MS Cookbook Fish and Seafood Recipes:
The MS Cookbook Fish and Seafood Recipes Will be launched very soon. Over the coming weeks I will be posting more recipes from the book here on the website just to wet your appetite. Before I do that let me tell you a little bit about why fish is such an excellent food for anyone who is suffering from Multiple Sclerosis or any other inflammatory auto immune disease.
Unlike other meat, fish contains mainly omega 3 fatty acids which research suggest to have an anti inflammatory effect. They seem to dampen the inflammatory immune response and thereby help reduce the risk of inflammation and relapses in auto immune diseases.
Other meat like beef or pork contain mainly saturated fats which have the opposite effect. They stimulate the auto immune response, something you want to avoid as they can add to the risk of relapses. (For more information on this I’d like to refer you to the OMS Program developed by Prof. Jelinik.)
I can only encourage you to avoid all saturated fats as much as possible and change from a meat eating diet to one that contains fish and is otherwise plant based.
In this recipe the fish is cooked without extra fat as it is steamed on a bed of rice. The rice is prepared with a selection of spices and sweetened soya milk. It is fragrant and tasty. I have altered the traditional Thai recipe to avoid the use of coconut as coconut has a high saturated fat content.
Steamed Sea Bass & Cucumber on a Bed of Thai Rice:
Sea Bass is a fish that is a protected species in Irish waters so it’s important to check that the fish you buy comes from a sustainable source. It’s probably one of the few fish types I make sure to buy from a farmed source as oppose to ‘caught in the wild’. That is one of the reasons why I included it in the ‘for special occasions’ section. For me sea bass isn’t a fish to be consumed in high quantities, it is a protected species for a reason. Sea bass is a very tasty fish though and when prepared like in this dish for example it is delicious and very much a meal for special occasions.
Serves 2
Preparation and cooking time: 35 minutes
Ingredients:
8 oz/250 g sea bass filets
handful of rocket leaves
handful of fresh coriander
1 tsp fresh chili, de-seeded and finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic
2 heaped tsp of gomasio
3 tsp lemon juice
3 tbs soy sauce
1 cup/250 ml sweetened soya milk
½ cucumber, cut lengthways into slices
2 scallions, finely sliced
some leafy greens and ½ thinly sliced red bell pepper to garnish
7 oz/200 g basmati rice
- Cook the rice for about 12 minutes (just under cooked) then drain it and place into an oven proof dish.
- While the rice is cooking chop up the rocket leaves, coriander, garlic and fresh chili and mix together while chopping very finely.
- Scoop up the herbs and place into a bowl, add the gomasio, lemon juice, soya sauce and soya milk and mix together until you have a slightly paste like sauce.
- Pour the mix over the rice, mix and spread out evenly.
- Place the fish filets on top of the rice, the scatter the cucumber slices over the fish.
- Cover the dish with tin foil and bake in a pre-heated oven at 190˚C for 15 minutes.
- Serve rice with the cucumber as a bed for the filets, scattering the scallions over the fish and accompany with leafy greens and strips of thinly sliced red bell pepper.