Finding a Substitute for Soya Sauce

I am currently going four days without gluten and dairy. I have had some struggles. Especially when it comes to seeing your family snack on chocolate and cookies. It was also not fun when somebody brought cake to work. Yeah, definitely wanted to cheat and eat a piece.

Random side note -- who knew that lipstick contained gluten?! Big surprise. And apparently so does play dough? Cool.

One item that contains gluten that was most surprising to me is soya sauce. I read that a lot of soya sauce contains wheat that is mixed in with the soy. Therefore, I cannot have any stir fry with soya sauce, which is hard at home because all we eat every day for dinner is basically stir fry with soya sauce and rice. That also eliminates going to restaurants and hawker centers in Singapore since soya sauce is one of the main ingredients. Challenge time!

Yeah, I love my stir fry. And I love my soya sauce.

I am going to make it my goal to find a substitute for soya sauce that will add flavor to the stir fry dish. Today marked my first experiment.

Bell Pepper Stir Fry with Brown Rice

I am a big fan of Indian spices and lately have been experimenting with Indian cooking a bit -- back in the gluten days. Indian spices have a lot of flavor to them and currently my two favorite ones are ground cumin and coriander. These spices were the soya sauce alternatives of the day.

Capsicum / Bell Pepper Stir Fry [Soya Sauce -less]

Ingredients:

• 2 Capsicums / Bell Peppers (One Green and One Yellow) -- (Chopped)
• 1 medium onion (chopped)
• 2 tsp chopped garlic
• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• salt to taste

The Raw Ingredients

1. Heat the oil in a pan on medium heat. Add garlic and onions and cook until onions begin to get soft (this will only take a few minutes).
2. Add the bell peppers to the pan and stir fry. Lower the heat and add in spices. Add in salt to taste. (The salt will bring out the flavour of the cumin and coriander so make sure that you add in enough salt to taste)
3. Turn of heat when the bell peppers are soft -- or still a little bit crunchy. It depends how you like them cooked! Serve with rice.

Stir Frying the Goodies!

The Finished Product

It turned out to look and taste very nice! I always love having a lot of colourful vegetables on my plate!

The Indian Spices ended up adding a lot of flavor to the dish and went really well the bell peppers. This is definitely a mix of spices I will try again.

I mark experiment one of finding the soya sauce substitute a SUCCES!!

Lunch Time!

I added some brown rice to it, put it in a lunch box and it will be ready to be taken to work!

This is so simple to make. I made it in the evening just before going to bed and it took me less than half an hour. Somehow, I feel very relaxed cooking in the evening, especially when trying out new foods and experimenting with things. This makes me look forward to not being able to eat food at work or at the canteen.

Good night! I have a lovely lunch to look forward to tomorrow :)