Recipe: Sesame Beef with Carrot Kinpara

Carrot Love by Chris Campbell

I've just eaten a delicious dinner based upon two recipes recently uploaded by Maki to her excellent Just Bento blog:

Easy Sugarfree Carrot Kinpara (try not to inhale the chilli fumes, like I did!)

Sesame Flavoured Beef (I omitted the mirin and substituted the brown sugar for xylitol)

I served the beef and carrots with boiled broccoli and King Soba (would provide a link, but their website appears to have mysteriously disappeared) brown rice noodles.

Highly recommended!

A weird, but tasty combination: Bacon-wrapped tofu

In the last few days both Maki @ Just Hungry and Profgrrl have mentioned the peculiar-sounding Japanese delicacy, bacon-wrapped tofu. It felt like someone was trying to tell me something. So, tonight, I gave it a go. And jolly tasty it was too. I used unsmoked back bacon (perhaps streaky would be even better?), a firm tofu ,and left the soy on the side as a dipping sauce. The overall 'package' was quite salty, but that was counteracted by the accompanying brown rice and steamed purple-sprouting broccoli.

All in all, a bit of a success!

An easy-peasy Japanese-style meal

The Green Tea Prawns with Cucumber Salsa recipe available from Times Online (last recipe on the page, scroll to the bottom) is really delicious. The prawns with green tea have a wonderful, delicate flavour which makes a change from soy/miso based sauces. And the radish and cucumber salad that accompanies the prawns is also very good. I didn't use Sushi vinegar as advised - for a start, I couldn't find it to buy it, but also because it contains sugar. I substituted brown rice vinegar instead. What are you looking at me like that for? It's brown rice - it's gotta be healthy ;). Okay, so the salad isn't 100% candida-diet friendly, but would make - along with a serving of brown rice - a great, but simple, meal to feed non-'thrushy' friends, without breaking your own diet too drastically. Gets an A+ from me!

Super noodles!

In my local health store the other day, I was delighted to come across a packet of Sanchi Organic Ramen (wholewheat) with Seawood minus all the usual crap you find in other brands of instant noodles. And jolly nice they were too. I chopped up a couple of spring onions to add to the broth, just to give a 'home made' veneer to my lunch (makes me feel less guilty for using convenience foods!). Not something to eat everyday, but makes a good store-cupboard emergency standby - and helps to indulge my need to eat like a 'proper' student from time to time. ;)

Snacks that'll blow your head off! Seriously!

I was in Holland & Barrett the other day, and starving hungry. I didn't want to go down the fruit snack route (I'm trying to curb my consumption - I think they may be responsible for my recent flare-up). Eventually, after scouring the shelves, I found Wakama Seasoned Snacks - a kind of Japanese-style potato crisp. And they seem to be anti-Candida diet friendly and they were on sale!

Ingredients:

potato starch
tamari (jury's out on this one - I'm allowed soy sauce, so I'm guessing a bit of tamari isn't too bad)
rice bran oil
carrot
cabbage
spinach
green pepper
wasabi powder (ouch!)
parsley
lettuce
sea salt
onion
barley malt (ooh, hang on, is that okay?)
job's tear (hatomugi)
wheat germ

They're pretty tasty and moreish too. But watch out for the wasabi, several of the crackers brought tears to my eyes!

STOP PRESS - barley malt is used as a sweetener. Oh, bugger!

Hokkaido-style corn, chicken and cabbage soup with miso

Have just made the most FANTASTIC soup for lunch, which is perfectly anti-Candida diet* compatible - courtesy of Maki at 'I was just really very hungry'. I substituted the chicken for firm tofu.

Highly recommended!

* just make sure that, if you're using tinned sweetcorn, it isn't sweetened.