New Cookbook

I got a new cookbook a few weeks ago. There were several recommendations for this cookbook on various Crohn’s forums, and I was able to pick it up on Amazon for £4.

There is a small section on low-residue and low-fibre diets, but otherwise it’s a lot of recipes that are just trying to pack as much nutrition into food as possible. Of course, much of that involves using copious amounts of eggs and dairy (and her dairy-free chapter is all about, you guessed it, soya), so not everything is going to work for me, but there are some interesting ideas that I can work with or adapt.

If anything, what’s been really helpful, is that the author, who is an American dietitian, does a really good job of explaining nutrition science in plain English and explaining how dietitians calculate your nutritional requirements and so forth. So it’s been useful for getting a better understanding of where the dietitians are coming from.

One recipe that did intrigue me right away when I had an initial glance through it was a recipe for breakfast sausage. Now for the Brits reading this, this is not sausage as you understand it. Sausage as Brits understand it absolutely no-go on a low-residue diet because of the casings, the fillers and the fat content. This is “breakfast sausage” in the American sense, meaning that it is a meat patty almost more akin to a burger. Think of the sausage (if you can call it that) in a Sausage McMuffin.

Now, I’ve never been a fan of sausage patties, and certainly I have never been a fan of Sausage McMuffins, so I was suspicious, but also very curious. Her recipe called for minced turkey, and as I have been cooking with that a lot, I thought it was an interesting idea. So I made half a recipe’s worth to try it out, adjusting it by exchanging onion granules for onion and changing the seasoning a bit.

Here’s what I did -

½ pound of mince turkey thigh
3/4 cup of breadcrumbs
2 tsp of onion granules
1 tsp of garlic granules
1/4 tsp of rosemary
1/8 tsp of thyme
1 medium egg
½ tbsp of lemon juice
1/4 tsp of salt
1/4 tsp of pepper

I mixed everything by hand in a bowl. Then I put it on some parchment paper and formed it into a 8-inch log. This took a few tries to get the shape and size right to cut it. Then I rolled in the parchment, put it in a freezer bag and put it in the freezer for a few hours before cutting it into patties with a sharp knife. The book said to put it in the freezer for 5 minutes to make it easier to cut. When I tried to cut it after 5 minutes, I had to shape it all over again!

Once I cut it into patties, I put a bit of parchment paper between each slice to keep them from sticking together and put them in a freezer bag and put them back in the freezer.

To cook them, I let them thaw in the fridge for a few hours. I put a bit of non-stick cooking spray (I use an olive oil one) on a frying pan, and cooked them on a medium heat until well browned, about 15 minutes, turning once.

To go with the Sausage McMuffin theme, I toasted an English muffin to serve it on.

These are surprisingly good! I actually really like them, which is not something I thought I would ever say about American sausage patties. They are quite filling too, and have a decent amount of protein in them to boot. And unlike pre-made ones, there’s no crap additives in them.

So this one is a keeper! (I’ll probably need to make more next week). I’ve marked a few other recipes in this book to try out, so I’m sure I will be posting more experiments soon.