Skip to main content

150 best Indian, Asian, Caribbean and more Diabetes recipes: Book Review

9780778804956_cover

I am not the meatloaf type.  Or a tuna casserole woman.

Why?  I find the standard North American fare very boring.  I love ethnic food and exotic spices and complex flavours. I am spoiled to live in ridiculously multicultural Toronto which is a mecca for ethnic food of almost any variety.  But we don't eat out much.  Its costly, the girls, like most kids, are not adventurous eaters, and most restaurant food is loaded with hidden sugar, salt and fat.

Thankfully, I love cooking and love cooking ethnic dishes.  So I was excited to receive this book to review.  Although no one in this house has diabetes, I assumed a cookbook aimed at diabetics would simply contain healthy, low sugar, reduced carbohydrate recipes that anyone can enjoy.  I was right!
Written by registered dietician, Sobia Khan, it has lots of delicious recipes!

I love this book!  It starts with some background on diabetes and prediabetes and discusses the relevance for multicultural communities (some ethnic groups are particularly at risk).  It also contains a section giving general tips on how to make traditional recipes healthier.  One of my favorite parts of this book is the section reviewing the key herbs and spices for various types of cuisine.  Very useful and informative!

The rest of the book is broken down into sections based on cuisine: South Asian, Chinese, Hispanic and Caribbean.  There are also appendices with basic stock recipes and nutrition information.

There are so many recipes in here I want to try!  Mouth watering curries, Chinese dishes like hot and sour soup, braised tofu and eggplant, cactus salad, Colombian rice with coconut, Trinidadian stewed black-eyed peas, and more.  I made one that really caught my eye and will share it with you soon.

My only complaint is that many of the recipes, particularly the Chinese ones, contain sugar, which seems odd.  There are many better sweeteners that are healthier for everyone and safe for diabetics. If I make any of these, I would substitute with coconut sugar, stevia or something else.  Likewise, although Khan suggests using brown rice instead of white in the into section, many recipes still call for white rice.  I don't care what's traditional, everyone should switch to brown rice, even if you don't have diabetes!

The book is also peppered with lots of tips and suggestions for combining recipes to make a whole meal.

Although each recipe is not accompanied by a photo, each section has a series of colour photos featuring a handful of the dishes in that section.

If you want to learn more about ethnic cooking, and/or want to learn how to lighten up the dishes you already make, this book is a good bet.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Japanese 7-Spice Kelp Noodles

I love trying new spices and seasonings, so I am very excited that the President's Choice Black Label line now has a bunch of new spice blends available.  My most recent find: Shichimi Togarashi, or Japanese 7-Spice blend. It's a combination of crushed red chili flakes, sea salt, Szechiuan peppercorns, black and white sesame seeds, poppy seeds, orange zest, wasabi powder and nori seaweed flakes. I make Japanese-inspired dishes all the time, but resort to the same old flavours most of the time: miso, soy, sesame, ginger and garlic.  I was so excited to be able to liven things up a bit. This dish is easy and tasty, although be warned that this seasoning packs punch.  I used 1 tsp, which ended up being too spicy for me, and I have a high tolerance for heat!  I recommend 1/4-1/2 tsp, or, if you don't like heat at all, make your own at home and omit the red chili flakes.  You'll get all the flavour without the heat. I served these noodles with a mix of seafood (

Blackfly Coolers: Product Review

Summer is over! Well, at least if you're a student. Officially it doesn't end for a few weeks, and it certainly still feels like summer. Yeah, I hate it. This f*cking hot, humid weather needs to end NOW! We made the most of our last weekend of the summer with our annual trip to the CNE on Friday, with a crowd of friends. It wasn't unbearably lot, thank goodness, and the girls and their friends had a blast on the rides.  Saturday I had to work, and Sunday was errand day. Monday we took the girls berry/apple/pear picking but didn't last long due to the heat. I organized the house to prepare for the construction workers starting back up yesterday, while Adam took the girls for a swim in our neighbourhood pool. Yesterday was the first day of school. Grade 2 and Grade 5. Yep, the girls are growing up.  We are fortunate that the girls don't have much anxiety about school, they are so much more confident than I ever was as a kid! But now, in the midst of our reno ch

How to Look Like a Celebrity

Okay, I know you're going to be interested in this post! I am sure virtually every woman in North America has wondered how Hollywood celebrities achieve such 'perfect' bodies.  Well, at CAN FIT PRO last week, one of Hollywood's top fitness trainers, Eric the Trainer , was there to tell us fitness professionals the secrets! Eric the Trainer, gave several presentations, and I caught the one on Celebrity Secrets, and it was most interesting!!!  I also found some of what he said rather disturbing. First off, he was very upfront about the fact that celebrities come to him for improve their appearance.  Not to improve their health or athletic performance.  To look their best.  He admitted that his approach then, is entirely dedicated to that end. Male and female celebrities are trained in completely different ways because Hollywood wants women to be lithe and thin and in his words, "look like they dropped out of heaven looking this way without every having ste