Heartburn Survey

This is not a recipe but might be helpful to people dealing with heartburn. This site http://sites.google.com/site/stopheartburnsurvey tries to collect the list of natural and medical treatments for heartburn and have visitors rank what helps them the most.

Squid with rice

This is a paella http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paella like recipe with rice and squid. The same recipe can be prepared with any other type or combination of seafood.

Ingredients:
3 cups log grained rice
1 tb turmeric
1 tb unsalted butter
2-4 tb olive oil
2lb whole or 1lb cleaned squid

Combine rice, butter, turmeric, salt and water and cook as usual. Try to undercook rice a bit.

If you bought whole squid clean it, here are a sample instructions http://homecooking.about.com/od/seafood/ss/cleansquidsbs.htm. After cleaning the squid you can either cut the tail into rings or keep the tails whole if they are small.

Once rice is cooked take a big glass dish and mix squid, rice and olive oil. Cover the dish with aluminum foil. Heat up the over to 375F and put the dish in for 30 min. After 30 min remove the foil and reduce heat to 300F. If the rice appears to be too dry add some more olive oil or just a bit of water. Keep the dish in the oven for another 25-30min, checking half way in between to make sure it does not get too dry.

Taste index, out of 5: 4
Heartburn safe index, out of 5: 4

Meat and zucchini in a casserole dish

This recipe is not original, rather its a stripped down version of many others.

Ingredients:
2 lb of cubed beef
4-8 zucchinis, depending on size
3-4 large carrots
optional rosemary

Heat up oil in the casserole dish, add salt and any spices which you tolerate (rosemary). Add meat and cook it for about 2-3 minutes on high, until it is lightly browned on all sides. You might want to brown the meat in batches.
Once all browned put all the meat back in the dish, add some water if the meat did not produce enough itself, and cook for about 10 minutes on medium with lid closed.
Cut carrots and zucchinis into large enough parts, so that they will not fall apart after being cooked for a while. Add everything to the dish and mix well with meat. Add more water is there does not seem enough, remember that zucchinis will produce more water, add more salt. Keep on medium until the water starts to boil, reduce to minimum. Cook with lid closed for about 1 - 1.5 hours, until the meat becomes very tender. Check the amount liquid regularly and rotate the content a few times.


Taste index, out of 5: 4
Heartburn safe index, out of 5: 4

Try Soba

This one is going to be super simple. I don't know why but I often get heartburn from regular pasta. It does not seem to be related to gluten intolerance, more likely pasta is just difficult to digest. Instead of pasta I've been cooking Soba noodles. Soba can be bought in Japanese and Korean stores, recently it had started to appear in regular grocery stores as well. When selecting Soba try to buy one that was made in Japan or Korea, so far locally made Soba that I have tried did not taste the same.

Cooking instructions are usually found on the packet but generally you are required to boil some water, salt it, add Soba and keep it boiling at low for about 6-8 minutes. Drain and pour some cold water over it.

Soba can be eaten cold, plain or with some soya sauce. It is also possible to make a delicious Japanese Soba soup, but I leave this for another post, which I will write once I master this recipe.

Taste index, out of 5: 4
Heartburn safe index, out of 5: 5

Simple salad

This is going to be pretty obvious but might be worth documenting any how. Fresh salad is very important for your diet for many reasons, which I will not go into. However, some ingredients and especially dressings can cause a bad heartburn.

I find that the following ingredients work for me, can be used in any combination.

Cucumber
Bell pepper
Avocado
Lettuce
Walnuts
Olive oil

Not too much variety, but if you use good quality olive oil and mix up the ingredients you will find the result quite tasty.

Taste index, out of 5: 3
Heartburn safe index, out of 5: 5

Rice with mushrooms and sea food

After some experimentation with rice I have discovered that sticky rice would cause heartburn, while the non sticky variety would not. Rice by itself gets pretty boring after a while, this recipe adds some flavor to this dish. I normally cook this in a rice cooker, which makes this all more simple, however cooking this is a pot should also work.

Ingredients:
2 cups of parboiled rice
1 box of whole or cut white champignons
1 large bell pepper
200-300g of raw pealed small shrimp or other kind of sea food - without shrimp the recipe also works add more champignons or peppers in this case
1 table spoon of olive oil or 30 ml of unsalted butter
1/2 tea spoon of ground turmeric
1 tea spoon of salt

Cut whole champignons into vertical slices
Cut bell pepper into small square pieces
Wash the rice
Combine all ingredients together, add sufficient amount of water. Generally you should add enough water to cook the rice. Follow the directions on the rice or rice cooker, usually 2 cups of rice would require 4 cups of water.
Bring to a boil then reduce to minimum - rice cooker does this for you
Cook until rice is soft and the water is gone - rice cooker does this for you

Experiment with olive oil/butter and salt until you get the taste right.

Taste index, out of 5: 4
Heartburn safe index, out of 5: 4

Veal and carrot cutlets

Always loved cutlets. The traditional way of making them includes onions, bread or flour and heavy ground meat, all things that would cause me to have heartburn. Here is an alternative I came up with.

Ingredients:

2 lb ground veal - less fatty than beef
4 large carrots - substitute for onions and bread
4 eggs
2 large spoons of non gluten flour
ginger - remove if ginger causes heartburn for you
olive oil
a bit of salt

Finely chop carrots and ginger - I use electric chopper
Mix well all ingredients. You should be able to form small flattened balls from the meat without it falling apart. If the meat does not stick add more eggs or flour.

Put some olive oil on the pan and preheat. Form fist sized flattened balls from the meet and place them in one layer on the pan, allowing enough space between them to be able to turn.

Fry until fully cooked, make sure the meat does not fry too much from the outside, as this may cause heartburn.

Taste index, out of 5: 4
Heartburn safe index, out of 5: 3

First post

Have been thinking about starting this kind of blog for a while. The purpose of this blog is to have a record of the recipes I have discovered or "invented". If other people with the same problems benefit from these posts it would make blogging more worthwhile.