What can I make with these limited ingredients?
May 15, 2013 9:04 AM   Subscribe

My wife is temporarily on a very specific diet with extremely limited food options. So, we need to figure out a way to get creative here.

Here are ALL of the things she can have.

* Apples
* Pears
* Steamed white fish
* Steamed vegetables
* Sea Salt
* Red Pepper
* Garlic

That's it. No butter. No oils. No other spices.

So...any ideas? :)
posted by JPigford to Food & Drink (23 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
3 things you can do to the fruit to mix it up

Grill it. Serve with Fish as a side dish

puree it. also an excellent side.

use it fresh and chopped with some of the steamed veggies some garlic, sea salt and red pepper to make a veggie salsa.

serve the "salsa" with steamed whitefish as a deconstructed fish taco (without the tortilla)
posted by bobdow at 9:12 AM on May 15, 2013


Does the fish have to be steamed? You could wrap it in foil with garlic, salt and pepper and cook it in the oven (possible veg to add if allowed: onions, leaks). Same with the red pepper, but without the foil.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 9:12 AM on May 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


Omit the apples and pears, and baby you've got a stew going!
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 9:16 AM on May 15, 2013 [3 favorites]


Roast the garlic in the oven, then use it as a spread for the fish and/or grilled vegetables.
posted by limeonaire at 9:27 AM on May 15, 2013 [6 favorites]


Also, can you give us any more details about which steamed vegetables are OK, and whether she's allowed to use other cooking methods (as long as they don't use ingredients not on the list, natch) on any of the items?
posted by limeonaire at 9:28 AM on May 15, 2013


If you can use fish stock and vegetable stock, you can steam veggies till soft, put in a blender to puree and add warm stock till you have veggie soups of various types. I know that pea/mint, cauliflower, and broccoli all work pretty well.

Add salt and red pepper to taste.
posted by bswinburn at 9:28 AM on May 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: @limeonaire: Any steamed veggies are fine. But no other cooking methods other than steaming (can't grill it or bake it in the oven).
posted by JPigford at 9:35 AM on May 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


Does "red pepper" mean fresh red bell pepper (rather than, say, dried cayenne)? If so, and since you don't specify steaming the pepper, you might try roasting the red pepper and pureeing it, either alone or with some [baked/dry-roasted/steamed]apple or pear and [also baked/dry-roasted/steamed] garlic to make a sauce for the fish or vegetables.

If "red pepper" does mean cayenne or other dry seasoning, try making the same sauce with apple/pear and plenty of steam-softened garlic and a bit of cayenne. The garlic's bite will be tamed by steaming it soft, so you'll end up with a tangy, thick, sweet-savory sauce to spoon over fish.
posted by Elsa at 9:39 AM on May 15, 2013


Apparently you can steam-roast garlic!
posted by limeonaire at 9:41 AM on May 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


Sorry, my answer crossed with your response that all vegetables must be steamed. I'm not sure if a steamed red pepper would peel properly, or even if it would be appetizing, but you might try it. And even without the pepper, a garlic & pear or garlic & apple puree would be pretty tasty.
posted by Elsa at 9:47 AM on May 15, 2013


Can she have raw vegetables (for salad)? Can she have avocado, which I believe is technically a fruit? If so you could make a salad and use pureed avocado & garlic & salt for the dressing.

If there is a medical reason for this diet, her doctor probably has a list of meal ideas because everyone probably struggles with coming up with meals.

If there is no medical reason for this diet, I am very concerned for your wife. This list has no items with any fat and it reads as very restrictive and arbitrary (especially with your clarifications about cooking methods).
posted by insectosaurus at 10:10 AM on May 15, 2013 [16 favorites]


"Vegetables" covers a lot of things. You've got sweet and salty flavors, tomatoes and probably some other veggies give you acid, you're missing umami unless there is a strong umami vegetable I'm not thinking of.

Mix it up so that some meals are sweet and some are salty and some are acidic. I would find vegan cookbooks and adapt cooking style to match the steaming (steam then blend to make sauces)

Examples:
- Steam eggplant, blend and add garlic and salt for baba ganoush, eat with lettuce to dip.
- Eggplant parmesean, minus the cheese.
- Chili
- Whitefish with chopped veggies and pears
- Spaghetti with spaghetti squash as the noodles
posted by zug at 10:21 AM on May 15, 2013


As far as red peppers go, assuming bell type peppers, you can parboil them for 30 seconds to a minute to remove the skin. If done right, it should still have a bit of crunch. Steaming might actually be faster at this, but I've never tried it.

For some white fish, you might consider making packets with foil or parchment paper, and sealing the fish inside with a bit of water (or a fish or vegetable stock), pepper, garlic, and salt. Or citrus wheels or citrus zest, if she can have that. Fish like trout that can be cooked whole can be steamed in their own skins through roasting, or in packets. Also try stuffing or cooking the fish with minced onion and tomatoes or anything with a high enough water content to keep the fish from drying out.

For the apples and pears, you can julienne them and make a fruit salad, or grill or pan sear large slices to carmelize some of the sugars. You could also try to puree them then dry or bake them into fruit leather for snacking.

For umami flavor, mushrooms would help if the diet allows OP the flexibility to misclassify them as "vegetable."

+1 for insectosaurus' concerns about this diet if not recommended for health reasons by a real doctor. This does seem arbitrary, especially considering the unexplained inability to season food with anything but salt.
posted by Hylas at 10:29 AM on May 15, 2013 [3 favorites]


"Steamed vegetables" includes an incredibly broad array of flavors. Mexican flavors with bell peppers and onions; Asian flavors with bok choy, egglant, and mushrooms; Italian with squash, onion, tomato. Kale, broccoli, asparagus, brussel sprouts, green beans, zucchini, celery, carrots, parsnips, beets- steam and toss with sea salt and roasted minced garlic.
posted by amaire at 10:40 AM on May 15, 2013


Are you certain it's that things need to be steamed, or is it that she can't have the fats people usually use when heating food in other ways? What if we had suggestions for food heating that didn't involve fats -- would that be OK, even if it were in a Crock Pot or a microwave or what have you?
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:04 AM on May 15, 2013


I'd make the argument that avocadoes are incredibly healthy vegetables.
posted by steinwald at 11:27 AM on May 15, 2013


Avocados are fruit, technically, so she should check with her doctor before adding them, if all vegetables are OK but the only fruits she can have are apples and pears.
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:53 AM on May 15, 2013


Can you roast the garlic?

Roast a red bell pepper, remove the skin.
Roast a head of garlic (Cut the top off the head, exposing cloves, wrap in foil 350 over for about an hour, let cool)
Squeeze the garlic out into a blender or food processor, add roasted red pepper, a little water if needed. Puree, strain. Salt to taste. Serve over steamed vegetables.

If not, you can steam the red bell pepper, I suppose. If you can't roast the garlic, use one or two cloves in the puree.
posted by plinth at 1:12 PM on May 15, 2013


You can make a simple coulis (basically, a puree that serves as sauce) from those ingredients. A coulis is very vividly colored, and it can add flavor, texture, and visual interest to your food -- and any of these would be great with steamed fish. There are fancier ways to do it, but you can just steam your vegetable until it's cooked but still brightly colored, then puree with enough water to make it blendable and salt to taste. You can strain it if you'd like to make it perfectly smooth. Red or yellow bell peppers make an excellent coulis, but you could use whatever you like.

I bet certain pureed vegetable soups would still be fairly good without the added oil and seasonings. You could steam the veggies, then blend them with water, salt, and perhaps some garlic, and serve them warm or cold. Maybe play with veggie combinations, like beet and carrot or carrot and fennel?
posted by ourobouros at 1:17 PM on May 15, 2013


Avocado, like peppers, eggplant, zucchini, tomato, okra, and green beans, are both fruits and vegetables. But I don't think they'd be very good steamed.
posted by ftm at 3:45 PM on May 15, 2013


> Avocado, like peppers, eggplant, zucchini, tomato, okra, and green beans, are both fruits and vegetables

This is a good reason to run this past the doctor who prescribed this diet. The logic behind a clearcut "vegetables good, fruit bad except for apples and pears" escapes me, but I'm not a nutritionist.

Why are we whispering?

posted by The corpse in the library at 9:50 PM on May 15, 2013


It's also strange that non-sea salt isn't allowed.
posted by yohko at 1:50 AM on May 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


It would be really helpful if you mentioned WHY she's on this diet, if it's for a specific reason or a doctor prescribed it then it's probably got a name and there will be blogs and websites dedicated to it.

I went on the death to yeast diet and the amount of recipes and advice out there was never ending, and it is also very restrictive (no fruit, no sugar, no vinegar, no starches, etc).

The steaming is ok, but no baking in the oven thing confuses me. One is wet heat and one is dry heat, how does this have such an effect on the food that it can't be consumed? As well, there should be a list of what vegetables are ok, as "vegetable" could pretty much mean any plant and people get into arguments about what is ACTUALLY a vegetable all the time. (Is a carrot a vegetable or a root? Can she have tomatoes?)
posted by Dynex at 1:16 PM on May 16, 2013 [3 favorites]


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