happened but they are definitely tasting better now - thanks. I think the lime juice added the thing thaty was missing from my previous attempts. Plus the avocada tastes so much better than the OEP Guacamole!

Frito - how did you know I was PKU? I'll be tryign the vodka pasta and the veggie chilli.

Mentalmiss

Have you just tried a stir-fry with just soy sauce added in the end. Nothing could be simpler or tastier.

Frito

funkey_monkey wrote: »

Frito - how did you know I was PKU? I'll be tryign the vodka pasta and the veggie chilli.

Because I've been following you.

And anyone needing a low-protein diet (for any reason) could use recipes developed for those with PKU. I figured there was no point re-inventing the wheel!

Grays Sports Almanac

Mentalmiss wrote: »

Have you just tried a stir-fry with just soy sauce added in the end. Nothing could be simpler or tastier.

Indeed.

Grilled salmon, brown rice and steamed broccoli - throw it in a pan for a few minutes and add soy sauce. Delicious.

funkey_monkey

I've finally figured out how to make sweet potato fries. It seems the secret is to make them skinny fries coat well in oil and put in oven. Wedge style seems to have a mushy effect after cooking. The boiled mash version is okay, but needs a lot of butter for taste.

I tried making pasts sauce using cherry tomatoes, but I think they needed blended to work properly - usually I use passata, but was recommended using cherry tomatos as they taste better. Capers didn't help the taste either!!!

I'll be trying something else this week. I'll let you all know how it goes.

funkey_monkey

I think its a temperature thing, but my stir fries turn very soggy and tasteless - unless I pour in large amounts of a stir fry sauce. However, to me the only sdifference between stir fry, korma, fajiats and pasta is the sause it it made with. It seems to be the sam ingredients fried off in a different sauce. This is where the blandness and lack of variety becomes boring for me.

Satori Rae

Make sure your very careful about your protein intake (you may have to swop ingredients) but this site is good to learn from.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes. Are you going to be a full time vegetarian now?

Frito

funkey_monkey wrote: »

I think its a temperature thing, but my stir fries turn very soggy and tasteless - unless I pour in large amounts of a stir fry sauce. However, to me the only sdifference between stir fry, korma, fajiats and pasta is the sause it it made with. It seems to be the sam ingredients fried off in a different sauce. This is where the blandness and lack of variety becomes boring for me.

I would get bored if I used the same ingredients for every dish. For instance you could use mange tout, baby sweetcorn, bamboo shoots, carrots in stir fry.
For Korma Id use onions (always used as a base for mopping up spices) and sweet potato, butternut squash. For fajita use peppers, all colours, and a green salad. For pasta you could make pesto sauce and have it with broccoli, courgette, green beans or other green veggies.

You're probably just in a rut, cooking the same few things the same few ways.

I'd highly recommend learning how to make a few different sauces and then you can experiment with different veg. Most world cuisines have stock vegetable but you can always swap around. I'm really into middle Eastern food at the moment.

funkey_monkey

Back again. I've made a veggie chilli, which was a bit pants. I used Jamies Olivers recipe :http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/vegetables-recipes/veggie-chilli/.

However, there was not much taste of it - in fact it tasted more like a tomato based veggie stew. I followed the recipe closely - only difference was that I used dried coriander as my shop didn't have any fresh stuff. Although I think my problems were more fundamental than that.

(Similar sort of veggies to what I had before too :rolleyes:)

L1011

Id use even more cumin and possibly a non fish Worcester sauce if you wanted to emulate the "traditional" taste. Have done that with qourn based ones and I could see sweet potato absorbing flavours even more than it does