Gingerbread and more cookbooks

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!!

I love Wagamama

We went to Wagamama in Birmingham for our 'adopted' son/ little brother's birthday as is becoming a tradition and I just had to say how much I like them.

On their website they list which dishes can be made gluten free and indeed do the same for a whole host of other allergens. Once you get to the restaurant you tell them you want the gluten free menu and they bring a book that lists all the allergens, dishes you can have and what had to be removed to make it safe.. then you order say number 26 no seasoning and you get a gluten free version. I do wish more places would do that. Apart from the occasional replacement of wheat noodles with rice ones they don't do any additions to dishes so some of them end up pretty plain but there are still a better selection than most places and if you have more than one allergy you can just cross check several lists.

The second reason I love them is that they bring the kids dishes FIRST as standard. You have no idea how many brownie points they score for that one, it seems standard in this country to bring the kids dishes last which is insane as they want their food colder than adults (and it has to start hot or it isn't cooked!) and they don't find waiting easy when hungry particularly if others have food plus you need to cut it up for them if they are small which means your food goes cold. We are so fed up with this we have started putting in complaints at anywhere that does it and Wagamama's is one of the few we haven't had to !!

Fish and Chip shops

I know that Fish and Chip shops are a very British thing so I thought I'd try and explain them to those of you who are not familiar.

The chipshop as they are commonly known is our traditional fast food and every town has at least one, though these days they compete with pizza, kebab, chinese and many others..

The standard fare on offer is chips obviously, fries to some of you but never thin cut which is what we would call french fries, chips are always cut a good fairly chunky size then deep fried. A good chip shop has nice crisp chips with fluffy middles. Traditionally the frying oil is beef dripping though many now use vegetable oil which of course allows you to sell to vegetarians but some will tell you the flavour isn't the same, personally I think the frying technique is more important than the oil.

Along with chips there is of course fish, always in batter. A chip shop batter is quite thick and puffed up and most people would not try to emulate it at home. This is out of bounds for us gluten free people so I have tried with some success to make my own, though it is a bit variable. What type of fish it will be varies though cod is the norm. Certainly in more coastal shops you often get a choice, traditionally cod, place or haddock though these days some are branching out or just specifying fish so they can use some of the tasty but less over fished varieties.

If you want something different the other things normally sold include breaded fishcakes, saveloy sausages, big battered sausages, and roast chicken portions. Steak or chicken and mushroom pies are normal too. It is very common these days for them to also sell doner and chicken kebab meat as well.

There are also regional specialities like potato scallops, deep fried roast potatoes, deep fried Mars bars (a Scottish 'delicacy') and even deep fried black pudding. We have cheese jacks in ours which are flavoured mashed potato, coated in a thin batter then deep fried and they have just started doing battered chips too !

Most of these come served wrapped in paper and liberally doused in salt and vinegar (normally malt or a pretend version there of) which you can then eat as you walk along.

There are a few extras that are normal to have on the side. These include mushy peas, curry sauce, pickled eggs, pickled onions and you can normally get little jars of pickled cockles too.

As you can see most things are deep fried and heavrly potato based often in batter which is a problem for celiacs. In all truth i probably shouldn't even eat the chips as there is going to be some cross contamination from the batter but I seem to manage though these new batter chips are making me rather nervous as that has got to up the chances.

IKEA and Gluten free

We popped into IKEA for some bits at the weekend.. yea right like it's possible to just pop in for something, even if you only go to the item you want it will take half an hour of walking.! Actually on that score I am waiting very interestedly to see how the new Coventry store works. In some ways I'm dreading the possible traffic problems espacally round the time our two universities start their new years but in other ways it will be interesting to see how it differs from an out of town store. You see the Coventry one isn't just off a motorway junction like the rest it is slap bang in the middle of the city ! It is over several floors and I am really hoping they make it easier to just pop into one section rather than being lead by the nose as the other stores do.. I think they would be stupid not to as a lot of their potential trade is people on their lunch break and you can't brose a whole store in that time but we will see.

Anyway back to our shopping trip. As it was lunch time we decided to go to the cafe and I was pretty much expecting to have chips or salad or maybe a cake as they do a GF one.. however as we waited in the queue we spotted the kids fish and chips had a big GF symbol on it but somewhat strangely the adult one didn't and neither did the meatballs which seemed a bit daff as most Swedish meatball recipes over here are GF.

Still we asked when we got to the counter and yes the kids fish was GF but the adults wasn't and neither was any other main meal! The fish was however at the far end of the counter meaning it was a lot less likely to get contaminated so I end up with two kids meals as it was cheaper than them trying to make up an adult one and I ended up with more chips! I am happy they are trying but I think I might chat to the cafe when they open in Cov and see if they could change the meatball recipe or at least do the adult fish GF as well. It was nice to have battered fish for once but the portions were very small even with two kids ones.

As to the actual shopping, we got the small one a place in the crèche much to his delight and so had 3/4 hour to look round. We got the cupboard doors and drawers to finish the units in the utility room and some new plates and bowls from their 365+ range.. we got 6 new bowls which will be good for soup, stew etc and then one each of the rounded off square dinner and side plates to see if they went with my Reflex Denby which is now discontinued. I think they will actually go quite well and we have been thinking of swapping our everyday china to white as the current black stuff can't really be mixed with the Denby. That wasn't the only things we picked up but the main ones of relivance on here I think.