How to use anti-inflammatory spices for a protein lunch (with Gurdeep Loyal)

A lot of people struggle to get turmeric in their diet other than just putting it into hot water or adding it as a supplement. So today, we've got Gerd Loyal in the kitchen. Gerd is a phenomenal recipe writer. He's been in the industry for over two decades. He is an absolute wealth of knowledge with not just the spices themselves, but how to use them in combination. And today's recipe is a Thai-inspired dish that we're using chicken mince for, but if you want to keep it plant-based, you could use something like a soy or a bean curd or tempeh. And we're using a selection of different spices have just as impressive anti-inflammatory benefits as turmeric. We're using black pepper, we're using coriander seeds, we're using cumin. And all these things in combination have synergistic effects on inflammation levels as well. Tell me what to do. I'm your sous chef. I'm going to get you chopping an onion, please. Okay. What I'm going to do is I'm going to start sort of making our spice paste. So we've kind of got two elements of this. Mix together the lime leaves and some of the dry spices, and then we're going to add some of the fish sauce. And you kind of make a paste by combining both of those. So in here, I am going to add some lime leaves. These are amazing ones. All of those cuisines that have this kind of amalgamation of different flavours, often it's lime leaf or lemongrass, I think. And actually adding it to Indian food, which, you know, this isn't Indian food, this is Thai, but with a kind of Indian inflection. So this sort of ability to pair and fuse flavours that work together, that seem so seemingly different, it's sort of in your DNA, right? There's no reason why you shouldn't reach for anything in your pantry for whatever you happen to be cooking. And I don't think you need to worry too much about, well, can that go with that? Can that go there? It's like, well, if it's in your pantry, they're all ready together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, why not add some tamarind to your chili con carne? Why not add some miso into something if you want to add some kind of, you know, savoury depth to it? And I think for me, I've got a real playful kind of approach to flavouring. Are there sort of like some sort of rules of thumb where you're like, okay, if you're making a dish and you have some heat, then you need to balance it with sweet or sour. When you're cooking something and you have a taste of it, and you're like, something's missing, think about those five elements. Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. And it'll be one of those. Often, it's the sour, which is why, you know, adding a spritz of lemon. You know, if you're making an Indian dal, putting that tamarind at the end, it just lifts the whole thing. So I've got in here, I've got lime leaves, I've got black pepper, I've got the inside of the cardamom seeds, and then I've got the coriander seeds, and a bit of salt. And I'm just gonna kind of... Oh, wow. That is so citrusy. It's so citrusy. You've got so much citrus in this, not only in the lime leaves, but actually coriander seeds are really lemony. That's amazing. So we're doing these today with chicken thyme mints, which is, you know, it's really lean, really protein heavy. And if people wanted to make like a vegetarian version of this, could you use like tofu, bean curd? Tofu, bean curd, like even like, you could do this with like a crumbled tempeh even. I'm just gonna blitz up the peppercorns as well. Just fry those off. Yeah, translucent, not brown. Yeah, translucent, not too much. And then I'm gonna add a bit of vinegar, which is kind of a nice acidic element. And then we're gonna add some fish sauce, which is our kind of umami. Fish sauce is one of those interesting things. People think they don't like it. It's like anchovies. People think they don't like it. And then if you make someone some food with or without the fish sauce, assuming they eat fish, I guarantee you, just don't tell them it's in there. And they will love it. It's like if you make a pasta sauce and you put in the anchovies, people say, I hate anchovies. And then you give them the one with the anchovies, and they're like, this is amazing. It's like, it's the anchovies. But I'm not gonna tell you that. And then the other thing I'm gonna add is a little bit, and this is sort of the Indian-ness, is to amp up that sourness. It's a little bit of amchur. So this is mango powder. Nice. There are some benefits to blood sugar regulation of amchur because of the sort of like bitter compounds in it. So it's sort of like touted as like amchur juice, I think it is. It's something that you take every single day, if you're type two diabetic or pre-diabetic or whatever. But in terms of the flavour, like that is just, it's like biting into a grapefruit. Yeah, a really tart, yeah, it's that. It almost tastes like the outside of sour sweets. It's like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're just gonna also add a little bit of water to this. Yeah, sure. Perfect. So what we've got here then is a really quick and really unique spice paste that has all of those different elements in there. Okay. I mean, smell that now. It's kind of got even more depth to it. And we haven't cooked anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, we're gonna get some garlic into there. Do you want to just crush that? We'll crush that, that'd be great. The key ingredient with this is gonna be our fresh turmeric. You can grate this if you want. It's very simple. You just sort of, in the same way that you would ginger, just with the back of a spoon. But I just think using fresh turmeric has so much more flavour. Yeah. It obviously has the vibrancy of the colour as well. Just brings out that delicious kind of gingery. Yeah. Like the gingeriness of it, which I just don't think that you get if you do it with brown. It's just not quite the same. This recipe actually comes from growing up Indian. If we were ever ill, we were given haldivud, which is turmeric milk. But the thing that we were always told is that you can't actually activate the turmeric unless there's black pepper in there. When turmeric milk started becoming this like trendy ingredient, I was always like, you're doing it wrong. It should taste of black pepper. Like, why does it taste of almond milk and maple? It should taste nice. It should not taste nice. So for me, I was like, well, how do I bring some of that ancient Indian wisdom into a Thai dish? So that's why this is the, you've got the black pepper and then you've got that kind of turmeric in there as well. Let's get the garlic in and then we will fry off the mince. Nice. The other thing about turmeric, I mean, we're always trying to get people to use spices more often in their cooking. I mean, there's strong anti-inflammatory benefits. Turmeric are actually when you just consume a whole and it sits in your gut and it has this prebiotic effect. But also, like you were saying with black pepper, it irritates the gut lining slightly. And so that's what leads to higher absorption. I see. Okay. We're going to get the mince in first. Quite high temperature? Yeah. I mean, we definitely want to brown it. Brown it, yeah. And I think we've got some chili as well. Yes, yeah. Here you go. I'm going to put in a little bit of that chili as well. And this is just, you know, we don't want it to be hot, but I think it's just about having a bit of that kick. Yeah. When it just starts to brown, that's when we're going to add this paste in, I think. Okay, cool. So this is just all of that delicious flavor. There's no oil. It's just the pure flavor. They're basically going to cook that down for about three or four minutes. And so we want the chicken to be cooked through and those spices to have just kind of cooked out a little bit. Yeah, yeah. And then I think just towards the end, what we'll do is we'll add a bit of lemon or lime, and then we'll add some fresh coriander as well. Okay, brilliant. So what we're going to do is we're going to just very slightly up the acid. Yeah. A little bit of lemon. You could use lime. Yeah. And then just towards the end. How's that looking? Should we put this through? Yeah, I think so. I'm just going to scrape the bottom just to get some of this flavor. So we've got our coriander going through and then the last thing is just going to be some peanuts, which I am just going to crush up. I'm just going to turn the heat off now. The last thing is just some of those peanuts and we'll save some for garnishing. Yeah, nice. Gosh, that was amazing. Super simple, right? So now we're just going to plate up. Okay. And like with the sour notes, you know, testament to the new book that you're writing and stuff. Could you use other sorts of sources of sour? I mean, absolutely. Tamarind, lime. Yeah, lemon, lime, like tamarind, absolutely. Even things like grapefruit. I think it's a really interesting ingredient to kind of add into things because it just is an unexpected sourness. And then there's obviously the entire world of vinegar. Red wine vinegar, white wine vinegar, infused vinegars. Wanting to just mix things up. So often I think people sort of, when they think sourness, they think it has to be a liquid thing. Yeah. No, it can be amchur. It can be sumac. Sumac is sour and zingy. Someone said everyone should have like the range of different flavors and the different ingredients that you- So, it's interesting you say that because in my book, this is exactly what I did. So I made these sort of little, I call them flavor bubbles. If you were thinking about sour and citrusy, here are all of the things that you could potentially use. Even like pickled onion, pumpkin blossoms, red wine, you know, amaboshi, which is this amazing Japanese plum paste, which is delicious. So this is what I wanted to do with the books. Like, I really wanted to get people to think expansively about food and go, well, actually, you know, if I'm going to be adding something that's, I don't know, herbal and grassy, here are all the different things I could use. And actually the point is not to say you need all these things in your pantry. The point is to say, you can make all of these things by thinking about the flavor characteristics of something and not being too worried about, oh, but I'm not cooking Middle Eastern food. And it's like, it's okay because you can still put sumac into this. It's going to be delicious. So we're just going to sort of arrange these out. Well, these are super healthy as well. Like not just from the sort of chemical composition, but because they have like prebiotic benefits as well. They're great for your gut, adds diversity. And the red ones have got these special anti-inflammatory chemicals in as well. You could add some veg to this. You could use tempeh. There's so many ways in which you can personalize this meal for your own flavor. Completely. Yeah, completely. I'm just going to do a little bit of red onion just to kind of garnish on top. This is actually a great one for kids. It's actually also a good one for parties. Because you can use this filling just to kind of fill in all sorts of little things. Really good. It's got some punch to it. It does. It's uncompromising on the flavor. And I think, you know, if you're going to go with lime leaves, sometimes a recipe would say, oh, use two or use one. And I'm like, no, no, put eight in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or if it's like, if you're using coriander seeds, instead of like half a teaspoon, well. A hundred percent. If you're going to use it, put in a teaspoon or put in two. I'm totally on board. You know, I get comments sometimes on my recipes where I'm like, have you told me to put like two teaspoons in? I was like, is that a typo? No, I'm like, no. Yeah, I get, yeah. Whack it in. I'm also thinking about from the perspective of the health benefits of getting these really densely concentrated beneficial compounds from herbs and spices. Like there's benefits of that stuff. So we're going to get a bit of that red onion onto there. Wow. Look at that. There you go. This is, that, I'm really impressed. Good. We're very, very impressed. A splattered book, but we've created it perfectly. So what is this? Turmeric and black pepper larb with lime leaf. Gorgeous. Wow. Let's try it. Come in. I'll let you go in first. Oh, wow. It's tasty, isn't it? Oh, bro. Bit of leaf that I'm eating this on, it's like, it matches perfect. So good. It's really tasty. So, so good. Mm. This is delicious. I love the lemon. And so, you know what it is? It's a lot of that lime leaf, just using a lot of it and then blitzing it up. Cause when you blitz the lime leaf up, it brings out all those essential oils. And often if you put in lime leaves whole or you just put them in like Chiffonade, you don't get to that level of the essential oils.