(For those who are fine with onions and garlic, have a video of someone opening a wine bottle with a shoe.)
If you got here through searching for "onion-free" or "garlic-free" you know how little information there seems to be. Hopefully this will help. You can also search for sattvic, which is the onionless diet of the Hare Krishna followers. Googling "sattvic recipes" turns up 37,400 results. Another strategy is "allium-free" as that's the genus for both onions and garlic. While you're here, I'll share what I've found.
How do I find out if I'm allergic/intolerant?
Thanks to the placebo or "nocebo" effect (Latin for "I will harm"), testing yourself can give you the wrong conclusion. It's worth a visit to the nutritionist. And if you have to do a restricted diet, they will tell you how to get the nutrients you need. I know someone who cut out so many foods without thought for nutrition that she gave herself scurvy.
Does all restaurant food have onions or garlic?
No, if you can ask the place to avoid cross-contamination. Order simple foods (steak, green beans, noodles with butter) and ask if they would cut and cook it on clean surfaces. Be polite! If you don't sound apologetic for inconveniencing the kitchen, the waiter could be tempted to ignore your request. Waiters are used to people crying "Allergy!" when they just don't like the the food.
How do I adjust recipes so I can have them?
You can replace the onion and garlic with truffle oil, asofoetida (also called hing), or kalanji seeds if you can find them. You can imitate the taste of caramelized onions with some fresh ginger, cayenne pepper, and a small amount of maple syrup.
Are there cookbooks for this?
These are the only ones I found: The Vegetarian Table: India and The Hare Krishna Book of Vegetarian Cooking. The Higher Taste: A Guide to Gourmet Vegetarian Cooking and a Karma-Free Diet has an online version here.
Links, please!
Onion-free Yahoo group
Sattvicfood.com
About.com's tips
Tribe.net onion-free forum
A sattvic tag on a blog called Angelic Monkey
The Higher Taste (sattvic recipes)
Freewebs.com onion-free and dairy-free recipes
Dietenlightened.com's onion-free section
Onion allergy tag on a blog called Little Cabbage
Krishna Food Channel
A chicken chili recipe on About.com
If you know any more, by all means please comment!
Showing posts with label onion and garlic free. Show all posts
Showing posts with label onion and garlic free. Show all posts
Monday, August 2, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Salsa!
Momma ripped out a magazine insert with three different salsa recipes. We needed something to take to a party, so we riffed off two of the recipes to make our own.
1 c diced pineapple
1/2 c finely diced red onion
1/2 c diced cucumber
1 clove garlic, minced
2 T chopped cilantro
2 T grated ginger
squeeze of lemon
drizzle of honey
salt and pepper to taste
Mix together and let rest 1 hour in the fridge.
For this salsa, the heat comes from the ginger, aided by the garlic and onion, and the acidity of the pineapple, rather than the traditional chilies.
So for an onion and garlic free version for myself, I upped the ginger and cilantro and black pepper. Tastes wonderful with blue corn chips, and would go nicely over baked chicken breasts or thighs. (Put lemon slices on the chicken pieces before roasting them, and then serve them over spinach with the salsa. Would be so good.)
1 c diced pineapple
1/3 c diced cucumber
1/4- 1/3 c chopped cilantro
4 T grated ginger (or more!)
Lemon juice
Honey
salt and LOTS of black and white pepper
I'm also reading Jamie Oliver's Cook with Jamie. It's an excellent cookbook, has a huge section of delicious-looking salads (if we only had the greens!), pastas, then goes through things to do with different meats (lots of seafood), a section on veggies, and some desserts. I wish the veggies took up the whole book. We don't really eat meat in our house, we eat pasta only rarely since Mum can't eat it anymore, so I'm not feeling entirely inspired. But the things he does with carrots! We're running out of carrots in our fridge!
And in other news, there's a new food and cooking channel on TV, the Cooking Channel. They have Julia Child on, Monday through Friday at 1pm Central time! And I got to watch "the Galloping Gourmet" for the first time yesterday. He's a scream.
1 c diced pineapple
1/2 c finely diced red onion
1/2 c diced cucumber
1 clove garlic, minced
2 T chopped cilantro
2 T grated ginger
squeeze of lemon
drizzle of honey
salt and pepper to taste
Mix together and let rest 1 hour in the fridge.
For this salsa, the heat comes from the ginger, aided by the garlic and onion, and the acidity of the pineapple, rather than the traditional chilies.
So for an onion and garlic free version for myself, I upped the ginger and cilantro and black pepper. Tastes wonderful with blue corn chips, and would go nicely over baked chicken breasts or thighs. (Put lemon slices on the chicken pieces before roasting them, and then serve them over spinach with the salsa. Would be so good.)
1 c diced pineapple
1/3 c diced cucumber
1/4- 1/3 c chopped cilantro
4 T grated ginger (or more!)
Lemon juice
Honey
salt and LOTS of black and white pepper
I'm also reading Jamie Oliver's Cook with Jamie. It's an excellent cookbook, has a huge section of delicious-looking salads (if we only had the greens!), pastas, then goes through things to do with different meats (lots of seafood), a section on veggies, and some desserts. I wish the veggies took up the whole book. We don't really eat meat in our house, we eat pasta only rarely since Mum can't eat it anymore, so I'm not feeling entirely inspired. But the things he does with carrots! We're running out of carrots in our fridge!
And in other news, there's a new food and cooking channel on TV, the Cooking Channel. They have Julia Child on, Monday through Friday at 1pm Central time! And I got to watch "the Galloping Gourmet" for the first time yesterday. He's a scream.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
in other news
We figured out that I have sensitivities to garlic and onions (in the same plant family), as well as dairy. Did you know that it was even possible to have trouble with garlic and onions? There's pretty much nothing on the web about it, except for a couple forum discussions. It probably hasn't gotten the popularity of gluten-free and dairy-free diets. So the last several months have been a bit challenging as I feel as if I'm relearning how to cook.
Basically my favorite way to cook veggies: sauteed with olive oil or butter, salt and lots of pepper, one or two additional herbs or spices. In this case, Mexican squash (not much different than zucchini) with paprika, toasted walnuts and rice. It's a very simple meal. I would usually add an egg, but the egg went in with the rice--I beat the egg, added rice, salt, pepper, oregano, and then scooped and dropped in a pan to make rice cakes.
Kale for the first time! Sauteed with salt and pepper, sprinkled with almonds, it was so good.
Mark Bittman's pad thai--except it was "ghetto" because we don't have tamarin paste, so I added lemon juice. And I used mung bean noodles instead of rice noodles. It was good, but it would probably be better if I followed the recipe more closely and if we had had cilantro on hand. I left out the garlic and scallions. With omitting garlic all the time (garlic is in the flavor base for pretty much everything!), I'm making an effort to draw more from other herbs and spices. We made the investment and went in on a bottle of white truffle oil, but I'm trying to save that for sauces and things, and for other things build complexity with other ingredients. Asian and Indian-inspired foods have been easier to modify and get that complexity than with Italian or French-based recipes. 
The leftover stir-fry got mixed with egg and pan-fried into patties. Yummy!
The same egg-and-pattie treatment with leftover wild rice pelof, zucchini and mushrooms.
Shanna made this pureed roasted pepper soup for me. So far pureeing has worked the best for making soups without onions and garlic. Otherwise the broth just doesn't seem very interesting and the veggies float around forlornly without the flavors locking together.
Roasted chick peas, baked sweet potato and rice. The chick peas were so much fun to bake and to eat!
Eating out of the house is tricky because onions and garlic are in everything; it's difficult to enjoy anything containing them when you know you're going to feel awful afterwards. But over spring break, the three of us went to Seattle. We ate at favorite vegetarian-vegan restaurant of Shanna's family--the food was all so fresh and simple that it was easy to get the garlic and onions left out. The food was very good: the bell peppers were stupendous, perfectly cooked, with good flavor. And the plating was well done.
Basically my favorite way to cook veggies: sauteed with olive oil or butter, salt and lots of pepper, one or two additional herbs or spices. In this case, Mexican squash (not much different than zucchini) with paprika, toasted walnuts and rice. It's a very simple meal. I would usually add an egg, but the egg went in with the rice--I beat the egg, added rice, salt, pepper, oregano, and then scooped and dropped in a pan to make rice cakes.
Kale for the first time! Sauteed with salt and pepper, sprinkled with almonds, it was so good.
Mark Bittman's pad thai--except it was "ghetto" because we don't have tamarin paste, so I added lemon juice. And I used mung bean noodles instead of rice noodles. It was good, but it would probably be better if I followed the recipe more closely and if we had had cilantro on hand. I left out the garlic and scallions. With omitting garlic all the time (garlic is in the flavor base for pretty much everything!), I'm making an effort to draw more from other herbs and spices. We made the investment and went in on a bottle of white truffle oil, but I'm trying to save that for sauces and things, and for other things build complexity with other ingredients. Asian and Indian-inspired foods have been easier to modify and get that complexity than with Italian or French-based recipes. Sweet potato stir-fry, another Mark Bittman recipe. I love sweet potatoes. Once again, the garlic was left out. Cayenne, lots of black pepper, cumin went into the seasoning, and once cooked, the stir-fry had lemon juice squeezed over top. This was Shanna's plate, so she got chopped scallions too. Peanuts, rice, baked mexican squash, fried egg finished it off---and the weather was nice enough to eat outside!
The leftover stir-fry got mixed with egg and pan-fried into patties. Yummy!
The same egg-and-pattie treatment with leftover wild rice pelof, zucchini and mushrooms.
Shanna made this pureed roasted pepper soup for me. So far pureeing has worked the best for making soups without onions and garlic. Otherwise the broth just doesn't seem very interesting and the veggies float around forlornly without the flavors locking together.
Roasted chick peas, baked sweet potato and rice. The chick peas were so much fun to bake and to eat!
Eating out of the house is tricky because onions and garlic are in everything; it's difficult to enjoy anything containing them when you know you're going to feel awful afterwards. But over spring break, the three of us went to Seattle. We ate at favorite vegetarian-vegan restaurant of Shanna's family--the food was all so fresh and simple that it was easy to get the garlic and onions left out. The food was very good: the bell peppers were stupendous, perfectly cooked, with good flavor. And the plating was well done.
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