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This salad has onion flavour as it’s base and uses chives to achieve this. It can be made without the chive flowers but if you can get them they do make a really pretty addition to this dish. I am really lucky where I live as we have the Incredible Edible scheme. This is a organisation that has planted lots of edible herbs and fruit trees around the town that are available for all residents and visitors to sample for free – as long as you know what you are looking for and what flowers are edible and can be used. I have gathered the chive flowers (the light purple ones – see image below), fennel leaves and borage flowers (the deep blue ones that I have used for garnish.) So for me this recipe was reasonable in cost because the herbs were free. There was also a pleasure gained in going for a walk and gathering my own food.

800px-Allium_schoenoprasum_in_NH_01 — Attribution ShareAlike 3.0

You can modify this recipe to make it more simple by just using chive stems and any green/red salad leaves to base the salad on, plus the borage flowers are not a necessary ingredient for the integrity of the dish. I produced this recipe without dressing as I felt the chives added plenty of strong flavour but you can add some if you wish- do check the label for fodmap ingredients. If you struggle with resistant starches then serve the rice whilst it is still slightly warm.

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Ingredients

75g of cooked wholegrain and red rice

4 chive flower heads and stems

4 chard leaves and stems

1/2 packet of low lactose mozzarella

2 sprigs of fennel leaves

seasoning

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Method

Chop the chive stems and chard stems into small pieces

Rip the chard leaves into small pieces

If needed cook the rice by covering in cold water and bringing it to the boil – season then cool and drain.

If using the chive flowers cut the individual flowers from the flower head

Rip the low lactose mozzarella into bite size pieces

Pull the fennel leaves into small pieces

Combine everything and serve

Serves one – enjoy!

talkhealth Blog

Garlic contains fructans (an oligosaccharide) and is for some people a potent cause of symptoms in IBS. It is a shame that it does as it is found in many ready meals and processed foods so can be a challenging part of the diet to avoid. Fructans is a non absorbable sugar that increases fermentation in the gut and gives some people with IBS symptoms. Cooking method is the key with avoiding fructans, they are soluble in water and this property means that if you use oil only, to cook the garlic, the flavour is imparted but non of the fructans. As the fructans are not soluble in oil. So, by all means fry your garlic in a small amount of oil then remove the garlic pieces from the pan before adding any water based liquid to the pan, such as stock, sauce or tomatoes. If you don’t wish to do that, then a good option is garlic infused oil, ensure the oil is clear and free of garlic pieces and you should not go wrong.

One reason why it is important to re-introduce fodmaps to the diet is to relax the diet and you might find that you can tolerate a small, or large amount of garlic. This means that you can have foods containing garlic and it makes looking for suitable foods a little easier.

What about wild garlic, or Ramsons? Is it low in fructans? It might be assumed that because the green leaves of spring onion and leek are, so must the leaves of wild garlic. As far as I am aware they have not been tested, so it is wise not to assume. It is also wise, if you do not have an issue with garlic to use the foragers code – if you are unsure of what you are gathering, then don’t pick the leaves. See the image below from Compoundchem.com which explains about poisonous plants that have a similar appearance to wild garlic and you would not want to get them mixed up.

So, is garlic an enemy? For some people, for sure – it results in symptoms but my opinion is that we have no food ‘enemies’. For some lucky people they can eat garlic with impunity. This is always the case with IBS – every situation is different.

If you can eat it the image is a salad based on cucumber, pine nuts, capers, anchovy, pea shoots wild garlic flowers and drizzle of balsamic vinegar – yum.

But if you can’t eat garlic you can impart that glorious flavour in other ways and to see a carpet of garlic flowers in the spring is a joy that is guaranteed not to have any untoward effects!