Gentle cooking - Oat porridge with stewed apple and banana

A gentle way to an anti-inflammatory lifestyle, no added sugar, less oil, salt, or fat. First post of the series: breakfast

I wondered why I hadn't posted anything about my meals recipes although I'm fairly active in sharing the pictures I took of my meals on Instagram. Then I came across a post by Amber Horrox where she shared about her way of anti-inflammatory eating. I took it as a sign to crack on writing my personal twist on this lifestyle. As you may know from following my writing for so long, I'm prone to autoimmunity flare-ups. It is suggested indeed that the autoimmune warriors follow certain lifestyle governing eating, personal hygiene, and more protocols.

Orthorexia is my problem. It's often a struggle to find a sweet spot between my adventurous tastebuds and sticking to safe anti-inflammatory foods. But as more and more healthier voices I connect with and follow in the autoimmunity space, there's more I am at ease to recognise that there's no single anti-inflammatory diet protocol that works for everybody. The general consensus is gluten is bad. And this sentiment is also shared across the health-sphere of other chronic illnesses. Amber wrote about how cutting down gluten has tremendously helped improve her migraine. But people may disagree about red meat, eggs, dairy, and so on.

I'm not the poster girl for avoiding gluten as I'm not that disciplined. I experiment with my meals. I don't restrict much, but I avoid UPFs and excess oil, sugar, salt, and fat. Hence, keeping a food journal is non-negotiable so I can draw some correlations if my symptoms are triggered later, or if I feel positive changes. I pay attention to my log so that I can notice if I haven't given my body a break from digesting problematic ingredients like gluten. Such awareness will usually be followed by a couple of days without gluten.

As I wrote the draft of this post (on a rainy Sunday afternoon with fellow writers in my writing club in Aberdeen), I figured I liked writing about food and the thoughts and culture surrounding it. I take it as a sign that my relationship with food has improved.

If you expect a perfectly measured list of ingredients here, I'm sorry you'll be mistaken.

I'm a dumper cook, I dump everything into the pot and measure the taste to my heart's content. Well, yes, I bake loaves of bread sometimes, and that's where you want to be more precise with the ingredients. But for other things, you can wing each recipe. Less salt or more? Cooked slightly longer for a softer texture? Your call.

Allow me to share my go-to recipes for the meals I prepare myself. It's useful to have staple recipes up your sleeve so that on those days and nights your brain is too tired to think or when chronic illness flare-up pops round, thinking of what to cook will be one less task.

Of course, if cooking is beyond what your energy level allows, meal prep is the key. But I'm not an avid fan of it. I ingredients prep but don't meal prep. Figure out what works for you.

Cooking is one of my favourite activities to wind down and to mark the passage of time, somewhat like a temporal landmark. The act of washing my hands before cooking started the winding down mode of my body, which I appreciate.

What does gentle cooking mean?

My own definition of gentle cooking:

Gentle cooking is a way of cooking that subjects the food to fewer alterations—such as excessive browning or charring, overly seasoned or deep fried—achieved by less heat, sometimes even less time to yield the bitey/raw output, to preserve the characters of the food to the body.

Gentle cooking is also a way of cooking with less inflammatory ingredients to your body. Everybody can react to inflammatory properties differently, so experiment properly or with a dietitian on your side if you can afford it. For me, I reduce dairy, gluten, sugar, and animal proteins in general.

Some dishes taste more comforting if overcooked, such as porridge, congee, or meaty stews. That's fine. Instead of high heat, it can be achieved by allowing more time at lower heat.

Instead of frying or grilling, fish can be cooked by steam or boiling water, for example.

Chicken or poultry can be steamed or roasted with the skin later to be removed because the skin is fatty and charred.

Instead of overly salted or sweetened, we use less salt, bananas, and fruits to adjust our palate to a gentler set of tastes. Vinegar to add richness is also preferred rather than a heavier taste.

Instead of UPFs and animal fats for dishes, customise the recipes with olive oil (still, use it less). Cheese can be used rather sparingly.

The recipes in this series are customisable to what you have in your pantry. Just make sure what your allergies and restrictions are and adjust the ingredients to meet this requirement.

Here we go, kicking it off with breakfast, the first meal of the day.

It literally means breaking the fast, as our body has fasted overnight (as you should to give your digestion a break, to rest and repair the cells). Make sure your breakfast and nutritious, gentle and filling.

Breakfast: Morning porridge

I used to not fancy oatmeal porridge until I found the jumbo oat which was a game changer.

Growing up in a South East Asian (SEAsian) culture, our porridge is what's called congee in the West, a porridge of rice instead of oat.

This rice congee is normally eaten with animal proteins, such as eggs, and/or shredded chicken, and topped with a generous ladle of yellow or brown stock depending on where you are. In my hometown, the local version has brown stock from the sweet soy sauce, while the yellow one, in Jakarta and the West Java area is made of turmeric infusion. A sprinkle of local celery (different from the huge-stalked celery type in the West), fried doughs (similar to the Chinese *youtiao*) and fried shallots serve as garnish. Another version that's more influenced by the Chinese culture has a thicker congee and no ladle of stock.

In my culture growing up, oat porridge is associated with a sweet breakfast as the congee represents the savoury.

But as people started demonising white rice for no apparent reason (I have a different stance regarding blood glucose here), oatmeal is deemed as the healthier alternative.

I get that oat has this higher content of beta-glucan fibre which makes it a recommended alternative for heart disease or type 2 diabetes patients who are discouraged from white rice.

Due to this subculture, oat is considered less palatable because it's associated with 'sick people' foods.

As there had been an increasing push towards oat becoming an alternative staple for society's breakfast, and the economics was better in my home country, making oat easily affordable and found in middle-to-low class income minimarkets (corner shops), the oat company (Quaker became a household name without competition) started on the marketing campaign for various recipes of oat, including the savoury.

I never enjoyed oat much as it wasn't my go-to breakfast option: the local vendors with their pushcarts or semi-permanent tents still rule over the locals' hearts with rice congee, local pancakes (kue cubit), rice with coconut milk and various condiments including proteins and veggies (nasi uduk), fried rice at home (somehow the local fried rice vendors operate in the afternoon and evening despite fried rice being a local household staple for breakfast), or a plethora of traditional cakes and cookies, much cooked using steamers rather than ovens as the latter are not a common household utensil.

But as I studied abroad, first in Den Haag, The Netherlands, and then Scotland, and grew fondness of the oat porridge, a Scottish breakfast staple, I definitely gave it a large go and fell in love all over again. I treated oats as my go-to breakfast option. Although the merry talk about savoury and sweet breakfast can quickly turn cheekily divisive, I sway towards the sweeter end of oat porridge. The savoury style can be used in a similar style to the rice congee, I believe.

Its versatility for savoury and sweet breakfast makes oats quite popular throughout the world. But this one I'm sharing specifically uses jumbo oats, with a hodgepodge of toppings that have health benefits. No oil nor milk is used to prepare this. But as always, this recipe serves as a mere guide. Adjust it to your preference.

Oat porridge with stewed apple and banana

You'll need:

- jumbo oats

- chia seeds

- one apple, I use the royal gala, generally pick the red ones rather than green

- cinnamon powder, or better yet, the cinnamon stick

- banana

- berries medley (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, whatever you have on hand)

- nuts and seeds (cashews, pumpkin seeds, golden flaxseeds . . .)

Method:

Boil jumbo oats and chia seeds for about 5 minutes or more depending on your liking. Five minutes is according to the jumbo oats package but that results in the porridge still giving out some bites. You can cook it longer if you wish.

As for the stewed apple and banana (or just stewed apple), it's a dump-all-together thing because no oil or fat is necessary, so you don't need to saute anything or time the ingredients.

What I do is just to throw the apple and banana slices into a hot pan with a splash of water and a sprinkle of cinnamon (or more). You can add some other spices like cardamom or even raw cacao to . . . spice things up.

Plating is just scooping the porridge into a bowl, top it over with the stew, fresh berries, nuts, perhaps shredded coconuts, seeds, and whatever else you have in hand.

That's all, folks.

By the way, I found writing lighthearted posts interesting. It gives me a pause from the usual deeply thought posts with analysis and reflection.

Tell me if you want to read about this more. I still have many recipes to share, obviously.

Also, if you're a subscriber, you must have noticed I posted a poem on Monday. In that post, I mentioned that I broke my rule of weekly posts, hence weekly notification only.

I hope you won't mind.

I believe I won't reach posting every single day, but please expect posts coming more often than once a week. You can always opt for in-app notification or label your email if you wish if you don't like receiving it in your inbox.

But I won't stop writing mischievous smile

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The Gentle Roadmap is a publication centred on a holistic healing journey. As a practising Catholic, the articles sometimes portray my layperson experience with the faith. If you like my writing and want to be notified of new posts, please subscribe (it’s always free). You’re always welcome here regardless.

Until next time,