The benefits of doing three things at the same time.

[Docb]

Since I developed diabetes, I've decided that, as my life expectancy's reduced, I'm not prepared to waste time on anything that I don't enjoy doing, if there are reasonable shortcuts. Grinding spices would definitely count as a waste of time for me if there's a decent pre-prepared alternative.

I find the real benefit of preprepared mixes is that they take out the problems of getting the blend right and avoiding the problem of finding the more obscure components. You have got to make a lot of curries for a lot of people to develop the instincts needed to get mixes even reasonably right from scratch. Just go for the better quality from a good Asian store.

And yes, toasting and grinding spices involves a lot of work and unless you are a stickler for authenticity and punishment, best avoided.

 

[rebrascora]

I add coleslaw to chilli which is too hot.
You could have just divided the chilli up into small portions @Lucyr and frozen it and then used it as the chilli seasoning for when you next make chilli although I get the feeling this experience might sadly have put you off.

When I am making an Indian dish I tend to just add what I think it needs but I am not a fan of it being really spicy, so very little chilli goes in, mostly a combination of the more aromatic spices like cumin and coriander and turmeric and ginger and garam masala and cloves and cinnamon if it is a more middle eastern dish. I never have the right ingredients in the house to follow recipes and I am not organised enough to shop for a recipe, so I mostly make it up as I go along having an idea of roughly what I want it to taste like. Not had to throw anything out yet, but had to dilute it a few times.
You are right about fresh chillis though. A friend gave me a pot of about 30 mixed tiny red and green ones to freeze and then just use as necessary. I thought 3 (2 green and a red) of them chopped up (far too small to try to deseed) in a big pan of curry would be about right. Ha! Was I wrong! I added more and more veggies and another can of coconut cream and chopped tomatoes until I had pretty well doubled the volume to make it comfortable to eat.

Quite shocked a restauranteur would admit to using Patak's! Wow!

 

[Leadinglights]

I add coleslaw to chilli which is too hot.
You could have just divided the chilli up into small portions @Lucyr and frozen it and then used it as the chilli seasoning for when you next make chilli although I get the feeling this experience might sadly have put you off.

When I am making an Indian dish I tend to just add what I think it needs but I am not a fan of it being really spicy, so very little chilli goes in, mostly a combination of the more aromatic spices like cumin and coriander and turmeric and ginger and garam masala and cloves and cinnamon if it is a more middle eastern dish. I never have the right ingredients in the house to follow recipes and I am not organised enough to shop for a recipe, so I mostly make it up as I go along having an idea of roughly what I want it to taste like. Not had to throw anything out yet, but had to dilute it a few times.
You are right about fresh chillis though. A friend gave me a pot of about 30 mixed tiny red and green ones to freeze and then just use as necessary. I thought 3 (2 green and a red) of them chopped up (far too small to try to deseed) in a big pan of curry would be about right. Ha! Was I wrong! I added more and more veggies and another can of coconut cream and chopped tomatoes until I had pretty well doubled the volume to make it comfortable to eat.

Quite shocked a restauranteur would admit to using Patak's! Wow!

I grew a selection of different chillies a few years ago and there was one that seemed particularly hot so I gave some to somebody I worked with to try as they were from Pakistan and made spicy food. Her husband used them and he commented that it the final outcome felt like you had been shot in the a..e. So we weren't just being wussish.

 

[CliffH]

I grew a selection of different chillies a few years ago and there was one that seemed particularly hot so I gave some to somebody I worked with to try as they were from Pakistan and made spicy food. Her husband used them and he commented that it the final outcome felt like you had been shot in the a..e. So we weren't just being wussish.

You were lucky your colleague didn't take out a grievance against you

 

[Docb]

Quite shocked a restauranteur would admit to using Patak's! Wow!

The takeaway had an open kitchen and you could learn a lot simply by watching the chefs at work. Whilst I was waiting for my order and watching, I saw the head chef reach behind a partition and take out the Pateks pot. When I raised my eyebrows, he simply showed me the pot and said this is very good. This was from a guy who had a dozen or more open containers of spices and his own prepared garam masalas in a rack in front of him which he used to create the majority of the dishes on the menu.

The takeaway is no more.

 

[helli]

I find the real benefit of preprepared mixes is that they take out the problems of getting the blend right and avoiding the problem of finding the more obscure components. You have got to make a lot of curries for a lot of people to develop the instincts needed to get mixes even reasonably right from scratch. Just go for the better quality from a good Asian store.

As I mentioned, I prefer homemade Thai curry paste as I can get the heat to my taste. The only unusual ingredient is galangal but any unused freezes along with the lemongrass, ginger and chillis and can be used from frozen.
The recipe I use makes enough paste for 8 batches so I freeze it in ice cube trays. Again, this can be used from frozen so no hassle and lasts longer than some of the pastes you buy from the supermarkets.
I used to share your opinion but couldn't find a paste to my liking so decided to give it a go and have become a convert.
Thankfully, it does not require any toasting or grinding of spices - I think that is more common with Indian curries.

 

[Theo]

Hi Docb interested to read your story of making choc brownies and pies using filo pastry. I’m always looking for ideas and just wondered if you have the brownie recipe and is it low carb plus is filo pastry ok for pre diabetes. Mine was 46 in my blood test a year go and due another test anytime so I’ve spent the past year researching all about low carb. I’ve cut back so much and feel I’ve done all I can .

 

[Docb]

Hi @Theo ... I do quite a lot of testing and I judge the suitability of anything against the results I get. I am sure the things I find have wider application but I'm not going to suggest they will work for everybody.

The brownie recipe I use is based on the BBC foods Best Ever Brownie recipe. I make it with around half the sugar and with at least 80% cocoa chocolate. If I add chocolate chips, again I use 80%+ chocolate. I cook it in small tins (about 5cmx3cm) with about 1cm of batter in each tin. The resultant brownie is smaller and denser than a shop bought brownie but the lack of size is more than made up by the intensity of the chocolate taste. I eat them with creme fraise using a small spoon, treating them more as fine pâtisserie than a lump of cake from the cake shop. I don't know what the carb content is but each brownie weighs around 50g and I'm guessing has under 15g carbs. Eating one hardly touches my blood glucose.

I know that a conventional pie or commercial pasty will have unwanted effects on my blood glucose from my testing. Not wanting to figure out unconventional pastries based on non wheat flour, it seemed to me that I could reduce the volume of pastry per portion by making the pastry as thin as possible. This led me to the idea of using a couple or three sheets of thin filo pastry in place of much thicker short crust pastry. Lower volume of flour, less carbs. I am sure that for me it works. I have made samosas and a pie topping using filo pastry and neither give me an unexpected rise in blood glucose.

We are in the same age bracket and I am perfectly content with an Hba1c higher than yours - it has hovered around 50 for the last few years. They way I look at it is that any benefits to be gained in getting it down simply do not outweigh the hassle involved. I do not have any short term problems, and I take the view that something else will get me well before the unwanted long term problems with diabetes come into play. My thought for you is to continue to do what you are doing and push diabetes down your things to think about list. You can bring it back up again if you get a big rise in Hba1c from some future routine test.

 

[silver minion]

Chilli with strawberry yogurt? Sounds like a Heston Blumenthal creation ...

View attachment 33382

I can’t buy yoghurt every week just in case I make chilli…

Lots of options to use plain yoghurt. Make a marinade for chicken pieces by adding teaspoon of garam masala or harissa spice and garlic paste. Leave overnight and bake or grill. Great with salad. Make up a zero cal jelly but add yoghurt instead of cold water to dissolved crystals. Whisk it up to get a moussey texture and serve with a few berries. Make muffins or waffles and substitute 2/3rds of milk with yoghurt for a fluffy texture. Garlic and herb dip for veggie sticks. They may be some left for cooling spicy chilli's or curries too.

 

[Lucyr]

Leave overnight and bake or grill.

Would that work in a pan? I don’t have an oven but have a hob.

 

[Leadinglights]

Would that work in a pan? I don’t have an oven but have a hob.

Yes it would be fine to do in a pan or wok.

 

[Lucyr]

Yes it would be fine to do in a pan or wok.

Thanks. I don’t own a wok either but I do have one saucepan and one frying pan.

 

[silver minion]

Would that work in a pan? I don’t have an oven but have a hob.

Yes but I would line the pan with parchment or foil to stop it sticking to the pan and put a lid on to keep the heat in. Or airfryer if you have one.

 

[Lucyr]

Yes but I would line the pan with parchment or foil to stop it sticking to the pan and put a lid on to keep the heat in. Or airfryer if you have one.

I don’t have a lid for my pan… I might need to do some shopping as part of learning to cook! I’ve been unable to cook really for years since getting ME. I do have an air fryer

 

[Leadinglights]

I don’t have a lid for my pan… I might need to do some shopping as part of learning to cook! I’ve been unable to cook really for years since getting ME. I do have an air fryer

I use my wok for almost everything ,stir fry, curry, chilli, bolognaise, pasta sauce. If you treat yourself to one then one with a flat bottom is better and a lid is useful.
But your air fryer would work OK.

 

[silver minion]

Just spent an hour and a half in the kitchen and have enough veg soup for a week, a batch of chocolate brownie and a three portion chicken, ham and mushroom pie which will be topped with filo pastry left over from my experiments earlier in the week which has been sitting in the fridge.

Its not that I am some super efficient genius cook, its more I stopped and thought a bit before I started. You see, there is a lot of hanging around when cooking and if you can fill in the gaps, you can get a lot more done than you might imagine.

So, first to start was the soup... pile the veg into pressure cooker and throw in a couple of chicken thighs and set it off. While that was doing its thing I made a batch of brownie mix. OK, I've made enough of that in the past so I could go round the kitchen and gather the bits and pieces and make it without thinking too hard. By the time that was in and baking, the soup had finished cooking. Out came the thighs and onto the chopping board to cool and the veg blitzed to a soup.

Brownie now ready and out onto cooling rack.

Another couple of onions chopped, some leftover ham, mushrooms and a couple of cloves of garlic retrieved from fridge and prepared for cooking. Pan on hob, oil/butter in pan and onion fried. Add garlic, the chopped up chicken (It falls off the bone), the mushrooms and chopped up ham and fry for a bit. Add a decent glug of wine and some of the veg soup - no need for a cube. Let it boil a bit to reduce and there is my pie filling. Will be topped with the filo at the last minute before baking whilst some veg steams..

No recipe calling for long lists of obscure ingredients, no arty pictures telling you what it must look like. Just a pile of stuff that will be good to eat and make life easy for the next few days.

So all you reluctant cooks out there I encourage you to have a go. Think more about having a stocked veg basket and a bit of a store cupboard. Use recipe books by all means but think of them as giving ideas rather than bibles to follow. When you are going to cook, think about how you might integrate things to get more than one meal out of the time you spend in the kitchen.

My multi tasking yesterday was a bit more mundane than yours. Made apple crumble with half almond flour instead of plain flour. Put a load of laundry on and emptied the dishwasher. Fed some cat biscuits to a very whiney feline. It was raining and she blamed me! Dismantled the table decoration and put the dying foliage in the compost bin. Most important of all made a nice pot of tea for me and hubby.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Lovely to her about your batch-cooking success @Docb

Sorry to hear about the Chilli-disaster @Lucyr