Love Your Gut nutritionist and cook Dr Joan Ransley has looked at ways that you can take inspiration from top food trends and has created recipes that are full of gut friendly dietary fibre, prebiotics and polyphenols without being bland or boring.
Full English vegan fry up
This vegan fry up is tasty and filling and contains a wealth of gut-friendly ingredients. Black beans are a great source of fibre that helps to keep the gastrointestinal tract moving and also contain galacto-oligosaccharides, which act like a fertiliser in the gut and provide material for beneficial gut microorganisms to feast on. Ginger is a soothing spice that’s gentle on the gut.
Ingredients
(serves 4)
- 200g mixed small peppers
- 3 tbsp olive oil for drizzling
- 200g wild mushrooms, brushed clean and roughly chopped
- 200g spinach, washed and roughly chopped
Tomato and tamarind ketchup
- 1 banana shallot, finely chopped
- 40g fresh ginger, peeled and finely grated
- 2 tbsp tamarind paste (available form large supermarkets)
- 400g tin chopped tomatoes
- 1 tsp of palm sugar
Avocado and black bean mash
- 1 large ripe avocado, mashed
- 200g black beans, crushed slightly
- squeeze of lemon
- ½ clove garlic, crushed
- 1 tsp cumin, ground
Method
Preheat the oven to 200oC/Gas mark 6. Place the peppers on a roasting tray and drizzle over a little of the olive oil. Roast for 20 minutes or until the skins begin to blister and turn brown. Remove from the oven.
To make the ketchup, drizzle a little more of the olive oil in a pan, add the chopped shallot and sweat until soft. Add the grated ginger and tamarind paste to the pan and cook gently for 2 minutes before adding the chopped tomatoes and palm sugar. Simmer for 20 minutes until the sauce is thick. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
While the ketchup cooks make the avocado mash. Simply mix the mashed avocado with the black beans, lemon, garlic and cumin to form a rough paste.
Place the mushrooms in another pan with a drizzle of olive oil. Cook over a moderate heat for 5 minutes or until the mushrooms are soft. Move the mushrooms to one side of the pan, add the spinach and cook until it wilts.
Serve the mushrooms, spinach, avocado and black bean mash with the tomato and tamarind ketchup. This would be lovely served with fresh toast.
Cook’s tip
Palm sugar adds caramel flavour as well as sweetness to a dish. It is great for balancing the acidity of dishes containing tamarind, lemon or lime.
Variation
This dish would be great topped with a poached egg for vegetarians and a rasher or two of bacon for meat eaters.
