Spice up your life

See that picture?  That's an anti-cholesterol army, that is.

Reading around, it's harder to get cholesterol down by not eating things than it is by eating things.  So, while it is probably a good idea to avoid dairy and cut down on saturated fats (don't kill yourself if you have a bacon sandwich; just don't have another one tomorrow), what is more likely to work is making sure you adjust your diet to include stuff which does bring your cholesterol down.  All of the stuff in that picture above is, somewhere, rumoured to work to bring cholesterol down. 

Some of the rumours are actually backed up by research.  Oats, we already know about, and garlic (although some studies disagree) and red wine.  Suprising, green tea is one of the substances where the claimed cholesterol lowering effects are backed by research; green tea appears to be an all-round wonder-food when it comes to reducing / preventing metabolic syndrome.  I hate it. I try to drink at least one cup a day.

Spices, though: there are huge lists of spices which may lower cholesterol.  We're looking at anecdata here, and some spices are referred to more than others. 

Top of the list is fenugreek, or methi.  You can get it as a tea, or more interestingly, just use the spice in cooking.  It has a clovey/mapely flavour.  There are studies which show that it reduces cholesterol in animals.

Many websites state that there is evidence that cinammon may reduce cholesterol, although other reputable websites state that the evidence is weak. It can't hurt to use cinammon as a flavouring, though.

Similar cholesterol lowering claims have been made about tumeric: again, more reputable sites claim that cholesterol-lowering properties haven't been proven (although tumeric does seem to have some medical activity).

Similarly, ginger may have cholesterol-lowering effects.  One of the things I'm noticing is that substances that may lower cholesterol often appear to be insulin-lowering substances as well.

While chili peppers have only a small cholesterol-lowering effect, they may well prevent the oxidisation of LDL cholesterol, or lower the rate at which it happens, anyway.

Cumin, strangely, seems to have no cholesterol-lowering effect in rats, although it does lower insulin levels.

Anyway, do you see where I'm going with this?

It's easy enough to do your own research, but it seems to me that many of the spices used regularly in Indian cooking may be active in reducing cholesterol.  The evidence that increased vegetable consumption  (do your own cite) will bring cholesterol down is also compelling.

Vegetable curries are the way to go, my friends.  Jackfirecat and myself have decided to cook our way through Indian Vegetarian food and we'll be posting the results here.

Shag Gobi Aloo

This is one of the ways to use the roast cauliflower you've prepared according to the instructions in the last post.  It's based on this recipe by the Hairy Bikers; I've changed it a little, and you can change it a lot, putting in aubergine, mushrooms, tofu or whatever you want (I've tried all of these).  The key thing here is the spice mix and the rough method.  In a later post, I shall summarise what I can find on the internet about various spices and herbs and the various claims that are made about their cholesterol lowering and health affects.  Suffice it to be said that the spices involved in South Indian cuisine are probably the spices about which most cholesterol-lowering claims are made; some of them feature here (fenugreek, garlic, tumeric and ginger).

Ingredients:

A tray of roast cauliflower
A bag of spinach leaves (about 200 - 250 g)
Three or four egg-sized (or slightly larger) potatoes - I think this is best done with floury or 'old' potatoes rather than waxy or 'new' potatoes.
A tub (about 8 oz) of very ripe baby plum tomatoes or cherry tomatoes or similar*.
One onion.
Olive oil or corn oil**

Spices:

I'm giving rough proportions - adjust as you wish

Two teaspoons of black mustard seed
One teaspoon of fenugreek
One teaspoon of tumeric
2 cm cubed ginger, grated
Two cloves of garlic
Two small, hottish (fruity-hot) fresh chilli peppers (1 cm - 2 cm length), seeds removed
Teaspoon of dry chilli pepper or one dried chilli pepper 4 cm in length, seeds removed***
Salt
Pepper

Optional: a teaspoon of cumin or cumin seed or fennel - but the spices above are quite enough.

Method

You'll have roasted a medium head of cauliflower according to the previous method.  Do try not to eat all of it.

Put a splash of oil into a heavy-bottomed large saucepan, and let the finely chopped onion fry away on a medium heat.  You aim to get all of the water out of the onion, and the starch in the onion to caramelise.  This is very important.  The Hairy Bikers suggest adding some sugar - this is because anything vaguely tomatoey works better if the other ingredients are kind of sweet.  I'm not suggesting this because I'm suggesting that you fry your onions enough.  Most people don't do this.

Here's a picture of the stage where most people think that their onions are fried enough:

There's a few flecks of brown in there, to be fair, but this is just the beginning of the caramelisation.  Here's what the same onions look like when they have  been fried enough:

Just enough, that is.  To be quite honest, these could even do with two or three minutes more, with constant stirring.  Cooking the onions enough may well take twenty - thirty minutes, but it's worth the effort.

While the onions are cooking, measure and prepare your spices and set them aside.  I divide the spices I'm going to use into 'wet' spices and 'dry' spices. It is important that the spices are measured before the point that you use them, as you will need to chuck them into the pot in quick succession at the apposite moment.

The garlic needs to be crushed (or sliced finely), and the ginger needs to be grated and the dried chilli chopped if you are using whole chillies, but you only need to 'measure' the dry spices.

 I found some brilliant little bowls (75p from Tesco) and I use those for spices.   Here's a picture:

 I think I probably just like taking pictures of spices in tiny bowls.

Talking of pictures, I am so entertained by this idea of cooking my way through South Indian recipes for health reasons that I bought a massala dabba.  Here's a picture of that:

Anyway, back to the recipe.

While you are waiting for the onions to get brown enough (don't try to speed it up by putting the heat on higher, as this will result in some burnt onions and some not-cooked onions), peel the potatoes and cut them into  1 - 1.5 cm cube pieces, and halve the plum or baby tomatoes.

Once your onions are properly brown, turn the heat up to high (I am using an electric stove at the moment, so I move the pan onto a neighbouring ring that has been pre-heated to high) and chuck in first the dry spices, giving everything a good stir, and then the wet spices (they bring down the heat in the pan a little), also giving everything a good stir, and wait about a minute (if the spices start 'catching', then it's enough), stirring all the while, and then chuck in the potato cubes. 

Stir the potato cubes constantly for two - three minutes, so that they are all covered in the spices and oil.  Then throw in the tomatoes and stir some more for another minute or two. 

The next bit is the magic bit.  Return the pot to the medium heat and stuff in the whole bag of spinach (4).  The spinach will appear to try to escape and overflow your pot or casserole dish, but ignore that.  Beat that spinach down.  Add a minimal amount of water - 2 fluid oz or four tablespoons (and you probably don't even need to add that much) and put the lid on the pot and wait ten to fifteen inutes.  The spinach will wilt and reduce massively in size, releasing liquid as it does so.  The potatoes will cook in this liquid, and in the liquid released from the tomatoes.

After about fifteen minutes, take the lid off the pot, give everything a good stir, and chuck in the roasted cauliflower.  Replace the lid and let everything simmer along nicely for another ten to fifteen minutes, or until you feel that the potatoes are cooked adequately.  You'll find that your curry has developed a sauce!

I like to serve this with rice or naan and yoghurt - no need to make a fancy raita.  It's really delicious!  You might want to squeeze a lemon over it before serving.

Note: I have tried making this using aubergines instead of potato, at that stage - I think that the aubergines would have been better pre-roasted or fried, and treated like the cauliflower.  I have also used mushroom along with the potato, and similarly, I think those would have been better pre-roasted and treated like the cauliflower.
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*We're not going to skin them - and the baby and small tomatoes are more flavoursome.  If your tiny tomatoes are almost going over, even better. 

**Olive oil is not traditional in Indian cuisine, but I like the taste of it in this.

*** Or just go for a small teaspoon of the dried chilli pepper you get in a jar or two fresh ones, or whatever.  The amounts here should really be 'some', and I do like it very hot.  I expect that half a rounded teaspoon of the dried stuff (not powdered) would really be enough - the dried stuff you buy in shops does seem to include seeds, whereas I'm saying in this recipe that you should take the seeds out and just use the flesh (because I think that gives a fruiter edge, but it's marginal) - but the seeds add a great deal of the 'chilli heat'.  Best to add less if you are in doubt, and move the heat up in a further cooking.  This is well tasty on its own, without the chilli heat.

(4) Take the spinach out of the bag, first, though.  Obv.