The Lilac Kitchen

Time flies

2011-07-01T00:37:00.000+01:00

I don't seem to be blogging much recently but life has been very full.

We have finished moving plots on the allotment and are trying to get fully caught up with the growing season. The garlic and shallots did pretty well given we moved them halfway through the spring and I now have bundles of garlic drying in the back of the house. The fruit bushes seem happier and the baby trees even have baby fruit though one of them has lost them all in the June drop. The established tree is a bit of a every other year cropper apparently but has a few here and there.

We put in some new flower planters at the front of the house instead of a wall or fence as it's a very small area but can you see something wrong with them?

The tomatoes and huge squash that seem to be growing on one of them were never planted. That's what comes from using the compost from the allotment !

volunteer squash, just what sort is it???

A closer look at the squash. I'm try to decide if I should dig it up and transplant it to the allotment or just leave it and find out what sort it is ! We have tomatoes and potatoes cropping up in various unwanted places on the allotment which surprises me as they are both tender here and we had the coldest December on record !

In more cooking related news I finally bottled up the apple 'beer' which turns out to be more like apple wine but very nice and I made 2 gallons of elderflower cordial.

2 gallons of cordial in random mixed bottles.

Not sure how long this will last us but it was really easy to make so will definitely be doing it again next year probably in bigger quantities.

quick menu post

2011-03-07T15:44:00.000Z

For the first time in ages I have a menu planned on a Monday so I thought I'd shock everyone and post it.!

This weeks gluten free menu swap is hosted by Celiac Family who chose celery. I don't have any recipes based specifically on it but there will be some in the leek and potato soup and I might possibly do braised celery later in the week as a side dish because Noddles wants to try it cooked.

Monday - Leek and Potato soup with cheese scones
(there are both leeks and potatoes left on the new allotment which are still edible so I think there may be a lot of recipes including them the next few weeks!)

Tuesday - Shrove Tuesday so there can only be one dish - PANCAKES !!

Wednesday - spare ribs and rice

Thursday - Pasta and sauce

Friday - Beef stew

Saturday - Treestump's third birthday so birthday picnic/tea and of course cake !

Sunday - Roast pork and all the trimmings.

Baking - cheese scones, birthday cake or cakes might do decorated cupcakes. some sort of bread.

One thing I do need to do is sort out something automatic that I like for breakfast, I'm trying to get out to the allotment when I drop Noodles to school but need to have eaten before I go out and having re-tried bread using Xanth gum last week it definitely does me no good and makes it much harder to get going in the mornings so I either need to make bread or something similar so I always have some available or find something else I will happily grab and run as I have to be in the mood for cereal, that said I might try making my own granola as that is one I do generally like but is SO expensive to get the couple of types that are gluten free here.

Allotment News

2011-02-27T20:37:00.000Z

I have decided to start posting allotment updates here rather than on a dedicated blog. I have failed to keep up the allotment one over the last year and now we have decided to move plots so the name isn't even right. Plus most of what we grow will end up on a plate so it seems sensible.

Anyway to explain the move a bit more, I like our original plot but it's been very hard work getting the compacted heavy clay into working order and much of our time has been spent trying to get a fence/hedge in and chasing Treestump around the site as our plot isn't secure. Last year it took us so long to prep and dig beds as the spring was so wet that by the time we got the potatoes in we were behind on everything else and most of it barely grew. Also with no hedge to mask us as most plots have and being right on the carpark we have been very much in full public view. We have not got as far as we would have liked due to a big learning curve, my physicality problems over the last few years and it just being a lot of work with little time and we didn't like feeling we were letting the side down particularity as it is the allotment sits 100th anniversary this year !

So move forward to this year and a plot just over the carpark comes free. It has been gardened by someone we know who is a professional gardener and I know has a similar outlook on many things to us and has put a huge amount of effort into getting i up and running properly. It is a lot of work to move all our stuff including the shed and greenhouse but once done we will have a plot that is fully up and running, all the beds are sorted and have been dug and had organic matter added and so on so it's a matter of keeping them weeded and planted rather than trying to get them going in the first place. Plus it has compete hedges so no more running off small person and far less on public view even though we are still basically in the same area. It even has an established apple tree !

Course there as some problems, it can be quite wet certainly it is at this time of the year but that can be worked round and some areas are worse than others and it's a standard problem in may parts of the site so would probably be something we had to deal with whatever plot we had.

So I spent a while getting wet today getting measurements but now have a plan of the plot and can start working out where the shed, greenhouse, soon to be rebuilt polytunnel and various baby trees are going to be moved to. Then all being well we will see how much we can move one day this week as we are pencilling in a full day of such things as half term will be over.

I have a few things started off in the greenhouse and some more in the house so hopefully by the time we get moved we should be into the growing season proper and can get a whole bunch of things into the ground directly as well.

Better than Awesome!

2011-02-08T14:50:00.000Z

I love my square cases

I didn't realise I haven't posted here at all this year ! Sorry I've been busy and Treestump has discovered the cbeebies website and thinks my computer should be for him to play games on! While they are educational I don't think someone under 3 should spend all day on the computer so am trying to limit the time he is on the computer and indeed the time I spend on it as it's all about setting examples isn't it!

Anyway one thing I decided recently was to cut gums form my diet as I have been struggling rather and am fairly sure it is connected to me eating more premade breads and so on which are loaded with Xanth gum. As it happens Shauna (Gluten free girl and the chef) has also decided to do the same which is great news as I was reluctant to try some of the baking recipes in her book purely due to the gum. Now her and Danny are converting all their recipes to be gum free and sharing that process on their blog !

One of the things they have found is that you can convert gluten recipes by weight much better than by volume which maybe why I have had an easier time converting our old favourites than many Americans I know because our recipes are all based on weight.

Anyway one of the recipes they posted recently was for wholegrain muffins. It's a great recipe and I have since made multiple versions both whole grain and using Dove Farm mix. I've even made savoury versions and they are all good !

Apple muffins

First off we tried apple muffins, just Dove Farm flour instead of mixing our own and big chunks of apple. They were really good and the boys demolished then in short order. Then we tried pear and dried peach they were to quote Noodles, "Better than awesome!!" No photos of those they went to fast!!

Cheese and sundried tomato spread with butter

Then I decided to try savoury and did some wholemeal cheese and sundried tomato ones using gram flour (which I love with cheese) and buckwheat as my main flours. These were also pretty good though less of a hit with the smaller people but they just love their fruit ones too much I think !

Stilton and red onion

I'm sure we've tried more but today's were stilton and red onion. I sweated off the onion and then added some honey and a small knob of butter and cooked them down till very soft. Really good !

So go on pop over and get the basic recipe then try your own versions!

Apple cake

2010-12-21T23:07:00.000Z

We have a new favourite for a quick, easy and tasty tea time treat

This is based on a recipe from the Be-Ro Baking book which is a legendary British baking book in its 40th edition, however theirs is a different fruit and used butterscotch not syrup plus obviously not gluten free.

I've made this twice in the last few days. The first time the apple disappeared into the cake and while it tasted great it didn't look very interesting. This second one I put apple purée behind the apple slices and that helped stop the cake enveloping the apples slices.

The recipe is very simple really. It is made like a Tart Tatin ie put the apple in the bottom of the pan and add the cake on top then turn out to serve upside down. In this case the cake is a basic Victoria sponge mix.

The syrup used can be a simple sugar syrup you make yourself with sugar and water or a bought one. We used some I made a few days ago which was a failed attempted at "compost jelly" from the River Cottage Preserves book. It is a jelly made from apple peelings and orange skins, tastes great but I didn't let it boil long enough and it failed to set so we are using it as a syrup instead.

Apple Cake

Apples - enough to cover the bottom of the tin once sliced - I used 4 smallish ones
Apple puree or apple sauce, a small bowl or jar full. This is optional but helps the slices stay visible
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup Syrup
8oz Sugar
8oz Soft marg or butter
4 medium eggs
8oz of flour (Dove Farm GF Plain flour)
2 tsp baking powder

Peel core and slice apples, lay in a pretty pattern over the bottom of a cake tin. Pour over syrup and cover with purée if using. Sprinkle on cinnamon.

Mix flour and baking powder together.
In a bowl cream sugar and marg or butter until pale and fluffy.
Add one egg at a time with a little flour each time, mixing well before adding the next egg.
Add the rest of the flour.
scoop mix over the apples gently spreading it out to completely cover it.

Cook at 180c for 30 mins or till set and slightly browning.

Allow to cool slightly then turn out on a plate. Eat warm with cream or even better with dark chocolate sauce and cream !!

Book review - Gluten-free girl and the chef

2010-12-01T18:49:00.001Z

I've been rather tardy about posting this one but that is partly because I love it so much I've been wanting to try out more recipes before I post about them but other things keep getting in the way.

When I got a email asking me if I would review this book I jumped at the chance, it was already on my wish list to buy and I have followed Shauna's blog for years back before her and Daniel married and had their wonderful little girl so I knew I'd love the style of writing. Actually I love it even more than I expected. I'm the sort of person who reads cookery books like novels and this one has so much to read! The recipes sound amazing and make you want try them out there and then but there is much more in the book than just recipes. This book is part recipe book, part biography about how Shauna and Daniel live their lives, it is mostly written in Shauna's 'voice' but with occasional additions from Daniel which works really well.

The extra stuff includes lots of tip bits about why you do certain things in recipes, information about ingredients and what it's like being a chef as well as a huge amount of enthusiasm and love of life anyone who reads the blog will know well.

One of the tips I can really relate to is that it is much easier to get a recipe to work if you sort out all the ingredients first, weigh them out and so on, that way you aren't trying to prep the next ingredient while the first stages overcook ! Something I may possibly have done more times than I like to remember. I am determined to get my kitchen better organised so I get ready before I start actually cooking !

So what about the recipes? Well I've tried several recipes from the blog in the past and they have all worked out well so while I haven't tried as many as I'd like as yet I am pretty confident they will be good when I do get to them.

One I did try is Apple and rosemary muffins. I've been doing a lot with apples recently as I have a couple of generous friends with apple trees.

Can I eat them yet?

As you can see I was trying out my new square silicon muffin cases which I just couldn't pass up when I saw them in Aldi, I now have 3 dozen silicon muffin or cupcake holders, though one dozen are a little floppy to use on their own.

They were very yummy and one of the reasons I chose them to try was the teff flour. I thought the flour added a lovely depth to them and the rosemary was really good in them too. Next time I will cook them just a little more as they were still a bit to gummy in the middle but that was very much me being impatient not the recipe !

I like that not all their recipes that need flour use a mix with sorghum in, while I totally understand why it is so common in american recipes it isn't a flour we can get a reliably safe version over here at all easily.

We also tried the garlic flans which had Tom considering what changes he might make to take some to the next camping event so I think that counts as a success !

I keep meaning to try the pickled apples too as I love pickled anything! The blue cheese cheesecake with fig crust is on the list, then there is the gluten-free crackers! There are many more including more complicated main course dishes that I plan to try later as well.

You never know I might get the Kindle version too so I can keep the printed one nice and clean ! You can find both versions on Amazon (the link here is for the UK but it's easy to fine on the American one too)

Thanks Shauna and Daniel for an inspiring and uplifting book and may you have many happy years together with your lovely little girl!

Menu - week starting 29th Nov 2010

2010-11-30T01:20:00.000Z

This week's gluten free menu swap is hosted by Gluten Free Goodness and they picked sweet potatoes as the ingredient of the week. I really like sweet potatoes but they aren't a desperately common veg here as they are too tender to grow in our climate without extra heat, however if I get time I may well pop into the market where there are normally some being sold and sometimes more than one variety of similar root veg as we have a reasonable sized African community here.

I have been very busy recently as I signed up to train as a climate change champion or as it should be called a climate change awareness champion as I have no plans to champion climate change :) This takes a day out a week plus homework and I'm busy doing all the normal things as well as trying to blitz our house so we can host a big family get together at Christmas.

I also have a new toy! I have final succumbed to all the good reviews on the various preserving groups I'm on and got an Excalibur dehydrator and it is everything people say! I love it. I'm still in the trying things out stage but I am in awe of those people who run more than one of these things at a time, it takes a lot of prep to fill all 9 trays! I have done several different types of apples friends have given me and it is interesting to see how the flavours differ both between apples and between the fresh and dried of the same apple.

The Boys think fruit leathers particular apple/pear or banana are fantastic !

I have also been making a few preserves including one called compost jelly from the River Cottage Preserves book which is made from the peeling and cores of the apples I've dried along with orange skins from oranges I juiced ! Very nice it is as well, though my first batch hasn't set as well as I'd like so I'm trying to decide between using it as a syrup or reboiling to thicken it up !

On to the menu for the week.

Monday - lamb chops, peas, baked potatoes served with garlic egg flans from Gluten Free girl and Chef (watch here for a review later this week)

Tuesday - Class day unless it is called off because of the snow currently falling! So pasta and sauce (nice and simple probably just a pre-made tomato and basil sauce)

Wednesday - Bean casserole.

Thursday - I'm at a low carbon conference all day so again something simple - tomato and eggs

Friday - Fish pie (mixed fish and sweetcorn in a while sauce topped with mashed potato and oven baked)
Baking - Thinking of trying a treacle tart but replacing the golden syrup with compost jelly syrup.

Pancake time

2010-10-31T11:57:00.001Z

Star, giraffe, treestump, spiral by Tom as well as broken egg and horn by Noddles

A few days ago Tom decided to have a go at some pancakes after I pointed him to the blog Jim's Pancakes.

All of these pancakes are made with a combination of plain batter and one coloured with chocolate milkshake powder !

I think he did pretty well for a first attempt!

Daring Donuts

2010-10-28T10:27:00.001+01:00

The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious.

Lori did give us a link to a gluten free donut but having just picked up a bunch of pumpkins from a local farm I decided to just try the pumpkin donut recipe she gave us using Dove Farm's gluten free plain flour mix which is really very good at pretending to be wheat flour particularly in cakey, baking powder raised recipes and they have other mixes for other uses anyway.

Lori found the pumpkin doughnuts are at Bon Appétit.
I have put the recipe at the bottom of this posts as well.
The pumpkin I used was a crown prince I think, it has a grey skin and a very very orange flesh. Really nice flavour when baked which I did before mashing it up for the recipe. We also had pumpkin risotto last night!

Rather than rolling out shapes I made small balls and flattened disks, one big mouthful or a couple of nibbles and there were very nice indeed. I'm going to freeze some of the dough as the recipe does give you a fair size bowl full so we will see how it works after freezing later one. They did crack as they fried hence the slightly strange shapes but that didn't really matter and they tasted good, the spices and pumpkin were evident but subtle and the insides a noticeable rich orangey colour.

Recipe

Pumpkin Doughnuts:
Preparation time:
Hands on prep time - 15 minutes
Chilling time - 3 hours
Cooking time - 10 minutes
Yield: About 24 doughnuts & 24 doughnut holes
Ingredients
All Purpose Flour 3.5 cup / 840 ml / 490 gm / 17 ¼ oz
Baking Powder 4 teaspoon / 20 ml / 24 gm / .85 oz
Table Salt 1 teaspoon / 5 ml / 6 gm / .2 oz
Cinnamon, ground 1 teaspoon / 5 ml / 6 gm / .2 oz
Ginger, ground ½ teaspoon / 2.5 ml / 3 gm / .1 oz
Baking Soda ½ teaspoon / 2.5 ml / 3 gm / .1 oz
Nutmeg, ground ¼ teaspoon / 1.25 ml / 1.5 gm / .05 oz
Cloves, ground 1/8 teaspoon / .6 ml / ¾ gm / .025 oz
White Granulated Sugar 1 cup / 240 ml / 225 gm / 8 oz
Butter, Unsalted 3 Tablespoon / 45 ml / 42 gm / 1.5 oz
Egg, Large 1
Egg Yolk, Large 2
Pure Vanilla Extract 1 teaspoon / 5 ml
Buttermilk ½ cup + 1 Tablespoon / 135 ml /
Pumpkin 1 cup / 240 ml / 285 gm / 10 oz (Canned pure pumpkin or fresh cooked and pureed pumpkin – DON’T use pumpkin pie mix!)
Canola Oil DEPENDS on size of vessel you are frying in – you want THREE (3) inches of oil (can substitute any flavorless oil used for frying)

Powdered Sugar Glaze: (I didn't do this bit)
Powdered (Icing) Sugar 2 cup / 480 ml / 250 gm / 9 oz
Whipping Cream (About 32% butter fat) 4 Tablespoon + more if needed / 60 ml
Directions:

Whisk together the first 8 ingredients in medium bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat sugar and butter in large bowl until blended (the mixture will be grainy and not smooth). Beat in egg, then yolks and vanilla. Gradually beat in buttermilk; beat in pumpkin. Using rubber spatula, fold in dry ingredients in 4 additions, blending gently after each addition. Cover with plastic; chill 3 hours.
Sprinkle 2 rimmed baking sheets lightly with flour. Press out 1/3 of dough on floured surface to 1/2- to 2/3-inch (12 mm to 15 mm) thickness. Using 2 1/2-inch (65 mm) -diameter round cutter, cut out dough rounds. Arrange on sheets. Repeat with remaining dough in 2 more batches. Gather dough scraps. Press out dough and cut out more dough rounds until all dough is used.
Using 1-inch (25 mm) diameter round cutter, cut out center of each dough round to make doughnuts and doughnut holes.
Line 2 baking sheets with several layers of paper towels. Pour oil into large deep skillet to depth of 1 1/2 inches (40 mm). Attach deep-fry thermometer and heat oil to 365°F to 370°F (185°C to 188°C). Fry doughnut holes in 2 batches until golden brown, turning occasionally, about 2 minutes. Using slotted spoon, transfer to paper towels to drain. Fry doughnuts, 3 or 4 at a time, until golden brown, adjusting heat to maintain temperature, about 1 minute per side. Using slotted spoon, transfer doughnuts to paper towels to drain. Cool completely.

Glaze Directions:

Whisk powdered sugar and 4 tablespoons whipping cream to blend. Whisk in additional cream, 1 teaspoon at a time, to form medium thick glaze.
Can be made up to 3 hours ahead.
Add doughnut holes to bowl of spiced sugar and toss to coat.
Spread doughnuts on 1 side with powdered sugar glaze.
Arrange doughnuts, glazed side up, on racks. Let stand until glaze sets, at least 30 minutes.

Autumn and sunshine

2010-10-12T01:16:00.001+01:00

Mixed apple jelly

Autumn is definitely here, the trees are turning fantastic colours and starting to drop leaves in droves which is several weeks earlier than last year when I began to think the leaves would just gradually die on the trees and not give us any show at all ! We had a very wet and prolonged spring this year and so the summer growing season has seems very short. However the last few days have included some really quite hot spells so the sunshine isn't quite over yet !

I hope to use the next few weeks to get the allotment up to speed so come the spring we don't need to be doing lots prep to start planting with our clay soil we need to prepare in advance as it's to sticky to work when very wet!

The slugs eat all the winter brassicas I tried to plant but I have shallots, onions and garlic to put in to replace them and some broad beans and peas which can over winter as well. Plus various things that can be started in the greenhouse and coldframes.

For now though it is a season of using up as many apples as I can get for free ! I don't have apple trees that give me fruit as yet but several people I know do and I also know several places they grow on waste land so I really need to get out and grab some more while they are still available.

I do have some already which we have been eating fresh and I have made lovely apple jelly as you can see in the photo above. I have a few more jars but that was as many as I was risking carry outside so I could show you to glow through them! It is mixed apple jelly because it has four different types of apple in it including the few crab apples from our tree. I basically used all the apples that didn't look like they would last long plus some cooking apples.

This weeks theme from the celiac family blog for the gluten free menu swap is potatoes, something I will definitely use this week. We are still digging them from the allotment though we need to get the last ones up and stored before the ground gets to damp and cold.

So the menu

Monday - As I didn't do it last week. Braised Lamp shoulder with greens and Anya potatoes straight from the ground (very nice they were to)

Tuesday - Not sure Mum is coming to visit so it depends what we end up doing.

Wednesday -Potato bake. Potatoes layered with tomatoes (from our greenhouse) and covered in a egg and milk mix with a little cheese.

Thursday - Rice and Stuff. Basically our version of something similar to fried rice, rice with lots of bits added to it to make a one pot meal.

Friday -Dosas or salmon and veg if I fail to make the Dosa

Baking - Pear and raisin muffins, cheese scones.
Fermenting - I want to have a go at Dosas which includes fermenting the mix first. Make Sauerkraut and start a batch of ginger beer. Can you tell I've finally got the book Wild Fermentation which I've been considering for ages :) All these things I was planning to try anyway but it's just that extra push to do so.

October Unprocessed and this weeks menu.

2010-10-03T23:42:00.000+01:00

Carrie over at Ginger Lemon Girl is joining in the October Unprocessed challenge and committing to at least one unprocessed meal a day. The challenge originates from Eating Rules who defined unprocessed as
"Unprocessed food is any food that could be made by a person with reasonable skill in a home kitchen with readily available, whole-food ingredients."

Which doesn't mean you have to make everything from scratch but that everything you do eat should be possible to make in a home kitchen so no weird chemistry lab ingredients. So I will still buy things like sausage and pasta which I can make but can't be bothered when others can do it better for me!

The original challenge is to eat unprocessed for the whole month, now we don't eat that many processed foods anyway but I'm still not sure I can do none at all for a month or at least I'm not sure my boys would want to however committing to one meal a day seems very possible so that's what I'm going to do as well as taking a good look at what we all eat and if we can cut back on the bad and increase the good.

The other thing I want to concentrate on is different, quick, easy and not to brain taxing things for breakfast. I'm trying to stay away from the pre-made bread I still have a stash of as much as possible and currently cereal isn't appealing but I need something I can make with little enough effort I get round to it before lunch time ! Any suggestions very welcome.

So onto the menu for the week. This weeks Gluten free menu swap is hosted by Celiacs in the House who has chosen brussels sprouts. These veg get a very split reaction in our house, some of us love them, others hate them. I sit rather in the middle, I don't hate them but I don't go out of my way to get them either. My attempts at growing them failed due to me not getting round to planting the baby plants out.. oh well next year ! We haven't had any in the veg box as yet either so any dishes involving them will have to wait a bit I'm afraid.

Monday - by special request fish and chips ie battered fish and chips, chipshop style, very much made from scratch.

Tuesday - Butternut squash risotto.

Wednesday - Sausage and mash with onion gravy, a good old British classic. The sausages are bought in but made with basic ingredients.

Thursday - pasta bake

Friday - Braised Lamb shoulder, served with green veg and oven roast root veg.

Baking - cheese biscuits, some muffins for breakfast and lunch boxes
Processing - lots of free apples ! Apple butter, apple jelly (using the few crab apples from our tree and some cookers), dried apple rings and apple beer.

Daring Bakers do iced Sugar cookies

2010-09-27T16:52:00.000+01:00

The September 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mandy of “What the Fruitcake?!” Mandy challenged everyone to make Decorated Sugar Cookies based on recipes from Peggy Porschen and The Joy of Baking.

She asked us to use a theme of what September means to us. Well as I said in the last post September is when Noddles has his birthday parties and indeed when my own birthday is so it takes no guessing to work out I made football biscuits.

As well as the normal recipe Mandy gave us a bunch of alternatives and I decided to use the one from Gluten Free Girl. They worked out very well indeed and went down a storm with the small boys who came to the party.

I made two teams of players and a ref as well as a bunch of footballs. Sorry it's so short a post but check out the Daring Kitchen as all the many and wonderful different versions the Daring Bakers made will be up there shortly.

Menu - 20th to 25th Sept 2010 and birthdays

2010-09-21T11:07:00.000+01:00

As you will see from the tickertape at the top of my blog Noddles was seven a month ago but over here that is at the same time as the August bank holiday which is one of our main national holidays and we have learnt his friends all tend to be away so we schedule his party for after school gets back. Therefore last weekend we had a football party !

The cake was iced by Noddles himself with a little help and we have a football game between the girls and the boys with a adult ref ! For those americans in the audience that is real football or what you call soccer :)

For the cake I used this easy vanilla cake from BBC good food and just subbed in a gluten free flour mix, I didn't even add any Xanth gum or similar and it was great. Good texture and quite moist. Has lasted well too though Treestump feels the way to eat it is to lick the icing and jam off it and then try and pass off the actual cake to someone else !

Blowing out the candles.. which made him jump as the additional ones were sparkler candles but they didn't really get going till he tried to blow them!

Today in contrast is my birthday which I am spending quietly at home waiting impatiently for my Kindle which I have treated myself with to turn up.. trouble is it isn't due to be delivered for a week or so yet which is a down side of buying the new hot product !

Now the next question is do I spend the rest of my birthday money on a dehydrator?

Anyway on to the menu which is late this week.
Oh I should also mention it is British Food fortnight so I may possibly have a few extra traditional British dishes this week such as Chip shop fish and chips and dumplings :)

Monday - boys had chicken dippers, smiley faces and peas, I had Dietary Specials sausage rolls instead of chicken dippers. I know not a great meal but the boys love chicken dippers !

Tuesday -Home made chip shop style Fish and chips cos I love then and it's my birthday :) Again very unhealthy but yar boo to that !

Wednesday - cauliflower cheese (which generally involves more vegs than just cauliflower)

Thursday - Chicken noodle soup

Friday - Nice big veg and bean stew - exact ingredients to be decided later ! Served with dumplings.

Baking - cheese scones and I am really tempted to try and make squashed fly biscuits otherwise known as Garibaldi biscuits.

Weekly menu - 6th Sept - 10th Sept

2010-09-05T21:34:00.000+01:00

Beach huts at Hengistbury Head.

Taken on summer holiday.

This weeks Gluten Free Menu swap is being hosted over at Gluten Free Smiles who has chosen peaches as this weeks ingredient. As you will see below we tried a new dish last week using peaches and it was good enough to add to my list of dishes to do again. There are also reasonable priced fresh peaches available currently, possibly not actually cheap but they don't actually grow here or at least not outside walled gardens and the occasional other sheltered private house. If anyone grows them for sale in the UK I've never come across them. As a result they aren't something we eat much fresh but we do treat ourselves to a few punnets over the course of the season or nectarines which in some ways I like even more which we almost always eat straight or cut up with berries and cream. As a result we normally only cook with tinned peaches.

So on to the menu
Firstly what we actually had last week.
Monday using up leftover mince
Tuesday - Lamb chops
Wednesday - Pork with peaches and black bean salsa, serve with rice. Quite liked this would do it again. Many people said they used a full tin of black beans and next time I probably will to.
Thursday - Sausage and potato wedges
Friday - Battered fish and boiled new potatoes from the allotment. Slightly healthier than chips but spoilt but using the remaining batter to do battered mushrooms later that evening !

Rather more meat on there than I like to plan so this week is going to try and balance that out.

Monday - Beef stew (OK the balancing comes later in the week the beef needs using up I am actually planning to cook that Sunday night to eat Monday)

Tuesday - Potato bake (potatoes, egg, milk, onion, possibly a bit of bacon baked in the oven) served with greens.

Wednesday - Salmon stir-fry with noodles

Thursday - Tomato and eggs.

Friday - out and about all day so it will be a grab and run day. I will try and bake some easy to eat bits and pieces in advance.

Baking - cheese biscuits, apple muffins, banana bread.

Dinosaurs ate my tomatoes !

2010-09-03T00:16:00.000+01:00

Exhibit one - the tomatoes.

As you can see there are clearly teeth marks on a couple of them. So Treestump who was hovering suspiciously around them was asked. "Are those your teeth marks in the tomatoes?"

Answer " No not my teethmarks ! Dinosaurs !!! "
So there you have it must be true my two and a half year old says so Dinosaurs ate my tomatoes !!

In more likely news I am ridiculously pleased with my baby parsnips which we will have roasted for tea possibly drizzed with honey. Why? Because they are the thinnings from the allotment and I have a good bunch more nicely growing bigger for later in the year. Parsnips are often difficult to get to grown and I have failed on many things growing wise but potatoes and parsnips it seems I can do !

Baby 'Snips, still muddy from the ground.

Also I have a lovely present from a friend.

A purple knife ! What could be better? Cuts nicely too and the cover fits very tightly meaning it could be taken camping and be both safe and unlikely to get it's edge ruined.

The Great British Bake Off

2010-08-30T17:41:00.000+01:00

I don't normally post about TV cooking programs after all we have so many these days but I am really enjoying the Great British Bake Off. It is so well... British ! Baking is such a part of our culture and this program somehow has an element of the WI (women's institute) or country shows. I'm not sure why because neither of them normally have people actually doing the cooking but they do both have very good and competitive cake displays and competitions I suppose. One thing I'm very like about this program is they are much more reasonable and down to earth about giving out results, none of these long pauses and trying to out psych the contestants which has become to common in many competitive cooking programs.

You can find the program to watch here though I don't know if none Brits will be able to access the shows . I hope you can.

The program started with ten hopeful bakers from all walks of life and each program they do three baking sessions before the lowest ranked two are knocked out. We have had two episodes so far in both they have started with a signature dish ( week 1 cake, week 2 biscuits.. cookie for americans), then they have been given the ingredients but not instructions for a very classic British dish which they then needed to use their knowledge and skill to bake it correctly. Victoria sponge last week, then this week scones, both of which are in my image at the top.. Finally they had to bake a specific dish but using their own recipes.. so week 1 was chocolate cake for a celebration and this week was three petifores - meringues, macaroons and cho pasty.

There has been a huge variety of dishes even within those limited groupings and a good few historical titbits from the presenters and useful tips from the two judges. Mary Berry is a women famous for her cookbooks and baking and Paul Hollywood is a top flight baker and both have given some great tips for instance adding a little salt to egg before you use it as an egg wash as it breaks down the egg making it easier to spread and don't let it dribble down the side of a scone because it hardens and stops it rising.

Obviously most of the baking has gluten in it and I think anyone however good would struggle to compete with the contestants on most of the challenges if they did it gluten free but it would be fun to try and see how close we could get to most of them.

Next week is bread, which will be interesting but far less applicable to gluten free cooking than cakes and biscuits as gluten free bread is just so different in technique and how the flour reacts.

So far I am planning to make a version of one of the cakes - chocolate brownie with meringue on top and see if I can use some of the tips on scones to improve my basic scone recipe. Some of the biscuit recipes sound really interesting too and the comments about how changing the balance between flour, fat and sugar effects the type of biscuit is worth remembering.

Weekly menu -30th Aug - 3rd Sept 2010

2010-08-30T16:38:00.000+01:00

With luck my run of illness has finished and all of a sudden we are nearly at the end of the school holidays ! I'm going to make a concerted effort to get back into some semblance of organisation and menu planning very much helps with that so here goes.

Cheryl from Gluten Free Goodness is hosting the menu swap this week and has picked water melon. This isn't something that we eat much of as it doesn't really grow here but when we do get one it always goes down well.

So the plan this week is as follows, it is most quite easy and very British dishes this week. The weather is not brilliant of this time of year and as the evenings get darker I naturally turn to such dishes.

Monday (a Bank Holiday here) - using up leftover mince, probably served simply with new potatoes straight from the allotment and some other veg.

Tuesday - battered fish and chips.. I haven't had battered fish for ages and fish and chips is a British past-time but I can't go to the fish and chip shop like most people.

Wednesday - Trying this recipe for Pork with peaches and black bean salsa, serve with rice.

Thursday - Veggy soup with cheese scones

Friday - Toad in the hole - sausages in Yorkshire pudding batter.

Book Review - The Fat Duck Cookbook

2010-08-13T19:22:00.000+01:00

As I mentioned I've not been to well recently and so have ended up sitting far more than I would like. However that has meant I've had a chance to catch up on some "light" reading.

I think I mentioned back along I got a couple of books by Heston Blumenthal for Christmas, well the bigger one as in real big tome is the Fat Duck Cookbook which is basically the cookbook of his restaurant but much more than that really.

I have been fascinated by Heston since he started doing TV programs. The combination of showmanship, science, fantastic cooking and the idea of using all the senses is very appealing. I have loved watching his experiments even if they are obviously just the final set-up bit for the program. I'd love to be famous enough to be one of the guests on his shows ! I think a more sensible wish would be to have the cash to book a table at the Fat Duck and try the tasting menu. The website specifically states they will tailor the dishes for allergies if you ask when you book and anyway many of the dishes are naturally safe for Celiacs.

So what is the book like? Well even if you get the budget version I got it is physically HUGE I can't read it on my lap without a big cushion to prop it up, really sitting at a table is more sensible. However once you have licked the whole actually being able to read it problem it is a hugely fascinating book. The first 130 or so pages are about how he got into cooking and how his restaurant and cooking style developed and evolved. It seems very much written from the heart and he is obviously a man with a huge passion for what he does. I really love the fact that he has managed so much on basically just being really, really curious. He is neither a trained chef or a scientist but has managed to span both and convince many very eminent people he is worth working with in both fields.

He talks quite a lot about the many "truths" of cooking which just arn't really true or are true but for different reasons than we think and there were many things that had me noding and thinking yes of course while reading. Probably the biggest being the one he co-wrote a paper on which is that the middle bit of the tomato (the bit many chefs tell you to throw away) is the bit with most of the flavour. I never understood why I should be throwing that bit out as it was the bit I liked best and had the real tomato punch but it took someone like him to look at it analytically enough to work it out and go against traditional chef "wisdom". That isn't to say he throws out everything traditional far from it. He stresses time and time again that it is just as important as the science and newer things he does.

I must admit he has me hankering after a kitchen that looks as much like a lab as anything but then it has never taken much for me to want to play with dry ice, liquid nitrogen and dehydrators !

Most of his recipes take days to do and have many many components but as he says in the run-up to the recipe section you don't have to do the whole thing, take a single sub-recipe and play with that, use it on it's own or with other things you already know how to do. Not all recipes need special equipment, though some obviously do, most do need a willingness to be organised and start preparing sometimes days in advance but if you are willing to do that they sound perfectly possible to do at home.

I can honestly say that Heston makes me as fascinated as my mum's copy of Escoffier did when I was a teen. That book opened up a whole new way of looking at food for me use as I was to good but traditional English cooking. Escoffier was full of dishes with sauces, a million ways to cook a chicken breast, ingredients I had never heard of and things which seemed posh and exotic to me then and made me think about other ways of cooking.

Heston opens up similar ideas and goes one step farther because Heston is all about Why.. And that is what I always want to know Why should I do this? Why does X taste good with Y but dreadful with Z? and so on.

I found out his first book was about cooking with kids and is now firmly on my to buy list as is the Fantastical feasts book as I'm determined to try lickable wallpaper for a party at some point!!

Finally the Fat Duck website is worth a look it has some fun elements to wander round and look at.

Sorry for being AWOL

2010-08-08T20:57:00.000+01:00

Not been much in the interesting food recently because I've had several weeks of what feels like reaction to gluten but i can't work out what from. This obviously means I've been rather safe and boring with my diet and one of the effects is very little energy. Then to top it all off I've had a bad case of Tonsillitis so no food at all for a good section of this last week !! I hope normal service will resume currently but at the moment I'm not even managing Daring Kitchen Challenges.

I'm late. I'm late !!! - Daring cooks do Nut Butters

2010-07-16T12:30:00.000+01:00

Opps missed the reveal date for Daring Cooks this month. Sorry!!

Better late than never I hope.

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

Margie and Natashya challenged us to make some more un-usual nut butters and use them to cook. I loved the idea and planned to do more than did but then ended up clearing out the freezer which limited what I was cooking rather. I will however be making more of my own nut butters from now on as it's is very easy and one of my boys quite likes the flavour of nuts but hates the texture so this is a great way to get more into his diet! With school holidays coming up I can see lots of nut flavoured cakes and things on the horizon. I have also just got a grain mill so am hoping to do a whole bunch of flours to try as well !

Anyway to the challenge recipe I tried one of the our hosts they gave us which was Asian Noodle Salad with Cashew (or Peanut) Dressing the recipe for which at the end of the post. I managed to fail slightly in that I had no ginger when I came to make the sauce.. something I always have in the fridge ! But even without the ginger it was still really nice.

I really liked how simple it was to make and it reminded me to do more dishes with uncooked vegetables which is a good thing. I didn't have any shrimp so I cooked some bacon till crispy and used that. The vegs we had were carrot, cucumber, tomato and mushroom along with some cress for garnish which worked very well with the sauce.

The Cashews made a great change from peanut which is the only nut I'd normally think to use in such things and I will definetly do using more different nuts in future.

Asian Noodle Salad with Cashew (or Peanut) Dressing
Yield: 4 servings
Recipe notes: Customize the salad by adding or substituting your favorite vegetables. Shredded cabbage, bean sprouts, and slivered carrots would make nice additions. Obviously, you can omit the shrimp, or substitute chicken or tofu or the protein of your choice. The dressing is equally as good with peanut butter rather than cashew butter. We tested the dressing with nut butters made from salted cashews & peanuts with good results.
Ingredients:
Cashew Butter:
1 cup (240 ml) cashews*
Cashew Dressing:
½ inch (1 cm) slice of fresh ginger, chopped
8 cloves garlic, more or less to taste, chopped
½ cup (120 ml) cashew butter
¼ cup (60 ml) soy sauce
3 Tablespoons (45 ml) sugar
3 Tablespoons (45 ml) vinegar
3 Tablespoons (45 ml) toasted sesame oil
¼ cup plus 1 Tablespoon (75 ml) water
Hot sauce to taste (optional)
Noodle Salad:
1/2 pound (225 g) linguine or thin rice noodles
1 tablespoon (15 ml) olive oil
1/2 pound (225 g) small or medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 large red bell pepper, cored and seeded, cut into thin strips
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, sliced
1/4 cup (60 ml) sliced green onions
1/4 cup (60 ml) chopped fresh basil
1 tablespoon (15 ml) chopped cashews (optional garnish)
Lime wedges (optional)
Directions:

Make cashew butter: Grind cashews in food processor for about 2 minutes until smooth. (*Or start with ½ cup (120 ml) prepared cashew butter.)
Prepare cashew dressing: Combine ginger, garlic, cashew butter, soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, sesame oil, and water in food processor or blender. Process/blend until smooth. Be sure to process long enough to puree the ginger and garlic. The dressing should be pourable, about the same thickness as cream. Adjust consistency – thinner or thicker -- to your liking by adding more water or cashew butter. Taste and add your favorite hot sauce if desired. (If the cashew butter was unsalted, you may want to add salt to taste.) Makes about 1 ½ cups (360 ml) dressing. Store any leftover dressing in the refrigerator.
Prepare noodles according to package instructions in salted water. Rinse and drain noodles. Set aside.
Heat oil in large non-stick pan over medium heat. Add shrimp to the pan and sauté for about 3 to 4 minutes or until opaque throughout. Alternately, cook shrimp in boiling water for about 2 to 3 minutes or until done.
Slice basil into thin ribbons. Combine noodles, bell pepper, cucumber, onions, and basil in a large bowl. Add about ½ cup (120 ml) cashew dressing; toss gently to coat. Add more cashew dressing as desired, using as much or as little as you’d like. Scatter shrimp on top. Squeeze fresh lime juice over salad or serve with lime wedges. Sprinkle with chopped cashews if desired.

Weekly menu - 29th June 2010

2010-06-29T00:26:00.000+01:00

We are still trying to use up the contents of the freezer and the weather here in the UK has been pretty warm so to much cooking has not been high on the agenda. I have a big stash of gluten free bread rolls I got cheap so have been to a large extent been living on salad sandwiches with lots of mustard and cress which I have a really like of currently. I'm waiting on a bunch of seeds to turn up so I can try a whole range of micro salad which is really just the same as mustard and cress just different plants, basically sprouts allowed to grow so they have leaves as well.

This weeks ingredient for the gluten free menu swap was picked by Celiacs in the House and is cabbage. I must admit we mostly eat cabbage in the winter but I do like it cut up thin and fried with a bit of sugar in other words what Chinese takeaways here call crispy fried seaweed ! The recipe she has posted sounds very good as well and I may have to try more things like stuffed cabbage it sounds like a good plan to me.

menu

Monday - roast chicken with boiled new potatoes direct from the allotment (the potatoes not the chicken, we haven't started keeping chickens yet though I would like to.)

Tuesday - Rice or pasta with chicken from Monday.

Wednesday - Hotdog sausages stuffed with cheese and wrapped in bacon served with creamed savoy cabbage from the IKEA a recipe a day cook book.

Thursday -see what is left to eat up and base something on that.

Friday - Tomato and Eggs.

Daring Bakers do Chocolate Pavlova

2010-06-26T23:55:00.000+01:00

The June 2010 Daring Baker's challenge was hosted by Dawn of Doable and Delicious. Dawn challenged the Daring Bakers’ to make Chocolate Pavlovas and Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse. The challenge recipe is based on a recipe from the book Chocolate Epiphany by Francois Payard.

This recipe is gluten free without any adaptions which is a really nice change from most Daring Bakers recipes. However Audax explained to us the difference between the recipe we were given and a traditional Australian Pavlova and his description of the meringue made me very much want to try his version. I have had pavlova a good few times, after all it can be the only dessert I can have at many places.. well that or icecream, however they are nearly always with fairly crispy meringue not the sort he described. The challenge recipe was much more like the ones I'm used to so I decided to use his way of doing it to see the difference. Audax said "Aussie pavlova has a very thin crust that is dry and crisp while the inside is soft and chewy like the lightest marshmallow you have tasted." The difference is mainly in the cooking method.

I made my meringues as individual portions using the sort of rings you use to shape rosties and so forth, like a big biscuit cutter though the pudding is so rich we ended up sharing one ! I didn't make the pouring sauce to go with it, well I started and made the custard a few days ago but then hot weather and grumpy kids meant I didn't get round to the rest and it went off :( We are having very hot sapping weather currently, well for us anyway I know from some places it would just be average but us Brits don't do heat !

I really liked the soft middle of the meringue and will certainly consider doing them again like this rather than the crisp meringue I'm more used to so thanks Audax for showing us the difference.. see his post for a look at what the inside of a big Aussie Pavlova looks like it's so different to a standard meringue !

The mousse is fabulously rich and I still have lots in the fridge so do be aware the recipe below makes quite a lot. I don't believe it is possible to have to much chocolate mousse but if you only want enough to top a 3 egg pavlova you might want to cut the recipe in half!

Recipe - Chocolate Pavlovas and Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse

Choc meringue
Instructions are mostly Audax's adapted to make it chocolate as per the challenge recipe.
To get crisp meringues as per the original recipe cook at 200º F (95º C) degrees for 2-3 hours and leave out the cornflour and cream of tartar.

3 large egg whites
½ cup plus 1 tbsp (110 grams) white granulated sugar
¼ cup (30 grams) confectioner’s (icing) sugar
1/3 cup (30 grams) cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 teaspoons cornflour (corn starch)

Preheat oven to 200°C (395°F). Dust lightly with 1/2 teaspoon cornflour a sheet of baking paper place on a baking tray. Place a 8” (20cm) x 2.5" (60mm) springform cake tin without a bottom as a container to hold the whipped egg whites on the floured baking paper (This size form is for 6 egg whites so you would need a smaller one for the 3 egg whites this recipe is for. I use three smaller rings to get individual ones.)

2. Using an electric mixer on the highest setting, beat egg whites and cream of tartar in a narrow deep bowl until soft peaks form (using a narrow deep bowl ensures the beaters are well into the whites and will build up the greatest volume). Add sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, beating constantly until thick and glossy. Add remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons of cornflour with the last tablespoon of sugar. Dissolving the caster sugar should take about 10-12 mins if using normal granulated sugar about 15 mins. (Test mixture by feeling a small amount of the meringue between two fingers if it is grainy beat longer.)

2a) To make chocolate meringue - Sift the icing sugar and cocoa powder over the egg whites and fold the dry ingredients into the white. (This looks like it will not happen. Fold gently and it will eventually come together.)

3. Spoon meringue into the springform cake tin. Shape the uncooked meringue using the springform cake tin as a guide into one giant meringue. Remove the springform cake tin and place the uncooked meringue cake into the oven. Reduce oven to 100°C (212°F). Bake for 1½ to 2 hours or until dry and crisp, test by tasting a teaspoon of the meringue from the top if it doesn't taste of egg it is done don't worry about the small hole made by this testing it will be covered by the topping. Test at 1½ hours and then every 15 mins until ready. Turn off oven and cool completely in oven (pavlova may sink and crack during cooling).
I used smaller rings and they were done in 1 hour.

Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse 1 ½ cups (355 mls) double cream (cream with a milk fat content of between 36 and 40 percent)
grated zest of 1 average sized lemon
9 ounces (255 grams) 72% chocolate, chopped
1 2/3 cups (390 mls) mascarpone
pinch of nutmeg
2 tbsp (30 mls) Grand Marnier (or orange juice) (I didn't use this as I was feeding it to small people)

Directions:

Put ½ cup (120 mls) of the heavy cream and the lemon zest in a saucepan over medium high heat. Once warm, add the chocolate and whisk until melted and smooth. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and let sit at room temperature until cool.
Place the mascarpone, the remaining cup of cream and nutmeg in a bowl. Whip on low for a minute until the mascarpone is loose. Add the Grand Marnier and whip on medium speed until it holds soft peaks. (DO NOT OVERBEAT AS THE MASCARPONE WILL BREAK.)
Mix about ¼ of the mascarpone mixture into the chocolate to lighten. Fold in the remaining mascarpone until well incorporated. Fill a pastry bag with the mousse. Again, you could just free form mousse on top of the pavlova.

For the pouring sauce follow the link to see more Daring Bakers !

Weekly menu swap starting again

2010-06-21T16:15:00.001+01:00

A small but very fragrant posy from the allotment

It's been ages since I posted a weekly menu or participated in the Gluten Free Menu swap and while our food planning is better than it was I have noticed we are slipping a bit again on using things up at the right time and so on and so I am going to start again !

This weeks host is Gluten Free Goodness and she picked raspberries which we love. The ones on the allotment are just starting to colour so we might have a few this week if we get them before the birds or finally finish the fruit cage so we can cover them properly! It is very nearly done now.

I'm working through our freezer at the moment to clear it out so a) we eat the things that we never get round to and b) it can have a proper clean, these things need doing every now and then after all.
As a result the menu is based mostly on that and rather more meat based than I would normally do as I try to do several vegetarian or very meal light meals every week but most of what we have left in the freezer to eat is meat now.

Monday - Pasta and mince

Tuesday - Omelets

Wednesday - Beef stew

Thursday - Fish pie

Friday - Roast Chicken with vegetable terrine

Daring Cooks - pate

2010-06-14T22:49:00.000+01:00

I only seem to be doing posts for Daring bakers and cooks currently. I am going to try and get back into other posts I've just been busy so on the computer less and off actually doing things more which can't be a bad thing really.

So on to the challenge !

Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.

The various recipes covered most options and we love pate here so I was determined to try at least one. The vegetarian version I've made before and in fact made several to help cater an event late last year so I decided to make the Three Spice Liver Pâté: adapted from Ravenous Couple, which was inspired by White on Rice Couple.

I will copy the recipe below and like most pates it is really very simple to make. I did make one or two adaptations. We dislike totally smooth pates so I kept back some of the pork belly and added it towards then end so it was roughly chopped not pureed smooth like the rest of the mix. The second adaptation was a mistake ! I totally forgot to add the egg but honestly it was great without it and still held together well which is very useful to know as we have a friend who can't have egg.

I cooked the pate in several tiny loaf tins which made very good individual portions and I must admit we just eat the bacon with the pate.. never did get this whole discard the bacon lark it's the best bit.!

A tiny loaf tin with sewing thread as a size gauge !

The pate was really good and definitely a recipe to go in the keep file. I'm really sorry I didn't do a bread. I did have a plan of what to do but then we had a freezer incident and had to cook up and eat a lot of things all at once and that rather threw all my plans out. The pate got made mostly because i had just bought the liver when we realised there was a problem, instead I served it with salad, and home made chutney which was lovely.

our coarse version -cos we prefer it this way

Three Spice Liver Pâté
Yields one 25 by 12,5 cm (10 by 5 inch) terrine or loaf pan
1 lb / 454 grams pork liver (or beef or combination)
1/2 lb / 227 grams ground pork
1/2 lb / 227 grams pork fat (or pork belly)
2 cloves garlic
2 shallots
1 whole egg and 1 egg yolk
1/2 tsp / 2 ml cinnamon
1/2 tsp / 2 ml coriander (ground or crushed)
1/2 tsp / 2 ml cumin
3/4 tsp / 3 ml salt
1 tbps / 15 ml coarse freshly cracked peppercorns
2 tbps / 30 ml cognac
2 bay leaves
1 package of bacon

Preheat oven to to 350ºF (180ºC).
Cut liver and pork fat into small pieces and add to food processor. Add ground pork, garlic, shallots, cinnamon, cumin, coriander, salt and pepper. Grind until smooth.
In mixing bowl, incorporate the meat and liver mixture with the cognac and eggs.
Line bottom of baking or ceramic pan with overlapping pieces of bacon. Place a bay leaf on the bottom and then fill with meat/liver mixture. Cover top with another bay leaf and then overlapping pieces of bacon.
Place in oven in the larger baking pan and add enough water to cover 2/3rds of the pan containing the meat/liver mixture. Bake for about 1-1.5 hrs.
The pâté will contract and the juices will be on the bottom. Allow to cool and soak up the juices. Remove any excess bacon and discard the bay leaves.

Daring Cooks do Stacked Enchiladas

2010-05-14T18:10:00.000+01:00

Our hosts this month, Barbara of Barbara Bakes and Bunnee of Anna+Food have chosen a delicious Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchilada recipe in celebration of Cinco de Mayo! The recipe, featuring a homemade enchilada sauce was found on www.finecooking.com and written by Robb Walsh.

Mexican food is something I love the sound of but can find very little of here, which is strange in a way as we have nearly every other cuisine under the sun! Coventry is a hugely ethnicly diverse city and within just our little block of streets there must be 20 languages spoken and a similar number at my son's school. We have shops selling Chinese, Indian, South African, Caribbean, Halal, Polish, Thai and so on and that's just in our little local set of shops never mind the rest of the city but pretty much the sum total of Mexican inspired foods is the use of tortillas to make wraps, tacos shells, the occasional tin of refried beans and salsa.

I make Tortillas quite often, so often I have the mix pre-made in a jar, as they are a great easy bread to make and I can use them like nan breads with Indian and to make wraps for sandwiches and so forth so that part was easy.

I use the tortilla recipe from Delightfully Gluten Free but I add just a dribble of glycerine as I find it helps with the stretch of the dough and I can get them thinner without breaking.

So first stage done.. mini tortillas, cut out with a biscuit cutter so they are about 4" wide and I added poppy seeds just because it sounded fun! By making them small I could get four stacks in my dish to go in the oven.

I looked all over and the only place I could find tomatillos was in quite large tins by mail order and if we didn't like them I'd end up with a lot left over so very reluctantly I decided I would have to do a different version. I will of course probably find six different places selling them after the challenge is over, that's always the way isn't it?

I decided instead to do the mole sauce from here which the hosts had suggested as a replacement, as we have never had a mole sauce before either it was still a challenge, particularly as the list of ingredients sounded very strange, chocolate and peanut butter with tomatoes? Still I had everything but the chillies. We have lots of chillies for sale here in the market and ethnic shops but this recipe calls for chipotle peppers which are apparently smoked and I really though I was out of luck on that one as well but at the last moment found some in Morrisons !

It's really nice to, I've very glad I had an excuse to pick that jar up as I think I will use it in other dishes too. So all ingredients acquired I set to making the sauce, which was really very easy and smelt really interesting, here it is bubbling away before I blitzed it smooth!

Tom and I really liked the taste though Jon wasn't so convinced, we decided the closest we have had before would be a satay sauce.
So on to the construction of the dish, to the sauce and tortillas I added some precooked turkey and cheddar cheese and layered it up in stages, very like making a lasagne really which is what that dish is more normally used for in this household.

So after a couple of layers of tortillas, turkey, sauce and cheese, it was topped with more torillas, sauce and a bit of cheese and put in the oven.. for a bit to long really so mine is less pretty than most of the other Daring Cooks but I caught it before it really burned!

So here is the final dish, served with rice, very tasty and something I will certainly be considering doing again soon in one form or another. I loved the different taste of the mole sauce but the dish as a whole wasn't so un-usual I couldn't see serving it to friends or family which is nice.

Recipes.

GF Flour Tortillas (based on a recipe from Delightfully Gluten free)

1/4 cup each of cornflour (corn starch), tapioca flour, potato starch.
1/2 cup of Dove farm rice flour (which is mixed brown and white)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1/4 tsp glycerine
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 to 3/4 cup of water (enough to make a nice dough)

Mix all the dry ingredients, then add the oil and glycerine. Finally add water to mix. Leave to sit for a few minutes then roll out as thin as possible by making small balls of dough, flattening them then rolling to size.
Cook in a dry pan with just a touch of oil for a minute or so each side.

Mole sauce (based on recipe from food network)

2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tin of chopped tomatoes.
1 sweet pepper, chopped
heaped tsp of chipolte pepper
1/2 pint chicken stock
2 tbsps smooth peanut butter
2 oz dark chocolate

The original recipe had chilli powder as well but as most of us are not used to chilli I stuck to just the chipolte peppers for the first time which gave it a bit of a kick but not too strong for us.

Saute onion in oil till translucent, add garlic and spices and saute to toast spices a bit. Add all other ingredients and simmer of 10 mins, Puree till smooth.

Stacked Enchiladas
Put a small amount of sauce in the bottom of a oven dish. Add a layer of tortillas, top with turkey, cheese and a little more sauce. Repeat this layer then add a final layer of tortillas, more sauce and some cheese.

Bake for about 20 mins to melt cheese and heat through.

Hosting Daring Bakers - British Suet Puddings.

2010-04-27T00:55:00.001+01:00

This month has been a very interesting one. I offered a while ago to host Daring Bakers and was given a slot in the summer and then a couple of days before the beginning of this month I got an email, please would I consider doing this month instead? I had an idea of what I wanted to do so all though I hadn't done the prep for it so I said yes and so at the last minute I threw together a challenge post.

This is the blog checking line (for the automatic checking to see if we joined in this month) seems a tad silly when I hosted but just bear with me!!
The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet.

So there you have it I challenged everyone to make British puddings, preferably using suet. I knew when I set the challenge most people outside Britain wouldn't have used suet, although it is theoretically available anywhere that eats cows or sheet most countries seem to use it only as bird food but here in the UK we have a long history of using every bit if the animal we can. What I didn't realise was how new the idea of steaming a cake or pie would be for the vast majority of Daring Bakers. If I had I would have down played the suet and focused more on the steaming as I put a few people off with the animal fat thing.. However many did try the challenge including many who do not eat animal fat and indeed some of the most fabulous sounding puddings were vegan or vegetarian.

I have included the challenge post as it went up on the Daring Bakers site at the end of this post.
Please do check out the Daring Kitchen site in a day or so when you will be able to see the whole range of puddings and indeed you can check the various blog postings via the blog roll there. Particular mention must go to Audax who is always does multiple versions of the challenge recipe but this time excelled himself and did 16 different versions!! Plus all of them looked fantastic unlike some of my attempts and he was very complimentary and surprised by some of our traditional dishes.

Even though steamed puddings are a common dish for me I learnt an few things from hosting this challenge.
1) Steam a suet crust pudding like steak and kidney for 5 hours and it becomes golden brown, flaky pastry which is much better than the slightly under done stodgy stuff people sometimes serve.
2) Suet crust works really well on baked pies and is one of the best gltuen free pie crusts I've tried so far.
3) Add some glycerine to it which helps it stay together and it makes a great sausage roll pastry.
4) Because suet melts at such a low temperature it incorporates into the other ingredients very well and you don't get that fatty taste you get with other animal fats and indeed veggy substitutes when it's cold.
5) Most cultures don't steam anything other than the occasional veg !
6) Always butter the dish if you want any chance of turning the pudding out!

Anyway as I didn't have time in advance to make any versions of the recipe here are a few random ones I did over the month.. Well actually the first one was done in advance, several months in advance as it is the last of the Christmas puds I made a month or so before Christmas but properly made Christmas puds last months.

Served with Cream AND Custard :)

I also made a streamed chocolate sponge but forgot to butter the dish so it fell apart so there is no picture of the whole pudding, however it was very tasty with choclate fudge sauce!

I tried and failed with a Sussex Pond pudding, I think I managed to misread the ingredients of something as others made much better ones, my however seemed to have lost all the moisture inside so there was no source.

A boiled version next because while I've done many steamed ones I don't think I've ever done the boiled in a cloth method.
Now this is NOT a method to use to get a pretty dish to be honest so please forgive the look of the final pudding, Audax has already given us a much better looking one. You will get a better looking dish if you steam it I promise! However I wanted to try a savory rolly polly and you generally boil them plus as I said I've not done a boiled one and was curious to see the difference.
So firstly the pastry, this is the standard suet crust, twice as much flour as suet, this one is a veg suet as I had some left over and had it out to take a photo for the main challenge post.
Not much to say really.. it's white, it's doughy, what else are you going to get with flour and fat really! I used a bought gluten free flour mix but honestly it would be able to same with normal flour. I've added a photo to the challenge post of the pastry.
The most common rolly polly is a jam one.. but i did a bacon and onion one because I wanted a main course pudding not a pudding pudding!.
Roll out pastry, cover with filling.

Roll into a log, squish ends to keep filling in. Wrap in greaseproof paper, then wrap in a floured cloth, in my case an old muslin square. Tie up with string, not to tightly cos it swells up a bit.

Then put it in to boil for an hour and a half, covered with a lid.

This is what it looked like once i unrolled it.. I rather failed on getting it out of the water and cracked the pastry.. steamed ones being in a bowl are less likly to just fall to bits!

and finally plated up.. Boiled pastry stays much whiter and obviously a bit damper than the steamed versions but it was very tasty..really a huge boiled stuffed dumpling and we all like dumplings too. Very filling too however as I said it isn't going to win and beauty prize.

I also did a suet crest on a great chicken, bacon and mushroom pie.

This time it was baked and honestly I can say it is one of the best pie crusts I've had. It works very well gluten free and with a bit of glycerine added to stablise the pastry when raw it makes great sauasge rolls !

Finally the one at the start of the post is a golden syrup sponge but I cheated on that one as it was in fact microwaved ! We normally steam such puddings but when people want pudding now not in an hour and a half microwaving works really well at least for basic sponge puddings !

(Editted to add - Microwaving takes 3-4 mins depending on your power level. I did 3 mins at 1000, the recipe said 4 mins on full but the age of the book means that would probably translate to about 600, maybe 800 )

The Original Challenge post
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The challenge I would like to set you this month is to try a very British dish and a very British ingredient.

The actual recipes (I am giving you a choice) are pretty simple really but the cooking method and the core ingredient are something that many people do not use or do on a regular basis if at all.

Those of you who know me might be surprised that as one of the early Alternative Daring Bakers I’m not doing a gluten-free recipe but we have just had one of those and I wanted to do a traditional British pudding and honestly a gluten-free traditional British pudding is a rare beast but the type I have chosen are very easy to convert.

These are very homely dishes but I thought that would be an interesting contrast to some of the very decorative dishes we often do and I am sure some of our members will still make them look spectacular!

Some of you will know about the British and the word pudding but for those that don't we use the word for many things:

1) Black pudding and white pudding a sort of meat and grain sausage. Black pudding uses blood as well as meat.
2) Pudding — a generic word for desert
3) Pudding — any dish cooked in a pudding bowl or pudding cloth normally steamed, boiled but sometimes baked.
4) An endearment i.e., "How are you today my pudding?"

For this challenge we are using the third meaning a dish cooked in a pudding bowl or cloth, though many of you may opt to do a sweet version in which case version two also applies!

The special ingredient is suet. Please, please don't worry if you can't get it. I will be suggesting alternatives but if you want to stretch yourselves and try some very traditional British dishes do try and source some as it does make a difference to the texture and Daring Bakers is all about trying things you wouldn't normal do or use. Please remember there are alternatives so please don’t worry if you can’t get or don’t want to use suet !

So what is suet?

It is the hard but flaky fat found on the inside of a cow or sheep around the kidneys and that area of the body. Suet in its raw form crumbles easily into small chunks so much so that my butcher says it covers his floor in bits if he doesn't have it taken out as soon as possible. In fact unless he knows he has a customer for it he has the abattoir take it out and throw it away and when I want some he gives it to me for free! It also melts at quite a low temperature, which has an effect on how it works in cooking. In some places such as the UK it is sold processed which basically means it is grated and combined with flour to keep the individual pieces from clumping together, and it becomes a sort of dried out short strands, almost granular in texture.

For people on a gluten-free diet like myself be careful as most if not all the processed stuff uses wheat flour, though the vegetarian version normally uses rice flour. As I said I get mine direct from the butcher and I suggest if you want to try this challenge fully you go down to your local butcher and ask them if they can source some for you. If they can it will not be expensive as it is just fat and they might even give it you for free!.

For those going “Yuck! Fat from the inside of an animal … no thank you!”, I have some good news. There is a vegetable suet available here and indeed anyone can substitute a hard, white vegetable fat. Wikipedia says the UK vegetable suet is made from palm oil so something of that ilk would work. I am led to believe a vegetable shortening, like Crisco will give you a similar effect. So please feel free to use whatever you feel most comfortable with or can get. Lard is also a possibility. Ideally steer clear of things like butter or soft margarine as you will get a very different texture and taste however if you are not comfortable using any of the fats I've suggested I am providing some links to recipes using butter right at the bottom (and one vegan) but read all the tips before that anyway You could even try substituting something like Coconut oil if you wish but in both these cases try a sponge pudding first as they are more tolerant of such changes.

However, back to the real stuff assuming you feel happy to use it. If you manage to get some from the butcher you will end up with something very much like this.

The packet stuff looks like this both the meat and veggy versions which is probably easier for most people to deal with if you can get it.

However if you are going the whole hog and trying the fresh stuff then the fat then needs separating from the membrane that holds it loosely together. Personally I normally just pull it apart with my hands and crumble the fat off the membrane but if you wish to make sure you completely remove everything except the pure fat you need to render it.

To render the fat, chop or grate it up and put in a pan. Then you slowly heat it over a low flame until it is completely melted. Carefully, because hot fat is very much not something you want to get on your skin, pour it into a sieve lined with cheesecloth to remove all the little bits of membrane and such like from the pure fat. If it still has bits in reheat until liquid and restrain.

So once you have your suet or suet substitute, what are we going to make with it? The answer to that is of course suet pudding. However I am giving you not one but two forms of suet pudding and both can be either savory or sweet so you have lots of options to play about with the idea.

The two basic types are a suet crust pudding with a filling or a suet sponge pudding. Examples of a pudding with a crust are a steak and kidney pudding or a Sussex pond pudding and examples of the sponge pudding are spotted dick, Christmas pudding and college pudding.

Both types are traditionally steamed in a pudding basin for at least an hour and this is a technique I know some people rarely, if ever, use. However it is very simple and can be done with the simplest of equipment. All you really need is a reasonable size saucepan with a lid, ideally with a heat proof plate or a steamer rack to go in the bottom of the pan and heat proof bowl or similar container to cook the pudding in. You can even go more basic than that and wrap the pudding in a cloth and hang it in the pot of water to boil!

Other uses for suet include dumplings for stew, making mincemeat for mince-pies, mixing with seeds to make fat balls for birds and as an extremely high calorie survival food for extreme environments such as arctic expeditions.

So the required elements of this challenge are:

1) to make a suet pudding using real suet or as close a replacement as you can manage or is acceptable to you; and
2) to cook it by steaming or if you want to be even more traditional by boiling tied up in a cloth.

Due to the short amount of time I ended up having to get this challenge together I have not tried out all the recipes recently, however they are all ones I have either used in the past or from sources I know to be extremely good for these sort of recipes.

Recipe Source: Recipes come from the following sources: Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course, The pudding club (www.puddingclub.com), Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management and the Dairy Book of Home Cooking and my family’s recipe notes!

Blog-checking lines: The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet.

Posting Date: April 27, 2010

Notes: Fresh suet should be kept in the fridge or do what I do and freeze it. I crumble off what I want as I go straight from the freezer. The boxed stuff can live in the cupboard.

The easiest way to steam a pudding is in a dedicated steamer as the water is kept away from the pudding so it can’t boil over. If, however, you don’t have a steamer use a pan large enough to easily fit the bowl you are cooking. Don’t fill the water more than about a third of the way up the bowl or it may boil over and into the bowl. Keep an eye and top up as needed with boiling water.

You need to lift the bowl off the bottom of the pan. This can be done with a steamer stand, an upturned plate or even crumpled up kitchen foil — anything that can stand being in boiling water and lifts the bowl off the bottom of the pan will work.

Make sure you have a well-fitted lid on the pan as you want the steam to cook the pudding not to boil off.

Make sure you put a pleat in the foil or paper you cover the bowl with to allow for expansion and then tie down tightly with string.

This is a bowl ready for the steamer, note the handle made from the string that also ties it together around the top.. this makes it very much easier to lift out when hot and is well worth doing.

This bowl is actually a Christmas pudding I made before Christmas which is also a suet pudding but unlike most made to keep for months rather than used straight away.

Variations allowed: You are allowed completely free rein on flavours and fillings and I am very much looking forward to seeing where the Daring Bakers take a very traditional dish like this.

Any variations due to restricted diets are of course allowed. Due to the way these recipes are cooked it’s very easy to substitute for gluten-free flours and get very much the same results as wheat. Do try your favorite flour mix as these are much more tolerant of flour changes than most pasty.

They can be made vegetarian and even vegan just by using the vegetarian replacement suet and an appropriate flavour/filling.

Preparation time: Preparation time is 5 to 20 minutes depending on the filling. Cooking time is 1 to 5 hours so do this on a day you have jobs around the house to do or are popping in and out as you need to occasionally check the pan hasn’t boiled dry! However it is otherwise a very low time requirement dish.

Equipment required:• 2 pint (1 litre) pudding bowl or steam-able containers to contain a similar amount they should be higher rather than wide and low
Traditional pudding bowl so you know what is normally used.

• Steamer or large pan, ideally with a steaming stand, upturned plate or crumpled up piece of kitchen foil
• Mixing bowl
• Spoon
• Measuring cups or scales
• Foil or grease proof paper to cover the bowl
• String

Type 1 Puddings — suet crusts.

Pudding Crust for both Savoury Pudding or Sweet Pudding (using suet or a suet substitute):

Ingredients

(250 grams/12 ounces) Self-raising flour (Note* If you cannot find self-raising flour, use a combination of all-purpose flour and baking powder.)
(175 grams/6 ounces) Shredded suet or suet substitute (i.e., Vegetable Suet, Crisco, Lard)
(a pinch) Salt and pepper (Note* If making a savory dish, can be replaced with spices for sweet if wished.)
(210 millilitres/a little less than a cup) Water (Note* You can use a milk or a water and milk mix for a richer pastry.)

1. Mix the flour and suet together.
2. Season the flour and suet mixture with salt and pepper if savory and just a bit of salt and/or spices if sweet.
3. Add the water, a tablespoonful at a time, as you mix the ingredients together. Make up the pastry to firm an elastic dough that leaves the bowl clean. The liquid amounts are only an estimate and most recipes just say water to mix.

4. Don’t over handle the pastry or it will be too hard.
5. Reserve a quarter for the lid and roll out the rest and line a well-greased bowl.
6. At this point add your filling.. a couple of options are give below but have fun and go wild!
7. Roll the final piece of pastry out into a circle big enough to cover the top of the basin, dampen the edges and put in position on the pudding, pinching the edges together to seal.
8. Seal well and cover with a double sheet of foil – pleated in the centre to allow room for expansion while cooking. Secure with string, and place it in a steamer over boiling water.
9. Steam for up to 5 hours, you may need to add more boiling water halfway through or possibly more often. There is a lot of leeway in this steaming time and different recipes give different steaming times. Delia Smith says 5 hours for Steak and kidney where as Mrs Beeton says 2.5 for a similar dish! One way to tell that it is cooked is when the pastry changes colour and goes from white to a sort of light golden brown. It is also hard to over steam a pudding so you can leave it bubbling away until you are ready.

This one is a steak and onion one cooked for 1.5 hours. (however as others have shown they come out even better if you steam for longer 3 to 5 hours is much better.)

This sort of pastry can also be used as a topping for a baked meat pie and becomes quite a light crusty pastry when baked.

Savoury Pudding Filling options: steak and kidney pudding.

1 full amount of suet crust (see recipe above)
(450 grams/about 1 pound) Chuck steak
(225 grams/about 1/2 a pound) Ox kidney
1 medium-sized onion
2 teaspoons well-seasoned flour
splash of Worcestershire sauce

1. Chop the steak and kidney into fairly small cubes, toss them in seasoned flour, then add them to the pastry lined basin.
2. Pop the onion slices in here and there.
3. Add enough cold water to reach almost to the top of the meat and sprinkle in a few drops of Worcestershire sauce and season with salt and pepper.
4. Follow the rest of the instructions in the crust recipe to finish pudding.
5. Cook for at least 2.5 hours (Mrs Beeton) up to 5 hours (Delia Smith).

Sweet Pudding Options: Sussex Pond Pudding

1 amount of suet pastry (see recipe above)
(120 grams/4.2 ounces) Demerara Sugar
(120 grams/4.2 ounces) unsalted butter
1 large lemon

1. Cut the butter into small pieces and put half in the basin with half the sugar.
2. Prick the whole lemon (preferably one with a thin skin) all over, using a thick skewer.
3. Place on top of the butter and sugar in the basin.
4. Cover with the rest of the butter and sugar.
5. Finish building the pudding as per the pastry recipe.
6. Steam for 3 ½ hours, or longer (for a really tender lemon), adding more water if needed.
7. To serve, turn the pudding into a dish with a deep rim, when you slice into it the rich lemon sauce will gush out.
8. Make sure each person is served some of the suet crust, lemon and tangy luscious sauce.

Type 2 puddings – Steamed Suet Pudding, sponge type.

(100 grams/4 ounces) All-purpose flour
(1/4 teaspoon) salt
(1.5 teaspoons) Baking powder
(100 grams/4 ounces) breadcrumbs
(75 grams/3 ounces) Caster sugar
(75 grams/ 3 ounces) Shredded suet or suet substitute (i.e., Vegetable Suet, Crisco, Lard)
(1) large egg
(6 to 8 tablespoons) Cold milk

1. Sift flour, salt and baking powder into bowl.
2. Add breadcrumbs, sugar and suet.
3. Mix to a soft batter with beaten egg and milk
4. Turn into a buttered 1 litre/ 2pint pudding basin and cover securely with buttered greaseproof paper or aluminum foil.
5. Steam steadily for 2.5 to 3 hours
6. Turn out onto warm plate, Serve with sweet sauce to taste such as custard, caramel or a sweetened fruit sauce.

Variants:
Spotted Dick - Add 75g/ 3oz currants and 25g/1 oz of mixed chopped peel with the sugar.
Syrup or Treacle or Marmalade Pudding – put 2 Tablespoons of golden syrup, treacle or marmalade at the bottom of the bowl before adding pudding mix.
My Fair Lady Pudding – Add finely grated rind of 1 medium orange or lemon with the sugar.
Ginger Pudding – replace the sugar with 100g/4oz of treacle, and add 1/2 tsp ground ginger.

Additional Information:

Suet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suet.

Suet substitutes: http://www.practicallyedible.com/edible.nsf/pages/suet.

Vegetable suet: http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/Dictionary/V/Vegetable-suet-6708.aspx.

Delia Smith shows you how to make suet pastry with step-by-step photos here: (http://www.deliaonline.com/how-to-cook/baking/how-to-make-suet-pastry.html).

Video of the whole process of making a suet crust pudding.
http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-steak-mushroom-pudding-317626/

Video of making a steamed pudding: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afQ6g0R8pMc.

A very good place to find recipes for many British puddings is the Pudding Club website http://www.puddingclub.com/.

Steamed Pudding: http://www.puddings.net/desserts/puddings/steamedpuddings/preparing.shtml.

Mrs Beeton of course had many suet based puddings in her book and thefoody.com lists many of them. Some are described as boiled but nearly all can be steamed in a bowl in the same way as the full recipes I've give here including Staffordshire Fig Pudding: (http://thefoody.com/mrsbpudding/staffordshire.html), boiled raisin Pudding (http://thefoody.com/mrsbpudding/boiledraisin.html), Boiled Rhubarb Pudding (http://thefoody.com/mrsbpudding/rhubarbpudding.html), ginger pudding (http://thefoody.com/mrsbpudding/gingerpudding.html) and several more.
Christmas Pudding

Bacon and Leek Pudding:
http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/2009/03/01/116229/Bacon-and-Leek-Suet-Pudding.htm

Butter based versions of steamed pudding

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3157/rhubarb-steamed-pudding
http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/type-of-dish/sweet/steamed-treacle-sponge-pudding.html
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/8185/sticky-gingerbread-pudding-with-toffee-sauce

Found a vegan one I can't vouch for it but thought it might be a starting point for someone.
http://www.scarlettdesign.co.uk/go-vegan/pudding.html

The whole of Mrs Beeton on line
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/beeton/isabella/household/
and just the puddings
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/beeton/isabella/household/chapter27.html

Sorry for the absence

2010-04-20T09:26:00.001+01:00

I have been really busy and even missed both a Daring Baker and a Daring cook challenge of the last few weeks. However I will be back and with a big post in about a week as one of the reasons I have been so busy is at the last minute I agree to host this months Daring Baker challenge. What i chose you will have to wait and see.

I have also been busy as part of the team making a giant mouse!!

Met Mac.

Daring Cooks do Risotto

2010-03-14T22:20:00.000Z

This month we were given a dish I had no problems at all getting my family keen to try as they all like it very much ! Another Naturally gluten free dish as well !

The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Eleanor of MelbournefoodGeek and Jess of Jessthebaker. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make risotto. The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the Australian Masterchef cookbook and the cookbook Moorish by Greg Malouf.

We were required to make our own stock and risotto base but after that were free to do whatever flavours we wanted and as usual the Daring Cooks made many wonderful and varied varieties.

I decided to do a fairly simple version partly so I could see what the risotto was like without masking it to much with other strong favours and partly to make sure all the family members would like it. As a result I chose to do chicken and peas.

Stock seasonings

I liked the stock, the cinnamon gave it as subtle twist I'm not used to but I liked it.

Here is the basic recipe for the stock.

Chicken Stock
Ingredients:
1 large chicken 2-3 pounds about 1 kg
chicken bones 2-3 pounds 1 kg
2 onions, roughly diced
1 medium leek - white part only, roughly diced
2 sticks celery, roughly diced
2 cloves garlic, halved
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp. white peppercorns ( Any type of whole peppercorn will do)
2 bay leaves (fresh or dried, it doesn't matter.)
peel of 1/2 lemon
1/4 tsp. allspice
Directions:

Wash the chicken and bones and places in a 5 Litre pot, cover completely with water and bring to a boil
Skim away any scum as it comes to the surface
Add the vegetables and bring back to a boil
Add the rest remaining ingredients and simmer very gently, uncovered for 1.5 hours
Carefully lift out the chicken, set aside. The chicken meat can be removed from the chicken, shredded off and used for other things like soup!
Simmer the stock gently for another hour. At , at the end you should have around 2 Liters
Carefully ladle the liquid into a fine sieve, the less the bones and vegetables are disturbed in this process the clearer the stock will be.  The stock is now ready for use. Freeze what you don't need for later use.

Bowls ready to serve.

We all really liked this and will happily have it again. I think it is only the second time I have ever made risotto but I really am going to try and make it a much more common dish on our menu as it really isn't hard and is very good.

Risotto Base

Ingredients:
olive oil 2 fluid oz 60 ml
1 small onion, quatered
rice 14 oz 400g
Any type of risotto rice will do. I use Arborio but the recipe itself says Vialone Nano. Another to look for is Carnaroli.
white wine 2 fl oz 60 ml
chicken or vegetable stock , simmering 2 pints 1 L
Directions:

Heat oil in a pan and add onion. Fry for a few minutes to flavour the oil then discard. (We diced ours and left it in as we like onion).
Add the rice and stir for a few minutes to coat each grain of rice with oil and toast slightly.
Add the wine and let it bubble away until evaporated.
Add enough stock to cover the rice by a finger’s width (about an inch or two). Don't actually stick your finger in, it will be hot. Just eye it off.
Cook on medium heat, stirring with a wooden spoon from time to time, until most of the stock has been absorbed.
Repeat Step 5 making sure to leave aside approximately 100 ml. of stock for the final step. .
Repeat, save 100ml for the final stage.
Once you are at this point, the base is made. You now get to add your own variation.

After this I added the rest of the stock and
unsalted butter 3.5 oz 100g chilled and cut into small cubes.

Let these combine in properly and then added
parmesan cheese, grated 2 oz 60g
a good amount of chicken taken off from the stock chicken
about a 1.5 cups of peas.

Serve in bowls.

Daring Bakers - Tiramisu

2010-02-27T22:47:00.001Z

This month's reveal almost didn't happen as my computer is dieing so it's going to be a bit quickly thrown together to tempt fate as little as possible. I may add extra notes later!

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.
text

We were asked to make mascarpone, Ladies finger biscuits from scratch and of course we were given recipes for all the other bits as well. I never realised how many stages there are to making this dish and to be honest I don't much like coffee so I've never really liked it but there are ways round that, I made both a coffee version for most of the family who love coffee and a pomegranate version for me

My mascarpone cheese and biscuits. The biscuits of course needed to gluten free and we were supplied several recipes by our hosts, mine were based on this recipe and my eldest is already asking when i am next making them!

The cream bit of the pudding is made from mascarpone, whipped cream, zabaglione (which is a sort of alcoholic egg custard) and pastry cream all mixed together. Zabaglione is normally made with Masala wine but I used mead instead !

You then dip the biscuits in coffee for a normal version (or pom for my pomegranate version ) quickly and layer them with the cream mix.

A traditional Tiramisu

Pomegranate Tiramisu

and finally what a slice of the coffee one looked like!

-------------------------------------------

Recipes

TIRAMISU
(Recipe source: Carminantonio's Tiramisu from The Washington Post, July 11 2007 )
This recipe makes 6 servings
Ingredients:
For the zabaglione:
2 large egg yolks
3 tablespoons sugar/50gms
1/4 cup/60ml Marsala wine (or port or coffee)
1/4 teaspoon/ 1.25ml vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
For the vanilla pastry cream:
1/4 cup/55gms sugar
1 tablespoon/8gms all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon/ 2.5ml vanilla extract
1 large egg yolk
3/4 cup/175ml whole milk
For the whipped cream:
1 cup/235ml chilled heavy cream (we used 25%)
1/4 cup/55gms sugar
1/2 teaspoon/ 2.5ml vanilla extract
To assemble the tiramisu:
2 cups/470ml brewed espresso, warmed
1 teaspoon/5ml rum extract (optional)
1/2 cup/110gms sugar
1/3 cup/75gms mascarpone cheese
36 savoiardi/ ladyfinger biscuits (you may use less)
2 tablespoons/30gms unsweetened cocoa powder
Method:
For the zabaglione:
Heat water in a double boiler. If you don’t have a double boiler, place a pot with about an inch of water in it on the stove. Place a heat-proof bowl in the pot making sure the bottom does not touch the water.
In a large mixing bowl (or stainless steel mixing bowl), mix together the egg yolks, sugar, the Marsala (or espresso/ coffee), vanilla extract and lemon zest. Whisk together until the yolks are fully blended and the mixture looks smooth.
Transfer the mixture to the top of a double boiler or place your bowl over the pan/ pot with simmering water. Cook the egg mixture over low heat, stirring constantly, for about 8 minutes or until it resembles thick custard. It may bubble a bit as it reaches that consistency.
Let cool to room temperature and transfer the zabaglione to a bowl. Cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight, until thoroughly chilled.
For the pastry cream:
Mix together the sugar, flour, lemon zest and vanilla extract in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan. To this add the egg yolk and half the milk. Whisk until smooth.
Now place the saucepan over low heat and cook, stirring constantly to prevent the mixture from curdling.
Add the remaining milk a little at a time, still stirring constantly. After about 12 minutes the mixture will be thick, free of lumps and beginning to bubble. (If you have a few lumps, don’t worry. You can push the cream through a fine-mesh strainer.)
Transfer the pastry cream to a bowl and cool to room temperature. Cover with plastic film and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight, until thoroughly chilled.
For the whipped cream:
Combine the cream, sugar and vanilla extract in a mixing bowl. Beat with an electric hand mixer or immersion blender until the mixture holds stiff peaks. Set aside.
To assemble the tiramisu:
Have ready a rectangular serving dish (about 8" by 8" should do) or one of your choice.
Mix together the warm espresso, rum extract and sugar in a shallow dish, whisking to mix well. Set aside to cool.
In a large bowl, beat the mascarpone cheese with a spoon to break down the lumps and make it smooth. This will make it easier to fold. Add the prepared and chilled zabaglione and pastry cream, blending until just combined. Gently fold in the whipped cream. Set this cream mixture aside.
Now to start assembling the tiramisu.
Workings quickly, dip 12 of the ladyfingers in the sweetened espresso, about 1 second per side. They should be moist but not soggy. Immediately transfer each ladyfinger to the platter, placing them side by side in a single row. You may break a lady finger into two, if necessary, to ensure the base of your dish is completely covered.
Spoon one-third of the cream mixture on top of the ladyfingers, then use a rubber spatula or spreading knife to cover the top evenly, all the way to the edges.
Repeat to create 2 more layers, using 12 ladyfingers and the cream mixture for each layer. Clean any spilled cream mixture; cover carefully with plastic wrap and refrigerate the tiramisu overnight.
To serve, carefully remove the plastic wrap and sprinkle the tiramisu with cocoa powder using a fine-mesh strainer or decorate as you please. Cut into individual portions and serve.

MASCARPONE CHEESE
(Source: Vera’s Recipe for Homemade Mascarpone Cheese)
This recipe makes 12oz/ 340gm of mascarpone cheese
Ingredients:
474ml (approx. 500ml)/ 2 cups whipping (36 %) pasteurized (not ultra-pasteurized), preferably organic cream (between 25% to 36% cream will do)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Method:
Bring 1 inch of water to a boil in a wide skillet. Reduce the heat to medium-low so the water is barely simmering. Pour the cream into a medium heat-resistant bowl, then place the bowl into the skillet. Heat the cream, stirring often, to 190 F. If you do not have a thermometer, wait until small bubbles keep trying to push up to the surface.
It will take about 15 minutes of delicate heating. Add the lemon juice and continue heating the mixture, stirring gently, until the cream curdles. Do not expect the same action as you see during ricotta cheese making. All that the whipping cream will do is become thicker, like a well-done crème anglaise. It will cover a back of your wooden spoon thickly. You will see just a few clear whey streaks when you stir. Remove the bowl from the water and let cool for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, line a sieve with four layers of dampened cheesecloth and set it over a bowl. Transfer the mixture into the lined sieve. Do not squeeze the cheese in the cheesecloth or press on its surface (be patient, it will firm up after refrigeration time). Once cooled completely, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate (in the sieve) overnight or up to 24 hours.
Vera’s notes: The first time I made mascarpone I had all doubts if it’d been cooked enough, because of its custard-like texture. Have no fear, it will firm up beautifully in the fridge, and will yet remain lusciously creamy.
Keep refrigerated and use within 3 to 4 days.

Daring Cooks do Mezze

2010-02-14T20:55:00.003Z

Before I start the Daring Baker post I just wanted to say something completely unrelated. A few months ago Freegle was born.. which is a UK based re-use network.. Today we past 1 million members !!! It's been a great few months!

The 2010 February Daring COOKs challenge was hosted by Michele of Veggie Num Nums. Michele chose to challenge everyone to make mezze based on various recipes from Claudia Roden, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Dugid.

Mezze is like a Middle Eastern version of tapas, lots of bits and pieces eaten together. You can pick and chose whatever you like. Michele challenged us to do two compulsory dishes and then add to them whatever we liked. If you check out the other Daring cooks you will see lots of different combinations of dishes. The two dishes she asked us to all do were to make homemade Pita bread and hummus.

The hummus recipe she gave us is at the bottom of this post. We very much enjoyed it and I found it very simple to make. We had it both plain and also with some caramelised onions puréed into the mix.

As I can't use a normal pitta bread recipe I tried a couple of different versions.

The first one I tried was a result of a discussion with a friend who has Turkish friends who make chickpea pitta at home. She got me the recipe or rather a rough list of ingredients so here is my recipe based on that.

Chickpea pitta

it is "roughly"
3 cups chickpea flour
"a bit less than a cup of other" flour (apparently plain flour or corn flour?) - we call cornstarch cornflour here so i used that.
2 teaspoons yeast
pinch salt
pinch sugar
pinch cumin seeds
pinch tumeric
2 tablespoons oil (ideally olive but not extra virgin, apparently)
"Water until it forms a soft dough"

She also said the pan it is cooked it is roasting hot as she remembers touching it by accident as a kid!!
So I mixed as directed then left it to prove for a few mins.. I find gluten free baking doesn't generally like long initial proving and there is no gluten to develop. Then I rolled out egg size lumps and put on trays, proved for 30 mins or so (actually longer as a small person woke up) and cooked on a very high heat (220 in a convection over) for about 6 mins.. I over cooked a few mostly as they were too high up the oven and to get that high a heat the oven puts on the top elements which then tend to grill anything close!

A few thought about puffing in the oven but it didn't survive coming out of the oven though they can be carefully split if wanted they don't have a pocket as such. Really quite tasty, chewier than a wheat one but my friend says she actually prefers that and she isn't gluten free so I'll take her word for it not having had wheat ones in nearly ten years. I might try rolling out a bit thinner in the next batch and a little more liquid as I think I made the dough a bit dry and see if that gets more puff.

For the full meal however I tried a sweet potato recipe from Straight to bed cake free and dried. I adjusted it a little replacing the sorghum with Dove Farm gluten free plain flour and the maize with gram flour (chickpea).
These were really fabulous and even more orangey yellow than in the photos. We will definitely be making them again. I think I will try some potato based ones as well as sweet potatoes are something we only get occasionally. These ones even puffed and developed pockets!

Sweet potato Pitta

So the full Mezze meal consisted of Sweet Potato pitta, caramelized onion hummus, plain hummus served with mince meat (which is how I often have it at our local Arabic restaurant ), more meat for those who like it without hummus, pickled beetroot, sweet and sour pickled roast peppers, tomato and cucumber.. we also ended up having some grated cheese as the small ones decided it was like tacos and they wanted cheese to add to them! They had a point. By the way I had dreadful trouble taking the photo of all the dishes as Treestump kept trying to put his place-mat on the table ready to eat!!

---------------------------------------------------------
Hummus – Recipe adapted from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden
Prep Time: Hummus can be made in about 15 minutes once the beans are cooked. If you’re using dried beans you need to soak them overnight and then cook them the next day which takes about 90 minutes.
1.5 cups dried chickpeas, soaked in cold water overnight (or substitute well drained canned chickpeas and omit the cooking) (10 ounces/301 grams)
2-2.5 lemons, juiced (3 ounces/89ml)
2-3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
a big pinch of salt
4 tablespoons tahini (sesame paste) OR use peanut butter or any other nut butter—feel free to experiment) (1.5 ounces/45 grams)
additional flavorings (optional) I would use about 1/3 cup or a few ounces to start, and add more to taste

Directions:
1. Drain and boil the soaked chickpeas in fresh water for about 1 ½ hours, or until tender. Drain, but reserve the cooking liquid.
2. Puree the beans in a food processor (or you can use a potato masher) adding the cooking water as needed until you have a smooth paste.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Adjust the seasonings to taste.

Weekly menu - Feb 8th 2010

2010-02-08T22:14:00.000Z

This week's gluten free roundup is being done by Angela's Kitchen and she has chosen garlic as an ingredient. We love garlic and use it a huge amount. I recently made some garlic confit following the instructions from Kate the Bake and it's fabulous and really nice to have to hand, the garlicky olive oil it is in is good too!

Organizing Junkie also have a huge round up of all sorts of menu which is well worth checking out.

I thought you never see me and for once i have a photograph I like so this week I'd brave it and put a photograph of myself up here for all to see!

So now you know what I look like!

So back to food after that brief interlude. While I generally prefer home cooked gluten free bread and so forth the pre-made stuff is useful and Dietary Specials is a very good brand over here so when I was told that Approved Food had a bunch of their stuff on their site this morning I had to put in an order ! Approved Food is a company who specifies in short and pass date food, by past date they mean past the best by date which is very different to the use by date.. the past by date is the date after which it might start to deteriorate and is used on longer life products, in reality they are often fine months after that date. Use by is on short use foods like fresh meat and so on and after that date it can be dangerous to eat the food as it will be going off. So anyway I am now waiting on a order of really quite a lot of gluten free bread products as they were selling them for about 1/12th the normal price! Cheap enough I will not feel the least bit guilty making breadcrumbs and bread and butter pudding if I feel like it, where as normally I ration it out to myself as it is rather expensive.

Right on to the menu. I have just done a inventory of the cupboards and need to get that written up and check what we do and don't have so this may well change as I do that as I always earmark some things to be used up when I do such an exercise but it's useful to have a starting point at least.

Monday - stir- fried vegs and rice with deep fried sweet potato and parsnip sticks.

Tuesday - Barbequed spare ribs with potato wedges

Wednesday - Birthday choice as it's Jon's birthday.. probably something simple like Steak knowing him!

Thursday - Daring Cooks challenge recipe which I failed to do fully last week.

Friday - Some sort of fish dish not sure what yet but we have several pieces of fish in the freezer that need eating up.

Weekly menu - Feb 1st 2010

2010-02-02T00:10:00.000Z

This weeks ingredient, picked by Heather at Celiac Family is chocolate.. oh what a hardship :) We all love chocolate, well nearly all but there always has to be one doesn't there? All the more for the rest of us.

Probably a rather heavy potato week this week but it's that time of year and we are all under the weather with colds so simple, easy favourites are the order of the day.

This weeks menu is

Monday - Homemade lamb burgers and potato wedges

Tuesday - potato bake.

Wensday - Daring Cooks challenge dish (sorry can't say what till later)

Thursday - After school visit from a class mate.. they both pestered me and him mum all last week!! Probably something simple like fish fingers or pasta with cheese sauce particularly as he's muslim so no meat unless it's Halal and so on.

Friday - sausage and mash

Baking - Banana muffins, potato cakes, biscuits of some sort.

A gluten free Canadian Treat - Daring Bakers

2010-01-27T16:14:00.000Z

The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca.

I have known Lauren a while now through us both having gluten free blogs and so it was wonderful to have her host this month's Daring Baker's challenge. I actually did this challenge quite early in the month as I needed some cake to take to an event but as I was pushed for time I used some gingerbread instead of trying her recipe for gluten free Graham crackers. However it does look like a recipe I would like to try at some point. The gingerbread was of course gluten free and the only other changes I made was to replace the almonds with walnuts and add a little crystallised ginger to the middle layer to cut the sweetness slightly and tie in with the gingerbread. I was worried the middle layer would be too sweet but paired with the dark chocolate on top and the base it wasn't that bad as long as you eat it in inch square pieces :)

I do really like this recipe and its nice to try something Canada which in many ways is halfway between America and us in that they have more ingredients we use such as the Bird's custard powder but also obviously a lot from their southern neighbour.

The recipe below included the Graham crackers partly so I have ti to hand when i do have time to try them.

On a completely different note. I failed to do a menu this week and boy have I noticed.. we have been in disarray where as last week was more hectic but I managed to cook something sensible most days.. so I am definitely making the time to do a menu for next week !

Nanaimo Bars

Preparation time:
• Graham Wafers: 30 to 45 minutes total active prep, 2 ½ hours to overnight and 45 minutes inactive prep.
• Nanaimo Bars: 30 minutes.

Equipment required:
• Food Processor
• Bowls
• Parchment paper or silpats
• Cookie sheets
• Double boiler or pot and heatproof bowl
• 8 by 8 inch square pan
• Hand mixer or stand mixer (You may use a wooden spoon, but this makes it much easier!)
• Saucepan

For Gluten-Free Graham Wafers
Ingredients
1 cup (138 g) (4.9 ounces) Sweet rice flour (also known as glutinous rice flour)
3/4 cup (100 g) (3.5 ounces) Tapioca Starch/Flour
1/2 cup (65 g) (2.3 ounces) Sorghum Flour
1 cup (200 g) (7.1 ounces) Dark Brown Sugar, Lightly packed
1 teaspoon (5 mL) Baking soda
3/4 teaspoon (4 mL ) Kosher Salt
7 tablespoons (100 g) (3 ½ ounces) Unsalted Butter (Cut into 1-inch cubes and frozen)
1/3 cup (80 mL) Honey, Mild-flavoured such as clover.
5 tablespoons (75 mL) Whole Milk
2 tablespoons (30 mL) Pure Vanilla Extract

Directions:
1. In the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade, combine the flours, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt. Pulse on low to incorporate. Add the butter and pulse on and off, until the mixture is the consistency of a coarse meal. If making by hand, combine aforementioned dry ingredients with a whisk, then cut in butter until you have a coarse meal. No chunks of butter should be visible.
2. In a small bowl or liquid measuring cup, whisk together the honey, milk and vanilla. Add to the flour mixture until the dough barely comes together. It will be very soft and sticky.
3. Turn the dough onto a surface well-floured with sweet rice flour and pat the dough into a rectangle about 1 inch thick. Wrap in plastic and chill until firm, about 2 hours, or overnight.
4. Divide the dough in half and return one half to the refrigerator. Sift an even layer of sweet rice flour onto the work surface and roll the dough into a long rectangle, about 1/8 inch thick. The dough will be quite sticky, so flour as necessary. Cut into 4 by 4 inch squares. Gather the scraps together and set aside. Place wafers on one or two parchment-lined baking sheets. Chill until firm, about 30 to 45 minutes. Repeat with the second batch of dough.
5. Adjust the rack to the upper and lower positions and preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (180 degrees Celsius).
6. Gather the scraps together into a ball, chill until firm, and reroll. Dust the surface with more sweet rice flour and roll out the dough to get a couple more wafers.
7. Prick the wafers with toothpick or fork, not all the way through, in two or more rows.
8. Bake for 25 minutes, until browned and slightly firm to the touch, rotating sheets halfway through to ensure even baking. Might take less, and the starting location of each sheet may determine its required time. The ones that started on the bottom browned faster.
9. When cooled completely, place enough wafers in food processor to make 1 ¼ cups (300 mL) of crumbs. Another way to do this is to place in a large ziplock bag, force all air out and smash with a rolling pin until wafers are crumbs.

Nanaimo Bars
Ingredients:
For Nanaimo Bars — Bottom Layer
1/2 cup (115 g) (4 ounces) Unsalted Butter
1/4 cup (50 g) (1.8 ounces) Granulated Sugar
5 tablespoons (75 mL) Unsweetened Cocoa
1 Large Egg, Beaten
1 1/4 cups (300 mL) (160 g) (5.6 ounces) Gluten Free Graham Wafer Crumbs (See previous recipe)
1/2 cup (55 g) (1.9 ounces) Almonds (Any type, Finely chopped)
1 cup (130 g) (4.5 ounces) Coconut (Shredded, sweetened or unsweetened)

For Nanaimo Bars — Middle Layer
1/2 cup (115 g) (4 ounces) Unsalted Butter
2 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons (40 mL) Heavy Cream
2 tablespoons (30 mL) Vanilla Custard Powder (Such as Bird’s. Vanilla pudding mix may be substituted.)
2 cups (254 g) (8.9 ounces) Icing Sugar

For Nanaimo Bars — Top Layer
4 ounces (115 g) Semi-sweet chocolate
2 tablespoons (28 g) (1 ounce) Unsalted Butter

Directions:
1. For bottom Layer: Melt unsalted butter, sugar and cocoa in top of a double boiler. Add egg and stir to cook and thicken. Remove from heat. Stir in crumbs, nuts and coconut. Press firmly into an ungreased 8 by 8 inch pan.
2. For Middle Layer: Cream butter, cream, custard powder, and icing sugar together well. Beat until light in colour. Spread over bottom layer.
3. For Top Layer: Melt chocolate and unsalted butter over low heat. Cool. Once cool, pour over middle layer and chill.
-------------------------------
Additional Information:
These bars freeze very well, so don’t be afraid to pop some into the freezer.
The graham wafers may be kept in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks. Mine lasted about that long.
If making the graham crackers with wheat, replace the gluten-free flours (tapioca starch, sweet rice flour, and sorghum flour) with 2 ½ cups plus 2 tbsp of all-purpose wheat flour, or wheat pastry flour. Watch the wheat-based graham wafers very closely in the oven, as they bake faster than the gluten-free ones, sometimes only 12 minutes.
For the Nanaimo Bars, if making with wheat, replace the gluten-free graham wafer crumbs with equal parts wheat graham wafer crumbs!

Gluten Free Menu Swap - Parsnips

2010-01-18T16:47:00.005Z

I'm hosting the Gluten Free Menu Swap this week and I chose Parsnips as my ingredient.

We love parsnips here, often referred to in our house as 'snips though I have found they are one of those veg you either love or hate. They are one of those vegs that really symbolise winter food for us and one that we await with anticipation. Parsnips are a bit like a carrot but much bigger and a creamy white colour. They are quite sweet and roast wonderfully. We always have them when we have a roast dinner along with roast potatoes. Parsnips are a good source of vitamins and very versatile, our favourites apart from roast include Curried Parsnip soup and parsnip crisps.. They also make a great mash and we sometimes mix them with carrot for a mix veg mash. Adding them to a stew or soup gives it a lovely mellow sweetness.

They take a long time to grow and they benefit form frost before they are harvested as that makes them sweeter. The seed goes off very quickly so they are one of the few vegs it is very sensible to get new seed for each year. This year I hope to have more luck growing them than last time when none came up and I plan to try a couple of different sowing dates to see what if any difference that makes .

You can find some more recipes here at Vegbox-recipes..

I did a dinner party for Tom's birthday and totally forgot to take pictures.. far too busy cooking but the menu was as follows.

Starters - Balsamic roasted red peppers, and spiced roast corgettes, cream cheese stuffed battered mushrooms.

Soup - French Onion or Roast Butternut.

Main - Pork and apple Terrine or Beetroot Gnocchi served with a choice of roast potatoes, pue lentils, Waldron salad, green salad and a choice of chutneys and pickles.

Desert - banana curd crème brulee, maroons, cupcakes and a chocolate heart cake (the last two were gluten as they were supplied by others)

Menu of the week.

Monday - liver and onions or sausage meat patties with potato and parsnip wedges, leeks in cream sauce and carrots. (only some of us will eat liver)

Tuesday - Veg Pakoras - leek and/or cabbage, chickpea curry of some sort.

Wednesday - Curried Parsnip soup and cheese scones

Thursday - Stew and dumplings.

Friday - Tomato and Egg

Baking and Batch cooking. -we need some biscuits and similar, possibly some bread.

Other menus

Manda of Asparagus Thin has been updating her blog look and very nice it is too. She loves parsnips too and had the great suggestion of parsnip muffins.. that is so on my list of things to try now!

Over at Gluten Free is Life parsnips will be something new if they try them. Hope they do as I think they are fantastic, apparently she is thinking of adding them to her fairly long list of vegetable fries she has tried. I can confirm they make the most wonderful chips (fries) and crisps (chips). Here we can get bags of parsnip crisps or parsnip, beetroot and carrot mixes. Only think to remember don't have the fat to hot because of the natural sugars in them they brown very fast.

Angela over at Angela's Kitchen has a birthday girl in the family this week and has made the most fantastic cupcakes for her.. those would be appreciated by pretty much all our family young or old !! The Princess Bride is a must see and one of our all time favourites.. fantastic fairytale for the kids, so many layers, double meanings and just brilliant sayings for the more adult among us! I quite fancy the sound of Halibut in Green Tea Broth too!!

Daring Cooks do Satay

2010-01-13T23:35:00.000Z

The January 2010 DC challenge was hosted by Cuppy of Cuppylicious and she chose a delicious Thai-inspired recipe for Pork Satay from the book 1000 Recipes by Martha Day.

This was a very interesting and indeed delicious recipe. Not a straight thai satay but none the worse for that.

I made two versions, chicken and pork, both were really lovely.. The pork was stronger and darker which I loved, where as the chicken was gobbled up by the smaller members of the family. The marinade gave the meat a lovely depth of flavour but still allowed each meat to come though.

Cuppy also gave us a peanut sauce recipe to go with the meat. My first attempt doing this curdled horribly. I think I cooked it too fast and too hot, but after much stirring it came back together. The second time I was more careful to heat it slowly and it worked fine.. yes it was good enough to make more than once. It is possible though that the sort of peanut butter I used had some effect as I used two different types. The first one was a fairly basic smooth and the second a whole-nut crunchy. Both were great and we ate the extra over the remaining rice.. Honestly I could just eat rice and sauce!

I can honestly say this was the quickest and easiest Daring recipe I have ever done but that is not at all a bad thing as it is one we will certainly be adding to our regular menus and many of them have been too complicated to cook regualrly around two small boys however much we might like them.

Recipes below are as Cuppy gave them to us.

------------------------------------------------------

Pork Satay with Peanut Sauce

Depending on the ingredients you select,

Time Table

	Prep	Marinate	Cook
Pork	30 min.	4 – 24 hrs	20 min.
Beef/Lamb	30 min.	6 – 24 hrs	20 min.
Chicken	30 min.	2 – 12 hrs	10 – 15 min.
Vegetables	5 - 10 min.	2 hrs	5 - 10 min.
Tofu	5 - 10 min.	2 hrs	5 - 10 min.

Satay Marinade

1/2 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 T ginger root, chopped (optional) (2 cm cubed)
2 T lemon juice (1 oz or 30 mls)
1 T soy sauce (0.5 oz or 15 mls)
1 tsp ground coriander (5 mls)
1 tsp ground cumin (5 mls)
1/2 tsp ground turmeric (2-2.5 mls)
2 T vegetable oil (or peanut or olive oil) (30 mls)
1 pound of pork (loin or shoulder cuts) (16 oz or 450g)

Feeling the need to make it more Thai? Try adding a dragon chili, an extra tablespoon of ginger root, and 1 tablespoon (0.5 oz or 15 mls) of fish sauce. (I keep some premature (still green) dragon chili peppers in the freezer for just such an occasion.)
Directions:
1a. Cheater alert: If you have a food processor or blender, dump in everything except the pork and blend until smooth. Lacking a food processor, I prefer to chop my onions, garlic and ginger really fine then mix it all together in a medium to large bowl.
2a. Cut pork into 1 inch strips.
3a. Cover pork with marinade. You can place the pork into a bowl, cover/seal and chill, or place the whole lot of it into a ziplock bag, seal and chill.

Uncooked Chicken and Pork Satay

Chill Chart

Pork	Beef/Lamb	Chicken	Vegetables	Tofu (no oil)
4-8 hrs Up to 24 hrs	6-8 hrs Up to 24 hrs	1-4 hours Up to 12 hrs	20 min – 2 hrs Up to 4 hrs	20 min – 4 hrs Up to 12 hrs

Directions:
1b. Mix well.
2b. Cut pork into 1 inch thick strips (2-2.5 cm thick), any length.
3b. Cover pork with marinade. You can place the pork into a bowl, cover/seal and chill, or place the whole lot of it into a ziplock bag, seal and chill.

Cooking Directions (continued):
4. If using wooden or bamboo skewers, soak your skewers in warm water for at least 20 minutes before preparing skewers.
5. Gently and slowly slide meat strips onto skewers. Discard leftover marinade.*
6. Broil or grill at 290°C/550° F (or pan fry on medium-high) for 8-10 minutes or until the edges just start to char. Flip and cook another 8-10 minutes.
* If you’re grilling or broiling, you could definitely brush once with extra marinade when you flip the skewers.

Peanut Sauce
3/4 cup coconut milk (6 oz or 180 mls)
4 Tbsp peanut butter (2 oz or 60 mls)
1 Tbsp lemon juice (0.5 oz or 15 mls)
1 Tbsp soy sauce (0.5 oz or 15 mls)
1 tsp brown sugar (5 mls)
1/2 tsp ground cumin (2.5 mls)
1/2 tsp ground coriander (2.5 mls)
1-2 dried red chilies, chopped (keep the seeds for heat)
1. Mix dry ingredients in a small bowl. Add soy sauce and lemon, mix well.
2. Over low heat, combine coconut milk, peanut butter and your soy-lemon-seasoning mix. Mix well, stir often.
3. All you’re doing is melting the peanut butter, so make your peanut sauce after you’ve made everything else in your meal, or make ahead of time and reheat.

Weekly Menu and exersise - Week 2 2010

2010-01-11T15:01:00.000Z

Ginger, chocolate and ginger/chocolate creme deserts by Tom for last weekend.

As I mentioned before I have joined the ten in 10 challenge and from there joined Sparkpeople which I am finding a really useful resource for logging both what I eat and what exercise I do. I am finding the wii fit is wonderful for keeping me doing at least some exercise each day (about 20 - 30 mins in fact) though it slipped slightly the last couple of days of last week which rather taken up with feeling lousy from a cold and cooking for an event at the weekend. I did then do some fairly energetic dancing at the event though. I also walked a few places. According to the wii fit I have even lost a few pounds though I'm not convinced I will not find them back again after the weekend.. I'll tell you later.

I did get to the allotment but only to drop off vegs for composting but I figure considering it was under several inces of snow and the ground is frozen solid I couldn't really do much anyway.. Well I do have some inside the greenhouse stuff to do but nothing serious.

I plan to continue to trying to do the wii fit most days and walking as much as possible, though I am wary of the state of our pavements with the current snow and ice, we arn't used to it here but we have made a decision in our house that next time it snows we are clearing the pavement outside our house so it doesn't compact and turn to ice.. then at least one small streach will be clear. The number of people, particularly older people, breaking bones slipping on the way to the shops etc is just not funny at the moment.. I don't think we can expect the council to have the resources to do that, the money involved in keeping the equitment etc available for the occational day a year can be spent much better elsewhere but if we all did the pavement outside our house then it would all be clear.

This week I have joined the Primal Stride 7 day challenges. They actually start on Thursday but I missed that due to the cooking and event so I'm starting week 2 today and either overlapping next week or I'll start each week behind everyone else. This week's challenge is the Double Crunch Challenge

Exercise: 250 crunches per day. Split them up however you like. 250 crunches every 24hrs will do it. (I'm starting at 100 today and working up as I think if I do 250 I will not be able to move tomorrow and therefore fail)

Health: Eat a different green vegetable each day. Suggested modifications include eating a different fruit each day or preparing a green vegetable in a different way each day. It’s up to you! Be creative!

Cooking wise for the event lastweekend we made some creme deserts, three layered veg puree terrines, one pepper and cheese terrine, lots of cheese biscuits and some gluten puff pasty squares with either apple and cramalised onion or brie and cranberry. We have decided we are getting some small shot glasses to do deserts in for next time we help cater the event.. We were just doing the veg bit for one meal the main people the food did a fantastic job and there was very few things I couldn't eat which was very appriciated even the main pudding was gluten free and very nice pears in red wine with rasiens they were too!!! Unfortunatly apart from the creme deserts I was too busy to think about photos.

The gluten free menu swap this week is hosted by Gluten free is Life and they have chosen GF Pizza which is fantastic as I was just thinking I should make up some more pizza bases. I recently saw a sweet apple based one which looked fantastic so might even try that. I will also post my menu on Organized Junkie's menu plan monday.

Menu 11th to 17th Jan 2010

Monday - pasta with a corgette and bacon sauce (green veg 1).

Tuesday - Sausages, mash, baked beans and sprout tops (green veg 2)

Wensday - Veg terrine made with Sweet potato, parsnip and broccoli (green veg 3) with potato/sweet potato rosti for those smalls who will refuse anything that looks green and is not cucumber.

Thursday - Daring Cook reveal day and I think we will have that dish again. (you will have to wait till then to find out what it is) probably served with spinich (green veg 4)

Friday - stir fried sprouts with honey, ginger and lemon with noodles and stir fried chicken. (green veg 5 - I think sprouts and sprout tops taste different enough to count as different veg.)

Sataday - we are having a brithday dinner party for Tom, menu still to be sorted based on who is definetly coming and what they can and can't eat.. So far with 8 people we have vegitarian, gluten free, no eggs/tomatoes and possibly no cheese as well as some who are fussy on veg and so forth :) I love my friends they like to challange me ! I will manage a proper dinner party type menu they can all eat!
(Green veg 6 - not sure as yet but there is bound to be at least one green thing.)

Sunday - Pizza as it's easy after the dinner party (green peppers of my 7th and last veg )

weekly Menu - week 1 2010

2010-01-04T22:13:00.000Z

A picture of me.. what do you mean you can't see me for the battle raging next to and on top of me?

This week Asparagus Thin has picked movie themed food for our menu swap this week which is a really fun idea, wonder if can think clearly enough to join in. My movie choices are rather old school which isn't to say I don't watch newer ones it's just those came to mind, probably because I've seen them more often.

Lunches for boys.. - The land that Time forgot (an oldy but a goodie) - dinosaur shaped sandwiches.. we were given a cutter that cuts two dinosaurs from one slice and they love it.

Monday - [Oliver] - Cheese bread and butter pudding for the gluten eaters as we had a good but crumbly loaf to use up. Broccoli and Stilton soup for me.

Tuesday - Daring Cooks challenge dish (can't tell you what it is and a movie would be giving you a clue)

Wensday - [Lady and the tramp - my cat LOVES tuna and when begging reminds me of the siamese] Tuna pasta bake.

Thursday - [ Lock, stock and two smoking barrels] sausage and mash.

Friday - We will be cooking dishes for an event at the weekend so probably take out.

Ten in 10 healthy Challenge

2010-01-02T09:58:00.000Z

I have joined a 10 week challenge over at Recipe Girl. It is called the Ten in 10 challenge is ten weeks in 2010. There are no specific things we are committed to doing it is up to us to set our own goals but it gives us all some support.

One of the resources she suggested was Spark People which is a free website where you can log your food diary and exercise logs and so forth. Having tried it for a few days I'm really impressed. I have paid for on-line food diaries before and it ticks most of the boxes those did. Critical for me it allows you to add in our own foods easily, as nearly all of these as based in the states not the UK and don't have gluten free foods in them much that is very important. They also have forums (though so far I find the format of those a little confusing) and a fun points system to encourage you to read articles and so forth.. All in all pretty good and free too! I do find having to log what I eat and do makes me focus better without to much stress about it.

so my goals for Ten in 10 specifically.

1) To keep logging food and excercise most days

2) To assess my diet and see if I can find ways of eating enough calories.. yes that's right enough calories, unless I eat too much fat I tend not to get to the recommended amount and that is meant to make your body think it's a famine and there for go into conservation mode. How mad it that!!

3) To up the amount of exercise I do generally be that walking, using our new wii fit (which is great fun) or digging the allotment.

4) I'm not going to have a specific weight loss goal but I do want to loose inches off my waist.. don't get me wrong I have plenty of weight to loose but if i focus on that I get depressed as I plato a lot and know if anything it will go up to start with when I exercise more as I put on mustle to start with rather than loosing fat.

5) Go to the allotment once a week at least, partly to get it ready for the growing season and partly just because it is a lovely place and I relax as soon as I get there, it's almost like being out in the countryside again. Me time is important and being outside is great.. though at this time of year I need to remind myself I will enjoy it once I'm out.

Plans for 2010 and a fabulous parcel

2010-01-01T22:40:00.000Z

The parcel first, on the gluten free recipe group it was suggested we have a chirstmas gluten free goodies swap and I was paired with Anna in Germany. The idea was we sent each other a shoebox fully of goodies and mine arrived a couple of days ago but I had to wait to get to the postoffice to collect it as we were out when they tried to deliver it. I have to admit I haven't sent mine yet as I failed to send it in time before Christmas partly due to a stomch bug and didn't want to have food sat in a box in some sorting office over Christmas.. I promise to get it in the post this week though! As you can see Anna has done me proud. Lots of lovely biscuits (already sampled by me and the boys on some cases), two types of pretzles some tea with ginger and some great sounding recipes.

Now on to the plans.
I don't exactly do resolutions but I do try and look at the last year and see what i want to do differently in the next.

This last year in concept at least has been pretty good so I think really it's more of the same but better.

1) Menus have worked well so I plan to keep doing them but hopefully a little more in advance.

2) The allotment has be great but I hope to do a lot more this coming year and to get at least twice as much ground into production properly this year.. which unless the slugs decimate it again should mean we are self surficent in veg at least over the summer.

3) More mainly veg based dishes which is of course tied up with the growing of said veg. Also possibly having more of a go at preserving things be that in jars or drying or whatever.

4) More exercise. This is partly tied in with the allotment.. more digging is more exercise but also other things. We just got a wii fit and so far that has been great fun. Though the Yoga has so far loosened my shoulders enough to remind me how stiff they are and give me a headache I know from experience I need to get through that and it will be better once they get looser again! The balance board is great for things like that as it gives you lots of feedback on your stance.

5) I'd like to loose weight. This is one I always feel wary about putting down as I rarely loose weight if I think about it to much and I'm aware that more exercise may make me weight more not less as I put muscle on fast for a woman so perhaps a better target is less inches and that's really what I care about anyway, I'm fed up of having a pregnant tummy when I'm not!!.. that and I want more energy!

6) To be better at sorting and clearing the house, the kitchen is much harder to use when messy and that goes for the rest of the house too. I don't do things because I can't find the right tools or space to work and our house isn't small we just need to get rid of a lot of stuff!!

7) Review how our local Freegle group (was Freecycle till recently) runs as see if we can improve that any now we have over 13,000 members as some things work better for small groups and now we are so big many members have problems with the amount of traffic and I think we are more of a juicy target for spammers and those less honest people after items to sell.. To be clear I don't mind people selling items IF they are honest about it when they ask for them.. Currently however most of my energy on that score is going on helping sort the national level stuff but I didn't stand for the committee so hope to have time to consider options for the local group too..

8) To have another real go at getting permission and help to get the local orchard up and running again. It is owned by the council and so far we have failed to find who we need to speak to never mind get anywhere farther.

9) Help the local school grow more veg and make sure they get in contact with a local initiative that is willing to help but has not managed to make contact with them only with me!

10) Get back into making things properly and regularly and maybe even make a bit of money here and there doing so.

Ten sounds a good number so I'll stop there as that's a pretty good range of aims I think !

Gluten Free Cooking Videos

2009-12-30T16:18:00.001Z

Dietary Specials have done a bunch of gluten free cooking videos with some very interesting recipe suggestions.

Unsurprisingly they mostly focus on using their products but that doesn't stop them being good recipes particularly for those not wanting to cook from scratch. I thought the Speedy chocolate Profiteroles rolls was quite inspired using as it does their ready made yorkshire puds as the pastry.. after all the texture and so forth of both is really very similar. Obviously they aren't exactly the same but I still think it's a great substitute which doesn't need you to try and make full blown chow pastry and even the most willing of cooks sometimes want an easy option.

I may well try their bread and butter pudding recipe. It is a pudding well liked here and their version includes peaches. I've never tried it with peaches in though one with apricots and marzipan is Tom's favourite so I'm guessing peaches would go down well too!

They are also a very friendly and helpful team. When I sent them a bit of a stroppy email because they said suet isn't suitable on gluten free diet in the Christmas pud recipe I got a very nice and pleasant reply and they changed the written recipe to include that you can get suet from the butcher. To be fair processed suet is unsuitable as it has flour to keep it sticking together but as you will know from my previous posts the raw stuff from the butcher is fat straight from a cow or sheep and therefore fine.

Also I have finally got my hands on one of their new fresh loaves. The nearest ASDA isn't stocking them and the couple of times I tried the other one previously I was late in the day and they were all gone. This time there were plenty on the shelf though so I will by trying it out later.. so watch this space for my views on them.. first impressions are good though, nice and soft feeling and a good size for a gluten free loaf, which is to say still smaller than wheat bread but big enough to make a good sandwitch..

Last Menu of 2009

2009-12-28T17:31:00.001Z

Well as the last few days of the year draw to a close it's time to look at what has been done in the last year and what will be done in the next. I think doing menus has been very useful so plan to keep doing so but I hope to plan a touch longer in advance most of the time and I am considering including all the allotment stuff in this blog. There are pros and cons to having a seperate one but I'm finding I'm forgetting to do that one as well as this and a craft related one so i may move it here as it's food related all be it growing not eating.

The gluten free menu plan is hosted by The GFCF Cookbook this week and they have picked leftover ham as the ingredient. Normally I always have leftover ham but I didn't do the meat this year so actually haven't got any leftover meat at all ! I do however have plenty of left over vegs (I always over buy for events of any kind), christmas pud (though that will last months if we want it to) and plenty of things like cheese.

I am thinking about what aims I want for next year but that will come in another post shortly.

Menu for the coming week.

Monday - Baked potatoes and whatever toppings people fancy plus leftover gingerbread cheesecake.

Tuesday -Vegetable gratin might even used bread crumbs as I have some left from last week rather than my normal crushed crisp topping.

Wednesday - Battered fish and chips or a suet pudding depending where I go shopping for meat/fish and what is good..

Thursday - Probably random party type food.. having a low key kids get together in the afternoon then just a quiet night in to see the new year in.. probably a nice bottle of something but not much more.

Friday - Sausage meat patties, mash and veg.

Gingerbread and more cookbooks

2009-12-26T22:41:00.002Z

This month's Daring Bakers Challenge is Gingerbread houses! As yet i haven't really managed to do it though I might have a proper go tomorrow, due to the holidays the reveal date is more a reveal week so many people already have thier posts up so I thought I would mention it so you could go and check out some fantastic gingerbread houses including some great igloos and other more modern buildings recreated in gingerbread!

I have however made gingerbread and indeed a tiny, tiny gingerbread shack.. I think house would be pushing it. This is because I made a gingerbread cheesecake to take to a family get together today. The recipe is adapted from Martha Stwart, I used the honey gingerbread recipe which worked very well with gluten free flour (Dove Farm gluten free plain flour).

The cheesecake come out very well, very rich but everyone seemed to enjoy it.

As to cookbooks well I lied about getting three yesterday... well not exactly lied. I had forgotten one I got early and I got two more today so in total there are 6 new cookbooks this christmas !

The one I had forgotten is Caribbean Food made easy, not something I would have thought to got myself but it has some quite interesting looking recipes so you may see more of that later.

The second one is the Wagamama book.

If you have read my blog for a while you will have heard about Wagamama who are a Japanese noddle bar type restaurant. They have a file folder at the restaurant telling you what dishes you can have or be adapted for various different allergies which means I know they take such things seriously and can easily chose something I know is safe. They also have the info on the website so you can plan in advance. They also scored huge points for having a policy of serving kids first rather than after the adults which is so common here for some reason I can never fathom. As we already know we love a good few of thier dishes this book with certainly get used and I look forward to trying safe versions of some of the ones I can't have at the restaurant.

The final book is one I've had on my wish list for a while now and have got out of the library on several occasions.

It is the river Cottage Meat book. For those that don't live in the UK the River Cottage series of books is by a guy going by the wonderful name of Huge Fearnley-Whittingstall who a good few years agoi now did a TV series about running his own little country garden complete with chickens and pigs and cooking the results, this has spawned into a much bigger enterprise but one that has always sung the praises of local food and small local producers. The Meat book is another big tome though not as heavy as the Fat Duck cookbook! It is nice to have a modern book explaining the various meats in depth and how you can use them as I have a few old ones but this covers the subject from the view point of explaining to people who havn't grown up knowing the various cuts of meat and eating the more 'uncommon' cuts or rather unfashionable ones...

I'm told I should be getting rid of a few of the cookery books I don't use to make space for them!!

Christmas

2009-12-25T23:26:00.000Z

We had a lovely Christmas day. My brother did a splendid meal to which I contributed two sorts of stuffing and the veg, though he did the cooking of the veg. I also took one of my christmas puds which seemed to go down quite well thought I forgot to take cream and so forth to go with it.

The two stuffings went down well, one was basically sausage meat, onion, garlic, and apple, the other was cooked rice, various dried fruits, a bit of garlic, parsley and some egg to bind it together a little.

We made various items for christmas hampers including chuckney, peppermint creams and noguat. I only remembered to take a photo of the noguat though but that is really nice if rather sticky. The photo at the start is of it, I made a honey, pastasio and cranberry version.

I also got a great haul of cooking books as presents which will give me plenty of reading materials for the next few weeks. I always read cookery books more like most people read novels but these ones even more so.

The first one is the biggest and boy is it big! You could kill people with this book.

I present The Fat Duck Cookbook by Heston Blumenthal. I love his TV programs and his fantastic OTT attitude that mixes cooking and a mad scientist lab. I got the basic version not the uber posh one that comes in it's own box and has a price tag to match but even the version I got is extremely heavyweight and has a great quality feel with wonderful photographs and of course his signiture dishes.

I also got another book by him "In search of Total Pefection" which looks interesting to read as well, it is about a set of TV programs he did about various well know dishes and looking for the 'perfect' version though very wisely he says everyones version of perfect is different.

Finally I got a much more humble but almost certainly more practical in a day to day sense book. The Green Kitchen which is about being energy concous in the kitchen, ways of saving energy and so forth. The recipes in this book are more of the ilk to make me go into the kitchen and try them out where as the first two are more awe inspiring but probably a lot less practical.

Catching up and getting sorted for Christmas

2009-12-20T20:26:00.000Z

Making Banana Bread

Sorry about the lack of posts last week. The week started with both Treestump and I suffering from a stomach bug so cooking as very low down my agenda. However we are recovered and apart from the normal lucking colds of this time of this time if year and the red cheeks which mean Treestump is probably brewing his second set of molars we are fine.

I made five of these in total.

I have finally used the last few bananas from my bargin a few weeks ago, well technically the last hand full were just a bit too squashy and have gone in the compost but it really was just a few last ones all the others got eaten. While they looked rather brown and spotty when we got them they turned out to be very nice and many were eaten just as is or as smoothies and fritters. I also made several batches of banana bread some of which is in the freezer, three batches of chutney and some banana curd which I've never had before and is very nice, though too sweet for me to eat with a spoon unlike Noodles who was happy to do just that!

I also failed to report back on the suet pudding. I did make a steak and onion one and it was really good. The pastry is fairly easy to work with partly as a slightly rough look is part of the appeal and so a few bits filled in by squishing offcuts into the gaps are fine.

The filled pudding before the top pastry was put on.

I used a very traditional recipe from back in Mrs Beeton's day so the ingredient list for the filling was pretty basic but I thought that was fine and the meat was good quality. Really just meat, onion, a bit of water and a bit of seasoning. Then it was steamed for about an hour and a half and came out looking like this.

The plated dish is pretty basic and not going to win any beauty awards but it is very tasty and just right for cold weather, thought I realy should have done a green veg as well !

Anyway on to this coming week.

Of course the week finishes with Christmas Day on Friday and we will be having a Christmas meal with my brother, his family, my mum and stepdad. Un-usually this year I am not doing the main cooking, my brother has offered to do that so I'm supplying vegs, stuffing and christmas pudding.

Working up to that the menu will be roughly as follows.

Monday - Fish pie with greens

Tuesday - Pho

Wednesday - Probably running round like a mad thing by this point so something very simple like "tomato and eggs"

Thursday - Salmon in some manner and Fruit Brulee for pud ( fruit covered in whipped cream with a caramel pored over which goes hard as it hits the cold cream... fantastic and a bit of a Christmas tradition on and off)

Friday - breakfast - we normally have smoked salmon and scrambled egg but I'm tempted to do gingerbread waffles instead having found a recipe that looks adaptable on Martha Stewart's site.

Saturday - Another get together with Tom's family - we are supplying a pudding. Currently planning either summer pudding as I have a good variety of berries frozen from the summer or gingerbread cheesecake also from Martha Stewart's site.

Sunday - A quiet day probably just eating any leftovers and the various cheeses and pates we always stock up on this time of year. Possibly a fresh made veg soup and scones.

Baking and batch cooking -
Still have some bits to make for presents as we do hampers for some people.
Plus biscuits and bread for us.

Weekly Menu Swap - Hosting Ingredient - Suet

2009-12-07T18:46:00.001Z

I realise that many people will probably never knowingly have used suet and indeed suet recipes seem to be mainly British dishes but the actual ingredient is available anywhere that cows and sheep are eaten. Why? Because it is the fat from around the internal organs.. OK I know at this point some of you are thinking that's gross but really it's not much different to using dripping or similar. Suet has the properties of being quite flaky in nature, having a low melting point and producing a very distinctive pastry among other things. There is also a vegetarian version though that might be hard to get in none suet using areas.. OK it's not probably something you want to use every day but there are some traditional winter dishes here which don't work without it.

To be fair much of it doesn't get used at least not by butchers these days as my previous post will show, I got a large amount for free of my butcher as he normally asks the abattoir to remove it before sending him the meat.. it's crumbly nature means the cool-room floor gets covered in bits otherwise. Now the abattoir might well have a use for it other than sending to a butcher.. You can certainly buy it in packets but it is coated in flour after it is grated to keep the bits separate so it is no good for me. It is also used a lot over here to make fatballs to put out for wild birds by combining it with seeds and other bits they like, it makes a good high calorie food for them. Traditionally it was rendered down to make tallow for candles too, very smoky candles for the masses who couldn't afford beeswax! .

So what recipes use it? Well Christmas pudding for a start and mincemeat, this is probably partly because mincemeat at least used to have meat in it.. I once made a traditional mincemeat with minced meat in it and apart from having to keep the mince pies in the fridge they really tasted no different to the none meat version which keeps for at least a year in a jar!

It is also used in suet pastry which is used in suet puddings.. these are savoury puddings ie steamed in a pudding basin, normally an outside of pastry with a pie type filling or even a plain sponge pudding type one to serve with meat a bit like Yorkshire pudding is . There are also sweet suet puddings eaten for pudding such as spotted dick and jam suet pudding... Have you noticed we like the word pudding over here :) I'm planning a meat filled suet pasty style pudding this week.

Delia's suet pastry
Bacon and leek suet pudding from Farmers Weekly
Plain suet pudding from The Foody
Spotted Dick from the Jane Austin Centre
Jam spong pudding from Cook it Simply

It's also used in dumplings to put in a stew for the last 20 mins or so of the cooking time which are a firm favourite here. Dumplings are very easy.. they are basically twice as much flour as fat and whatever flavours you like such as herbs, onion, cheese or whatever goes with the stew.

Basic dumplings from The Foody
A version from Jamie Oliver for those who don't have suet

I posted some links to Christmas pudding recipes a couple of weeks ago and will post up my gluten free, corn free, citrus free version when I have finished trialling it..

Here are a couple of mincemeat recipes, mincemeat is easy to make and once made you can make another British Christmas staple the mincepie. There are plenty of other uses for mincemeat too as you can see here.

Delia's version.
A meat version from River Cottage

Anyway that is probably more about Suet than you ever wanted to know so on to the menus.

Our menu this week.

Monday - Suet meat pudding with potatoes, cabbage and carrots.

Tuesday - Fish pie

Wednesday - School play so something simple like baked potatoes we can have quickly.

Thursday - Cauliflower cheese.

Friday - Stew and dumplings.

Baking and other batch cooking- Chrismas puddings, Banana bread, banana chukney, banana curd, banana steamed pudding.. (well I do still have about 16lb of bananas to use up! )

Other Menus

Heather over at Celiac Family has just got back from a surprise trip to Disney World the lucky thing, she has a lovely sounding menu plan though she tells us it is quite simple due to the hectic time of year !

Angela at Angela's Kitchen does use suet even if only to make fat balls for the birds ! her menu so based on some deals her hubby picked up which is the sort of menu I love. her Thai seasoned patties sound particularly interesting.

Cheryl from Gluten free goodness has a lovely photo of her cats all curled up to greet us. She has a very interetsing sounding menu and she may never have heard of suet but then I have no idea what mahi or kalamatas are so we are even !

Bargins on the high Street

2009-12-06T19:09:00.003Z

I am very much a supporter of buying locally and I have been trying to support my local shops more recently rather than defaulting to the supermarket. I do still buy some things in the supermarket but we now get vegs from the allotment, a veg box every other week from a local organic shop and any extras from a couple of very good veg shops on the local high street. In fact in easy walking distance we have at least 4 shops with a good range of veg, some more traditional English, some quite Asian oriented.

We get milk delivered by a milk man and the local bread shop is great and we have noticed their prices have not gone up nearly as much as the supermarket so now they are on a par was as not so long ago they were noticeably more expensive.

I am also trying to buy most meat from the local butcher and having had some fantastic beef from him has really brought home how bland the supermarket stuff can be.. he also happily caters to my wims making me gluten free sausages to my specs and even getting me suet when I ask.. It turns out they normally have the abattoir throw the suet away before delivering the carcase as they have no use for it so as a result I got it for free! I got about 5lb, which I'm guessing is one cows worth, of which the picture show about a pounds worth.. Its' quite flaky fat though in this raw form you do have to separate the fat from the surrounding membrain but it means I can make proper chirstmas pub well a gluten free 'proper' one anyway.

The other big bargain of the week was bananas! I stopped at the newest of our veg shops to buy a couple of bags of bananas to make chutney as our current favourite is banana based and spotted that while the bags were a good price they had a big heaped box full of slightly brown ones marked up for 1.99 for the box !! As the recipe calls for very ripe bananas that seemed like a plan! In all there was 28lb of bananas in the box so that's about 7p a pound!!

Actually turns out most aren't too ripe for eating straight either so the smallest having recovered from his illness earlier in the week has been stuffing himself with them and they are great as fritters to!

Weekly Menu 30th November to 4th December

2009-11-30T21:43:00.001Z

Well I've missed Stir it up Sunday but plan to make christmas puds this week if I can find the time. We visited my mum this weekend who is rather under the weather as is her dog and indeed my youngest.. all different things but it's just one of those times. Was very nice to see mum and I have to work harder on the allotment to catch up with hers!

Menu this week partly based on the fact should be picking up a sausage/sausage meat order from my butcher and hopefully some suet, partly for the christmas pud. One of the things i dislike in pretty much all the pre-made Gluten free christmas puds I've tried is the fat that seems to stay solid in on the edges and I think that is partly they are using vegetarian suet so I hope my butcher will be getting me some of the real stuff without the flour that contaminates the boxed stuff so then I can try a proper recipe with proper animal fat!

If I do get the suet I also want to make a steak pudding.. it meat wrapped in a suet pastry and steamed. We rits use pudding to mean both a dish cooked in a pudding bowl that is either using pastry or cakey (these can be both sweet or savory) or a generic word for desert.

My smallest is on antibiotics as his throat and ears are inflamed ad he hasn't been eating much but I hope once the medication kicks in he will feel more like eating. Strangely while he is off even things like icecream he is still eating salt and vinegar crisps which I would have thought was spiky and acid.

This weeks menu is a bit random and not fully worked out more of a sketch menu.

Monday - Pasta and cheese/ham sauce

Tuesday - I'm out most of the day so something simple like fish-fingers and smilies faces.

Wednesday - sausage and mash.

Thursday - something pumpkin based as mum gave us one she grew.

Friday - Suet pudding

You will be able to find more gluten free menus at Asparagus thin who is hosting the menu swap this week.

Daring Bakers do Cannoli

2009-11-27T11:44:00.001Z

The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.

I had never heard of Cannoli till this challenge but then that is one of the great things about Daring Bakers, and indeed Daring Cooks, you end up making things you would never have considered. Turns out they are a sort of fried pastry, a tube of pastry that is deep fried and filled with a creamy filling. They are known for being very filling and hard to eat without making a mess.. sound perfect.

Being a fantastic host Lisa supplied us not only with the standard recipe but also with a link to a gluten free version which turned out to work very well, you can find it here.

It was also suggested we make our own ricotta and/or mascarpone cheese. I'd made ricotta for a previous challenge so I had a go at mascarpone which is made with cream not milk and it came out fabulously. I used the recipe surgessed which you can find here.

One thing about the recipe is it makes quite a lot of dough, I still have some in the freezer as we couldn't eat it all in one go.. not even making several dishes with it. Unless I was catering a party I think I'd cut it in half. I also found I destroyed plastic wrap rolling it out so I swapped to using two thin re-useable baking sheets - thickish plastic you can bake on and then wash, like a plastic version of greaseproof paper..

I started out trying the traditional version.This is a picture of making the dough.. did I mention it uses port!! Pastry made with port and deep fried sounds good doesn't it! Oh those tins are old baby milk tins which I keep my various flours in. They stack well and I have lots !

As I didn't have any molds I used some pieces of dowel that at one point held together the wooden bed we take camping. Yes we take a wood double bed camping, doesn't everyone?

These deep fried very well and I filled them with a mix of mascarpone, apple and whipped double cream.

Very tasty I'd certainly consider them for a party, perhaps with some brandysnaps as well to ring the changes.. Someone said they tasted like sugarcones and one of the things I have never found since being gluten free is a good cone.. the only ones I've found have been wafer ones which aren't brillient and I don't much like the wafer ones anyway so I had to try this recipe for cone.

Someone on the Daring Baker forum had suggested using foil trays to fashion molds so I made a very, very rough cone to try it out.

It was wonky but really, really nice with icecream in it.

After this we still had a lot of dough left the next day so I thought I'd try a savoury version as while it is a sweet dought it isn't so sweet it couldn't work with savory fillings. I did try to make deep fried dishes but they just opened up in the fryer so I ended up with disks so I cut out one to look a bit like a flower and made a cheese and ham flower for Noodles lunch with a sausage stem and leaves, He liked it enough to have seconds and ask for one in his lunchbox the next day !

We were told you could bake the pastry too so I also make some small tarts with a ricotta and bacon filling. I had a spare egg white so whipped it up and added it which made the filling fluff up very nicely.

The Pastry is definietly better fried but it does work as a pie case too.

Weekly menu 16th to 20th November 2009

2009-11-16T22:33:00.000Z

Treestump enjoying some late flowers in his aunts garden. Wish we had a garden that size though she is hoping to move soon but says the current house will be a hard act to follow.

We had the allotment AGM this weekend and I promised to make some gluten free nibbles. I made some cheese biscuits and they went down so well I ave included the recipe at the end of this post. They are based on several cheese savory I've tried in the past but the exact mix was a new one I tried and worked very well indeed.

This weeks menu swap is hosted by In my Box who chose Dutch ovens this week. I have never been sure what a Dutch oven is but after seeing her photo of hers I realise I've had one. I call it my Le Creuset casserole. I have a cobalt blue one which was a wedding present and a very very well received one at that. I can confirm they are fantastic for cooking stews and casseroles in.

We have decided we have been slipping on the amount of vegs we have been eating so are trying to up that this week.

Menu this week.

Monday - boys had boiled eggs and soldiers, we are having a prawns, courgette, mushrooms, tomatoes and pasta in a white wine and cream sauce..

Tuesday - Sweet potato rostis, pork chops and green vegs.

Wednesday - bean and veg stew with baked potatoes

Thursday - butternut squash gratin with any vegs left before the new box turns up.

Friday - Fish and chips.

Baking - Daring Bakers monthly challenge, cheese biscuits

Cheese Biscuits

(makes about 45)

2 oz Dove Farm Gluten Free plain flour (or other generic GF flour mix)
2 oz Gram flour
8 oz Cheddar or mix of cheeses
1/2 tsp salt
good pinch of cayenne pepper or similar spice.
good pinch of mustard powder (make sure it's gluten free).
good pinch of black pepper.
3 oz butter
1 egg

Sieve the flours into a bowl with spices and mustard. Add the salt and cheese then rub in the butter till it's crumbly.
Add an egg and a little more flour if needed to make the pastry rollable which will depend on how big the egg is.. if the egg is big it ends up a little too sticky

Roll out pastry to about 3mm (1/8 inch) using plenty of flour to flour the board.. gluten free of course. Then use a small cutter to cut biscuits.
Arrange on a none stick or greased baking tray, these can be quite close together as they don't expand much.

Cook at 190 C for 10-12 minutes.

Cool on a rack.

Daring Cooks - Sushi English style.

2009-11-14T07:40:00.001Z

The November 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was brought to you by Audax of Audax Artifex and Rose of The Bite Me Kitchen. They chose sushi as the challenge. As Audax does even when he isn't hosting he has done a whole host of varieties and as he is in Australia he was also first to post this month so if you want to see a wider range and indeed a blog version of all the very thorough instructions they gave us check out his blog.

Our Challenge was to make three specific forms of sushi and in that I failed as I never made the dragon sushi but I did make several types of the other two.

I've struggled to find Nori as it's a bit random who will have it in around here and didn't end up with any wasabi but I knew I'd have to leave that out for most of the family though I like it so that was not a major loss.

My rice did burn a little on the bottom (I never get rice cooked this way right) but the rest of it was fine. It has a very nice taste once the dressing is added I must say and we all enjoyed it though it was quite a faff to make compared to standard rice.. but then you can't make pretty shapes with standard rice!

I started with a British fusion idea I had so here is an English Breakfast roll served with tomato sauce as that is what you get with breakfast, though brown sauce would be fine as well and closer to soy in flavour.. I just liked the colour better of the tomato! for the photo! I think actually they would work with soy sauce too.

Filling is egg, bacon, mushroom, tomato and black pudding (blood sausage). I only did one sheet of nori so it isn't really a spiral but they were still great.
Then I did tuna and sweetcorn at the request of my 6 year old. Again one sheet and pretty much all eaten by him, he came back for seconds and thirds!

Next came Nigiri sushi which I did find harder as the rice didn't like sticking together firmly enough, though it liked sticking to me if I didn't keep my hands quite wet! As Audax had done vegimite and cheese I felt I had to do Marmite and cheese, I also did some with a cheese that has branston pickle added to it. The small one loved them but the older ones of us decided that grating the cheese and doing it in a roll would work better. The Marmite does as a lovely savoury taste though again it is quite like soy sauce in that regard. I also did ones with smoked salmon. No raw fish for us not because we don't like it but we live as far from the sea as you can get in this country and so I didn't feel any of the fish on offer was fresh enough.

Finally I did some plain rolls wrapped in Nori with toppings. Do they have another name? We had prawns and cucumber and black and white pudding. The puddings are the same recipe but the black one had blood and the white doesn't. They are a sort of oat based spiced sausage and actually made really delicious sushi, Black pudding sushi will defiantly be on our list in the future.

I have promised Noodles I will make him some egg wrapped sushi as he wasn't totally struck on the seaweed.. this he tells me after eating about 6 pieces ! I also really want to have a go at the more complicated rolls with faces and flowers and so on. I figure I can make canes in Polymer clay and it's basically the same technique give or take :) So watch this space for my alien faces when they all go wrong!!

Weekly menu 9th to 13th November 2009

2009-11-11T13:45:00.002Z

Wrote this monday and completely forgot to hit publish!

My Christmas pudding planning is slowly shaping up, I am now roughing out a gluten, citrus and maize free one so my mum and step-dad can eat it too. My step dad is unable to have citric which means he rarely gets Christmas pub either so was quite keen on the idea when I suggested it. I think citric is almost if not as common as gluten as a random added extra in processed foods so he has to be just as careful as I do.. don't you find it typical my mum can have gluten but gets very similar reactions as my obvious ones to maize ie a form of rheumatic arthritis!

Also need to remember to ask the butcher to do me a batch of gluten free sausage meat to freeze ready for things like sausage-meat stuffing as my brother and I have been parcelling out who cooks what for Christmas and as stuffing is problematic for me I'm doing that among other things. Have a hankering to make sausage rolls too !!

This weeks Gluten free menu swap is hosted by Gluten Free Goodness even though she has no kitchen this week! She has picked carrots as this weeks ingredient. We use carrots on almost a daily basis so I can pretty much guarantee we will have them as a vegetable this week at some point as everyone likes them. My favourite way to dress up basic boiled carrots is drain them, then add a little butter and lemon juice and toss them in the mix, very simple but very nice.

Last week didn't go quite as planned as the lamb chops turned out to be stewing lamb but they made a really good stew later in the week!

Monday - Filled yorkshire puds

Tuesday - Fish fingers and smiley faces as they are easy and we are re-oiling the work surfaces in the kitchen.

Wednesday - Pho

Thursday - Pork chops with oven roast veg.

Friday - Tempted to do a suet pudding possible a steak one but will depend on time. The weather is definitely darker and colder recently and that always get me thinking about me traditional stodgier British food.

Gluten Free Menu swap round up

2009-11-02T19:40:00.007Z

This week I agreed to host the gluten free menu swap and I chose dried fruit as my ingredient. We use a lot of dried fruit and even more so this time of year.

This year I plan to make both Christmas cake and Christmas pudding from scratch using traditional recipes adapted to be gluten free. The recipes I plan to use are so full of dried fruit that the flour is really an after though. For those that don't know what Christmas pudding is think if a sort of steamed version of a very dark, very rich fruit filled fruit cake.. Both Christmas cake and Christmas pudding in this country are nearly back in colour and very full of fruit and often pumped full of alcohol for a couple of months if you follow the traditional recipes.

Here are a couple of Mrs Beeton's Christmas pudding recipes, note the large amount of fruit compared to flour and breadcrumbs, the recipe I am thinking of using has no flour at all just some bread or cake crumbs.

The dried fruit we probably use the most is sultanas which I believe Americans either don't have or call by a different name (Edit - Heather says they are often called golden raisins in the US). They are between currants and raisins in size and quite sweet and pale in colour compared to both the others. We also have dried apricots, pears, peaches, bananas, prunes, currants, a couple of types of raisins in the cupboard and probably a couple more I've forgotten.

We snack on them, add them to cereal, cakes, vegetable and tomato sauce to go with pasta and several more dishes including a really nice chicken and apricot Moroccan dish Tom cooks.

This weeks menu

I've also listed my menu this week on Menu Plan Monday on organised Junkie.

Monday - Lamb chops, chips and whatever we feel like at the time.

Tuesday - Fish pie with sweet potato topping (didn't do last week, didn't even buy the fish !)

Wednesday - Polenta terrine which I also failed to get round to last week.

Thursday - Sausage and mash

Friday - Quinoa, dried fruit and chickpeas with spiced chicken..

Baking

Pumpkin tealoaf (with sultanas) - mostly to use up the inside of the pumpkin from Halloween.
Pear pie and/or cake
I now have the urge to try converting Coventry god cakes as well which would mean repeating the puff pastry.. they are basically puff pastry filled with mincemeat.. or maybe Eccles cakes which have a dried fruit filling, similar but different.... argg I should never have picked dried fruit now I've remembered lots of recipes I want to try and convert!!.

Other menus

Kimberly from Gluten free is life sounds like she has had a rough ride recently but at least she likes my ingredient choice. Her menu sounds very nice indeed.

Heather from Celiac Family is making pupusas again which I'd never heard of till she posted about them and this week she has added an link with more information. She describes this week and quick and easy but it still sounds very tasty.

Manda from Asparagus Thin warns about snacking to much on dried fruit as she rightly points out they have a lot of sugar all be it natural rather than refined. She has some very intriguing sounding dishes I wish my menu sounded so interesting and I'd love to know what Risotto Nero is or how to make Curried Sweet Potato Salad, Japanese Style.

Over at Angela's Kitchen as usual there is a hectic schedual and a great sounding menu plus lots of baking to refill the freezer. Her ground beef freezer plan sound a really good idea and as I'm trying to buy more from the local butcher and less from the supermarket I may try it next time he does a special on mince.

Trishtator over at Gluten Free in Salt Lake City has a picture up of her street which shows that autumn seems at about the same stage here and there. Her menu sounds great and I will be checking back to see here cinnamon apple muffins recipe later this week.

Dietary Specials frozen shortcrust pastry

2009-10-29T17:30:00.007Z

When we were in Sainsburys at the weekend we checked out the frozen gluten free section as we don't get there very often and they stock a better range than most. I picked up a couple of things i haven't tried before including the shortcrust pastry from Dietary Specials.

I really rate most of the Dietary Specials products I have tried including their bread and pizzas though often I can only find the cheese and tomato ones in most places which is a bit boring.. I've just noticed on the website they have brought out a two fresh breads for ASDA, may have to pop down to ours and see if they have them!

Anyway on to the pastry. It comes in a pack which contains two separately wrapped packages of pastry. Each are weigh 200g and they say each packet will do one of the following.
12 jam tarts
7-9 mince pies
6-8 sausages rolls
18cm (7 inch) plated pie
19-20 cm (71/2-8 inch) flan dish
4 x 9cm (31/2 inch) tartlet dishes

I would say that is pretty accurate really which means a single packet (ie half a pack) is quite a reasonable amount to use at once and by having two in a pack if you want more it's there already.

I used both packets last night so I could give it a good try and out of the 400g I got 1 plated pie, 4 mini flans with decorative leaves on top and 4 jam tarts.. not bad really.

The instructions say once defrosted kneed the pastry for about 2 mins till soft and pliable. When I did this the pastry went from quite hard and crumbly to a very workable soft and pliable pastry. I was really very impressed by how easy it was to roll out. If you read this blog regularly you will know I have tried several pastry recipes from scratch and this was by far the easiest to roll out I've ever used. I was interested to note from the ingredients that it was pretty much starches and the only flour listed was rice flour right at the end of the list it certainly had a very smooth feel to it which reminded me of a home-made cold porcelain recipe I have which has a similar very smooth feel to it.

Once I had made up the tarts I filled them with various fillings. The mini flans got lots of pieces of roast pork and an egg and milk mix and a pastry leave for decoration. Served with home grown pink fir apple potatoes and a Japanese type of spinach from the veg box..

The larger pie was filled with feta cheese and of course the jam tarts got jam.. unfortunately the jam tarts got eaten too fast to be photographed.

The feta pie got topped with caramelised pear and some fresh pomegranate seeds once it had cooled a little.

The pastry held up well, it was quite short and a little crumbly but nothing more than many shortcrust pastries. It didn't burn as easily as some of the pastries I've made and while it was possibly a touch dry on the edges it stayed crisp not soggy under the filling even though I didn't blind bake it first. It was very easy to work and I will seriously consider keeping some in the freezer for occasions when I just want something easy. One of the best gluten free pastries I've ever had to be honest. Dietary Specials do it again... now if they can just do me some puff pastry better than the one I did recently for Daring Bakers they will have my undieing love!

And finally...... this is what happens when you stay up half the night because you are teething!

Daring Bakers go French

2009-10-27T09:40:00.001Z

Strawberry and chocolate - White tea and rose petals

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

This months challenge was French macarons, not the coconut macaroons we can buy fairly easily here, these are the French ones made with almonds, egg white and sugar to be found in multiple pastel colours in very posh looking shops. I've never had a real one made by a professional though I did try making them once before which were OK but rather too sweet for me.

Thank you Ami for giving me the incentive to try again !

This is a naturally gluten free challenge so for once I'm on a par with everyone else so no excuses for not doing as well! To see how I compared check out the other Daring bakers. Some of which are just amazing.

So this month I tried them a couple of times. The first was basically using the challenge recipe though to be fair I got a bit confused at one point about what I was adding where so that might account for them not working quite as well as hoped. I flavoured them with dried strawberries which I dried earlier this year when doing a previous daring cooks challenge. I also added a small amount of pink paste food colouring as we were warned not to add to much extra liquid.. I figured the paste colour was better than liquid.

They did get feet, the crinkly ring round the bottom of the cookie, but they spread too much which made them to flat and too delicate. They were also still a bit sticky so getting them off the sheet was 'interesting' However I sandwiched the ones that survived with a mix of milk chocolate, whipped double cream and fresh strawberries and they were very nice.. though they really needed eating with a spoon.

The second batch was made using Tartelelle's recipe which many people found easier to get good results with. This batch is flavoured with white tea and rose-petals.. basically teabags from The London Tea Company called Crimson Lush emptied into the food processor with the icing sugar and almonds then just a couple of drops of rose oil added. By the way the London Tea Company teas are worth getting just for their origami style boxes which use no glue at all.

Crimson Lush tea and my new Vanilla extract.

The other thing I did differently was age the egg whites by leaving them out on the side for nearly two days. This made the gloopy, jelly like texture of the whites break down some and is meant to help get the right constancy.

If anything they went the other way as some of them ended up with little points not nice flat tops but they stayed much neater little domes and apart from colouring in the oven slightly they look pretty good plus they came off the sheet fine as well.

Much, much less delicate though you still wouldn't want to throw them about. I am not sure if it was the recipe change or the egg whites or just whisking to the right constancy better but these were a definite improvement.

The taste is quite delicate so I went with a cream cheese filling just adding a little icing sugar and vanilla extract so as not to over power the rose and tea flavour.

Neither of these was so over-poweringly sweet as my previous try which I think was my mistake for over sweetening the filling. Don't get me wrong they are sweet but if you make sure the filling is appropriate to the shells you can moderate that quite well. One or two Daring Bakers even did semi savoury ones which I must admit is tempting to try. The strawberry ones were a hit all round but I think the rose ones are a little more adult a taste however I might be surprised. I made them last night after smalls were in bed so they haven't tried them yet. I try not to feed them to much sugar first thing in the morning ! (edit - Noodles, age 6, liked the tea and rose ones until i told him what was in them, he guessed ginger, at which point he wouldn't eat any more and said "Ohh Yukky!! petals are Yukky!" )

Challenge Recipe
(Tartelette's various wonderful versions can be found here )

Preparation time: Not taking into account the amount of time it takes for you to bring your egg whites to room temperature, the whole baking process, including making the batter, piping and baking will probably take you about an hour to an hour and a half. How long it takes to make your filling is dependent on what you choose to make.

Actual baking time: 12 minutes total, plus a few minutes to get your oven from 200°F to 375°F.

Equipment required:
• Electric mixer, preferably a stand mixer with a whisk attachment
• Rubber spatula
• Baking sheets
• Parchment paper or nonstick liners
• Pastry bag (can be disposable)
• Plain half-inch pastry bag tip
• Sifter or sieve
• If you don’t have a pastry bag and/or tips, you can use a Ziploc bag with the corner snipped off
• Oven
• Cooling rack
• Thin-bladed spatula for removing the macaroons from the baking sheets
• Food processor or nut grinder, if grinding your own nuts (ouch!)

Ingredients
Confectioners’ (Icing) sugar: 2 ¼ cups (225 g, 8 oz.)
Almond flour: 2 cups (190 g, 6.7 oz.)
Granulated sugar: 2 tablespoons (25 g , .88 oz.)
Egg whites: 5 (Have at room temperature)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 200°F (93°C). Combine the confectioners’ sugar and almond flour in a medium bowl. If grinding your own nuts, combine nuts and a cup of confectioners’ sugar in the bowl of a food processor and grind until nuts are very fine and powdery.
2. Beat the egg whites in the clean dry bowl of a stand mixer until they hold soft peaks. Slowly add the granulated sugar and beat until the mixture holds stiff peaks.
3. Sift a third of the almond flour mixture into the meringue and fold gently to combine. If you are planning on adding zest or other flavorings to the batter, now is the time. Sift in the remaining almond flour in two batches. Be gentle! Don’t overfold, but fully incorporate your ingredients.
4. Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a plain half-inch tip (Ateco #806). You can also use a Ziploc bag with a corner cut off. It’s easiest to fill your bag if you stand it up in a tall glass and fold the top down before spooning in the batter.
5. Pipe one-inch-sized (2.5 cm) mounds of batter onto baking sheets lined with nonstick liners (or parchment paper).
6. Bake the macaroon for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and raise the temperature to 375°F (190°C). Once the oven is up to temperature, put the pans back in the oven and bake for an additional 7 to 8 minutes, or lightly colored.
7. Cool on a rack before filling.

Yield: 10 dozen. Ami's note: My yield was much smaller than this. I produced about two dozen filled macaroons. Esther's note : I agree with this assessment.

Pears and this weeks menu

2009-10-26T18:49:00.006Z

I never did go scrumping due to Jakey dieing and as it is half team this week we can't go this week either as the area isn't really safe for small people even if it's just the nettles being too high. However before school finished I did get round to picking some of the pears with a few of the kids. There are still huge numbers on the tree though and after the first dish with them i want to go and get a whole bunch more. Unfortunately I can't give them to the kids unless they have a signed letter from their parents agreeing! This will be done when we get the veg garden up and running but has not been done yet so the pears are going begging. If I do pick a bunch more I think the teachers will get some goodies at least! I don't want them going rotten like they did last year if I can help it seems such a waste.

We decided the pears are really cooking pears and indeed they poached wonderfully as the picture above shows. I poached them in a sugar and water mix with some spiced winter fruits cordial by Belvoir added. I served them with vanilla cream for the young ones using some new vanilla extract we just got which is fabulous.

For the adults I made crème brulle, actually the smalls got some the next day it was just to late in the day for them the night before by the time they were made. As you can see from the picture they had a bit of a skin on them straight out of the oven but it was easily removed. Next time I will cook them a little lower I think.

One with a skin, one without.

Anyway on to the menu. As it is half term I will just list the dishes I plan rather than specific days as that will depend on weather and what we end up doing each day. I treated myself to a couple of recipe magazines so a few dishes might be from those too. I got Donna Hay which I hear much about but very rarely see here and Country Kitchen which is a British seasonal based cooking magazine but haven't finished reading yet..

I also picked up some frozen gluten free pastry I've never tried before so watch this space.

1) Baked Potatoes with various fillings

2) Fish pie with sweet potato topping.

3) Polenta terrine from Donna Hay

4) Pear and feta pie.

5) Veg stew with suet dumplings.

This weeks gluten free menu swap is hosted by Celiac Family and the chosen ingredient is cilantro which we call coriander. I do like coriander and might get some from the local Indian shop as a coriander pesto might go very well with the terrine. Go there to check out more gluten free menus.

There are also a lot more menus, some gluten free at Menu plan money at Organized Junkie.

Weekly menu 19th to 23rd October 2009

2009-10-19T18:28:00.003+01:00

This week Celiacs in the house is hosting the menu swap and has chosen squash as the weekly ingredient. I like squashes but they arn't as common over here as they are in the states and the slugs ate pretty much all the ones I grew.. from the photo she sent to my phone my mum has had much more luck though.

That said I might get one on thursday in our veggy box and if we did I will tyr and remember to post how I ended up cooking it.

Didn't get much cooking done last week because of all the stress round Jakey dieing but we managed. I want to do more this week and to get on with sorting the allotment befoe it gets to cold.

Menu

Monday - beef stew.

Tuesday - mince based bake.. like a moussaka but possibly with corgettes rather than abergines.

Wensday - Pho

Thursday - moroccan aubergine and chickpea salad , roasted califlower with pork chops

Friday - Possibly something sqaushed based if we get one.

Interesting Fact of the day

2009-10-16T21:23:00.002+01:00

Hedgehogs are lactose intolerant and they don't digest digest bread well so bread and milk is not good for them.. leave out meat based (not fish) dog or cat food for them, preferable chicken !

Daring Cooks make Pho

2009-10-15T17:08:00.004+01:00

Argg I'm a couple of days late I completely missed the posting date but i was rather distracted as our three legged cat was found seriously hurt in a neighbours drive Wensday morning. We have had to have him put to sleep, he had been savaged by a dog and was just too badly hurt to keep going, any one of the things wrong with him would have been sortable but all together they were just to much for him.. We will miss him greatly and whoever's dog is responsible is very lucky I don't know who they are!

Anyway after that rather big downer to something all together more tasty.

the Daring Cook challenge this month was Pho by Jaden of Steamy Kitchen.. I used her full length recipe which can be found here on her blog. We have been asked not to post that recipe in full but we were given a shorter one from her up and coming bookcalled The Steamy Kitchen cookbook which will be on other Daring cooks blogs if you wish to look.

I very much recommend this recipe, it was flavourful and very comforting without being overly hot, all of us including the smalls liked it which isn't always true with soup. Even the long version isn't hard it just needs some time around the house rather than sitting over the stove and it's naturally gluten free to!

Menu 12th to 16th Oct 2009

2009-10-12T17:04:00.004+01:00

Several colours of beetroot from the allotment.

I didn't get through all the recipes I listed last week but that was because I did other things instead rather than just snacking, if anything they were more healthy and veg based. That included a really nice beetroot and goats cheese side dish one night.

This week Gluten free Goodness is hosting and has picked apples. I'm hoping to go scrumping this week.. ie collecting apples on land I don't own.. to be fair I plan to raid the abandoned allotments not other people's gardens which is the more traditional scrumping target. If the council get their way the trees in those allotments will not be there many more years as they want to build an incinerator on them! I really hope the plan never goes through for more reasons than I can count but top of it is that if we got our act together here and recycled as well as many places (and indeed likely to be forced to by national legislation) are heading for the thing will be a big white elephant we as council tax payers will still have to fund for 30 years to come due to the way they plan to finance it and that I'm very much not happy about as I don't think it is the right thing to deal with our waste and I don't think the way things are going it will be needed either.

Anyway away from politics if I manage to get a bunch of apples I may well be doing a whole load of baking for the freezer as well as making chutney and other such items.

(Edit to add)
Scrumping - (UK phrase, possibly only southern England) To steal apples, normally off the tree. Generally done by young boys taking a pocket full and involved climbing over orchard walls and other such risky behaviour. General considered to be a childish prank rather than a real crime. Probably related in some manner to the drink scrumpy which is a strong, generally cloudy version of cider also form the south west..

The trees I am planning to check out are on effectively waste land and certainly not fruit anyone owns or plans to pick.

Menu
Monday - Something aubergine based as per last week as I didn't do that. In answer to a question last week no I haven't tried the curry but it sounded fantastic so I would like to.
Meringue, cream and raspberries from the allotment for pudding.

Tuesday - Sausages with Colcannon potato cakes.

Wednesday - veggy stew with dumplings. Again failed to do this last week but used the vegs for other things :) see below for quick dumpling recipe.

Thursday - Courgette, bacon and brie gratin. I love the sound of this recipe which is rice based.

Friday - Kipper flan with an apple salad.

Dumpling Recipe

To make dumplings mix 4oz flour, 2oz suet, seasoning to taste, some finely chopped onion which has been sweated off a little to soften and some herbs if you like. Add enough water to bring the mixture together, which will not be a huge amount. Shape into small balls and place on the top of the stew about 20-30 mins before it finishes cooking.

I use veg suet purely because I can easily get a gluten free version and the easy to get meat version has wheat flour in it (to keep the strands separate)

Menu 5th to 9th Oct 2009

2009-10-05T00:09:00.005+01:00

Where has the year gone? Still it does mean that at the end of this week I get to go on a perfume making course !! It's my birthday treat. I also need to decide what to do about my Kenwood mixer which is playing up. The dealer says it is the motor which is faulty and will cost nearly as much as a new one to fix.. I've only had it 18 months and Kenwoods are meant to last years so I'm not impressed currently but plan to contact them direct this week and see what they say.

Anyway to more interesting things.
The allotment is very much wound down for the autumn but in terms of work we are doing more tidying up and planning for next year. I failed on winter greens this year but plan to get onions, garlic and maybe a few other over wintering things in the next couple of weeks. We did finally clear the brambles off the plum trees on the side of the plot and there was a lot of brambles on that poor tree or should I say trees as there are several there actually.

Saturday's meal the only thing not off the allotment was the protein which was nice.

This week the gluten free menu swap is hosted by Asparagus thin who challenged us to use 10 of her listed superfoods so I have put them in brackets in each day.. how will i do?

Menu for this week

Monday - Swedish meatballs, green beans and rice. (beans, assuming fresh ones count too)

Tuesday - Something aubergine based as we have several from the greenhouse possibly Aubergine parmigiana or charred aubergine and coconut curry. (aubergine otherwise known as eggplant, tomatoes, garlic at least)

Wednesday - Sausage casserole (Greens as a sidedish, garlic and the related onion in the casserole)

Thursday - veg stew with dumplings. (garlic, tomatoes, mushrooms, beans at least)

Friday - pasta and sauce (not sure what sauce as yet)- (probably tomatoes and/or red wine)

Baking - Peanut butter cookies to use up an old jar.
Plus something using raspberries and/or blackberries as we have both from the allotment and well as strawberries and blueberries from the shops (all super foods)

I drink tea everyday as well :) and we regularly have yoghurt as a snack or breakfast or pudding.

Menu 28th Sept to Oct 2nd

2009-09-29T23:11:00.003+01:00

Well I was going to do a nice menu with several vegetarian dishes as that is the theme chosen this week by the Gluten free menu swap host BUT I went to check a few things in the freezer to finalise the menu and realised it hadn't been on for several hours! Luckily it turned out just to be the plug had been knocked but we now have a lot of sausages, pizza, prawns and other bits of meat to eat up and no ice-cream left at all :(

Have been doing some nice baking recently, just biscuits and the link including the cornflour, lemon and courgette biscuits above.

Monday - individual quiches made with the remains of the puff pastry

Tuesday - Pizza followed by plum crumble (the plums defrosted too).

Wednesday - prawn curry and rice.

Thursday - sausage and smiley faces, more crumble

Friday - pork spare ribs and vegs.

Daring Bakers do Vols-au-vents

2009-09-27T12:11:00.010+01:00

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

Puff pasty, proper stuff from scratch ! I was both elated and terrified at the idea. I've never come across decent gluten free puff pastry, most companies, books etc don't even attempt it, though to be fair most normal cook books tell you buy the pre-made stuff but no-one makes premade gluten free puff pasty so I had been thinking about trying it for ages.. but now I had to get off my backside and actually try it!

I decided to try and use as close as the standard recipe as I could as I really want puff pastry, not filo or strudel pastry.. real puff pastry. So I had a think. Dove Farm flour mix is a good place to start they have worked hard on that mix and for most things it does work amazingly like wheat flour. I also decided to add an extra flour for flavour and of course a gel of some sort to allow the pastry some chance of rolling. Finally I thought about liquid.. gluten free flours nearly all take more liquid than wheat flour and as it is steam that makes the layer rise I thought not having enough liquid is going to be a major problem with getting any rise at all. Considering that some recipes add acid to disrupt the gluten I thought we might, just might be able to do this as gluten can't be that intergal a part of the recipe.

I have listed the recipe as we were given it at the bottom of this post but obviously that is the standard none gluten version.

The Ingrediences I actually used were as follows, (no salt as our butter is salted)

Batch 1
1 1/2 Cups Dove Farm Plain gluten free flour
1/2 Cup Chestnut flour
3tsp Xanth gum
7/8 cup water
250g butter

Batch 2
1 1/2 Cups Dove Farm Plain gluten free flour
1/2 cup gram(chickpea) flour
2 tsp Xanth gum
2tsp pectin
7/8 cup water
125g butter (as the first batch seemed TOO buttery)

Both batches I then followed the normal instructions apart from the fact I did all the rolling out on clingfilm as otherwise I find GF dough sticks to the surface and is impossible to move. With the second batch I sprinkled a little more water between the layer a couple of times as it seemed a bit dry still.

With both batches there was a point I thought it really wasn't going to work at all, the butter was showing through so much it looked more like a pat of butter with pastry bits mixed in and I was sure we wouldn't get any noticeable layers but I am happy to say I was wrong.Chestnut dough after two turns.

Gram flour dough after two turns, noticeably drier.

While I had worries about there being no layers the dough actually rolled very well, much better than I'm used to it doing, perhaps because I am getting better at judging how much liquid is needed I'm not sure. The cling film and making sure the top is well dusted with flour helps too.

The chestnut dough after 6 turns cut through.

Both batches cooked well though i ended up pouring off butter on the first batch there was so much which is why I cut the butter in half for the second and I honestly think that was plenty.

As you can see I did get layers on both and while they didn't rise as much as some people's I think they did pretty well and they certianly tasted good. I will definatly do this again next time I really want puff pastry!

For the fillings I did whipped cream and toffee apple slices for the chestnut ones and cream cheese with ham and tomato for the gram flour ones as I always find gram flour goes well with cheese and also because my six year old wanted cheese and ham! One of the other daring bakers did a beetroot and goats cheese filling I might try later as I still have a few that haven't been filled and eaten.

I cooked the cutouts with a little cheese topping as well so they were more like flakey cheese biscuits. Finally I made a cheese turnover with the remaining pasty just to see how it came out and it was a really nice little snack.

Do pop over to the Daring Kitchen and check out everyone else versions, some are just fabulous.

========================================================

Michel Richard’s Puff Pastry Dough

From: Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan
Yield: 2-1/2 pounds dough

Steph’s note: This recipe makes more than you will need for the quantity of vols-au-vent stated above. While I encourage you to make the full recipe of puff pastry, as extra dough freezes well, you can halve it successfully if you’d rather not have much leftover.

There is a wonderful on-line video from the PBS show “Baking with Julia” that accompanies the book. In it, Michel Richard and Julia Child demonstrate making puff pastry dough (although they go on to use it in other applications). They do seem to give slightly different ingredient measurements verbally than the ones in the book…I listed the recipe as it appears printed in the book. http://video.pbs.org/video/1174110297/search/Pastry

Ingredients:
2-1/2 cups (12.2 oz/ 354 g) unbleached all-purpose flour
1-1/4 cups (5.0 oz/ 142 g) cake flour
1 tbsp. salt (you can cut this by half for a less salty dough or for sweet preparations)
1-1/4 cups (10 fl oz/ 300 ml) ice water
1 pound (16 oz/ 454 g) very cold unsalted butter

plus extra flour for dusting work surface

Mixing the Dough:

Check the capacity of your food processor before you start. If it cannot hold the full quantity of ingredients, make the dough into two batches and combine them.

Put the all-purpose flour, cake flour, and salt in the work bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade and pulse a couple of times just to mix. Add the water all at once, pulsing until the dough forms a ball on the blade. The dough will be very moist and pliable and will hold together when squeezed between your fingers. (Actually, it will feel like Play-Doh.)

Remove the dough from the machine, form it into a ball, with a small sharp knife, slash the top in a tic-tac-toe pattern. Wrap the dough in a damp towel and refrigerate for about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, place the butter between 2 sheets of plastic wrap and beat it with a rolling pin until it flattens into a square that's about 1" thick. Take care that the butter remains cool and firm: if it has softened or become oily, chill it before continuing.

Incorporating the Butter:

Unwrap the dough and place it on a work surface dusted with all-purpose flour (A cool piece of marble is the ideal surface for puff pastry) with your rolling pin (preferably a French rolling pin without handles), press on the dough to flatten it and then roll it into a 10" square. Keep the top and bottom of the dough well floured to prevent sticking and lift the dough and move it around frequently. Starting from the center of the square, roll out over each corner to create a thick center pad with "ears," or flaps.

Place the cold butter in the middle of the dough and fold the ears over the butter, stretching them as needed so that they overlap slightly and encase the butter completely. (If you have to stretch the dough, stretch it from all over; don't just pull the ends) you should now have a package that is 8" square.

To make great puff pastry, it is important to keep the dough cold at all times. There are specified times for chilling the dough, but if your room is warm, or you work slowly, or you find that for no particular reason the butter starts to ooze out of the pastry, cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate it . You can stop at any point in the process and continue at your convenience or when the dough is properly chilled.

Making the Turns:

Gently but firmly press the rolling pin against the top and bottom edges of the square (this will help keep it square). Then, keeping the work surface and the top of the dough well floured to prevent sticking, roll the dough into a rectangle that is three times as long as the square you started with, about 24" (don't worry about the width of the rectangle: if you get the 24", everything else will work itself out.) With this first roll, it is particularly important that the butter be rolled evenly along the length and width of the rectangle; check when you start rolling that the butter is moving along well, and roll a bit harder or more evenly, if necessary, to get a smooth, even dough-butter sandwich (use your arm-strength!).

With a pastry brush, brush off the excess flour from the top of the dough, and fold the rectangle up from the bottom and down from the top in thirds, like a business letter, brushing off the excess flour. You have completed one turn.

Rotate the dough so that the closed fold is to your left, like the spine of a book. Repeat the rolling and folding process, rolling the dough to a length of 24" and then folding it in thirds. This is the second turn.

Chilling the Dough:

If the dough is still cool and no butter is oozing out, you can give the dough another two turns now. If the condition of the dough is iffy, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes. Each time you refrigerate the dough, mark the number of turns you've completed by indenting the dough with your fingertips. It is best to refrigerate the dough for 30 to 60 minutes between each set of two turns.

The total number of turns needed is six. If you prefer, you can give the dough just four turns now, chill it overnight, and do the last two turns the next day. Puff pastry is extremely flexible in this regard. However, no matter how you arrange your schedule, you should plan to chill the dough for at least an hour before cutting or shaping it.

Steph’s extra tips:

-While this is not included in the original recipe we are using (and I did not do this in my own trials), many puff pastry recipes use a teaspoon or two of white vinegar or lemon juice, added to the ice water, in the détrempe dough. This adds acidity, which relaxes the gluten in the dough by breaking down the proteins, making rolling easier. You are welcome to try this if you wish.

-Keep things cool by using the refrigerator as your friend! If you see any butter starting to leak through the dough during the turning process, rub a little flour on the exposed dough and chill straight away. Although you should certainly chill the dough for 30 to 60 minutes between each set of two turns, if you feel the dough getting to soft or hard to work with at any point, pop in the fridge for a rest.

-Not to sound contradictory, but if you chill your paton longer than the recommended time between turns, the butter can firm up too much. If this seems to be the case, I advise letting it sit at room temperature for 5-10 minutes to give it a chance to soften before proceeding to roll. You don't want the hard butter to separate into chuncks or break through the dough...you want it to roll evenly, in a continuous layer.

-Roll the puff pastry gently but firmly, and don’t roll your pin over the edges, which will prevent them from rising properly. Don't roll your puff thinner than about about 1/8 to 1/4-inch (3-6 mm) thick, or you will not get the rise you are looking for.

-Try to keep “neat” edges and corners during the rolling and turning process, so the layers are properly aligned. Give the edges of the paton a scooch with your rolling pin or a bench scraper to keep straight edges and 90-degree corners.

-Brush off excess flour before turning dough and after rolling.

-Make clean cuts. Don’t drag your knife through the puff or twist your cutters too much, which can inhibit rise.

-When egg washing puff pastry, try not to let extra egg wash drip down the cut edges, which can also inhibit rise.

-Extra puff pastry dough freezes beautifully. It’s best to roll it into a sheet about 1/8 to 1/4-inch thick (similar to store-bought puff) and freeze firm on a lined baking sheet. Then you can easily wrap the sheet in plastic, then foil (and if you have a sealable plastic bag big enough, place the wrapped dough inside) and return to the freezer for up to a few months. Defrost in the refrigerator when ready to use.

-You can also freeze well-wrapped, unbaked cut and shaped puff pastry (i.e., unbaked vols-au-vent shells). Bake from frozen, without thawing first.

-Homemade puff pastry is precious stuff, so save any clean scraps. Stack or overlap them, rather than balling them up, to help keep the integrity of the layers. Then give them a singe “turn” and gently re-roll. Scrap puff can be used for applications where a super-high rise is not necessary (such as palmiers, cheese straws, napoleons, or even the bottom bases for your vols-au-vent).

The Omnivore’s Hundred

2009-09-26T20:33:00.004+01:00

I know, I know. I haven't been around.. I will try to be better but most of my computer time recently has been taken up with the massive amounts of email traffic to do with the birth of Freegle.. what is Freegle most of you will be asking.. the answer to which is over 1/3 of the now ex-Freecycle groups in the UK who have set up their own UK based network instead.. a split in other words. There are reasons.. very good ones as far as I'm concerned but I'm not going to say much here as it can come across as sour gaps if you weren't involved.. but I think the fact that over a 1/3 of ALL the groups in the UK and a large chunk of the UK leadership people have left Freecycle and more are still doing so gives you an idea that it was a fairly fundamental split.

Anyway on to food related stuff.
I came across this via Love me knot Creations but it started in Very Good Taste which turns out is another English blogger. They have a FAQ about the list on their blog.

So without more waffle i give you the Omnivore’s Hundred.

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating. (did in red as was brain dead about crossing out)
4) Optional extra: Post a comment at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns (as long as gluten free home made ones count.)
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras unless someone can find me some I don't consider cruel to produce.
24. Rice and Beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche (however I just picked up a tin of it so I will soon)
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea (I grew up in Devon to have not had these would be anti-patriotic or something!)
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more (I wish!)
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi (nearly bought some yesterday though)
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (unless they do a gluten free one and even then I'm unlikely to)
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV (not 100% sure on this one but i suspect some of the real ales I've tried in the past would have been)
59. Poutine (not exactly though I've had chips, cheese and gravy a good few times)
60. Carob chips
61. S'mores
62. Sweetbeards
63. Kaolin (in medicine)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baiju
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate (of course I'm a member of Hotel Chocolat tasting club!)
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee (real coffee gives me massive headaches)
100. Snake

I seem to have tried just under half and would like to try a few more sometime soon.

Busy, busy, busy

2009-09-09T22:22:00.006+01:00

Sorry for the lack of posts recently we went to visit the in-laws who live by the beach and then had the start of a new school year to sort out. Noodles is settling into Year 2 which doesn't seem quite possible and tells me he can't wait for Treestump to join him but that is a few years away still. I need to arrange to talk to his Headmistress again about picking the fruit off the pear tree with the kids and as everything is ripening very early this year I need to do that sooner rather than later.

Noodles and I did some baking before we went to his grandparents though we didn't take any photos unfortunately. On his request we did apple and strawberry pies, he helped chop things and so on. They were very nice as were the jam tarts we made with the left over pastry. We used the recipe from Gluten Free, Every Day which i reviewed here which worked much better when not burnt! I think however next time I will try without blind baking as the edges still went a little hard and the pie and the none pre-baked tarts were very nice. I was surprised to find the gooseberry curd tarts were more popular with small people than the raspberry jam ones though i am certainly not complaining about that.

As you can see from the photo the weather at the beach was somewhat rough but fun was had and we also visited the New Forest and saw ponies, cattle and donkeys that all roam where they will both across the moorland and through the towns.

We stopped by the end of a small town and saw a path over the moorland with a sign saying access to allotments only so had too look, found a lovely group of about 50 allotments, very well tended and more sheltered than I'd first have though. One of the plot holders allowed us to look round and Noodles was very interested. He was very impressed by a huge pumpkin we saw, which gave us something to aim for next year and he recognised rhubarb which quite impressed me as really he has only seen it once when we went fruit picking earlier in the year. We have agreed that next year we will grown flowers as well as he loves giving people flowers and why buy hothouse ones from the supermarket when we can grow them?

perserving and alcohol

2009-08-31T09:25:00.005+01:00

I have made a second batch of the wonderful banana based chutney, though actually the jar in the picture is the first batch not the second, the only one left already so you can see why I made more.

I also picked some blackberries and collected some windfall damsons so have put the damsons in gin and the blackberries in vodka to make liqueurs, with sugar of course.. it will be a few months before i report back on those. I also have some sloes in the freezer which will go in gin. The sloes may have been picked a bit early but everything is very early this year and they seemed ripe.

I have also made blackberry and apple crumble and muffins so we have had plenty to eat too!

Before our allotment open day this weekend I investigated the interior of the abandoned allotments next to the current used ones for apples, if you look on one of the aerial maps such as this one you will see there are a lot of un-used plots and there used to be more, the tip (the buildings on the left) were once allotments too as was the industrial estate off to the right and there are more that were in operation till very recently going up to the north, you can see that start of them in the top middle of the picture.

We have been given permission to re-open the plots between the used ones and the railway as we now have a waiting list of people wanting plots, the triangle above the plots but they have been digging bore holes in the rest of it to see if they can build a new incenirator there. Needless to say we, and the local residences are not impressed. Even if you think an incinorator is a good idea, this one is to cover Coventry, Warwickshire and Solihull, so why they can't find some land that isn't both in an urban lived in area AND green belt I don't know.. the one that is currently there is soon to be decommisoned and the access isn't as good as it would be if they resited to somewhere out of the city on a major trunk road but that would mean being in Warwickshire where the population get to veto such things.. Can you tell I'm not impressed with our councils railroading tactics and the fact two other areas are willing to dump their rubbish on us! I don't call Coventry the black-hole of the area for nothing we get all the bad stuff and none of the good that the surrounding areas get.

Anyway rant over, currently the bore hole making has left big tracks through the old allotments making fruit picking easier so I will be going back to get more apples and such.. and yes Mark if you are reading this I will take someone with me we can carry more that way :)

Book Review - Gluten Free Every Day Cookbook

2009-08-18T09:44:00.000+01:00

Gluten Free Every Day Cookbook by Robert M. Landolphi

I feel like I'm a proper blogger now as I was recently contacted by the publisher of this book to see if I wanted a review copy! I've never had one offered to me before and after confirming they realised I was in the UK I said yes please.

The book duly arrived and I settled down to look through it. I love cookery books, gluten free or otherwise and I actually prefer ones like this which are mostly writing rather than lots of glossy pictures it always feels you are getting more somehow. The style is nice and easy to read with the information about how and why it came about being a lovely bit of personal interaction with the author.

The basics chapter at the beginning is particularly useful and I'd suggest it to anyone as one of the best lists of flours etc and their uses I've seen in a book including standard nutritional data and the tips on how to use a recipe are really useful as well. The one downside for me as a Brit is that he does use a bunch of pre-prepared items which are not available here but that would be far less of a problem for Americans and I understand entirely why he has used them. I could probably find substitutions but it might be a little trial and error to get the right version as he has picked specific brands for the effect they give. Therefore for testing out the recipes I picked a couple that didn't used pre-prepared ingredients to give the book a fair try.

The recipes are well laid out and varied and there were quite a few I was tempted to try. In the end I decided to start with a pastry recipe as that is an area I always struggle with so I picked Flaky Single Piecrust on page 92 as we have lots of apples and I wanted to make an apple pie. The dough came together easily and I duely put it in the fridge as instructed. The next day I rolled it out between greaseproof paper again as instructed and lined a tin with it.. that was far easier than other methods I've tried and will certainly be used again.

Then I managed to over bake it a bit so please ignore the slightly burn edges in the photo. In future I will use a shallower pie dish as this one was far too high for the filling and the pastry that was sticking up burnt (again my fault) so was rather solid and unpleasant, the pasty lower down however worked extremely well, it stayed soft but not soggy and did what pastry should do which is hold the filling and give structure to the dish.. it tasted good to and my eldest has already asked for me to make it again. As long as you don't over cook it and have random pointless pastry sticking up I am sure it will be wonderful in other dishes !

The other recipe I tried was Luscious Lemony Chestnut bars, page 142. These have jumped straight into my regular make list. They are extremely flavoursome, easy to make, hold together well and use ingredients I am very fond of to good effect such as chestnut flour in the crest and a lemon filling. I really can't think of anything bad to say about them at all !

I have a request to try the maple-pecan bars next as that combination is a favourite of a certain family member and I am definitely going to try some of the more distinctly American savoury dishes such as corn bread, the parmesan popovers next to them sound good too. Tri-spiced onion rings with horseradish dipping sauce sound fabulous and will probably get tried as soon as I do a bit of a search on on of the seasonings so I can replace it with something available here and we definitely want to try the baked bean recipe.

So in summary a very interesting and useful book with some very useful information and great recipes. Distinctly American in feel but that isn't a bad thing as we love trying new dishes. I am sure this will be a stable book for us from now on.

Weekly Menu 17th to 21st August

2009-08-17T18:12:00.005+01:00

Well last week went quite well really I tried a few new dishes like beetroot with cream and parsley, very easy, very yummy and very bright pink!! The photo above really isn't as bright as the real thing!

We also made a pickle based on over ripe bananas which i found in a magazine. I only did half a batch as that was how many bananas I had and it made two jars, we are already well into the second jar so that is certainly going in the recipe file for repeated use! The bottle in the picture is a lovely pink port we recently found, for roleplay events pink drinks are something we collect as Tom's character has a reputation for drinking them. The crackers are bought gluten free one.

The other thing i made new was this recipe for Kohl Rabi and Potato Gratin which was really nice, basically a whole bunch of veg in a white sauce with parsley baked in the oven. I used ready salted crisps and cheese for a topping rather than bread crumbs which worked very well. Plus it used red lentils so I managed to incorporate pulses last week as I said I wanted to. By the time it had cooked they had almost desolved into the dish and would be a very good way of adding them in for people who weren't keen on them.
I also did some baking including apple pie but that will come in another post.

So what about this week? Well the gluten free menu swap is being hosted by Gluten Free Goodness and she picked peaches as an ingredient. I don't currently have plans to use them but we do like them so if I see some good ones at the local shops I might give in. I noticed today another greengrocer had opened on the high street this morning and they look quite good, they also sell Halal meat but then one of the others is also an Indian shop where i get various flours and a third is also a flower shop the final one in walking distance is just a greengrocer! I think four in easy walking distance is pretty good really and there are probably a couple more if I wanted to walk a bit farther.. Plus I went into the market in the centre of town for the first time in a while and was pleasantly surprised at the variety in there too.

I've ended up trying nemaslug on the allotment to see if I can cut back the number of slugs are they are just doing to much damage after all the damp weather we have had. Though we are still getting lots of potatoes, corgettes, runner beans and cucumbers (had a white one last week though it's the only one from that type that have grown so far) plus the tomatoes are ripening and not all have been slug damaged. There are a couple of aubergeine, again keeping fingers crossed they survive the slugs as the first one didn't plus a pepper or two and there should be a few sweetcorn soon.

Monday - Spare ribs with Aubergine salad

Tuesday - stuffed courgettes from the allotment as I have several largish ones I plan to pick tomorrow.

Wednesday - Sausage, new potatoes and fried cucumber. (I have 10lb of lamb sausages to be picked up Friday to add to the 10lb of beef ones in the freezer as my butcher is getting them made up specially for me.)

Thursday - potato bake

Friday - home made Fish and chips.

Baking - more biscuits and cake bars as the boys are all at home plus I haven't as yet got round to this months Daring Bakers Challenge.

Daring cooks - A Spanish rice recipe

2009-08-14T19:00:00.000+01:00

This month's Daring Cook challenge was hosted by Olga from Las Cosas de Olga and Olga’s Recipes this month and she picked a Spanish recipe, Rice with mushrooms, cuttlefish and artichokes by José Andrés.

She says he is one of the most important Spanish Chefs at the moment. He trained under well-known Ferran Adria at his three Michelin star restaurant El Bulli. José Andrés lives now in Washington DC and he owns several restaurants in Washington DC area (El Jaleo, Zaytinya, Oyamel…). The recipe is from his US TV show Made in Spain.

Now I didn't end up making it quite as suggested as i could not get the cuttlefish but I stayed as true to it as I could apart from that.

I had a go at the recipe quite early on after the challenge went up as I happen to have fresh artichokes that needed eating.. I NEVER have them, even though I love them. Literally this is the first time in years and I was given some by someone at the allotment. I have young plants on my plot and they seem to grow very well but I will not get any flowers this year. I don't think I've ever seen them in the shops. One problem I had was I've never cut one up before, I normally cook them whole then eat the flesh off the leaves with butter. I think I left too much leaf attached next time I'll probably just do the disk bit from the base and cut everything else off but the video supplied seemed to show a bit more left than that.

Anyway I couldn't get anything like cuttlefish or squid, in fact the person in front of me asked about squid and was told they are out of season here. Our fishmonger only sells fresh fish, no frozen and being in the middle of England we are a little limited. I ended up with prawns, a few lagustine, scallops and some other fish who's name I had totally forgotten by the time I got home!

To start the recipe you make a slowly cooked tomato and veg sauce called Sofregit which is then used to flavour the dish once the rice and fish is cooking. I liked the Sofregit quite a lot and it is a good base for other dishes I would guess. For rice I used risotto rice as that was the closest I had on hand.

As well as the main rice dish we made some Allioli on the side. Alloli is basically garlic combined with oil to make a very strongly flavoured paste.

The Allioli was very interesting to make, I'd have liked to know approximately how much oil to add as having never made it before I really didn't know when to stop. We love garlic and it was certainly strong! Mine came out a slightly grey white, other peoples came out some very different colours depending on the olive oil used and so forth. In fact Audax got a very dark green version see his blog for a chemistry lesson on why I found it fasinating.

The dish was quite nice though I think I may have been to light on the seasoning as it was blander than I expected, next time I will be heavier handed with thsoe things it says a touch of and also the packets of saffron we get here aree tiny and from the colour of other people's dishes I'm guessing they used more than I did. The allioli certainly added to it very well.

---------------------------------

Rice with mushrooms, cuttlefish and artichokes
Recipe with additions from Olga

Cooking time: 45 minutes
Equipment:

1 Chopping Board
1 knife
1 medium saucepan
1 Paella pan (30 cm/11” is enough for 4 people. If not available, you may use a simple pan that size)
1 Saucepan

Ingredients (serves 4):

4 Artichokes (you can use jarred or freezed if fresh are not available)
12 Mushrooms (button or Portobello)
1 or 2 Bay leaves (optional but highly recommended)
1 glass of white wine
2 Cuttlefish (you can use freezed cuttlefish or squid if you don’t find it fresh)
“Sofregit” (see recipe below)
300 gr (2 cups) Short grain rice (Spanish types Calasparra or Montsant are preferred, but you can choose any other short grain. This kind of rice absorbs flavor very well) – about 75 gr per person ( ½ cup per person) Please read this for more info on suitable rices.
Water or Fish Stock (use 1 ½ cup of liquid per ½ cup of rice)
Saffron threads (if you can’t find it or afford to buy it, you can substitute it for turmeric or yellow coloring powder)
Allioli (olive oil and garlic sauce, similar to mayonnaise sauce) - optional

Directions:

Cut the cuttlefish in little strips.
Add 1 or 2 tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan and put the cuttlefish in the pan.
If you use fresh artichokes, clean them as shown in the video in tip #7. Cut artichokes in eights.
Clean the mushrooms and cut them in fourths.
Add a bay leaf to the cuttlefish and add also the artichokes and the mushrooms.
Sauté until we get a golden color in the artichokes.
Put a touch of white wine so all the solids in the bottom of the get mixed, getting a more flavorful dish.
Add a couple or three tablespoons of sofregit and mix to make sure everything gets impregnated with the sofregit.
Add all the liquid and bring it to boil.
Add all the rice. Let boil for about 5 minutes in heavy heat.
Add some saffron thread to enrich the dish with its flavor and color. Stir a little bit so the rice and the other ingredients get the entire flavor. If you’re using turmeric or yellow coloring, use only 1/4 teaspoon.
Turn to low heat and boil for another 8 minutes (or until rice is a little softer than “al dente”)
Put the pan away from heat and let the rice stand a couple of minutes.

Sofregit (a well cooked and fragrant sauce made of olive oil, tomatoes, garlic and onions, and may at times
different vegetables such as peppers or mushrooms)-

Cooking time: aprox. 1 hour
Ingredients:

2 tablespoons of olive oil
5 big red ripe tomatoes, chopped
2 small onions, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped (optional)
4 or 5 garlic cloves, chopped
1 cup of button or Portobello mushrooms, chopped (optional)
1 Bay leaf
Salt
Touch of ground cumin
Touch of dried oregano

Directions:

Put all the ingredients together in a frying pan and sauté slowly until all vegetables are soft.
Taste and salt if necessary (maybe it’s not!)

Allioli (Traditional recipe)
Cooking time: 20 min aprox.
Ingredients:

4 garlic cloves, peeled
Pinch of salt
Fresh lemon juice (some drops)
Extra-virgin olive oil (Spanish preferred but not essential)

Directions:

Place the garlic in a mortar along with the salt.
Using a pestle, smash the garlic cloves to a smooth paste. (The salt stops the garlic from slipping at the bottom of the mortar as you pound it down.)
Add the lemon juice to the garlic.
Drop by drop; pour the olive oil into the mortar slowly as you continue to crush the paste with your pestle.
Keep turning your pestle in a slow, continuous circular motion in the mortar. The drip needs to be slow and steady. Make sure the paste soaks up the olive oil as you go.
Keep adding the oil, drop by drop, until you have the consistency of a very thick mayonnaise. If your allioli gets too dense, add water to thin it out. This takes time—around 20 minutes of slow motion around the mortar—to create a dense, rich sauce.

José's tips for traditional recipe: It's hard to think that, when you start crushing the garlic, it will ever turn into something as dense and smooth as allioli. But don't give up. It's worth the extra time and effort to see the oil and garlic come together before your eyes. Just make sure you're adding the olive oil slowly, drop by drop. Keep moving the pestle around the mortar in a circular motion and keep dreaming of the thick, creamy sauce at the end of it all.

Olga’s Tips:
(1) In Spain, rice is not stired as often as it is when cooking Italian risotto. You must stir it once or twice maximum. This tip is valid for all Spanish rice dishes like paella, arròs negre, arròs a banda…
(2) When cooking the alternative style you can change the cuttlefish or squid for diced potato.
(3) If you can’t find cuttlefish or squid, or you’re not able to eat them because of allergies, you can try to substitute them for chicken or vegetables at your choice.
(4) Sofregit can be done in advance. You can keep it in the fridge or even freeze it.
(5) For more information on how to clean and remove the heart of artichokes, please watch this video
(6) To watch how Jose Andres cooks this dish click here.
(7) For more information on how to clean and remove the heart of artichokes, please watch this video
(8) To tone down the taste when you do it by hand in a mortar, then add an egg yolk. If you want to tone it down in the alternative way use milk or soy milk. Anyway, the best alternative way is the original oil and garlic alone.
(9) Allioli must be consumed during the preparation day and preserved in the fridge before using it.
(10) For help on conversion on metric to imperial, visit this page.

This week

2009-08-11T10:20:00.003+01:00

I haven't been about much recently as it is the summer holidays and other things at home are rather up in the air so we are very busy but this week is the Daring Cook reveal date so watch this space for that.

Also we were away last week on a canal boat owned by other family members, a lovely few days just our little family pottering down the canal, you can see some more photos on my craft blog but the shot above fairly well sums up the type of view we had most of the week. Very peaceful. We eat quite well to, all fairly quick meals as the kitchen is obviously small and I had to plan in advance so there was space but we had some lovely salad and sandwich lunches and quick and easy evening meals.

My rough menu this week is more a list of things I'm hoping to fit in.

Use up the apples I've been given in things like apple tart as they are starting to go rotten!

Make a meal or two with pulses. This weeks menu swap is hosted by In My Box who has chosen pulses because she struggles to use them something I have a similar issue with. She is running a blog event on that theme so I will try and use it to encourage me to use more too.

I did recently have a fantastic chickpea salad when eating out so i will be trying replicate that as well as doing some dishes with corgettes as they are one of the few things the slugs aren't eating faster than I can get too.. Our weather has been perfect for them these last few weeks and to say I am fed up with them is an understatement.

Try out a few dishes from a couple of new GF books I got recently and possibly a raw food book i got from the libary.

I think this week I will do a post toward the end of what we had rather than what I am planning.

Monday the boys had some normal gluten laden fresh pasta that was on offer which was enjoyed and I had a simple pasta and sauce later on.

Weekly Menu 27th to 31st July

2009-07-26T22:49:00.010+01:00

Cucumbers growing in my greenhouse last week..

Where did July go? A whole month of both boys at home ahead, no school till sometime in September so I hope we can get out and about and do some things. The weather is very, very variable at the moment with quite a lot of rain in the mix making it hard to know what it is going to be like from one minute to the next.. typical British summer then :)

This week I am hosting the Gluten Free Menu swap and I picked cucumber as my ingredient. Cucumber is one of our favorite vegetables and we have two types plus gherkins growing in the greenhouse. We picked our first home grown cucumber and the first gherkin on Thursday night and two more cucumbers this morning. The tomatoes are growing well but are still green. Noodles told me that the cucumbers were very yummy and they were better because we had grown them.. which is wonderful, the idea growing your own helps kids eat more veg seems to be true with him at least, he ate peas from the pod this morning as well. Here is my menu followed by the others who are joining in the swap this week.

Monday - Fish fingers (GF for me), smiley faces and baked beans

Tuesday - Cauliflower and courgette bake.

Wensday - Burmese curry and cucumber pickle (at the bottom of the page)

Thursday - Sausage with roast beetroot and mashed potato

Friday - not sure yet depends a bit what vegs are ready at the allotment and what we get from the veg box.

Baking -Want to try the marshmallows from this months daring baker challenge I didn't manage by the challenge date. Noodles wants to make mini cupcakes.

Other menus

Kimberly at Gluten free is life has a family birthday to look forward and a full but great sounding week.. She also has an interesting cucumber salad I may have to try.

Sea at Book of Yum has a lovely sounding menu mostly cooked for her by a friend as she has a beautiful looking new baby to concentrate her time on.. congrats Sea she is lovely.

In my box has a fantastic and colourful sounding vegan menu and while I don't plan to become vegan any time soon I could happily eat any of those dishes.

Cheryl at Gluten Free Goodness has some lovely looking hazelnut meringues and a great sounding menu.

Wendy at Celiacs in the house has some lovely summery pictures and a nice mix of dishes this week.
_______________________

Burmese Cucumber Pickle
from the Complete Asian Cookbook by Charmaine Solomon

Serves 6
2 large green cucumbers
1/2 cup of vinegar (originally malt but I use cider)
2 cups water
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup peanut oil
2 tbsp sesame oil
8 cloves garlic, sliced
1 medium onion
2tbsp sesame seeds

Peel cucumbers, cut in half long ways an scoop out seeds. Cut into fingers, then chop into 2 inch lengths. Bring vinegar, water and salt to the boil, drop in cucumbers and boil till transparent. Drain and leave to cool.

Heat both oils together and fry garlic till pale golden, drain. Fry onion till golden brown in the same oil. Toast sesame in a dry pan till golden brown, stir constantly. Turn onto plate to cool. When oil is cold dress cucumber with 3 tbsp oil. Mix well. Add onion, garlic and seeds. Toss lightly. Serve.

Daring Bakers - July

2009-07-20T20:06:00.011+01:00

It's that time again, the reveal date for Daring bakers where cooking blogs all over the world all show you versions of the same recipe..

The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

I really wanted to make both but in the end time was against me and I only managed the Milan Cookies, however as i still have the ingredients for the Marshmallow cookies they may make an appearance later. We were allowed to do only one however so I have still officially completed the challenge.
Milan cookies are very thin cookies sandwiched together with chocolate. Obviously I need to adapt the recipe but in fact it worked very well just substituting Dove Farm flour for the wheat flour and indeed some of those cooking conventionally mentioned the cookies went quite soft after a day where as the gluten free ones kept their texture much better being crisp round the edges with a slight softness in the middle of the biscuit, so a plus for gluten free. I expect that is because of the natural shortness of most gluten free flours and the fact that I did not add any extra liquid to the mix. As gluten free flours tend to need more liquid this kept them crisp.

The first biscuits shown on the trays at the top are a better colour than the ones shown with chocolate as the second batch over cooked slightly, However I gave most of the first batch away before I could photograph them finished, hence the slightly less ideal ones in the finished picture. Still they tasted nice, though te just brown round the edges ones were prettier and did taste even better.

I think I would cut back on the vanilla and lemon for everyday use and in fact i didn't use the full amount in the batch I did but having some in they is very good as it brings them up from being just a basic biscuit.

Milan Cookies
Recipe courtesy Gale Gand, from Food Network website

Prep Time: 20 min
Inactive Prep Time: 0 min
Cook Time: 1 hr 0 min
Serves: about 3 dozen cookies

• 12 tablespoons (170grams/ 6 oz) unsalted butter, softened
• 2 1/2 cups (312.5 grams/ 11.02 oz) powdered sugar
• 7/8 cup egg whites (from about 6 eggs)
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons lemon extract
• 1 1/2 cups (187.5grams/ 6.61 oz) all purpose flour (I used Dove Farm gluten free plain flour)
• Cookie filling, recipe follows

Cookie filling:
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
• 1 orange, zested

1. In a mixer with paddle attachment cream the butter and the sugar.
2. Add the egg whites gradually and then mix in the vanilla and lemon extracts.
3. Add the flour and mix until just well mixed.
4. With a small (1/4-inch) plain tip, pipe 1-inch sections of batter onto a parchment-lined sheet pan, spacing them 2 inches apart as they spread. (I used a teaspoon instead)

5. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 10 minutes or until light golden brown around the edges. Let cool on the pan.
6. While waiting for the cookies to cool, in a small saucepan over medium flame, scald cream.

7. Pour hot cream over chocolate in a bowl, whisk to melt chocolate, add zest and blend well.
8. Set aside to cool (the mixture will thicken as it cools).
9. Spread a thin amount of the filling onto the flat side of a cookie while the filling is still soft and press the flat side of a second cookie on top.
10. Repeat with the remainder of the cookies.

One of the tips given by another Daring baker was to use tins to get all the biscuits the same size, I tried this but put too much in each pan so i did indeed get round cookies but they were more cake like in texture.

I think this recipe will go in my to use again file because while I had to do several batches to use all the mixture it really wasn't hard and I loved the delicate texture and the chocolate was good too. I am tempted to try sandwiching some with my gooseberry curd and dipping one end in chocolate as well.

Weekly Menu 20th to 24th July

2009-07-20T12:16:00.005+01:00

This week is the first week of the school holidays so will be marked by us getting into a new routine hopefully and maybe even me driving the big car. I've had a driving lesson and have another booked this evening because my lovely little Smart car is automatic and while I have a manual licence I haven't driven a manual car since I passed, well once a day or so after I passed.. The big car is need to fit both boys in however so if we are to be able to go out and do anything outside the city or indeed some far flung parts of the city I need to drive the other car.

In other news I scored some silicon baking things for 3 pound the lot at a charity shop. One cake 'tin' and two mini fairycake (cupcake) moulds.. really mini they are only about an inch across each hole.

The menu for the week is fairly basic and easy to give the boys my time.

Monday - leftovers from the weekend.

Tuesday - sausage and new potatoes, because I am picking up a sausage order from my butcher, I get 10lb at a time specially made for me. Beef this time.

Wednesday - stir fry

Thursday - pasta and sauce

Friday - out and about.

Baking - I promised Noodles millionaires shortbread this week. Plus working on the Daring Bakers challenge for this month.

Daring cooks go Molecular !

2009-07-14T22:51:00.007+01:00

Until this months challenge I had never heard of molecular cuisine (sort of the science of cooking) but I am now fascinated by it, the science geek in me wants to know more plus gluten free baking has a healthy dose of chemistry to learn if you want to get your head round mixing your own flour mixes. Over the winter when there is less growing of vegs going on, and indeed less weeds to keep in check, I may well check out some of the forums on the subject.

Anyway on to the challenge. Sketchy, from Sketchy's Kitchen set us a challenge to recreate a dish from Grant Achatz, found in the Alinea cookbook - page 230. This dish looks very obscure and strange to start with and before this the only chef I'd really come across doing such things was Heston Blumenthal who has recently done a couple of wonderful and very mad programs on british TV.

The dish is basically fish pouched in butter served on beans and slices of banana. Sounds pretty basic so far doesn't it ! However then you add multiple powders, dried and ground up ingredients, things that would normally be put in a sauce to go with the fish. Many people were very thrown by this part but taking a deep breath I looked at it and realised that while there was a bunch of prep none of it was hard in and of itself. As it happened I had just started experimenting with drying and indeed grinding things to powder just a few days earlier and had just done some lemon peal which turned out to be one fo the ingredients.

In the end I did 5 powders and used four of them. We were given various ways to do the drying. A dehydrator - something I'd love to own but don't. Microwave - quick but less good flavour wise on the couple I tried or the oven on a very low heat which is what I opted for on most for mine. They they were crushed in a mortar and pestle and sieved though a fine sieve.

The powders I did were

Parsley -(bottom left) Oven was slightly better than microwave but fundamentally both taste like dried grass which is pretty much the same as shop bought dried parsley

Oregano - quite bitter tasting and I didn't use it in the end, again oven better than microwave.

Lemon peel - (bottom right) just plain peel dried, the recipe called for candied peel but I had already done the plain so that is what I used. Smelt divine and tasted like sherbet.

Red Onion - (top right) Fantastic flavour, lovely pink colour. I very tempted to do more for flavouring things

Capers - (top left) Ones in vinegar, washed and dried. Another very flavoursome one.

To make up the dish the powders were piled on the plate and then swirled. The green beans were cooked in a Beurre Monte, which is basically butter emulsified with water first. The fish was also cooked the same way. The recipe stated skate but I used Pouting which is a nice and fairly cheap white fish.

Some slices of banana were placed on the plate then green beans and finally fish. It was topped with ground dried banana flakes.

So what was it like?? Funny dry powders? Actually it was amazing. Not at all dry, partly due to the butter things were cooked in. The powders exploded flavour, well part from the parsley but even that added colour. All together the flavours worked fabulously and it got a very good reception from Tom, once he got over the fish bone he is jinked to find however hard I try!!

I really recommend trying this it is worth the faff of making the powders and they in themselves are an interesting experiment.