Kate The Bake

Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice cream & Daring Baker's Baked Alaska

2010-08-28T00:01:00.000+01:00

The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking. For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event and Elissa was the gracious hostess of both. Using the theme of beurre noisette, or browned butter, Elissa chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petit Fours. The sources for Elissa’s challenge were Gourmet magazine and David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop”.

After quite a gap where I have struggled to find motivation, this month's daring baker challenge grabbed me and enticed me to try a recipe that has intrigued me since I was a little kid. I think it was the most read recipe in one of my childhood cookbooks right at the back with surprisingly clean pages! The recipe called for both shop bought ice cream and cake rather than making them from scratch. I didn't even realise that you could make ice cream at home back then. Although as a kid I read the recipe with lustful regularity, I never attempted to make it, it didn't make any sense - how on earth could you bake ice cream without it melting? Madness!

Anyway, yesterday, clad in shoes and a jumper for warmth for the first time this summer, the grey windy and rainy day provided a perfect backdrop for ice cream making and baking. I was glad of the diversion from the miserable weather. After much negotiation with the teen, the ice cream flavours were decided as i) chocolate and peanut butter & ii) banana. The daring baker challenge called for us to make 2 types of ice cream from scratch along with a browned butter pound cake which would provide the base to build the baked alaska on. I decided to make individual versions with the ice cream frozen into small French tumbler-style wine glasses lined with cling film. Once the ice cream was un-molded and sat a'top the cake base, a simple meringue could be piped over the whole thing and then The molded ice cream is set upon a gluten free chocolate sponge base before being topped with a piped vanilla meringue which is baked or browned using a blow torch.
The meringue was a very simple recipe of 2 large egg whites and 100g castor sugar whisked together with a teaspoon of vanilla extract folded in at the end. I piped this quickly using a star nozzle over the ice cream bases and then blasted them with a blow torch - I am yet to dare to bake ice cream!
I was persuaded to flavour the cake base with chocolate as well although for me, that has proved one step too far - it will some time before I eat chocolate cake again.

This dessert is rich beyond belief and even my baby French wine glasses proved way too big for the finished individual servings of baked alaska - if there is a next time, shot glasses will be used. There was no need to serve a main course, this was a dessert-only dinner which had to be followed by a 5k run to settle my stomach!

Much as I love a rich creamy ice cream (and for a simple flavour like vanilla I would definitely stick to the original recipe) for this combination of chocolate and peanut butter, I reduced the egg content of the recipe and used my own fall-back recipe for a (slightly) lighter ice cream. This ice cream has been a regular for us all summer, we love the combination of salty crunchy peanut butter with a creamy sweet chocolate ice cream. When I am making this for 'normal' consumption, I would not add the peanut butter mix until the ice cream has almost finished churning so that the peanut butter ends up rippled through the ice cream rather than fully combined. However for this baked alaska, I have fully mixed it in so that the ice cream will be consistently frozen throughout.

Chocolate & Peanut Butter Ice cream:

100g 70% Belgian chocolate
240ml / 1 cup double (heavy) cream
3tbsp dutch processed cocoa powder
240ml / 1 cup double cream
125g crunchy unsweetened peanut butter
a pinch of sea salt
30g agave nectar or sweet freedom
360ml / 1.5 cups whole milk
140g or 2/3 cup white sugar
3 large eggs
1 tsp madagascan vanilla extract

Break up the chocolate and place in a microwaveable bowl with 1 cup double cream. Heat on high for 45 seconds then stir until the chocolate melts into the cream. Whisk in the cocoa powder and set aside.
Mix the peanut butter with the second cup of double cream, the sea salt and the sweetener, set aside.
In a heavy-bottomed pan, gently heat the milk and sugar stirring constantly until the sugar dissolves. Remove from the heat as soon as this happens.
Whisk the eggs in a large heatproof bowl. Keep beating the eggs whilst pouring over the warm sweetened milk. Beat until thoroughly combined, then pour the whole mixture back into the pan.
Add the chocolate and cream mix to the pan and stir to combine. Heat the whole chocolate custard mix very gently, stirring constantly until the custard is thick - do not let this boil, nor stop stirring until the custard is ready.
To check whether the custard is done, use your finger to draw a line through some cooked custard on the back of the spoon or spatula you are using to stir - when the bare line remains clear through the custard, then the mix is ready. The custard will be thick and creamy but with a slightly jelly-like consistency, this is due to using whole eggs rather than simply egg yolks.
To cool the custard, you can simply place the whole pan in an ice bath or a sink or washing up bowl half-filled with cold water. Make sure that you don't splash water into the custard as it cools - but don't put a lid on the pan as that will slow down the cooling process. Change the water 2 or 3 times until the custard is at room temperature. Now you can chill the custard in the fridge for an hour or so before freezing it.
Once the custard is lightly chilled, add the peanut butter mix in large dollops but don't mix in too much (the churning will do this) and now you can churn the mix as per your ice-cream maker's instructions. If you don't have an ice-cream machine, you can decant the custard into a freezer-proof box and place in the freezer for 3 hours. After three hours, take the box out and stir vigorously with a fork to break up the ice crystals. Repeat this process hourly until the mixture is thick and creamy and too difficult to stir, at which point - if you are making baked alaska - you can decant the ice cream into the mold for freezing.

gluten free pièce montée (Daring Bakers May 2010)

2010-05-27T00:01:00.001+01:00

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

So, this month's Daring Baker challenge was to make a pièce montée or croquembouche. This is an epic 3-D dessert of French and Italian origin and are served as wedding and baptism cakes in France.
A proper croquembouche (and mine is not quite) is a gravity defying pyramid of choux pastry puffs filled with sweet pastry cream and drizzled in caramel or maybe chocolate to provide some glue for construction purposes. When I first figured out that the puffs were constructed around an inedible cone I was a bit disappointed, much the same as I when I (finally) realised that the 'celebration' cakes that languish in the windows of some bakeries are actually foam-filled moulds - Pah, humbug!
I decided that I wanted my version to be all edible though as a result, it is slightly less impressive than the architectural cone or cocktail stick versions.

The challenge recipe did not provide a gluten free alternative recipe so I used a recipe that I have been working on.

It isn't quite perfect or foolproof yet, so whilst the piped shapes puff up beautifully, they are not completely hollow inside. Since I need to be able to fill the puffs with pastry cream, I cut a little hole out of the bottom of each puff and picked out the filling (which tends to sit on the bottom of the puff) then piped the filling in and replaced the bottom.

I used the suggested recipes for the sweet pastry cream which were chocolate and vanilla so filled half the choux pastry balls with each variety. I like the element of surprise with different fillings, though last time I made this dessert with a raspberry mousse filling which was lovely too.

The most fun however, was in the decoration: spun sugar. It was a damp day when I made the decoration which is not the best weather to be working with this delicate confection, you really need a dry tim environment, not Spring time (or any other time) in England. I had to work fairly quickly to make the shapes then build the dessert and photograph it before the sugar softened. I had no more than a couple of hours before the sugar began to soften and warp and the dessert began to gently collapse. I got a bit carried away with the sugar spinning and made loads more than I needed. Luckily the teen feels a need for empty calories (her definition) today so is crunching her way through it now!

And there we have it, a really fun daring baker challenge. I will publish the recipe once I have put the finishing touches to this gluten-free choux pastry recipe, then you should have a go at making one too.

gluten free ginger bread spread (speculoos a tartiner)

2010-05-24T18:55:00.000+01:00

I love speculoos biscuits. I mean, I really really love them! I used to get excited every time I discovered one of those slim, delicately spiced and caramelised biscuits nestled on the saucer almost hidden by my coffee cup. Until quite recently, though, I could only experience that thrill in Europe, not at home in the UK. Now times have changed and I could, if I wanted, buy bulk packs of speculoos in my local cash and carry (though in the UK they are just called caramelised biscuits, or some such). And now of course, even if I wanted to eat them, I couldn't, because they contain wheat.
So, when food blogger and writer David Lebovitz wrote a post on speculoos spread I was envious and intrigued in equal measure. I read the post a couple of times and then carried on as normal ignoring the faint pangs of jealousy growing in the pit of my stomach. Ignoring, that is, until one morning a few days later when the sun was shining, my kitchen was quiet and I, for once in a very long time, actually felt like cooking.
I searched around the internet until I found an ingredients list for the Lotus brand of 'Speculoos a Tartiner'. It made me laugh to read it - 57% crushed biscuits, sugar and vegetable oil to make a sweet smooth spread. Duh, how obvious!

Somewhere in the depths of my freezer I had a gluten free half batch of David Lebovitz's Chez Panisse Ginger Snap dough which needed to be eaten. I figured that I could mix up some speculoos spices, sprinkle over the dough, knead it in and bake the revised version. This might on be an unorthodox way to make Speculoos but in this case, imperfections don't matter as I am going to grind up them up anyway!
One of my favourite memories of speculoos is the blend of spices mingling with the rich caramel flavour, so I decided that since I was already going to use my food processor to grind the biscuits, I might as well also make some caramel and grind that up to make caramel powder to use instead of sugar. So by 8.10 in the morning I was pouring a cup and a half of nut brown caramel onto my lined baking sheet to cool and preparing my spices to add to the defrosting log of ginger biscuit dough. One day, I may come back to this recipe again and create a proper gluten-free speculoos biscuit from scratch, but for now the buttery spicy dough of David's Chez Panisse ginger snap recipe is definitely delicious enough to satiate my immediate desire for this sweet creamy spicy spread.
I added extra spices to the dough to give a touch of speculoos fragrance to the ginger and cinnamon of the cookie dough. My mix contained white pepper, coriander, nutmeg, clove, cardamom seeds and anise but you can add or remove spices to suit your palate (or dig out your favourite speculoos recipe and bake those, of course!). You can of course use shop-bought speculoos biscuits instead but if you do you might need to reduce the caramel powder to 90g as speculoos are a bit sweeter than the ginger biscuits I used.
The spread will go through a strange "Oops, I've failed" phase as you mix it together. In fact, it looked so odd that I didn't even bother taking photos of the method as I was so sure that it had gone wrong! But I persevered and I was very glad I did as the crumbly lumpy mess slowly transformed into a smooth creamy spread.
There is, of course, a flaw in my plan: I have absolutely no idea what the original 'speculoos a tartiner' tastes like so I have nothing to compare my own version to. I can however confirm that it is delicious: gently spicy, sweet and smooth but with a few crumbs for texture. If you can resist tasting this for a day or two, you will be rewarded with an even richer, more rounded flavour.
At the end of the day when the teen appeared, I mentioned that I had been messing around the kitchen but got no reaction (that's teenagers for you!) so I was amazed to discover the contents of the jar had almost disappeared the next morning ... I am now mixing up the next batch of cookies, I'll be making two jars this time!

ginger bread spread recipe (to make 1 jar)

ingredients:

160g speculoos cookies or ginger snaps (as per details below)
120g ground caramel powder
90g sunflower oil (or other neutral oil)
60ml water
15g nutritional soya lecithin (this will stop the spread separating once mixed & stored in the jar, it is great if you happen to have some but it is by no means essential)
15ml lemon juice
1/4 tsp sea salt

method - spread

weigh 160g cookies into a food processor and process to a fine-ish powder, make sure there are no chunks left.
add 120g powdered caramel (or 90g depending on your taste) and process again to combine.
sprinkle in the lecithin (if using) and process again till fully combined.
leave the processor mixing and add 1/4 tsp sea salt through the feeder tube.
now pour in 90g oil and let the mix process to a rough puree
pour in the lemon juice and don't panic when the mix turns into thick pasty lumps, it is OK (promise!)
gradually tip in the water watching the mix as it becomes smooth and homogenous. stop adding water when you think you have the consistency you want - if you are using wheat-flour biscuits you may find you need slightly less water than with gluten free.
stop the processor and taste the spread, add a little more lemon juice if you like.
decant into a sterilised jar and store in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

speculoos biscuits:

a half batch (with extra spices) of David Lebovitz's chez panisse ginger snaps*
extra spices ground in coffee grinder: 3 white peppercorn, 1 black peppercorn 1 cardamom pod, 2 clove, a good grating of nutmeg, 1/2 star anise.
if you are making your own biscuits, add the extra spices at the same time as those in the recipe and follow the method as shown.
* to make the recipe gluten free replace the flour in the recipe with 260g rice flour PLUS 1/2 tsp xanthan gum or use your favourite gluten free mix.

ingredients: caramel powder

200g white sugar
135g water

method: caramel

line a large heavy baking sheet with non-stick baking paper and set aside.
take a large heavy based saucepan, sprinkle the sugar and water into the pan and it on a gentle heat without stirring.
leave the pan on the heat allowing the sugar to dissolve and the syrup to boil gently.
keep an eye on the gently boiling syrup as it begins to colour, leaving it until it is a rich middling brown colour.
pour the syrup onto a lined baking sheet and leave it to set.
once the caramel is cold and set, break it up into small pieces and place them in a food processor.
whizz until the caramel becomes a fine yellow powder, then tip out of the processor and store in an airtight jar.

gluten free jam roly-poly, Daring Bakers April 2010

2010-04-27T00:01:00.004+01:00

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.

It is unseasonably warm and blue outside so making such a traditional winter pudding seems a little anachronistic as I watch my courgette seedlings stretch up towards the sunlight, growing at least a centimetre a day. The Daring Baker challenge for this month was to make a pudding of suet pastry, suet was the only required ingredient, so this could have been anything from steamed treacle pudding to a wintery steak and kidney savoury pudding. I was at a loss for an idea of what to make until I found this, in a local junk/kitchenalia shop and when I found the original instructions inside, then my mind was made up - a jam roly poly in its' own proper tin.

Jam roly-poly is the epitome of proper English puddings, a suet pastry roll filled with sweet jam and cooked by a combination of steaming and baking, this pudding would be a familiar item to any school pupil educated in both state and private schools in the UK last century (and yes, of course that includes me!).
I compared the recipe supplied with the tin to the version that appears in the 1923 copy of Mrs Beeton's Cookery that was given to my Grandmother in that year and they were almost identical, Mrs B suggested less baking powder and more salt so I tweaked the recipe a little to find some middle ground.
A quick glance at more modern recipes revealed that very little else had changed, so I was ready to roll! Apparently jam roly-poly is also known as Dead Man's Leg, which is slightly less appetising I think. From that nick-name, the pudding then became known as Dead Man's Arm as house-wive's used the sleeves of their husband's old shirts to contain the pudding for baking, personally I think I will stick with roly-poly!

Creating a gluten free version took a little thought. I think that if I was really keen on this type of pudding, I would spend a little more time developing the pastry recipe. In an ideal world, the pastry would be more flakey and layered than my version, which is slightly softer in crumb than I would aspire to. The pastry for the pudding is not sweet, there is a touch of sugar to hint at the direction of the filling but the sweetness is supplied by the jam filling.

I used, quite literally, the first jar of jam I could find in my store cupboard. Now I have to own up that I have 3 batches of jam made last year, all of which were stashed in a cupboard quickly and label-less. I know, big sin! So when I grabbed the first jar, I was hoping for a thick strawberry jam with lots of fruit (and possibly a tad to much pectin) which would have remained in a thick layer between the rolls of the pudding. Unfortunately I grasped a jar of quince jelly, sweet yet gently acidic but soft rather than sticky in texture. The jam, as you can see in the picture, has soaked into the pastry a little, so the roll effect of the pastry is slightly less defined than I would like. This doesn't detract from the taste at all, and with a slick of home made custard, this makes a delicious and filling winter pudding. The pudding only takes about 15 minutes to put together, and an hour or so to cook, so it is not a difficult recipe to try (once the weather is cooler!).

Jam Roly-Poly

Ingredients

95g rice flour
50g corn flour
50g tapioca starch
1dsp arrowroot flour
1dsp psyllium husks
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
40g castor sugar
100g gluten free (or butcher's) suet
120ml milk
150g jam

Equipment

Mixing bowl
baking paper
foil,
baking or roasting rack that fits inside a roasting tray

Method

Cut and grease a piece of baking paper approx 30cm square.
Cut a piece of foil of a similar size (not needed if you have a roly poly tin).
Preheat the oven to 200°C.
Mix together all the ingredients except the jam to create a firm pastry.
Tip the pastry out onto a floured surface and roll out to create a rectangle of pastry approx 15cm x 30cm (with the short side nearest you).
Spread the surface of the pastry with all the jam.
Roll up the pastry from the short end facing you, to create a roll 15cm by about 8cm deep.
Using a couple of spatulas, lift the roll onto the greased baking paper and roll the baking paper loosely around the pudding (the pudding needs room to expand as it cooks).
Fold the ends to create a tight seal, if you have a proper tin then pop the wrapped pudding into the tin and close. If not then wrap the pudding loosely in a piece of foil, again sealing the ends tightly but leaving room for the pudding to expand.
Place the wrapped pudding on a roasting rack in a roasting pan filled with water to a level just below the roasting rack, loosely cover the pan with foil and place in the pre-heated oven for 1 hour.
When the pudding is cooked remove the pan from the oven, and unwrap the pudding carefully, beware of any build up of steam.
Cut the pudding into slices about 2cm wide and serve each slice with custard, cream or ice cream.

Daring Bakers March 2010 Orange Tian

2010-03-27T01:00:00.003Z

The 2010 March Daring Baker’s challenge was hosted by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings. She chose Orange Tian as the challenge for this month, a dessert based on a recipe from Alain Ducasse’s Cooking School in Paris.

This is my third challenge and I feel as though I have got the hang of the concept. I have read enviously as other daring bakers amended recipes and thought up interesting flavour combinations as variations on the published recipes. Whilst I had some wild ideas and great ambitions for variations on this month's theme, I have a bad back at present which means I can only stand for a few minutes at a time. So instead of being an opportunity to get creative, simply the act of making this was the challenge this month!
I live gluten free I also adapted the pastry recipe to create a gluten free version. I based this recipe on a version that I found here and was delighted to discover, at the same time, another gluten free blog to read (thanks Natascha!) and another reason to brush up my French. To make my life a bit easier, I substituted the marmalade for the orange and cardamom marmalade that I made recently.

Preparation time:
- Pate Sablee: 20 minutes to make, 30 minutes to rest, 15 minutes to roll out, 20 minutes to bake
- Orange segments: 20 minutes, overnight to sit
- Caramel: 15 minutes, overnight to sit
- Whipped Cream: 15 minutes
- Assembling: 20 minutes
- Freezer to Set: 10 minutes

Equipment required:
• Cookie cutters . Ideally, you should have about 6 cookie cutters to build the desserts in and cut the circles of dough (see photo). The cookie cutters will be the size of your final dessert, so they should be the size of an individually-sized tart mold. If you don’t have round cookie cutters you could use an individually-sized cheesecake mold without its base.
• A food processor (although the dough could be made by hand too)
• A stand-up or hand mixer
• Parchment paper or a silicone sheet
• A baking sheet
• A rolling pin

For the gluten free pate sable - my recipe is here

For the Marmalade:

* 100g freshly pressed orange juice
* 1 large orange used to make orange slices
* cold water to cook the orange slices
* 5g pectin
* granulated sugar: use the same weight as the weight of orange slices once they are cooked

1. Finely slice the orange and place in a medium-sized pot filled with cold water.
2. Simmer for about 10 minutes, discard the water, re-fill with cold water and blanch the oranges for another 10 minutes.
3. Blanch the orange slices 3 times. This process removes the bitterness from the orange peel, so it is essential to use a new batch of cold water every time when you blanch the slices.
4. Once blanched 3 times, drain the slices and let them cool.
5. Once they are cool enough to handle, finely mince them (using a knife or a food processor).
6. Weigh the slices and use the same amount of granulated sugar.
7. In a pot over medium heat, add the minced orange slices, the sugar you just weighed, the orange juice and the pectin.
8. Cook until the mixture reaches a jam consistency (10-15 minutes).
9. Transfer to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and put in the fridge.

For the Orange Segments:

* 8 oranges

1. Cut the oranges into segments over a shallow bowl and make sure to keep the juice.
2. Add the segments to the bowl with the juice.

For the Caramel:

* 200g granulated sugar
* 400g orange juice

1. Place the sugar in a pan on medium heat and begin heating it.
2. Once the sugar starts to bubble and foam, slowly add the orange juice.
3. As soon as the mixture starts boiling, remove from the heat and pour half of the mixture over the orange segments.
4. Reserve the other half of the caramel mixture in a small bowl — you will use this later to spoon over the finished dessert.
5. When the dessert is assembled and setting in the freezer, heat the kept caramel sauce in a small saucepan over low heat until it thickens and just coats the back of a spoon (about 10 minutes). You can then spoon it over the orange tians.

[Tip: Be very careful when making the caramel — if you have never made caramel before, I would suggest making this step while you don’t have to worry about anything else. Bubbling sugar is extremely, extremely hot, so make sure you have a bowl of ice cold water in the kitchen in case anyone gets burnt!]

Set cream

* 200g heavy whipping cream
* 3 tbsp hot water
* 1 tsp Gelatine
* 1.5tbsp orange marmalade (see recipe above)

1. In a small bowl, add the gelatine and hot water, stirring well until the gelatine dissolves. Let the gelatine cool to room temperature while you make the whipped cream.
2. Combine the cream in a chilled mixing bowl. Whip the cream using a hand mixer on low speed until the cream starts to thicken for about one minute. Increase the speed to medium-high.
3. Whip the cream until the beaters leave visible (but not lasting) trails in the cream, then add the cooled gelatine slowly (discarding the water) and beating continuously.
4. Continue whipping until the cream is light and fluffy and forms soft peaks. Transfer the whipped cream to a bowl and fold in the orange marmalade.

Assembling the Dessert:
Make sure you have some room in your freezer. Ideally, you should be able to fit a small baking sheet or tray of desserts to set in the freezer.
Line a small tray or baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone sheet. Lay out 6 cookie cutters onto the parchment paper/silicone.
Drain the orange segments on a kitchen towel.
Have the marmalade, whipped cream and baked circles of dough ready to use.
Arrange the orange segments at the bottom of each cookie cutter. Make sure the segments all touch either and that there are no gaps. Make sure they fit snuggly and look pretty as they will end up being the top of the dessert. Arrange them as you would sliced apples when making an apple tart.
Once you have neatly arranged one layer of orange segments at the bottom of each cookie cutter, add a couple spoonfuls of whipped cream and gently spread it so that it fills the cookie cutter in an even layer. Leave about 1/4 inch at the top so there is room for dough circle.
Using a butter knife or small spoon, spread a small even layer of orange marmalade on each circle of dough.
Carefully place a circle of dough over each ring (the side of dough covered in marmalade should be the side touching the whipping cream). Gently press on the circle of dough to make sure the dessert is compact.
Place the desserts to set in the freezer to set for 10 minutes.
Using a small knife, gently go around the edges of the cookie cutter to make sure the dessert will be easy to unmold. Gently place your serving plate on top of a dessert (on top of the circle of dough) and turn the plate over. Gently remove the cookie cutter, add a spoonful of caramel sauce and serve immediately.
Resources:
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-tian.htm (An article about the dessert known as tian.)
YouTube link on how to segment an orange: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG5mcEEBlcI
To learn more about Pectin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pectin
What to substitute for Pectin: http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/Dictionary/P/Pectin-6222.aspx

gluten free sablé pastry recipe (sweet pastry for desserts)

2010-03-26T23:59:00.000Z

Here is the gluten free sablé pastry that I created for a Daring Baker's challenge.
This is a simple sweet pastry which is great for making sweet tart cases or even simple biscuits to serve with rich desserts. It is based on a combination of recipes - a gluten free sable recipe that I found here along with my shortcrust pastry recipe here. This volume of pastry made 8 x 10cm tart cases.
Don't skip the chilling step, it really helps to firm up the dough and makes it much easier to handle. You can freeze the dough either unbaked, at the chilling stage or once the tart case(s) have been baked blind.

gluten free sablé pastry

125g rice flour
1/4 tsp xanthan gum
25g glutinous rice flour
25g cornstarch
5g arrowroot flour
60g cold cubed salted butter (if unsalted, add a pinch of salt to the dough)
60g icing (confectioners) sugar
60g ground almonds
1 whole egg

method:

sieve the flours together with the xanthan gum
beat the butter and sugar together with the ground almonds and rice flour until you have fine bread crumbs.
add the whole egg and beat again to bring together. if the pastry doesn't naturally form into a ball, give it a squeeze and see if that holds it together - if so then take it out of the mixer and gently knead together to form a ball. If it is still too dry, add a little cold water if the pastry dough and beat a little longer before testing again and kneading in to a ball.
form the kneaded dough into a rectangular slab (more surface area will chill more quickly), wrap in cling film and chill for 30 minutes or until you are ready to use it.

Roll out and use as per your recipe, dusting the work surface and pastry with a little rice flour if it is sticky.

You will need to bake this pastry blind before you fill it. To do this:

roll the pastry out and line your tart tin.
cut a piece of baking parchment to fit the flat base inside your filled tin.
place the paper onto the pastry base.
cover the baking parchment with a layer of dried beans, rice, lentils or baking beans if you have them (ensure that the beans remain on the parchment otherwise they will bake into the pastry base)
bake the tart case for 20 minutes or so until the edges are lightly brown and the base of the pastry case is firm.

If rolled to 1/4" thickness, bake at approx 175°C for 15-20 minutes until golden. If the centre is a little undercooked, you can remove the beans and the paper and return the case to the oven for 5 minutes.

a quick apology

2010-03-15T09:13:00.003Z

I am frustratedly absent from blogging at present, and am very sorry for this. I have been on great painkillers that have made back pain and arthritis completely manageable for the last year or so, but my body has decided that it no longer likes the drugs. So until I can get the painkillers right, or jump the queue for back surgery, I am taking a quiet break. It hopefully will only be another week or so until I have this cracked but until then, under warning from the teen (who will verify that I talk drug-induced jibberish all day), I am banned from blogging! (By the way, I would like to point out that I consider myself far too young to have arthritis or need back surgery ... since my bio pic of a brownie will not reveal this!)

In the meantime, check out this food photography and cooking course that I hope to do later in the year with one of my favourite photographers, an amazing cook and one of my favourite parts of France - what could be better!

vanilla ice cream recipe

2010-03-01T17:22:00.003Z

I hesitate to say it, but I think that we may be slowly emerging from this long cold winter. Down here on the south coast, we have been taken aback by the volume and frequency of the snow, and I know even now it is too early to say it is past, merely that we may be over the worst!

The last burst of snow was heralded by the most rapid freeze I have ever experienced, it reminded me of a favourite film, The Ice Storm, and the creeping cracking ice grasping and enrobing everything in its' path. That Wednesday evening, wet rainy roads turned to sheet ice in a matter of minutes and our simple journey from one part of town to another became an epic adventure - sliding backwards down a hill, slipping off the road, into a wall and failing even to get over speed bump due to the lack of momentum and the severity of the ice. Having said all that you might think that our car was written off and we both ended up in neck braces, but no, all these manoeuvres were carried out gracefully at no more than 5 miles per hour, thankfully! The following day delivered an epic walk up iced hills to get to work, I fell over so many times on the way there, far too many times to count during a mere couple of miles walk!

I don't recollect ever spending a full winter sleeping in climbing socks, pj's, thermals and a fleece under a thick wool blanket and a down duvet. Crazy cold, or crazy susceptibility, at least. Whilst I haven't enjoyed the piercing cold it has, for some reason, awakened an interest in icecream. I have found myself thinking often about methods of making, ingredients and flavours. I have a list of recipes to try, but before I do, I thought that I would indulge in a flavour that I hope will be well received at home.

There seems to be a sudden fashion in our house for all things peanut butter related. My husband has always snacked on wholemeal toast with peanut butter and the teen could demolish boxes full of Reese's peanut butter cups given the chance, and I have recently become very fond of a bastardisation (or should I say adaptation?) of the Indonesian salad Gado Gado. This recipe isn't actually that far from the real mccoy, but most closely ressembles the gado gado salad that I remember feasting on at Rasa Sayang in Soho more than twenty years ago. I am not sure how authentic that meal really was though it was definitely a great meal in wonderful company. Isn't it funny how the memory of a good meal sticks with you, even down the years?

Anyway, back to peanuts. They have most recently made an appearance in a chocolate peanut ganache made to fill some not-too-good macarons I made. We decided not to fill them as, although tasty, they were not up to much visually. So with the choc peanut butter ganache on the worktop, I was at a loss for something to do with it. Not for long though, as my ice cream ponderings came flooding back. I mixed up and churned a batch of vanilla ice cream, which in its' naked form is often ignored in our freezer. However I split the mix in half and stirred half a batch of chocolate peanut ganache into half the ice cream before freezing. I have managed to salvage a scraping to photograph whilst the plain vanilla has lingered untouched, so far. I will crunch up the failed batch of chocolate macarons and stir them into this half batch, along with some crushed salted peanuts and grated Galaxy chocolate. I know it won't be hanging round for long after that!

Vanilla ice cream

5 egg yolks
500g double cream
150g castor sugar
250g whole milk
1 tsp vanilla extract (*please see foot note)
a pinch of sea salt.

For a proper recipe and method, can I suggest that I have a look at David Lebovitz's blog and his vanilla ice cream recipe here. My method is not ideal, indeed frankly, it is just lazy and it can easily go wrong!
Still, if you haven't heeded my warning, here is my method:

mix the egg yolks together with the vanilla extract in a 1 pint pyrex jug.
pour the cream, milk and sugar into a thick bottomed pan
heat the pan gently, stirring constantly until the sugar has dissolved, this will happen whilst the milk is finger-hot if you use castor sugar.
pour about 1/4 pint of the just-warm cream mixture into the jug whilst stirring the egg yolks briskly with a fork, as long as the cream is cool the eggs should mix into the cream without cooking
whilst stirring the pan, pour the egg yolk mix back into the pan.
put the pan back on to the heat and continue to warm the cream mix over a low heat whilst stirring constantly but gently.
keep stirring gently as the cream heats up slowly towards boiling, spluttering a little.
let the cream simmer and continue to stir gently. You should notice the cream thickening gradually, don't stir too vigorously or else the mix can separate.
after 5 minutes take the pan off the heat. now you want to stop the pan cooking and start cooling the custard down as soon as possible. you can do this by putting the pan in a bowl filled with iced water, unless you are like me and never have enough room in your freezer for the quantities of ice required to do this efficiently.
the alternative is to fill your washing up bowl about 1/3 full with some cold water and place your pan into the cold water - don't let go of the handle until you are certain that the pan is not floating & make sure that tap is turned off.
the cold water will begin to cool the ice cream down, change the cold water periodically to speed up the cooling proces. stir periodically to ensure a skin doesn't form (and to help it cool quicker).
on a cold-ish winter's day it took about 40 minutes for my custard to cool down.

If you summarise that, you warm your milk, cream and sugar, chuck a bit in your egg yolks and stir, pour the yolks into the main pan and stir constantly until the custard is thick. Then cool by putting the pan in water. Top tip - don't be an idiot and leave the tap running whilst the pan is in the water as you might end up with watery custard!

set up your icecream machine and pour the mixture in to churn as per the machine's instructions.
if you don't have an ice cream machine you can pour the cream mixture into a 1L freezer box and place in the freezer. Take the ice cream out every 60 minutes, stir thoroughly then replace in the freezer.
whilst the ice cream is churning, take half a recipe of chocolate peanut ganache and warm very gently in a microwave or bain marie until just melted.
pour in 50g double cream to thin, then add this sauce to the ice cream in the last 5 minutes of churning (if you making this manually, pour the sauce in when the ice cream is quite thick, give a good stir to distribute it like a raspberry ripple icecream, then freeze for a final hour).
store the churned icecream in the freezer until ready for use. take it out of the freezer 10-15 minutes before serving to allow it to soften up before serving.

I forget how easy it is to make a really top quality ice cream at home, most often because I don't have much room in the freezer to store it. Admittedly our freezer is getting a little bit full now, 2 flavours of ice creams, 2 sorbets and tiramisu - the dessert bug has really bittten me, so watch out for more recipes soon!

*using vanilla extract - I don't want to be controversial, by all means use a vanilla pod but it does add an extra stage infusing the milk/cream before adding the sugar. I use Nielsen Massey Madagascan vanilla extract and find it excellent in most desserts, especially in sweet cooked/baked products.

gluten free tiramisu, daring bakers feb'10

2010-02-27T07:33:00.001Z

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.

I greeted this Daring Baker's challenge with some degree of trepidation as tiramisu is not a dessert that I have chosen to eat very often over the years. I have never seen a gluten free version which means my memories are even more vague and I am dredging back a long way for a point of reference.

According to the Daring Baker hosts, Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking, this is the story behind this rich dessert:

"The perfect Tiramisu is a balance of flavors of a sweet zabaglione, strong coffee, marsala wine, creamy mascarpone cheese and the dusting of unsweetened cocoa.

Tiramisu is said to have its origins in Treviso (Italy), and there are quite a few stories about how it came to be created. One story traces the tiramisu as far back as the Renaissance claiming that it was first made in honour of the visit of Grand Duke Cosimo di Medici to Tuscany. Yet another one points to the tiramisu being an adaptation of the "Zuppa Inglese" referring to the sponge cake and cream layered English Trifle. However, experts in this area generally agree that the tiramisu as we know it today, was born in the ‘70s. Some believe that the Tiramisu was created in the the Le Beccherie (a restaurant in Treviso). Others suggest that Tiramisu was first made in 1971 by an Italian baker named Carminantonio Iannaccone in a small bakery in Treviso, Italy."

I love the fact that two passionate bakers from India are encouraging us to create a multi-faceted dessert from Italy in our many kitchens all around the world. That is the Daring Bakers for you!

For any-one who cares (and that includes me!) tiramisu, or rather tirami su literally means "pick me up" or "pull me up" in reference to the effects of the sugar and espresso in the dessert.

There were no shortcuts in this recipe and method, the challenge was made up of 4 technical components, all of which had to be followed in order to successfully complete the challenge. The whole process took me 5 sessions to complete, baking the biscuits and making the cheese in evenings during the week, then starting the zabaglioni and the pastry cream early on a weekend morning before constructing and chilling the dessert later the same afternoon. Of course, as all bloggers know, the dish isn't completed until photographed and written up so that accounts for the final session today. I am very glad that I chose to complete this challenge very early in the month as I think I would have panicked if I had left this to the last minute!

As this dish is quite complex, I am going to break down the elements into separate posts which I will add in the next few days:

savoiardi biscuits
home-made marscapone cheese
cooked zabaglioni
pastry cream

Each component is a valuable technique in its' own right and very useful in a baker's repetoire. Compiling the dish seems a touch bizarre after all the effort that goes into making the elements. Fundamentally, you just mix all the sauce elements together until they are creamy, then layer the cream with the savoiardi biscuits. Ta-daa!! Tiramisu :)

orange & cardamom marmalade bars

2010-02-18T14:49:00.001Z

UMME5EB3TG5E

Now that I have made marmalade, I am constantly thinking of recipes to include it. I really don't want to find any jars stuffed at the back of a cupboard two years down the line.
I have been working in the bakery at work for the past couple of weeks. We are busy with new customers so the orders are coming in fast and furiously and it is all hands on deck. At present though, we just don't have enough hands so we are all flat out all day trying to get enough baked and packed to fill the pallets quickly enough. It is always good to be back doing the hands on work but the collapsed discs in my back are screaming out by the end of every day and it is all I can do to swallow some food, painkillers and collapse. It is almost unheardof for me, but twice this week I haven't even had the energy to turn my computer on at home!
I spend my days thinking of healthy sensible recipes that I can make at home which will sustain me during each working day and ensure that I finish the day feeling healthy rather than drained. However, having made marmalade this week, everything I make this week is going to contain this rich bitter jam and so will not rank too highly on the health scales!

This bar is (yet!) another variation on Nanaimo bars, but the filling is a blend of bittersweet marmalade and custardy cream. With a crushed chocolate biscuit base and a chocolate topping, it is also a more substantial take on jaffa cakes. I have changed the recipe a bit, to lower the sugar content and take out the raw egg in the base. I am really looking forward to the bitter note of the marmalade cutting through the sweetness of the custardy layer and the chocolate on top. A little piece mid-afternoon should give me just enough ooomph to get me through till the end of the day & see me home with a smile, I hope, and that will definitely make me more popular in my house!

orange & cardamom marmalade bars
base layer

100g butter
10g ground flax with 30g water
300g gluten free chocolate shortbread crumbs
50g ground almonds
25g icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Line an 8" square baking tin
Melt the butter
Mix flax and water & leave to stand for 5 minutes.
Add 1/2 tsp vanilla extract then stir it all into the butter.
Stir the butter mix in to the crumb then pour into the prepared tin.
Press in to create a firm even base, chill until the middle layer is ready.

middle layer

100g softened butter
100g marmalade (I used my orange and cardamom recipe here)
25g custard powder
125g icing sugar

beat butter and marmalade together until smooth and creamy
sieve the icing sugar and custard powder together then add to the butter
beat with a hand beater until well combined and smooth
spread over the biscuit base and chill

top layer

55g milk chocolate
60g (70%) dark chocolate
25g butter

melt chocolates and butter together over a low heat or in microwave
allow to cool (but still liquid)
pour over the middle layer and chill until set

gluten free pot sticker dumplings (metric)

2010-02-15T11:51:00.000Z

I posted the original recipe and method for these a few months ago, but never quite got round to converting the recipe from cups into metric measures.
The teen and I made these as part of our spurious Chinese New Year's Eve feast dinner this weekend so I have finally got round to writing up the metric measures. This time we made the filling with minced chicken thighs (including the fat & a bit of finely chopped skin) replacing the pork, as we were having pork belly elsewhere in the meal, it made a great substitution with a dash of chinese rice wine & an extra pinch of salt.

Please refer back to the original post for the original filling and method here.

Pot sticker wrappers:

175g rice flour
40g tapioca starch
40g corn starch
46g sweet rice flour
1 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp psyllium husks
1/2 tsp kuzu
1/4 tsp salt
1 large egg
120g cold water

Method:

Sieve all the dry ingredients together.
Beat the egg into the cold water.
Whilst stirring your flour, gradually pour in the water making sure the flour absorbs the water as you go.
Bring the lumps of flour together in the bowl by hand.
If the dough is too wet or sticky add more sweet rice flour, if it is too dry add water 1 tablespoon at a time.
Knead this for a couple of minutes on a work surfaced sprinkled with a little corn starch
Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces. Leave all but 1 piece in a bowl under a damp tea towel.
Dust your work surface with corn starch and roll out the small piece of dough until it is between 1/16th" & 1/8th" thick.
Using a 3-3.5 inch round cutter, cut out as many shapes as you can, put the circles to one side under a damp cloth and carry on with each piece of dough in turn. I found that if you collected up the trimmings and sprinkled a couple of drops of water on them, you could combine them into the next piece of dough without any problems.
Carry on until all the pot stickers are cut out. This recipe makes 50 dumpling skins.

click here for a filling recipe and cooking method

oxtail stew recipe

2010-02-14T16:44:00.000Z

It's still winter, it's still cold and there is even more snow forecast. On top of that, it is February, credit card bills from Christmas are overdue and there still isn't enough sun or daylight to keep everyone in good cheer. At this time of year I find myself turning to slow-cooked stews, vegetable soups and casseroles for the family.
Last week, I spotted oxtail on the butchers counter and bought a few pieces to try it on the family.
The teen grew into a phase of really fussy eating between about 5 and 13, she has slowly eased out of it trying first mussels, then meat with bones in (that was a big one!) but I am yet to persuade her of the flavour and enjoyment to be found in offal and other trimming cuts. But she does love beef, so since it is less than a pace from a rump steak to the tail, I thought I would risk the minimal cost and make an oxtail stew.

This is a very easy and lazy recipe making best use of a slow cooker or aga to gently heat the stew for hours at a time. Early one morning this week, whilst waiting my eyes to focus in the grey dawn and the coffee to brew, I roughly chopped up some celery, carrots & onions and slowly fried them off in a touch of olive oil with a clove or 2 of garlic added. This was piled into the slow cooker with herbs, a few pieces of oxtail, some left over red wine and beef stock. And that was it, slow cooking for 10 hours to create a rich and unctous stew with delicious gravy.
Serve with good crusty bread or mashed potato, a touch of mustard and a glass of red wine or proper beer.

oxtail stew (per person)

2-3 pieces oxtail
1/2 medium onion
1/2 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 carrot, sliced
1/2 stick celery, sliced
1 tsp rice flour
1/2 sprig thyme
1/2 bay leaf
1/4 pt beef stock
1 glass red wine (or more beef stock)

dry fry the oxtail in a hot pan to caramelise all over then take out
add a dash of olive oil, the chopped onion and garlic to the hot pan, fry over low heat for 5 minutes
add the carrot and celery, fry for another 5 minutes
sprinkle over flour, and fry for a couple more minutes
transfer the contents of the frying pan to a casserole or slow cooker
add the oxtail and herbs
pour over the stock and wine, and stir
if using slow cooker, close lid and turn onto low heat for 10 hours
for casserole, bring to the boil on a hob then transfer to a low oven (140°C) for 3-4 hours
to serve, remove herbs, serve with a green salad and crusty bread or mashed potatoes and mustard.

Buy "A Hand for Haiti" E-recipe book NOW!

2010-02-11T20:43:00.002Z

Lauren who blogs at Celiacteen has pulled together a collection of recipes donated by bloggers from all around the world, which is being sold to raise funds for the Red Cross in Haiti.

This is a collection of over 85 recipes and more than half of them are gluten free. Every one needs a few gluten free recipes in their collection so what a great way to gain a few new recipes as well as a chance to discover lots of food bloggers from all around the globe.
This is a great cause, and really we are lucky to be rewarded with so many great recipes for such a small donation.

The book sells for a minimum of $10 Canadian dollars, but when you consider that $15 Canadian dollars is still less than £10, this book is worth at least $15 Canadian dollars of every-one's money.

PLEASE BUY THIS TODAY - if you buy before the end of FRIDAY 12th FEBRUARY, the Canadian government will MATCH each donation that you make. Really! So, spend a tenner, get a cook book and the warm cosy feeling of knowing that $30 Canadian dollars will be donated to the Red Cross for Haiti.

There isn't much more to say, just buy it!

Thank you :)

Puy Lentils recipe

2010-02-08T07:00:00.012Z

The teen has just burnt a pan of lentils. She was making some for her to take to college for lunch tomorrow and she used the last of the puy lentils we have in the house. She is currently trying very hard not to slam the cupboard doors as she clears up the mess and the burnt pan. She is not a happy kid as she is faced with having to eat a canteen lunch tomorrow. I was going to suggest making an alternative version but decided to bite my tongue and beat a hasty retreat instead.

In the kitchen cupboard we have a good selection of pulses : brown lentils, yellow split peas, chana dahl, chickpeas, kidney beans, black eye peas, cannelini and haricot, just off the top of my head. But I know that not one of these will make an acceptable substitute for her, not today. So the teen thinks she is going hungry and the world is a dark dank place.

When I was her age, doing A-levels, I attended a college with tertiary and sixth form classes on the same site. The subsidised canteen was run by the City & Guilds catering students, and the food was good (most of the time!). That didn't stop me though, on a quest to save my allowance and part-time wages for the weekends. I would walk the mile and a half each way and eat the cheapest food I could buy there. The canteen sold breakfast sandwiches, 3 course lunches and proper puddings but it didn't take long to work out the cheapest foods on offer. On the average day, it was a heaped plate of plain white rice with beansprouts,which off the top of my head (and we are going back a few years) cost 26p, 15p for the rice, 11p for the beansprouts. I know it sounds as though I was being really tight, and I probably was, but I really enjoyed the food. It was simple, fresh and filling. They had soy sauce behind the counter and with a beg and a smile, a dash of dark rich soy and a bit of fresh salad, this was a fine meal. There was one dark shadow that could spoil the meal though, and I have never, ever understood this. The beansprouts were baked "au gratin". Yes, really. A deep gastronorm tray of beansprouts seasoned then pushed under a grill with a thick layer of sharp catering cheddar-style cheese. You had to avoid the cheese and there was a knack to doing it. The dinner ladies thought that the cheesey topping was the best part of the dish, so they would bestow it with a smile and a heavy hand to favoured students and wouldn't take no for an answer. The only way to solve the problem was to arrive about 5 minutes after the canteen opened. This would ensure that you weren't first in the queue, the staff were fairly busy and would already have bestowed their gift of cheese on earlier visitors meaning you would likely as not get a scoop of slightly softened sprouts missing the dreaded cheese. I have no idea why they made beansprouts au gratin though I am glad to say that I have never seen it on a menu since. If you have, you may well have been eating the food created by one of my north London college alumni (sorry!).

So back to the task in hand. This is the recipe that the teen was making. These lentils can be served as a side or a vegetarian main, or tossed in a vinaigrette, they can be served as a salad. They are really popular in our house and were eaten with glee by our kids when other vegetables were shunned. The lentils will stay firm if you leave them to stand after they have boiled but if you are pushed for time, you can simmer them a little more (adding a little extra water) for around 15 minutes instead.

Puy Lentils

250g puy (small green french) lentils
2 sticks celery
1 carrrot
1 clove garlic
1 bay leaves
1 lemon, zested and juiced
2 sprigs thyme
salt and pepper
2 dsp (2 x 10ml) olive oil

Method:

Dice the celery and carrots and finely chop the garlic.
Rinse the lentils.
Pour 1 dsp olive oil into a heavy bottomed saucepan with a lid.
Heat gently then add the garlic and vegetables and stir, allowing to soften in the oil, about 10 mins.
Add the lentils and turn in the oil until covered.
Pour on cold water until the lentils are covered, about 2 cm above the surface of the lentils.
Add the bay leaves and thyme, cover with a lid.
Bring to the boil and turn down to a gentle boil for 10 mins.
Turn the heat off after 10 minutes and leave to stand for 30 minutes.
The lentils should cook through but will still have some bite (ie not mushy).

To serve hot (rather than use in salad):

Remove the bay leaves and thyme stems.
Bring to the boil again with the lid off.
Add the zest and juice of the lemon and season to taste.
Pour over the 2nd dsp of olive oil and stir through, serve.

If you are going to use these as a salad:

Drain once cool
Remove the bay leaves and thyme stems.
Add the lemon zest and juice along with the 2nd dsp olive oil.
Season to taste and serve with chopped parsley.

orange & cardamom marmalade recipe

2010-02-06T18:50:00.000Z

During our mammoth kitchen clear-out, I felt it my duty to venture right to the back of (nearly) every cupboard and the fridges to investigate the contents. Right at the very back of the little fridge snuggled a jar with the merest scrapings of its' contents remaining inside. This is a really bad habit of mine. When I am totally in love with a food, I can never bring myself to finish it, in case I forget it, or I am craving the flavour one day. I am not entirely sure of the reason but I know that it reflects an element of my personality that a psych would probably make a mountain out of!

The jar concerned bears a black lid and label with contents almost as dark, and is the remnants of our last jar of Kush Cuisine's Orange & Mango Marmalade with Cardamom. When we used to sell at farmers markets in London we would see them at the Blackheath market. I say we, but in fact my alternate Sundays never coincided with them, and it was my husband who attended on those days whilst I was working back in the bakery. And so it was him who came home with this delicious thick marmalade studded with deeply perfumed crunchy cardamom seeds. I love it, and having given up the markets, have had to ration myself to the occassional serving in order to make the jar last longer. And then one day there was one last serving left in the jar and it was pushed further to the back of the fridge to save rather than actually finishing it.

Today though, I made rice flour drop scones for breakfast and feasted on them with the last of this delicious marmalade, safe in the knowledge that the citrussy smell wafting through our kitchen was heralding the creation of my first ever batch of marmalade, flavoured with cardamom in deference to Kush's masterpiece.

If you ever find yourself at a farmers market in London, do check out Kush and grab a jar of their delicious marmalade ... alternatively, of course you could have a go at this recipe and see how your own version matches up!

I have based my recipe and method on a combination of this recipe on Delia's site here and a recipe from The Times here, have a look (and you will be able to see how my impatience changed the methods!) This can be a bit time-consuming to make and you need to plan in advance. Obviously getting your Seville oranges is the first mission as they are only in season in January and February. If you can lay your hands on some, but don't have time to use them, stick them in the freezer and you will be able to make the marmalade whenever you fancy.

Seville bitter orange marmalade infused with cardamom

Ingredients:

1.5kg seville oranges
10g black cardamom seeds (after podding)
2kg granulated sugar
2.2l water

Equipment:

2 large pans with a lid & some foil, 1 x muslin square (I am using a new baby square), big sieve & bowl, jam thermometer or a few chilled saucers, 6-7 x 500g jars with lids & waxed paper to seal.

Method:

Wash the oranges and scrub with a bit of washing up liquid if they are coated in a shiny layer of wax.
Place in the large pan and fill up with water
Bring to a boil, and reduce heat to a simmer. Seal the top of the pan with a piece of foil and then place the lid over.
Simmer at a very low temperature until the oranges are softened by a combination of the steam and hot, hot water - this took about 2 hours for me.
Whilst the oranges simmer, de-seed the green cardamom pods by toasting the whole pods gently in a frying pan until they swelled up in the heat, open the pods with your finger nail or the tip of a sharp knife and scrape out the seeds. There is no denying this is tedious work so if you can find good quality ready-seeded black cardamom seeds, I suggest you use them!
Leave the oranges to sit in the water until cool enough to handle (retain the water afterwards).
Place the sieve over a big bowl. Slice each orange in half, using a spoon scrape out the pith, pips and inners of each orange half into the sieve.
Add all the orange inners to the water your cooked your oranges in and bring this to a rolling boil to reduce by half in about 20 minutes.
Whilst this is boiling, warm your sugar either by placing the sealed bags on your radiator (my lazy method) or sprinkling the sugar into a couple of baking trays and placing in a low oven at about 100°C for 10-15 minutes.
Slice your orange skins into thick or thin strips - depending on what you prefer in your marmalade. For me this is short thick chunks (though thin slivers are much more photogenic of course!).
Once the twenty minutes is up and the orange liquid is reduced by half, place the sieve over your second pan and drain the cooked orange liquid into the clean pan. Scrape through the sieve with a big spoon to extract as much of the juices and goodness into the pan below.
Add the orange peel to the pan of juices along with the cardamom seeds. Bring this to the boil and slowly add the sugar stirring constantly to ensure it dissolves quickly.
Once the sugar has dissolved turn up the heat and boil rapidly for 10-15 minutes.Whilst this is happening, wash your jars and lids then sterilise in the oven at 150°C for 15 minutes.
Check the setting point of the marmalade - if you have a sugar thermometer you are looking for the temperature to reach 106°C (220°F). If you don't have a sugar thermometer grab a chilled saucer and scoop out a spoonful of the syrupy dark juices onto the saucer. Leave to sit for a minute or two then tilt the saucer from side to side. If the liquid is set, the skin will stop the marmalade running across the saucer as you tilt. If not, the liquid will run and needs to boil for another 10 minutes or so.
Repeat the test until the marmalade is ready and once setting point has been reached, take the pan off the heat and leave to sit for half an hour to cool a little.
Ladle the cooled marmalade into your cooled sterilised jars and place a piece of waxed paper over the top before placing a lid on each jar.

Notes - I found that the oranges were a bit over cooked - when I came to remove the pith and inners the skin fell apart making the whole process very messy. This also made it harder to cut the skin into even shreds so I ended up using a pair of scissors and sandwiching several pieces together to cut.. In future I would only boil for an hour, then leave to cool for a maximum of 2 hours and hopefully this will do the trick.

gluten free macaroni cheese

2010-01-31T17:49:00.000Z

This recipe is a homage to the macaroni cheese created recently by Helen Graves for Fiona Beckett's bloggers Mac & Cheese competition here and is, to my mind, the most genius adaptation of a recipe familiar to most of us. You can find Helen's recipe and the story behind it here.

I love macaroni, the slightly denser hollow pasta tubes with it's satisfying bite but am yet to find a gluten free version in the UK. In fact, on the day I went to buy pasta for this, I could only find corn & rice fusilli which is certainly not a combination I would choose naturally. But since it was the only pasta on the shelf, it is now the pasta which is enveloped in the most cheesy sauce awaiting baking for tonight's supper (and probably tomorrow night's too).

The genius behind Helen's mac & cheese is that she cooked her pasta in a ham stock, this was the bit that really grabbed me. So yesterday morning I found myself in a queue ten deep at our local butcher crossing my fingers that no-one else in front of me had read Helen's blog and was also queueing for one of the 3 remaining ham hocks on the platter in the window. I watched a couple of young women in front of me buy the best part of half a pig cut to their requirements: joints, chops, boned belly, mince all packed into big clear plastic sacks and pay the most ludicrously low price for the lot ... all freerange and locally farmed, and all such amazing value. It was also great to watch that their order didn't phase the butchers or annoy anyone else in the queue, in fact it didn't actually seem to slow up the queue very much at all, two butchers diverted to process their order and the other 3 carried on serving the rest of us. I spotted a pack of oxtail which I couldn't leave without buying, along with some lamb steaks for the teen who made marinated shish kebabs, tabbouleh with quinoa, hummous and pitta for supper for us all last night (it was lovely!).

The ham hocked simmered during the afternoon as we cleaned up around the on-going building works. I left it to cool in the stock over night and today converted it into the most unctuous pasta & cheese bake. The pasta was cooked in the stock for 2/3 of the packet cooking time before draining into a second pan. As I was leaving the pasta al dente (gluten free pasta gets soggy so quickly), it seemed sensible to try to squeeze even more of that flavoursome stock into the dish. So veering away from Helen's recipe I made the cheese sauce with half soya milk and half stock (using the pasta cooking stock). I was trying to capture as much of the flavour of the stock as possible whilst at the same time reducing the dairy content - quite difficult when the recipe calls for 500g cheese! I used a mixture of cheeses, very much what we had in the fridge at the time, which was Sussex High Weald's Ashdown Forrester, Bookham's Sussex Charmer, the tail end of a Wensleydale and also a hunk of artisan Red Leicester. This has made a very rich quite complex flavour though lacking a little bite which 100g of really good cheddar would have added. Next time I will use the same combination but with the cheddar, 100g of each.

So here we are, I know it taste's great (chef's perks!) even though it hasn't yet been baked in the oven. There is enough pasta and cheese to feed a small army ... or our family for today, and possibly tomorrow!

Ham hock stock:

1 ham hock
1 celery stick
1 carrot
1 onion
1 bay leaf
6 peppercorns

Cover all of these with water in a large pan, bring to a boil.
Once boiling turn heat down to a simmer, cover with a lid and leave to cook for 2-3 hours.
When meat is tender and flakey, turn heat off and leave the hock to cool in the stock.
Once cold, drain the stock and pick the meat off the ham hock. Chop the meat finely and chill until needed.

Pasta

1 x 500g gluten free pasta (macaroni if you can get it)
ham stock

Bring the stock to a rolling boil (don't salt).
Add the pasta and cook for just over half the time stated on the pack.
Drain the pasta into a sieve placed over a second pan.

Cheese sauce

50g butter
30g rice flour
350g soya milk
350g ham stock
500g grated cheese

In a heavy bottomed saucepan, make the bechamel by melting the butter, then adding the flour.
Stir or whisk the two together over a gently heat and keep stirring for 3-4 minutes allowing the flour to cook through. The flour will come together into a thick mass which will then break down again as you continue to cook.
Take the pan off the heat, pour in the soya milk whilst whisking constantly and keep whisking whilst the sauce thickens. Add the hot stock and simmer the sauce gently for a few minutes.
Remove from the heat and stir in the cheeses, stir gently until fully melted.
Sprinkle over the ham reserved from the hock. Taste and season with nutmeg, pepper and / or mustard to taste.

Assemble the mac by adding the pasta to the cheese sauce and mixing together. Pour into a large baking dish. Bake at 200°C until hot throughout and browned on the tip. Before baking, if you want to, you can top this as per Helen's suggestion with more cheese mixed with breadcrumbs. However by this stage I was beginning to worry that we might all die of heart attacks whilst eating this (!) so I omitted this crunchy cheesy topping and opted instead to serve with a crunchy chicory & little gem lettuce salad with a mustardy vinaigrette.

gluten free peanut butter shortbread bars

2010-01-29T07:00:00.001Z

I have been making more than my fair share of exceedingly sweet things this month, as I have completed my first Daring Baker's challenge. I usually actively try to avoid baking really sugary treats, as I find sugar so addictive that I have to exercise extreme will-power not to eat everything at once. However the rest of the family are rather partial to sugary snacks, so I have made the odd recipe to keep them all happy!

We are having a big, big clear out of our small, small kitchen at present in preparation for a bit of a re-jig to make the workspace a bit more practical. So every evening has seen me with my head stuck right to the back of the cupboards, packing boxes and investigating sell-by dates.
And oh, the shame! One unidentifiable tin was dated 1-10-2003 which means that it has moved house with us at least once and possibly up to 3 occasions. The label was gone and whilst I was quite happy to open and investigate, I was out-voted and the tin was binned. We had the weirdest selection of wafer biscuits and digestifs from central European countries, pasta from East Germany (thank you to the many language student visitors) as well as a random selection of cup-a-soups (some of which are now out of production, does this make them collectors items?) which pre-dated my going gluten free. It is going to take a while for us to get the kitchen re-organised, so I can only apologise for the fact that I will continue to be a bit light on new recipes for the next couple of weeks. Once we are there though, we will christen the space with a roast Rib of Beef from Paganum which is taunting me with it's deep red and creamy white beauty whilst patiently waiting for us to demolish it.

In the depths of one cupboard languished a huge tub of wholesome peanut butter, dark brown and chunky, with neither salt nor sugar added. It was well within date but the tail end has been neglected in favour of a jar of glowing yellow American Skippy peanut butter recently acquired from Costco. Whilst the flavour of this wholesome version was still great, the contents were drying and lumpy yet too good to chuck, so I looked for a way of using this up. Another find was a box of homemade biscuits - the last of the shortbread that we made at Christmas as gifts but ungiven due to the snowy weather. And when a tin of condensed milk rolled out of the cupboard onto my toe (ouch!), a plan was formed.

There are two ways of making this, both are quick and easy but they depend on the ingredients that you have to hand. If you don't have a bunch of biscuits to hand - and to be honest, if you have to buy gluten-free biscuits you probably don't then want to crush them up and use them for something other than dunking in a good cup of tea - you can bake the base fresh, which is quick and easy too. Of course, and as usual, you can substitute the gluten free flour ingredients for wheat flour if you want. You can omit the peanut butter filling and replace it with a jar or tin of ready made dulce de leche for an even quicker recipe. Both the biscuit base and the baked shortbread base can be used for a myriad of other toppings and bar-style cookies so they are both really handy recipes to have in your repertoire.
I made this last night with the crushed biscuit base, the 3 stages took no more than 20 minutes in total with chilling time on top. If you freeze your biscuits before you use them, the chilling time will be reduced.

Ingredients

Crushed biscuit base:

100g melted butter
300g crushed gluten free biscuits (digestives, shortbread, any plain biscuits)
25g cocoa powder (if you want a chocolatey base)

line an 8"x8" square tin with non-stick baking paper.
crush the biscuits. I chucked the biscuits in to a pyrex mixing bowl, grabbed a flat-ended rolling pin and pounded them with the blunt end as if I were using a big pestle & mortar.
pour over the melted butter and cocoa if required and stir through until fully mixed
press the mixture into the tin firmly and then chill in the fridge until cold and set.

Baked shortbread base (this is a basic traditional shortbread recipe)

150g rice flour
30g cornstarch or maize meal (subtitute potato starch or millet flour if necessary)
120g salted butter at room temperature
60g sugar
beat the sugar and butter together
add the flour and mix until you have big breadcrumbs
press the breadcrumbs into the tin to form an even base layer
prick the surface lightly (not all the way through) with a fork every 3cm
bake at 160°C for 20 minutes and allow to cool in the tin before adding the next layer

Whilst the base is cooling, make the middle layer ...

85g peanut butter
75g condensed milk
20g custard powder (substitute with 20g tapioca starch, 5g sugar & 1tsp vanilla extract if you can't find or tolerate it)
a sprinkling of sea salt

beat the condensed milk and peanut butter together until creamy
add the custard powder and beat again, the mix will become firmer due to the starch
spread the mixture over the chilled base layer and return to the fridge for about 30 minutes

Whilst the middle layer is cooling ...

75g plain chocolate broken in to pieces (I used a 70% Belgian bar available from all supermarkets)
65g milk chocolate (in this case - Galaxy)
25g butter

Melt the chocolate ingredients together, keeping the mixture as cool as possible.
Allow the chocolates to cool as much as they can whilst remaining runny
Spread the chocolate over the cooled peanut butter layer
Chill again and allow around an hour before serving.

daring bakers - nanaimo bars - january 2010

2010-01-27T00:01:00.001Z

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.

This is my first attempt at a Daring Baker challenge. The Daring Bakers (and Daring Chefs) are a worldwide collective of foodbloggers who participate each month in a challenge, each making to the same recipe and then posting their experiences and photos of their results. I have followed the Daring Bakers for quite a while and often wished I was taking part, so now I have taken the plunge. On starting Daring Baker, I had been expecting to have to convert each recipe to gluten-free but amazingly, my first challenge is a gluten free recipe - this makes for a very easy life. Lauren who converted this recipe and hosted this challenge is a cool gluten free blogger from Canada, if you haven't come across her site and her recipes you are missing out, so do have a look at her blog here.

Nanaimo bars originate from a town called Nanaimo in Canada. These were chosen to remind us and celebrate next month's Winter Olympics which are being staged in Canada. I am really looking forward to the Winter olympics and am loving the BBC trail for them too. I will definitely make this recipe again to welcome the games into our house (a lame excuse, I know!).

It may seem complicated or unnecessary to make these biscuits from scratch for the biscuit base, but it isn't. We don't have graham crackers in stores in the UK so it is often suggested to substitute with digestive biscuits, but don't, as there is little similarity. Instead grab your rolling pin and knock up a batch of these, you won't regret it!
By the way, I have deviated from the traditional path a little to create a less sweet and, to my mind, more interesting filling. Hopefully I haven't insulted the folk of Nanaimo in doing this. If it is any consolation, the nut (any nut will do) filling tastes great!

Gluten-Free Graham Wafers
Ingredients

138g glutinous rice flour
100g Tapioca Starch/Flour
65g buckwheat flour or potato starch (the original recipe called for Sorghum flour but it is v.difficult to find a completely gluten free source in the UK, so I have substituted this).
200g dark muscavado sugar
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
3/4 tsp or 4g salt
100g butter or very chilled dairy free margarine
80g honey
75ml whole milk
30ml (2 tbsp) pure vanilla extract

Directions:

Chop the butter into a very fine dice then freeze for 30 minutes. If using dairy free margarine, freeze 100g then chop or grate once frozen.
Sieve flours and bicarbonate of soda together.
In a small bowl, whisk together the honey, milk and vanilla.
Combine the flours, brown sugar and salt in a mixer
Blend using the paddle beater to combine, then add the chilled butter
Blend again until the mix is the consistency of a coarse meal (no chunks of butter should be visible).
Add the liquid blend to the flour mixture and mix again until the dough barely comes together. It will be very soft and sticky.
Turn the dough onto a surface well-floured with sweet rice flour and pat the dough into a rectangle about 1 inch thick. Cut in half, bag each piece and chill until firm, about 2 hours, or overnight.
Sift an even layer of sweet rice flour onto the work surface and roll 1 piece of the dough into a long rectangle, about 1/8 inch thick. The dough will be quite sticky, so flour as necessary.
Cut into 2 inch squares, prick with a fork over each biscuit, set on a baking tray.
If the dough is sticky, chill the trays for half an hour before baking (I baked these on the snowiest weekend in early January so didn't need to do this). Gather the scraps together and set aside. Repeat with the second batch of dough.
Adjust the rack to the upper and lower positions and preheat oven to 180°C
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.
Bake for 15 minutes, until browned and slightly firm to the touch, rotating sheets halfway through to ensure even baking. This might take a little longer, but not much, The biscuits will come out soft but crispen on cooling. If they don't get fully crisp pop them back in the oven for another 5 minutes.

When cooled completely, place 160g biscuits in a food processor and pulse to make 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.

For Nanaimo Bars
base layer

115g butter
50g granulated sugar
35g cocoa
1 egg or 8g ground flax with 30g water
160g gluten free graham cracker crumbs (as above)
130g coconut (omitted as I am intolerant of coconut, additional graham crumbs to replace)
55g almonds, finely chopped

Line an 8" square baking tin
Melt the butter, sugar and cocoa together in a double boiler or microwave
Add the egg or flax and stir well until thickened
Stir in the crumb, coconut and nuts then pour into the prepared tin.
Press in to create a firm even base, chill until the middle layer is ready.

middle layer

70g butter
80g peanut butter
20g custard powder
30g double cream
200g icing sugar

soften butter and peanut butter in a microwave until soft.
sieve the icing sugar and custard powder together then add to the butters
pour over the cream
beat with a hand beater until well combined and smooth
spread over the biscuit base and chill

top layer

55g milk chocolate
60g (70%) dark chocolate
25g butter

melt chocolates and butter together over a low heat or in microwave
allow to cool (but still liquid)
pour over the middle layer and chill until set

Additional Information by Lauren:

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.

garlic confit

2010-01-24T19:20:00.001Z

Garlic, this is a staple in most kitchens, a delicious and easily identifiable ingredient that enhances so many dishes that we enjoy.
At home, we have started making a simple garlic confit which makes using this essential ingredient that bit quicker and easier. Of course there are some recipes where the fresh pungent flavour of the whole cloves is still best, but we have found that many, in fact, most of our meals benefit from the lighter touch of a clove or two of confit garlic and a drizzle of its' aromatic oil.
Thomas Keller advocates the use of garlic confit in many of his dishes and gives a method for this, along with other confit concepts in his book Bouchon.
In our kitchen a jar of confit garlic sits to the right of the gas hob alongside some freerange eggs, a pot of sea salt, a lemon, a couple of lighters (to light our broken hobs), a pepper grinder, some honey and - at present - a jar of fennel-infusing vodka (which really should be stored in a dark cupboard instead). With just a little bit of work every few weeks, it is possibly the most useful ingredient in our kitchen especially as it speeds up the process of making a quick evening meal dramatically. But there are just 3 cloves left at the bottom of our jar, so it is time to make some more.
It can be a bit fiddly to make as each clove of garlic should be peeled completely before use, but I have found a slightly easier method of making which at the same time saves your finger nails from the inevitable spikes of garlic skin which wedge just under the nail and hurt like hell as you peel. So get yourself three or four heads of garlic, separate out the heads of garlic into individual cloves and remove the outer layers of paper by rubbing. At this point try your cloves in the jar you are planning to use, to ensure they fit, then wash and sterilise the jar.
Place all the cloves into a large saucepan and cover with boiling water. Simmer for a couple of minutes until you see the odd pieces of skin floating to the surface. Drain the cloves and put them into a bowl. Now the outer skins should separate really easily, so with wet fingers (to stop the skin sticking to you) take the rest of the skins off and pile the cloves onto a piece of paper towel to dry. Soon you will find yourself with a heap of naked white cloves ready to be preserved in oil.
Pop the garlic back into the large saucepan and cover with oil, I use a cold pressed olive or rapeseed oil. If you are a keen user of infused oil, you can add more oil to the pan, perhaps an inch above the level of the cloves. This will give you extra oil to bottle later on.
Heat the garlic and oil until the oil begins to boil, now turn the heat down to a very low simmer. Leave the garlic simmering gently in the oil for around 40 minutes. The cloves should be soft and tender but still pale and creamy.
If you are a fan of caramelised garlic, you can cook the garlic at a slightly higher heat, to create a more caramelised clove. It is very much personal taste as to which you prefer.
We use a spoonful of oil and a clove of preserved garlic in virtually every savoury dish we make. I love the simplicity of use as well as the rounded and more subtle flavour of the preserved garlic, just mash a clove onto the pan using the back of a spoon or spatula and you are done. As it is already cooked, we don't need to worry about preparing and cooking the garlic before adding to a dish and that harsh flavour you can get if the garlic isn't cooked through is no longer an issue. Personally, I don't find caramelised garlic as useful in the kitchen though I love it in it's own right. I certainly couldn't use a whole jar of caramelised garlic withough having to get seriously creative. Occassionally I will roast a head of garlic wrapped in foil in the oven, then keep this in the fridge squeezing the cloves as I need them into sauces, mayonnaise or just onto a cracker for a snack.

home-made marshmallow recipe

2010-01-15T16:36:00.000Z

I can take not credit whatsoever for this recipe. I was reading David Lebovitz's facebook feed and there it was, a link to the most beautifully indulgent winter-warming concept. The original post is here written by Rebecca & Val at 'Foodie with Family' which is a lovely blog and well worth a look.

The post is for hot chocolate blocks with marshmallows, a beautiful idea and the subject of some debate in our house. The b contain condensed milk and plenty of chocolate yet you use them by plunging them into hot milk. Far enough, but since they contain milk, why can't you just put them in hot water? We debated whether my husband would notice us using up the last of his milk in a mug of hot chocolate. The teen hates milk (except in hot chocolate) and I don't use it so it is only my husband who would miss the last of the milk in the fridge. But the snow was falling, the temperatures were sub zero outside and frozen snow & ice was sending cars clumsily ice-skating across roads and pavements. The shops had already been stripped of milk (both fresh and powered) and the length of our conversation proved how guilty we felt about the thought of using the last of 'his' milk on a treat. We spent far longer than is healthy talking about hot chocolate before deciding not to go ahead. Instead we said that would look at the recipe in future to see if we could make the blocks milky enough to dunk straight into hot water with a dash of cream.
So, maybe it wasn't the moment to create the hot choc but I was raring to have a go with the marshmallows. I have been collecting marshmallow recipes for a while now, daring myself to have a go, but not quite brave enough! This recipe finally has the weight of the gelatin required, so comforted by the knowledge that weight rather than 'sheets' will give a consistent result, I was ready to go.
The original recipe suggests using an 8"x8" tin - don't, it is too small, and the marshmallow will overflow so use a 9" square or equivalent volume. I had to throw a little bit away as I didn't have any more room to pile any more on top in my 8" tin and so my marshmallows were nearly 2 inches high! Sugar syrup is very hot, so pour carefully and remember that the utensils will be hot and sticky too unless you grease them ...do follow the instructions about greasing. The mix is incredibly sticky so greasing the utensils as well is essential to make the whole process manageable.

Having made them, I don't think that I quite 'get' marshmallows. I am now faced with 86 pieces of white fluffy sticky air-filled sugariness, possibly the most pointless foodstuff I have ever made. I would like to confirm though, that they are not difficult to make, just sticky, messy and completely superfluous to normal human existence.
Have fun!

Ingredients:

21 grams gelatine
125ml cold water
400g granulated sugar
225g glucose syrup
65ml water
1/4 teaspoon salt
15ml vanilla extract (or other flavor extract)
icing sugar

Method

Line 9 x 9-inch with cling film and lightly oil it using your fingers or non-stick cooking spray.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, sprinkle the gelatin over 125ml cold water.
Leave to soak for about 10 minutes whilst following the next stages.
Combine sugar, glucose syrup and 65ml water in a saucepan.
Bring the mixture to the boil quickly, as soon as it is boiling, allow to boil hard for 1 minute.
Pour the boiling syrup over the soaked gelatin, attach the whisk and turn the mixer on low.
Gradually speed up the mixer until it is running at full speed.
Add the salt and beat for between 10 and 12 minutes, or until fluffy and mostly cooled to almost room temperature.
After it reaches that stage, add in the extract and beat to incorporate.
Grease your hands and a rubber or silicone scraper with neutral oil and transfer marshmallow into the prepared pan.
Use your greased hands or the spatula to press the marshmallow into the pan evenly.
Take another piece of lightly oiled plastic wrap and press lightly on top of the marshmallow, creating a seal. Let mixture sit for a few hours, or overnight, until cooled and firmly set.
Sprinkle a cutting surface very generously with icing sugar.
Remove marshmallow from pan and lay on top of the sugar.
Dust the top generously with sugar as well.
Use a large, sharp knife to cut into squares.
Separate pieces and toss to coat all surfaces with the sugar.
Store in an airtight container.

leek tart recipe, gluten free

2010-01-13T18:39:00.000Z

The wintery weather across the UK has caused panic-buying in the supermarkets. In our local shops, the shelves were first stripped bare of milk, bread, eggs, bacon and sausages before shoppers moved on to toilet rolls, cheese and fresh meats. I didn't look but am guessing that there must have been a gap in the tomato ketchup and brown sauce stocks too because it looks as though everyone has become fried breakfast addicts in the south east! In our household, panic-buying consisted of stocking up on vegetables and oranges, so far, we haven't gone hungry! As I am writing this, I can hear the dulcet tones of rear-wheel drive car wheels spinning on the freshly fallen snow and failing to get a grip on the slippery tarmac hill outside our house. I have no desire to leave the house right now, and I am guessing that the drivers outside are wishing they had made the same decision.

A sudden craving for a satifying smooth savoury custard lead me to making a quick leek tart last night. I hesitate to call this a quiche, as there seems to be so much negativity towards that particular nomenclature. I love quiche, the teen loves quiche, and as a kid this was one of her favourite meals. To be fair, by 'this' I mean that "quiche-lorraine out of a box" (preferably from Marks and Spencers) was her favourite! And as you might expect, my home-made version was looked upon as something of a low-brow affair comparatively. I have no idea whether this was thoroughly justified or just another attempt by the under 8 year olds to besmirch my cooking! Looking back ten years, I recognise that there has been a complete about-turn in the style and quality of my cooking as I have become more and more obsessed by this strangest of art forms. I have cooked since I was a kid but only in these past few years have I gained a real understanding of flavours and structure. I suppose I have only now started to think about food and ingredients, as opposed to eating! So, in reality, the nipper was probably right to reject my quiche of ten years ago!

I found lots of variations on the theme of this recipe on the internet. Most of these contain cheese which, for me, makes the creamy filling too rich and masks the gentle flavour of the leeks, but then, I am a purist! If you are not a fan of nutmeg, this is equally delicious with a touch of thyme. Add a couple of sprigs to the pan whilst you cook the leeks and pick out the stems before you mix the leeks and the custard. If you want to make this more of a gourmet delight, you can also infuse the cream with a bay leaf (warm the cream with the bay leaf to just below boiling point, then allow to cool before removing the bay leaf & using the cream in the recipe as instructed). Alternatively you could also soak a few saffron stems in a little water and add that to the custard instead.
I was a bit impatient to get this into the oven so didn't leave the pastry to rest for thirty minutes before rolling. I thought I had got away with it until I went to move the smoothly rolled sheet over the pastry case, at which point it fell apart completely! So, whilst I waited for the pastry to rest properly, I prepped the leeks - which is, of course, what I should have planned to do in the first place. This recipe is very easy to make and delicious to eat, so my impatience was quite justified. I had promised myself a chiled glass of manzanilla with the tart (and not before) so that was the real reason for rushing the pastry.

Whilst sitting down to eat this together, the teen declared her new passion for a vegan diet (forget the eggs and cream in the tart, th enext bit is even better). On tasting this, she followed this statement up without so much as a pause for breath, by suggesting that this tart would be even more delicious with nuggets of crispy smoked bacon or salmon fillet included. Fickle? A teenager's prerogative!
This recipe is just as good served as a summer lunch as a winter supper or snack. Do enjoy it!

Ingredients

1/3 recipe gluten free shortcrust pastry
600g leeks (or onions)
2 tbsp butter, olive oil or rapeseeed oil
250g double cream
5 freerange eggs (medium to large)
nutmeg, salt & pepper

Method

preheat oven to 180°C
roll out pastry and line a 10" tart plate or loose bottomed tin (or individual tins)
lay baking paper over the base of each tart, cover with baking beans or pulses
bake blind for 20 minutes until the pastry base is cooked through and crisp, but not coloured
whilst the tart case is baking, wash and finely slice the leeks
fry gently with a sprinkling of salt until softened into a thick mass
in a large bowl, whisk the eggs and cream together, season with salt and pepper and a good grating of nutmeg
remove the cooked tart shells from the oven, carefully tip the hot beans off the tart into a heat proof bowl and leave to cool, remove the baking paper too.
once the leeks are cooked, stir them into the cream mix, stirring until the leeks are evenly mixed through the custard
carefully pour the custard into the tart shell and replace in the oven
bake at 180°C for 25 minutes, turning half way through to ensure an even bake
remove from the oven checking the custard is cooked through (just firm to the touch) and allow to rest for five minutes before serving

Orange and apricot cake

2010-01-08T07:00:00.014Z

I am not used to long breaks or holidays, especially not ones that involve extended stays at home. But the Christmas break just passed saw me at home for the best part of two weeks. It was less than twenty-four hours before I started getting cabin fever desperately trying to find things to occupy me. I was further hampered by the need to rest my back after minor surgery so the few days running up to Christmas saw me mostly on the sofa surrounded by cook books with my laptop and a notebook for researching recipes. I found lots and lots though I don't suppose that is any surprise, food-enthusiastics have grasped new technologies with both hands and share recipes and experiences around the world. I did get very distracted trying to find out how to make vietnamese spring roll pancakes (I've not sussed that out yet) which then lead on to glutinous rice dumplings and then ... well, you know how it is. Suddenly you have encircled the globe three times and completely forgotten what you started out looking for.

I have been thinking about the ultimate orange cake for some time. I want to capture the zingy essential flavour of orange zest in a gluten free cake, with a light texture without any icing. Of course, it also needs to be low fat and preferably sugar free too. I am still working on this holy-grail of cakes but I thought I would share this recipe with you as it has definitely grown on me over the past couple of weeks.
The recipe is originally found here, on the Big Hospitality website and was created by Christine Bailey who was the joint winner of the Gluten-free Chef of the Year. This is a variation of the theme of "take a whole orange, puree it and fold puree into polenta-based recipe". I like this recipe because Christine has addressed a couple of points that I always see as negatives with this style of recipe. By zesting the orange and then peeling it, discarding the white pith, you omit those bitter notes which can overpower the zesty flavour. Then by adding a gluten-free flour blend to the polenta she has also lightening the consistency of the cake which is great.
This is a sugar-free recipe and that is worth bearing in mind before you take your first bite, even with the added honey, this cake is not sweet. You can address that with the type of apricots you buy. I used run-of-the-mill sulphured supermarket ones which added texture but no real sweetness to the recipe. If you can choose unsulphured, organic apricots, those dark brown, unattractive fruits that tend to get ignored for their bright orange, less flavoursome counterparts (squeeze the pack and make sure they are really squidgy if you can) then you will get a far richer sweeter flavour that will compliment this recipe perfectly.
I have copied the recipe just as Christine has written it though I made mine with dairy free margarine. My mixture curdled completely in the food processor but this makes no difference to the finished cake though, so don't be concerned if it happens to you too. Instead of making one cake I split the mix into 2 x 5" round tins and 3 greased and flour dusted dariole molds. The little ones took 15 minutes to bake and the 5" ones took 21 minutes. I glazed one of the 5" cakes with a fresh orange juice and icing sugar (5 tsp icing sugar to 1 tbsp orange juice, I think) to serve for tea and have eaten the other, unglazed cakes for breakfast and they have been lovely!
I hope you enjoy them too.

Ingredients:

Zest of two oranges
2 oranges peeled, cut into half
200g dried ready to eat apricots
125g unsalted butter (dairy free margarine*)
3 eggs
3tbsp honey or agave nectar
100g GF flour (75g rice flour + 25g millet flour*)
150g quick cook polenta (fine corn meal*)
2tsp gluten-free baking powder

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C, gas mark 4
Grease and line a spring form 18-20cm cake tin
Place the orange zest and oranges in a food processor and process to form a thick puree. Add the apricots, butter, eggs and honey and process again until smooth.
Place the flour, polenta and baking powder in a bowl.
Add the puree and beat well.
Place in the cake tin and bake in the oven for 30 minutes until a skewer placed in the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack.

* these are my annotations but otherwise the recipe and method are exactly as Christine's original recipe.

beetroot soup recipe (borscht)

2010-01-07T19:21:00.000Z

I am not sure that I can get away with calling this Borscht as there are so many variations of recipe, by geography, nationality or personal choice. This is really just beetroot soup, a lovely one that is easy to make.

The most difficult aspect appears to be getting hold of decent quality raw beetroot. If you don't have a farmers market locally, please pass by the hugely expensive bunches at the supermarket and head instead for your local greengrocer. In my local area, you have to get up early to get fresh beetroot. This isn't due to its' sell-out popularity, sadly, but because they all sell beetroot pre-boiled but for this recipe, that isn't really what we want. I try to pop in before 9 and can generally lay my hands on a few fresh purple nuggets, otherwise it is just a case of asking nicely and then collecting the following day.
I am a big beetroot fan and do tend to eat a lot in stir fries, vivid pink sushi rolls and beetroot hummous. It strikes me that beetroot should be the favourite vegetable of almost every girl from 2 - 12 as they dart in and out of their 'pink' phase, yet my daughter spent years hating beetroot, so much so that we took to hiding it in tomato pasta sauces and stews as well as in chocolate cake. I have only just discovered that I like lightly vinegared beetroot, which I have avoided due to memories of sharp squidgy chunks as part of a 1970's Sunday tea at my aunty's house. I was obviously just too young then! It feels as though we used to visit aunty for tea almost every week, though I am sure that is not the case, as they had pretty busy lives. Tea was a proper high tea. Lettuce, tomatoes, salad cream (decanted), sliced bread (yippee!), slices of ham, pickled onions and a really good cup of tea. I really miss Aunty's tea, it was strong but not bitter, dark yet not full of tannins and I loved the way the spoon clinked the china tea cup as I stirred in the sugar. Delicious! It is funny how memories stick in your mind. At one stage the road collapsed outside their house, leaving a stonking great hole and no vehicle access. In my head, this huge and slightly ominous hole was there for years ... though I am sure that the council must have filled it in quite quickly.

Anyway, this recipe starts with my favourite cooking smell: the gently stewing of finely chopped onions, garlic, carrot and celery until soft and scented. It is an easy soup to make, so jump in, have a go and enjoy the pink!

Ingredients

750g raw beetroot - peel and chop
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
1 carrot, peeled & finely chopped
1 stick celery, peeled & finely chopped
1 medium onion, peeled & finely chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled & finely chopped
1L chicken stock + additional water if required
1 bay leaf
1/2 lemon, juice only
salt & pepper
soured cream, horseradish & dill to serve

Gently fry the finely chopped onion, garlic, celery & garlic in the rapeseed oil over a very low heat until soft and aromatic.
Add the heap of peeled and chopped beetroot
Cover with stock and add extra water if required until you have 4cm above the level of the beetroot.
Add a bay leaf if you have one and leave to simmer with a lid semi-covering until the beetroot is soft, around 45 minutes.
Puree the soup then allow to simmer for another 10-15 minutes to thicken and concentrate the flavours. Season with fresh lemon juice, salt and pepper before serving.
This is delicious served with a horseradish cream and fresh dill.

Enjoy.

french onion soup recipe

2010-01-06T15:31:00.000Z

On days like today, soup is one of the few things that can really warm you and get right to the heart of the cold. We are lucky to all be sitting indoors, warm and dry whilst watching the "oh my goodness, there is snow in the south" drama unfolds on television.

My mum is from Lancashire, my father from London. We were brought up in London but spent many of our holidays under the age of 11 in Lancashire at my grandpa's house, the house my mum grew up in. Not being a Coronation Street viewer as a kid, this type of house, street and town were completely alien to me: row after row of 2-up, 2-downs with a lean-to kitchen, outside loo and coal store. The dark-roofed terraces clung tightly to the steep hills running down to the mills in the town at the bottom of the valley. I was far more familiar with a landscape of wide suburban street with tidy front gardens, pampas grass and polished cars in the drives of red-brick semis and bungalows, or ostentatious faux-georgian detached houses with white marble fountains & statuettes on their ludicrously tiny attempts at "sweeping drives".
There was never enough snow in the outer London suburbs when I was a kid. Mum used to commiserate with us (whilst thanking God that she didn't have to stay home from work with us too often!) and tell us stories of heavy snow, woollen stockings and long walks to school. We didn't have much truck with the long walks bit as we walked a mile and a half to school albeit in waterproof coats and poly-bag lined shoes. The snow though, we envied. As head of science at a girl's school across the Pennines, she would drive her Morris 1000 over the hills, behind the snow plough and says that she doesn't recollect a day when she didn't make it in to school eventually.
For most of this winter's cold spell, she has managed fine, living alone in Derbyshire. We managed to persuade her to come to us for Christmas after her own Christmas plans fell through. Unsuprisingly, we had to rescue her from Tonbridge station as they didn't even bother to run trains south on the day of her arrival. Right now, she is at home looking out onto about 15 inches of snow. She has gritted her paths, shovelled snow away from her garage doors and her neighbours have cleared tyre tracks down to the main road. They have gone to work at the county offices some ten miles across the moors, scarcely batting an eye-lid at the snow.
Down here on the south coast, we have had to close the bakery because the industrial estate hasn't seen a gritting truck for, well, I am not sure how long. Getting in this morning was difficult and as the snow continued to fall the tyre-tracks on the road disappeared into the soft white velvet layer. After watching a 4-wheel drive and a quad bike almost come to blows outside, we decided it was sensible to beat a hasty retreat. As the snow continues to fall this afternoon, I think of Mum and her sensible matter-of-fact attitude to the weather and think that we could use a whole lot of people like her down here, preferably running our councils!

To the matter in hand - soup! There was always a pan of soup on the go when I was a kid, but I could never get a recipe from mum, that wasn't the way she worked so that is how soups have developed with me. What is in the fridge? what needs to be used up? OK, celery & stilton soup, bacon and green pea - see how it works? I don't really get the idea of a recipe for a soup as I don't think that there are any hard and fast rules to soup-making, unlike baking, where technique and volumes matter enormously. I made this on yet another cold day and let it sit on the hob on a super low temperature (lower than a simmer) until it was wanted. By the time we got to it the flavours were rich and concentrated which balanced perfectly with the others cheesy croutons, yet still worked for my un-adorned bowl.

ingredients, use this volume of ingredients per person, making a minimum of 2 servings:

1 large onion
1 knob butter or 1 dsp olive / rapeseed oil
1/2 clove garlic (roasted or confit if possible)
1 tsp rice flour
1/2 pint beef stock (cubes are ok, home made even better, if you have it)
1/2 glass white wine
1/2 bay leaf
1 dsp (10ml) cognac
small sprig of thyme
salt & pepper

method

caramelise the onions by adding them to a hot frying pan with the butter or oil melted.
stir rapidly so that the onions take on a dark rich brown colour but don't let them stick or burn
after 5 minutes, turn the heat down and add the garlic
allow the onions to cook through until they are a soft, sweet, stringy mass (this should take about 20-30 minutes)
sprinkle over the rice flour and stir into the onions trying to pick up as much of the caramelised goo (technical term, sorry!) from the pan
add the stock and wine, and bring to the boil
add the herbs and turn the heat down to it's lowest setting, without a lid, for 45 minutes or so

to serve

gluten free bread for croutons
olive oil or butter
cheese

croutons method*

whilst the soup is cooking for that last 45 minutes, preheat oven to 180° & cut one thick slice of gluten free bread per serving
brush each side of the bread with oil or spread with butter
cube into 3/4" chunks
place chunks onto a lined or greased baking tray and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes, give them a quick shake if you remember about half way through.
once they are golden brown and crispy take the tray from the oven and leave to cool (don't forget that gluten free bread browns more quickly and suddenly than wheat bread)
pre heat the grill just before the soup is ready, and find some heat proof bowls to serve the soup in
when the soup is ready, bring it back up to the boil, add the cognac
put a serving in each bowl, sprinkle some croutons over then follow with a good thick grating of cheese
pop under the grill for a few minutes until the cheese is brown and bubbly (keep a close eye)
remove and serve immediately

*when i can't be bothered with the grill method, we make the croutons in a non-stick (important) frying pan by dry frying and then just chuck some cheese over and allow this to melt on the croutons and the pan before tipping the whole lot over the soup. it tastes the same but without the aggravation ... and sometimes that is all that counts!

gluten free pasta recipe

2010-01-03T12:25:00.000Z

I have been craving pasta and not just any pasta, but slippery gratifying ribbons of tagliatelle, a pasta style that I am yet to find as a commercial gluten free variety. There has been a fair amount of pasta slurping going on around me at home recently. I usually ignore the temptation and prep myself some more Vietnamese spring rolls or a quick stir fry. But there is something about freezing temperatures which make it difficult to enjoy overdosing on raw veg. This is definitely the time of year for something a little more substantial, so besides cooking up another batch of Nomato sauce & soup I am drawn towards a bowl of pasta.

I was pondering on the merits of different types of pasta and the differing attitudes to fresh egg as opposed to dried pasta. It dawned on me that cooking pasta al dente must vary according to the type of pasta you start with. I am a bit British in my pasta tastes and tend to like my pasta cooked through. The one exception to this is Spaghetti Vongole where I expect my spaghetti to have a little bit of bite. So, if you are making and cooking pasta from scratch, how do you achieve that bite? as fresh pasta in my experience is chewy rather than brittle? And if you can't get that al dente bite with fresh pasta, is the 'al dente' concept traditionally Italian? It is all a bit meaningless I know, but that is a small and possibly scary insight into the workings of my mind!

Making pasta is not hard work as long as you are well equipped but it is, like all recipes that require special equipment, a leap of faith to invest in the first instance. You can use this recipe for making spaghetti or tagliatelle, as well as hand shaping traditional Italian pasta. One of my favourites is orechiette (little ears) which are easy to make from tiny chunks of dough - you can even make these without a roller, which might be worth a go before taking the plunge.
I bought my pasta machine yonks ago, from Ikea. It sat for ages in its' box quite literally gathering dust (and grease) on a top shelf above the hob for ages. I used to gaze on the box proudly "look, I've got a pasta machine" but it was rarely used. Since I started a gluten free diet, this has all changed. A new place in the cupboard with the mixer and my food processor means it is easy to reach for and my diet has vastly improved with the addition of egg noodles, wonton wrappers & potsticker dumplings - all products of my beloved pasta roller. It is difficult to know whether a pasta machine is a good investment for you, but have a think about this. Try to make this recipe, by hand, rolling out the dough. If you like the taste, are not put off by the effort and find yourself thinking about making it again (having forgotten your aching arms and tired hands) then buy a pasta machine! By the way, the ikea machine has fixed tagliatelle and noodle rollers on the same machine, so it was a versatile investment. I haven't seen one in Ikea since but I know that they crop up on ebay intermitattantly selling for around a fiver under the brand / model name Ampia 150, worth the investment I think!

I wanted to retain the yellow hue of traditional egg pasta, so besides the eggs I have included some yellow cornmeal in the dough. If you can't eat corn, then substitute this with millet (for the yellow look) and potato starch for the corn starch (I can't eat potato starch so don't usually include it). Egg pasta doesn't need to be rolled as thinly as noodles and wrappers which will be a bonus if you are doing this by hand, on the pasta roller I rolled from settings 1 - 5 before passing each sheet through the tagliatelle cutter.

Ingredients

150g rice flour
50g fine corn meal (masa - yellow corn)
100g tapioca starch
100g corn starch
100g glutinous rice flour
10g kuzu starch
1.5 tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp psyllium husks
4 eggs
120-180ml (approximately) water

method

sieve all the flour ingredients together
put all the dry ingredients into a mixer or food processor bowl
add the eggs with the mixer running
gradually drizzle the water in till the mix ressembles chunky breadcrumbs (you may not need all the water in the recipe)
tip the dough out onto a work surface dusted with tapioca starch
knead together to make a smooth dry dough and form the dough into even cube
wrap in a plastic bag and leave to rest for 20 minutes
cut a slice off the dough
roll two or three times (turning dough each time by 90 degrees) with a rolling pin till it is thin enough to pass through the machine without cracking
process the sheet through a pasta machine reducing the thickness each time to create a thin silky sheet, 5 passes worked well for me (or keep rolling manually, turning and dusting with tapioca starch frequently)
if you have a cutter-attachment for your roller, use it now or slice the sheets into noodles or shapes of your choice (if you have the correct attachment you can pass the sheet through your machine to create the pasta shape of your choice)
set each finished batch to one side under a damp cloth until all the dough is processed

Rolling tips:
Keep the rest of the dough in a plastic bag whilst not rolling it.
If the outer skin of the dough is dry when you start, wet your hands slightly and squeeze the dough until it is just moist (not sticky) and pliable again.

You can dry the finished pasta fully if you like, simply by leaving it in the open air, turning each pile of noodles to ensure they are open to the air, then store in an air tight box. Alternatively you can drape noodles or spaghetti over a drying rack (I have used a clean clothes airer). If you don't want to dry them you can put them straight into an airtight box and freeze until you need them. When I have room in the freezer, I also freeze the 'dried' ones in case I haven't managed to dry them completely.

Whilst I was taking the photos I was snacking on the left over cooked pasta with remnants from my fridge. I discovered that this pasta tastes great with tuna, cooked green beans, toasted hazelnuts and garlic oil topped off with a grating of Sussex Charmer cheese (more on this later).
Hope you enjoy this!

welcome to 2010

2010-01-01T15:59:00.010Z

In the spirit of the New Year, I have decided that it is time to open up to the world a little.

It was with this thought in mind that I found myself standing in the snow at my front door with a drill at 9.30am on New Year's Day. Now we have a shiny new working doorbell which is great, in so many ways!
Our lovely postman will be happy that he doesn't have to hammer on the door and yell, not knowing whether we are in or out. The teen's boyfriend will not be shut out in the rain for twenty minutes because no-one can hear him knocking and friends who pop round on the off-chance, will finally find the door opened and a welcoming cup of coffee instead of sore knuckles and the echoing silence of their un-answered thumps (sorry!).
Following the same theory, I will start to mention to friends and family that I write a blog. It has been just 4 months and 46 posts since I started writing this so this is a real baby in the world of food-blogs. I doubted my abilities to post regularly so I have not, so far, spread word of my blog beyond my closest colleagues and family members. Those with whom I live could not have failed to notice my new obsession but, in case it was just that, a fad that I would tire of in 5 minutes, I have kept the blog under wraps.
Blogging takes real commitment and a dedication that can be hard to sustain when work and life in the wider world gets busier and more demanding of time & energy. I know that I am going to experience lapses and gaps, and that when life intrudes, my passion for food and writing will have to take a back seat. But I know that I will come back, because a lapse doesn't mean failure, it just means that life got in the way, and that happens to all of us.

When I found myself yesterday taking photo after photo of a gluten free sausage roll because we finally had an hour of sunshine, I realised that blogging completes a circle for me. The circle starts with the constant thoughts and dreams of foods & ingredients, continues past the pile of cookbooks by my bed, the 24 tabs currently open on my browser with different recipes and cooking techniques, and embraces the fact that, for me, food is not just fuel but a means of expression and creativity. By photographing and writing about the foods that I make, I am able to document my progress, and also retain a record of techniques and ideas that I have. And that takes me back to the beginning, completing the circle. I wish I had started blogging years ago. This blog gives me an outlet for all my thoughts and recipes, a reason to try out new recipes & techniques and a place I can share my ideas with anyone who might appreciate the recipes and find them useful in their lives too. It also removes a whole heap of pressure for my family and makes our family life a lot easier. This is not just because there is food always on the table, but because they no longer have to listen to me endlessly hypothesising about grinding buckwheat groats to make my own soba noodles, or whether grains of ground kudzu have smooth or sticky edges, and feign interest.
Truly, you, as a reader, are keeping my family sane and I am extremely grateful to you! I would love to hear your thoughts about the blog and especially any gluten-free recipes that would be particularly useful for you. I am happy to give anything a go, so let me know what you miss the most and would love to eat again, in a gluten free version. I am not promising that I will be able to turn my hand to everything, but I will happily try!
So, with that said, I want to get back to the mission in hand. I have ingredients in the kitchen and 2 recipes to try before supper. Thank you for reading, I hope that 2010 lives up to your hopes and dreams.
Happy New Year!

home-made cured salmon recipe

2009-12-31T09:19:00.000Z

I find myself, happily, with a whole salmon sitting in my fridge. My usual, more frugal, self would fillet, portion and freeze the fish for quick mid week meals probably making a few gluten-free salmon fish fingers too. Today though, I am going to buck the trend and cure the fillet to serve on Christmas Day with buckwheat blini and rose champagne (that is the only way to start Christmas Day in our house). This dish takes around 48 hours to cure and during that time you do need to turn the fish over morning and evening to get an even cure. But apart from that it is one of the easiest and most impressive 'home-made' dishes that you can serve, so have a go and lap up the praise when you serve this. And, if you area really sensible, you will buy your salmon already filleted!

I have used 2 different cures, one for each fillet. The first was a very simple sugar/salt mix (using the quantities listed in the recipe but omitting the other flavourings). I rubbed this fillet with gin to help the cure to penetrate, this gave the salmon a faint hint of juniper which is just delicious. The intention with the second fillet was to cure it with dill in the style of gravad-lax but I couldn't find a single sprig in my local stores. The gods of invention have obviously been looking after me so I have substituted dill for slivers of fresh fennel and some strongly-flavoured fennel vodka which has been sitting in my cupboard infusing. In case that sounds weird, 3 months ago I stuck handfuls of several different spices and flowers in sterilised jam jars of vodka. There is quite a random selection, as well as fennel there is coriander seed, hibiscus flower, lavender and several others. I wasn't quite sure what I was doing at the time - but obviously I was being foresighted and planning for Christmas!
You will get messy filleting and pin-boning the salmon before annointing it with the curing mixture, but that is all part of the fun. I prefer a slightly sweet cure so have used a little more sugar than some recipes suggest. You can freeze the salmon after it has been cured and rinsed off. I did this and layered some fresh dill in between the fillets before freezing. It is much easier to slice thinly from frozen and you get a thin vivid green layer in the middle which is pretty too.
Serve the salmon on homemade buckwheat blini (recipe here) with some soured cream or sliced avocado, delicious!

Ingredients

1 x 650g skin-on salmon fillet, pin-boned, rinsed and dried
20g finely shredded fennel plus any fronds that are attached, finely shredded
(or 1 bunch dill)
40g dark brown muscavado sugar
60g coarse sea salt
1 dsp fennel seeds
1 dsp white peppercorns
1 tsp coriander seeds
20ml fennel vodka (or gin)

Method

Cut the salmon fillet in half widthways
Lay the pieces of salmon fillet skin-side down on a piece of cling film (at least 3 times the length of the filet)
Grind the aromatics with the coarse sea salt in a coffee grinder, liquidiser or pestle & mortar
Add the sugar to the salt mix and mix again till combined
Spread the mixture over the flesh and press onto the fish
Drizzle over the vodka or gin
Lay the shredded fennel or dill over 1 half fillet
Sandwich the 2 fillets together and wrap the cling film tightly around the fish
Put the wrapped fillet into a ziplock bag and lay that onto a deep-lipped plate or serving dish
Put a plate on top and weight the plate down with a heavy object (a couple of tins of beans)
Put the weighted dish into the fridge
Turn the salmon pieces every 12 hours and refridgerate again
After 48 hrs, remove the salmon from the fridge and unwrap.
Wipe each fillet to remove the cure and rinse thoroughly to remove the last traces of any salt.
Sandwich the fillets together again and wrap tightly in clingfilm.
If you have time, freeze this until an hour before you want to serve this, otherwise chill it.
Remove from the freezer or fridge an hour before you are serving it, unwrap and slice finely across the grain to create thin slices.

Serve with blini and chilled vodka or champagne.

buckwheat blini, gluten free

2009-12-30T18:18:00.005Z

Our Christmas at home is not complete without blini and smoked salmon at least once during the holiday. Having splurged on Christmas Day I thought that we wouldn't be re-visiting this recipe until next year but fate decided otherwise when I woke up to yet another grey rainy cold day this week. There seemed only one way to bring some sunshine into the day, so a late breakfast of strong black coffee, blini and home-cured salmon seemed the perfect recipe to put a smile on our faces. Judging by the speed these were devoured I am definitely going to serve round 3 on New Years Day - this time with champagne to welcome in 2010.

This recipe makes enough to serve 4-5 for breakfast, and up to 8 for a starter or canapes before a meal.
Blini are naturally gluten free as they are traditionally made with buckwheat flour. Buckwheat does have a distinctive flavour, so if it is too strong for you substitute half the flour with a gluten free blend, rice flour or plain wheat flour if you are not following a glutenfree diet.

I fried these blini in a 50/50 mix of unsalted butter and lard, the lard is a fantastic addition, making them crispier and far more flavoursome then if simply fried in butter. The lard suggestion came from GlutenFreeDay, you can find an alternative recipe and method on Emilia's great blog here, she also has suggestions for dairy free substitutions if you need them.

Blini are delicious served with cured or smoked salmon, you can find a recipe for easy home-cured salmon on my blog

Ingredients

100g creme fraiche or sour cream
125g milk
165g buckwheat flour
3g salt
7g (1 pk) easy-blend dried yeast
2 eggs, separated
25g butter
25g lard

Method

sieve the flour and salt into a large bowl
sprinkle the fast-acting yeast over the flour and set aside
weight the milk and cream into a small saucepan and put on a very low heat to warm
separate the eggs, putting the whites into a medium size bowl
tips the yolks into the warming milk and whisk in.
dip your fingers into the milk and, when the mixture is blood temperature, pour this onto the flour
whisk the batter together until it is smooth, cover with a tea towel and put the bowl in a warm place to allow the yeast to develop (approx 1 hour)
once the batter is bubbly and rising (see picture) whisk the egg white to a stiff peak
pour the egg whites into the batter mix and gently stir in till fully combined (the batter will become a bit slippery)
heat a heavy frying pan or skillet and add half the butter and lard
once the fats are foaming, spoon in 4 dollops of batter. You can use muffin rings for a perfect shape but I don't bother - as long as the butter is hot the batter doesn't run too much
the batter will rise and bubbles will form in the topside of the blini
turn over whilst the top is still runny and cook the underside until it is lightly brown and the edges are crispy
remove to a warm oven dish lined with a tea towel and continue to cook the remaining batter, using the rest of the fat when necessary

Serve warm with cured or smoked salmon (see my recipe here) and a slice of creamy avocado.

gluten free short-crust pastry

2009-12-27T09:03:00.000Z

A few years back we used to buy our butter from a local cheesemaker for whom butter was a tasty by-product of their cheese. I was curious when one day I saw a big commercial hobart mixer in the dairy and asked why it was there.
"That is to grate the butter" came the reply.
Ok, so why would you grate butter? Well, you could put that another way by thinking about the process of making pastry which is all about the rubbing in or distribution of the fats in the flour. You take chilled butter, chop it into chunks and then, using your fingertips you rub the butter combining it with the flour until the little pieces of butter have completely disintegrated into the flour creating a sandy yellow, slightly gritty texture. My Home Ec teacher at school drilled it into us that we should never, ever have floury palms whilst making pastry as that would make for a heavy pastry - definitely fingertips only (and don't moan about cramp in your hands!).

The other day when the weather decided that Mum would be spending Christmas with us, I realised I would need to make some mince pies. I had been intrigued by the idea of grating butter for bakery purposes but since it has never really matched the processes that we used in our bakery, I haven't thought much more about it, until I read a post in November on the Gluten Free Girl & the Chef blog (a great source of inspiration and entertainment which you can find here). I amalgamated that recipe with my own existing recipe, which was in need of a bit of an upgrade as I had to lose the potato flour which I can't tolerate at present. Instead I added teff as suggested by Shauna. I am a fan of using glutinous rice flour as an addition to pastry and doughs, especially when used with cornflour as you get a silky smoothness and an easy to handle dough. Kuzu is a gum / gelling agent with it's roots in Japanese cooking, it is great for adding flexibility to pasta doughs, the addition here is a bit of a test but I thought that, in combination with almond flour, I might get a smooth and manageable dough which still has a shortness of traditional wheat pastry. This combination of flours is necessary for me as I can't tolerate either oats or potato starch which are commonly used in other flour blends and thankfully it looks as though it is working well.
Grating the fat makes it a lot easier to get an even distribution without getting cramp in your hands rubbing in.
The dough came together beautifully, rolled out to 2.5mm with no handling problems and has made the most beautiful light crisp pastry no doubt improved by the combination of lard and butter together.

You can make this into a proper flakey pastry by rolling out portioning the dough into quarters and rolling each piece in turn into a 3mm sheet. Spread half the dough with a sparse scraping of butter and fold the dough sheet in half over the butter. Do the same again on this new layer and fold again. If you have patience do this once more, now re-roll the pastry out to it's original size and shape and use as normal. When you bake you will get light flakey pastry which flakes and crumbs luxuriously.
I made the sausage rolls pictured with the flakey pastry and mince pies with the regular version, the sausage rolls were devoured before they had cooled, all my guests were wheat eaters and not one of them noticed a difference!

Ingredients:

200g rice flour
150g tapioca starch
80g ground blanched almonds
80g teff flour
80g glutinous rice flour
80g cornstarch
25g arrowroot flour
10g kuzu
1.5tsp xanthan gum
150g grated butter
120g grated lard
2 medium eggs
90-120 ml very cold water

Method:

grate the lard and butter and store in the fridge whilst you prep the flours
grind the kuzu with the almonds in a coffe grinder
weigh and sieve the rest of the flours together
sieve in the xanthan gum and salt
stir in the ground almonds and kuzu so all the flours are combined in a large bowl
whisk 2 eggs with 100ml very cold water and set aside
grab the grated fats out of the fridge and take 1 smallish handful of the mixed butter and lard
rub this in to the flour using your finger tips, until the fat diasappears into the sandy mix
continue this until all the fats are used up - if you find this difficult get all the fat into the mix and broken down into little pieces
transfer the flour and fat mix to a food processor or mixer and mix at low speed until you have a consistently sandy mix
whilst the mixer is still running, drizzle in the egg mix slowly and let the mixer do the work, bringing the dough together
once the dough looks like a crumble mix stop the mixer and squeeze a couple of chunks of the dough to see how moist it is. If the dough sticks together without too much moisture then stop the mixer and tip the dough onto a work surface. If the dough is too dry, drizzle in another 10-15ml water whilst the mixer is running and try again, if the mixture is too wet, add a handful of tapioca starch and mix again before testing.
Knead the dough 4-5 times to bring the chunks together then shape into a slab, wrap in cling film and put it in the fridge to rest for at least 30 minutes before using.
Baking, for small tarts or pies, you can roll the pastry thinly and bake filled from raw. If you are making a bigger tart or pie then I suggest you bake the pastry blind before filling. I baked mince pies at 170°C for 25 minutes turning the tins half way through, but I do suggest you follow the instructions for the pie you are going to make, simply substituting this pastry for the one in the recipe.

This volume of dough has made 36 mince pies and 18 x 4" sausage rolls.

Chocolate roulade, Yule log, Buche de Noel, gluten free naturally

2009-12-25T23:21:00.000Z

A couple of days ago, the teen popped outside to wait for a pizza delivery, which gave me a couple of minutes to write whilst she was not reading over my shoulder. Apparently, according to her, I am failing as a mother - again! We went to the supermarket to do a pre-Christmas essentials shop, she picked up one festive food stuff after another from a shelves, and each time I replied "Oh you don't need to buy that, I can make it". And so on, ad infinitum.
She was trying it on a bit, she knew we had already made home-cured salmon and sloe vodka, that the gluten free pastry for the mince pies was mixed and waiting to be rolled from the fridge. However the cry went up when I saw her reach into a chiller cabinet for a huge premium-priced (but not delicious-looking) yule log. She knew she was pushing her luck, so we read the ingredients list together, and she put it back of her own accord. But did she moan!

Chocolate logs are, I presume, historically an import from France where you find beautifully presented 'buche de noel' with marshmallow mushrooms in patisseries just before Christmas. When we were kids, making a chocolate log was the only reason that we could persuade Mum to buy a supermarket Swiss roll, though we thought that they were the height of sophistication Mum was not convinced - imagine how excited we were when we later discovered Wall's Artic Rolls! So I can really understand the desire for a delicate rolled chocolate sponge filled with chocolatey buttercream with a bark-styled buttercream dusted in icing sugar snow.
Anyway, whilst she is outside I will whisper to you that I've made this recipe, a gluten-free chocolate roulade and decorated it as a Chocolate Yule Log for our Christmas dinner. I want this to be a suprise for her as the teen is not a fan of Christmas pudding. For her, the main event will be a forerib roast with yorkshire puddings and all (yes, all!) the trimmings especially creamy horseradish. I am already looking forward to the look on her face when she sees it, even though she will probably be too stuffed to eat any till later in the day!

I've used a Mary Berry recipe for the ingredients which is naturally gluten free. I am a great fan of Mary Berry and found that her foolproof recipes were a great way to build my confidence and learn the basics when I first starting baking cakes. Roulades look impressive but are not that tricky as long as you have a good recipe to start. For the yule log, I have used a different techinique from Mary Berry, in that I prefer to roll the sponge before it cools and unroll to fill before re-rolling. The key to making this is confidence. Believe that the sponge will be cooked enough even though it is only in the oven for 20 minutes. Be confident in rolling your sponge, and do it quickly before it can cool down and break. And gently unroll the cooled sponge to fill it before re-rolling. Knowing that I am going to cover the outside of the roll with buttercream icing means that I can patch up any cracks that I create as I roll, unroll and roll again.
The Mary Berry method here suggests rolling the sponge once it is cold and filled. This is great if you don't want to make the roulade as soon as you have baked the sponge and especially good for summer roulades when you are decorating the dessert with little more than a sprinkling of sugar.
Once you have made one and discovered just how straightforward they are, don't forget that this roulade recipe is a fantastic dessert for any time of year. Filled with cream or chocolate, cherries in summer or blackberries in the autumn (preferably without the chocolate buttercream 'bark') this is a lovely dessert for anytime of year!

Sponge ingredients:

175g 70% cocoa solid chocolate in 1cm sq pieces
175g caster sugar
6 medium free range eggs, separated
A pinch of salt
2 level tbsp cocoa, sieved

Method

Set the chocolate to melt either in the microwave or in a bain marie, remove from the heat as soon as it is melted and allow to cool slightly
Lightly grease a 13"x9" (33x23cm) swiss roll tin
Line with non-stick baking paper
Pre-heat the oven to 180°C / Gas Mk4
Whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff peaks are formed (but before they become dry)
Add half the castor sugar and beat until combined
Transfer the egg whites into another clean mixing bowl
Now whisk the egg yolks and the rest of the sugar together until they are light and creamy and trebled in volume (at least 5 minutes, so use an electric mixer)
Add the melted chocolate to the egg yolk mix and mix gently to combine
Add one spoon of the egg white mix to the chocolate mix and fold in.
Continue adding the egg whites, until fully combined
Then add the cocoa powder and stir till combined
Pour the mixture into the prepared tin, spread to the corners and level the top
Bake in the oven for 20 minutes until just firm to the touch (the top of my sponge puffed right up whilst in the oven, so I stuck a skewer in a few places to let the steam out and the skin deflated)
Whilst the sponge is baking lay a second sheet of baking paper on the counter and sprinkle with a little castor sugar
Remove the baked sponge from the oven and flip the baked sponge over onto the sugared baking paper
Peel off the backing paper from the sponge and roll up the warm sponge using the base sheet of baking paper, starting on one long side and working quickly but gently to create a roll - folding a long edge of paper over the sponge and then using the long edges of the paper to guide the roll, a bit as though you are rolling up a christmas cracker.
Tuck the edges of the paper in around the finished roll and leave to cool

Filling & icing

100g plain (70%) chocolate, melted with
150g milk chocolate
100g double cream (nearer room temperature than very chilled)
100g icing sugar, sifted

Melt the chocolate
Add the cream to the chocolate and stir till combined
Add the icing sugar to the cream mix and beat till creamy
Add a little more icing sugar to thicken or cream if the mix is too thick to spread
Unroll the sponge and trim the edges to get a neat even finish
Spread one third to one half of the chocolate cream filling on the sponge and re-roll quickly, don't worry if it breaks use the filling as glue to hold the bits together - you can cover up the damage afterwards with the chocolate cream coating!
Spread the remainder of the chocolate cream over the outside of the roll and leave to set for 15 minutes.
Using a fork, drag the prongs across the surface of the iced log to create the effect of tree bark, cover and chill in the fridge until you are ready to serve.
Dust with icing sugar before serving.

Christmas Eve, the big day is almost here

2009-12-24T22:00:00.000Z

Almost all the presents are wrapped and under the tree (a few didn't make it through the snow and ice, but no worries). The vegetables are prepped for tomorrow and we are really looking forward to tucking into the biggest and most beautiful piece of beef I have ever bought (from Paganum in Yorkshire). Before the festivities take over, I wanted to wish you happy Christmas and hope that you all enjoy tomorrow with friends and family or in peace and quiet with your feet up!
If you are going to be entertaining between Christmas and New Year, I'll be posting a few recipes to help you including properly flakey gluten-free pastry, sausage rolls, mince pies and a yummy chocolate yule log.
So, enjoy the cooking but don't forget to sit down and enjoy yourselves but most of all have a happy Christmas!

piping or pouring/dipping icing for cookies, cupcakes and gingerbread decorations

2009-12-20T13:14:00.003Z

Here are just a quick few lines to give you a recipe for pipe-able icing for last week's gingerbread tree decorations.
I couldn't find my icing nozzles anywhere in the house so have decorated some of my biscuits simply using a thick plastic freezer bag with a tiny hole cut in one corner instead of a piping bag & nozzles.
As with all icing recipes, the exact amounts vary depending on your environment. Little things like the moisture in the atmosphere (is it raining or very humid?) and the temperature affect the exact amount amount of icing sugar you will need to get the perfect piping consistency.
You can get a really good piping mixture by following the technique below, and don't hestitate to repeat the process of adding a little more liquid or icing sugar to get the balance just right, it is far easier to get it right now rather than discovering the mix is too thick once it is in the piping bag.

Ingredients

260g sieved icing sugar
1 medium egg white or 1 tbsp powered meringue mix with 2 tsp water
Food colourings of your choice

Method

Simply add both ingredients to the mixer and beat until smooth.
Stop the mixer and scrape down the bowl before re-starting and beating on high until you get stiff peaks like meringues.
You are looking for the icing to be dry when you are mixing with peaks formed by the beater, but it will look glossy immediately you stop and themix will slump very slightly into the bowl. If you get this effect then the icing will flow when you pipe it but will set quickly so it won't run. If you have dry icing with matt peaks and no movement then start beating and add cold water 1 tsp at a time, turning the mixer off to check consistency after each addition.
You can add food colouring once the icing is well-mixed.
Add a little at a time, you may find you need to balance the extra moisture by adding a little more icing sugar but it shouldn't effect the colour of the icing.
Transfer the icing into piping bag and use immediately.

To make a smooth dipping or pouring icing

Dilute the icing made above with 2 tbsp water
Beat thoroughly to to make a smooth loose paste
Transfer the paste into a small shallow bowl wide enough to fit your biscuits in
Dip each biscuit face down into the icing and shake to allow the excess to drip off
Put each dipped biscuits face up on a cooling tray over a lined baking tray to dry
If your biscuits have hanging holes in, re-pierce these with a skewer before the icing is fully dry.

gluten free gingerbread for Christmas biscuits and decorations

2009-12-18T09:00:00.003Z

The Autumnal rain has finally given way to clear skies and the temperature is dropping with every day that passes. I had originally written this saying I was half hoping for a mythical white Christmas, and right this second my dreams have been fulfilled (though slightly early!) as I gaze out of the window onto dark street enrobed in the first snows of this winter down here on the south coast.
Christmas is just around the corner and we are finally getting ourselves ready for the holidays. One of last year's Christmas cakes is unwrapped and ready to be decorated with marzipan and candied fruits, rum-mince pies made with fruits that have marinaded all year, and gingerbread for decorating the tree as well as eating, of course.
The gingerbread recipe that I use is less sweet and far more fragrant than traditional crunchy English gingerbread. My daughter & her friends were not that keen on bought gingerbread when she was little so I tried to create something more suited to their tastes. She still likes this now so I haven't changed the recipe or spice blend in years. The biscuits are subtly fragrant with a blend of spices which conjure up, in our household, the start of Christmas. Whilst these baked we put the tree up and the smell of spices mingling with the rich pine tree confirmed that Christmas had definitely arrived in our house. Then, every year, we would snuggle down in fleecy blankets under the light of our advent candle and read a chapter of Jostein Gardner's Christmas Story. I love this Christmas ritual that still continues today, especially as my daughter is no longer the toddler enraptured by a fairy story, but a philosophy-studying young adult who cites this an enjoyable influence on her path to adulthood (I am so glad I didn't choose Rudolf, the Red-Nosed Reindeer!).

Adding the spices to the sugar & butter mix and gently cooking them together creates a more rich and fragrant dough than you get by adding spices directly to the dry ingredients, in much the same way that you would cook off the whole spices before making a masala for an Indian dish. You can adjust these spices to suit your tastes, dropping the cloves (maybe) and increasing the ginger if you prefer.
This recipe can make thick soft biscuits or crisp thin ones. If you are making decorations for the tree then crispier ones are better so roll the dough out to 5mm, bake the cut biscuits for 18 minutes, then allow to cool. Once they are cool, pop them back onto trays and put them back into the re-heated oven for a further 6 minutes, then leave them to cool in the oven. These biscuits will be crispy and robust enough to hang from the tree. If you want soft gingerbread roll the dough out to 8mm and bake for 16-8 minutes until the biscuits are cooked through but still soft. Let these biscuits cool on the baking tray for five minutes before removing to a cooling tray.

These biscuits look great decorated but as the moisture will make the biscuits a little softer it is better to ice them closer to Christmas or when you are going to eat them. My icing nozzles are still tucked away somewhere in the loft so decorating these will happen later this week and I will add some photos later on.

Gingerbread recipe

70g dairy free margarine or butter
125g light muscavado sugar
100g golden syrup
35g treacle / molasses
60 ml rice milk
3/4 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground fennel seeds
1/2 tsp ground coriander seeds
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

300g rice flour
100g millet flour
100g tapioca flour
60g sweet (glutinous) rice flour
1 tsp xanthan gum
2.5 tsp gluten free baking powder
a pinch of salt

3 medium freerange eggs (150g)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

measure the spices directly into a small saucepan.
if your scales have a tare function you can weigh the sugar, syrup, treacle and butter directly into the pan
add the milk and warm the pan on a very gentle heat, keep the temperature low enough to be able to dip your finger in comfortably (not that you need to do this as part of the recipe!)
sift all the flours together with the baking power and xanthan gum
beat the eggs and vanilla extract together in a mixer or food processor
add all the flour and then the sugar mix and beat on the mixer
once the dough has come together stop the mixer and scrape onto a plate
cover and chill (either in fridge or outside depending on your weather) until the dough is between 8-14°C
pre-heat the oven to 150° C
dust the work surface with a little rice flour and tip out the dough
divide the dough into 4 sections
working 1 section at a time, roll out as per instructions in the introduction and cut out using decorative cutters
if you are making these to hang on the tree, use a straw to punch out a little hole so that you can thread a ribbon through
place the biscuits on a lined baking sheet and continue with the rest of the dough
roll and re-cut the trimmings until all the dough is used
bake as per introduction
allow to cool completely then pack into airtight containers to store for icing.

last minute christmas presents for the food-lovers in your life

2009-12-15T10:00:00.002Z

As it is getting close to Christmas, I thought I would offer a helping hand to anyone who has forgotten to buy a present for their favourite foodie friend or relative. Matt who blogs with Carla at Food for Friends Yeah published a "christmas list for foodie fellas" in November which got me thinking on several counts. The first thought was about sexism and I did complain (!) then Matt published a list for foodie girls so I've shut up! However I loved the idea of his Christmas present tips. To be honest I think that presents for foodies are the most fun to buy, but that is probably because I love everything I buy as gifts but have the dilemma of wanting to keep the presents for myself.

So bearing in mind it is now so close to Christmas, I thought that it might be useful to add some easy-to-order presents for those of you who are not keen to venture onto the high street in these final few days before Christmas. Some of my favourite items which are still available for this year are:

Magazines subscriptions are actually a very good gift as the anticipation of each delivery is like a new present every quarter. Fire & Knives is a fantastic literate exploration of food as it relates to life. Bearing in mind that food, and our need for it, is one of the things that bind all humans together, we usually manage to marginalise the wider subject focusing instead on chemicals, packets, recipes and trends. If you want to explore food and eating without a recipe in sight then Fire & Knives is a great place to start, and this first issue has the most quirky short story which is worth the cover price alone. Fire & Knives quarterly costs £20 p.a. to subscribe.

The next on my list has already made an appearance on

my blog earlier this year here and that is the Kenwood Cooking Chef. This is the sophisticated great grand-daughter of the original Kenwood Chef that my Mum passed down to me. Available from John Lewis (though hurry, there are only 3 left on their website) this machine cooks as well as mixes so taking the hardwork out of tricky staples like hollandaise or bechamel sauces. You can make soup or stew, steam vegetables or even make a chocolate mousse - a whole meal in one machine but you will really have to love the person you give this to as they cost £995 each.

Alternatively, if you are making food the old fashioned way, these enamelled individual casserole dishes are really cute and practical.

Unlike the Le Creuset versions with their stoneware lids, these are all-cast iron and are priced at just £13.99 each. Of course, if you want to be invited round to dinner by your recipient, you definitely need to give 2, if not 4! Available from Denny'sin grey and several other colours, they are still in stock as I write with delivery within 7 days. (By the way, family - I would definitely be happy to find 2+ of these in my stocking!)

No regular cook should be without a good mandolin, and after I managed to break the slicer blade earlier this year, I have been looking around for a replacement. I have settled upon this as being the best balance of size and cost efficiency. Made by Microplane who have an unparalleled reputation for their graters and zesters, you can be sure that this will be yet another good buy. This also comes with a finger-friendly food holder which will save your finger ends.
Available from Lakeland, the last order date for standard delivery is Monday 21st December.

Another Lakeland item which are especially good for bigger hands and maybe for the barbecue too, are these silicon mitts. They are flexible, lined and have good insulation capabilities as well as being machine washable. These are sold singly so you would be more popular if you bought two!. They cost £12.79 each and again, are available from Lakeland. The last order date for standard delivery is Monday 21st December.

Of course, they say that the best gift to give is something home made. When we used to sell on farmers markets I would to hold back a few handmade chocolates, flavoured nuts and gingerbreads to use as little stocking fillers and gifts for friends and family. I still like to gift people things that I have made myself but I'm aware that sometimes I might be emptying my cupboards to make some space for christmas food - and that isn't such a altruistic notion! This year I have made some sweet dill pickles and ginger carrot pickles to give as gifts. Both recipes mature quickly so even if you make them now they will be ready to eat by Boxing Day with leftover turkey or ham. For chilli lovers, I will be making candied chillis. Once they are made, they are stored in the syrup they are cooked in which is hot, spicy and sweet. The chillis are perfect added to brownies or cookies, and the syrup is delicious drizzled over fresh mango with lime juice.

candied chillies with sweet chilli syrup

2009-12-13T18:20:00.001Z

This was inspired by a twitter comment that Clotilde from Chocolate & Zuccini recently. The French, like the Italians, have a history of creating and eating candied fruits in a way that the Brits seems to have missed. Yes, we have glacé cherries and chopped mixed peel but that is about it. In France in the run up to Christmas you will find platters of individually candied fruits - figs, mandarin oranges, melons, pears and pineapple as well as chestnuts, greengage plums, peaches, apricots and clementines. Beautifully presented, glowing translucent fruits.

The link Clotilde gave is to a company called La Fabrique de Douceur here. Their chillies, along with the other fresh fruits they make are lucious and beautiful to look at but I think they are only available in France.

Reading through their website reminded me that I have quite a few chillies at home which I can't eat due to allergies. Rather than simply throw them away I thought I would have a go at candying them, just to see what would happen. So here is a simplified version of candied chillies. The sweet and spicy syrup would make a delicious drizzle over ice cream or a fruity tart, whilst the chillies themselves could be used in biscuits or ice cream, or served as they come with cheese.

As you can see this quick version gives you the flavour but not the texture of french-style candied fruit.
These are very quick and easy to prepare and if you have any chilli-heads as friends, they would make great easy foodie presents too.

Candied Chillies in sweet chilli syrup

Ingredients:

8-12 fresh mild to medium red chillies
450g white sugar
450ml water
boiling water
sterilised jar & lid big enough to contain the chillies

method

pour about 1L freshly boiled water into pan and add the chillies.
bring the pan to the boil and blanch the chillies for 1 minute.
drain the chillies and refresh in cold water.
add the equal volumes of sugar and water to the pan and bring to the boil
add the chillies and cook at a gently boil for 30-40 minutes.
during this cooking, sterilise the jar in the oven or in boiling water for 15 minutes.
when the chillies are cooked, lift them out gently and place in the jar
pour the syrup over and screw the lid on
allow the jar to cool before storing in the fridge.

To be honest, I don't know how long these will last after cooking, but since the chillies are blanched and so sweet, I am sure that 2-3 months is quite reasonable as long as they are completely submerged in the sugar syrup. I have a couple of ideas for recipes to use these in which I will add in the near future. Enjoy!

gluten free wontons skins & prawn shao mai dumplings

2009-12-10T07:00:00.001Z

I miss Chinese take-aways: browsing the long menus, taking time to pick from the myriad of choices, imagining the flavours and anticipating the delivery. Vicariously I share these activities with the teen and her friends but have to find something "very important" to do once the food is delivered, or else I find myself questioning them over every mouthful.
I've always cooked my own mock-Chinese stir-frys with the constant trio of flavours: ginger, garlic and chilli, but precisely because I used the same flavours, everything ended up tasting the same. Since I stopped eating chillies I have augmented my flavours with star anise, szechuan pepper and other spices which have vastly improved the results, but you can't get away from the fact that they are just vegetable stir-fries. Fuschia Dunlop's books are on my Christmas list but I am too impatient right now to wait: I want Chinese and I want it now!

I have just discovered Mary Moh's blog here, Mary cooks Malaysian food and it all looks scrumptious. I was drawn to her blog by the sweets and desserts, especially because Malay cuisine features lots of gluten free ingredients, and therefore lots of gluten free desserts. Whilst browsing, I came across Mary's recipe for Wantan dumplings in turkey soup. I think that wonton soup was the first dish I ever ate at a Chinese restaurant, I remember being captivated by the silky smooth wonton skins floating in the savoury broth.
Wontons have been out of reach to me for ages but, remembering that I saw Lye Water (kan sui) in our local oriental store by the station, I decided that wonton skins and soup are the next gluten free step for me. With gluten free wontons, you open up a whole range of new recipes and dishes. Beyond wonton soup, you can also make all manner of dimsum which are otherwise out-of-reach to gluten-free eaters. Even crispy wonton skins make a pleasant change to prawn crackers.
However, as you can see from the picture above, I got distracted from my task and decided to make shao mai as I figured they would be on my plate even quicker than wonton soup (making stock from scratch would take just too long today!). Shao Mai are delicious little steamed open dumpling stuffed with a quick and easy filling. I've made a prawn & salmon filling, but there are plenty of meat versions around on the internet. Make sure that 50% of the protein in the dumpling is naturally fatty - like the salmon in this recipe - this will help keep the filling juicy and soft whilst they steam. Mine are so messy (here is what they should look like!) but they taste great. I was geniunely so hungry and so impatient whilst I was making the dumplings that I just dolloped a teaspoon of filling in the centre of the freshly rolled square skins and squidged up the corners. Luckily they cooked well and tasted great which goes to show that free-style dumplings work too!
The basic pasta dough, made with egg and lye water, can be used for traditional style Chinese egg noodles too - adding a little more authenticity for a gluten free Chinese meal. I am not quite sure how these would turn out without lye water. Even a little touch in the recipe adds an authentic smell and chewy texture so do try to find it if you can.

Gluten free wonton skins
Ingredients

flour blend (or 300g gluten free flour):
140g rice flour
50g tapioca starch
50g corn starch
50g glutinous rice flour
10g kuzu starch
1 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp psyllium husks
2 eggs
1/2 tsp lye water (kan sui)
80-120ml (approximately) water

method

sieve all the flour ingredients together
put all the dry ingredients into a mixer or food processor bowl
add the eggs and lye water, start the mixer running
gradually drizzle the water in till the mix ressembles chunky breadcrumbs
tip the dough out onto a work surface dusted with tapioca starch
knead together to make a smooth dry dough
cut the dough into 5 pieces
process each piece in turn through a pasta machine reducing the thickness each time to create a thin silky sheet. I found the dough become brittle at roller #8 so stopped there.
cut each piece into 6cm squares or rounds
dust each sheet with more tapioca starch to ensure they don't stick together
stack to one side under a damp cloth until all the dough is processed

If you are not using these immediately store them in a ziplock bag in the fridge. If you are freezing the wonton, store them flat in a box before freezing. The dough sheets will be brittle and will shatter easily if they are knocked or squashed whilst in the freezer.

Prawn Shao Mai dumplings

1 large egg white
1 tablespoon Chinese wine (or dry sherry)
2 teaspoons tamari sauce (gluten free soy)
2 teaspoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons cornstarch, plus more for dusting
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
225g raw prawns, roughly chopped
225g salmon, skinned and roughly chopped
2 finely chopped spring onions
1” fresh ginger, peeled & finely chopped
8 sprigs coriander, finely chopped
1 carrot, peeled & grated
2 leaves Chinese cabbage, finely shredded
1 recipe gluten free wonton skins,rolled & cut into 3” squares or circles

method

whisk the first 8 ingredients together in a small bowl
put the rest of the ingredients in a food processor bowl
chop for 30 seconds then pour in the liquid ingredients.
let process for another minute then stop
that's the filling made - I said it was quick!

grease a dinner plate with a couple of teaspoons of sesame oil
take 1 wonton skin at a time and lay on the palm of your opposing hand (not the one you write with)
spoon a heaped teaspoon full of mix onto the centre of the skin and push the corners together so they stick to the mix.
flatten the bottom of the dumpling by tapping it on the work surface
put onto the greased plate and continue till all the mixture is used

To cook:

place a greased plate inside a bamboo steamer
set dumplings on plate, don't squash too may in, it took me 4 batches to cook all the dumplings
steam for 15 minutes and serve hot with a dipping sauce of tamari and chilli oil

I really hope that you have a go at making these. They are fun to make and delicious to eat. This recipe made enough to serve 6 people, so I have portions made up in the freezer, ready for the moment the teen orders her next Chinese take-away.
Let me know what you think!

a trip down memory lane: food co-operatives, bulk buying & the good life.

2009-12-09T07:30:00.003Z

I recently made the trip across to a wholefoods co-operative about 50 miles away to collect some ingredients for work. For several years, this was a regular jaunt across the Sussex countryside for me, loading 25kg sacks of flour and case after case of dried figs, prunes, raisins, sultanas and apricots into my groaning car and bouncing back along the foothills of the Downs. Now these ingredients come into the bakery in whole pallet loads. Where once there was 25kg, or even - if we were really busy - 37.5kg in 3 cases, now we have 1 ton pallets, wow!
For all that it is exciting to grow up, I have missed the regular visits to the warehouse. They reminded me of being a kid, back in the 70s in north London. We lived a very suburban childhood, but my parents were quite unique in their outlook. As my own daughter tells me regularly now, 'unique' and 'parent' are not two words that most children ever wish hear describing their own Mum & Dad. I wanted my parents to be normal - evenings out, buying ready meals, taking us to Spain on holiday and driving shiny new (& fast) cars. But that just wasn't my parent's style, and I really appreciate their outlook now.
My parents didn't wholly embrace "The Good Life" , we didn't get as far as chickens or sheep, though I know Dad would have appreciated their gardening skills - eating bugs, keeping the grass down. Once the vegetable garden was established and we had learned to process the gluts of beans, tomatoes and apples at their peak, Dad looked around for other ways to keep Mum busy. Plenty of home baking, jam making and bottling fruit led onto making home made ginger cordial and a wonderful exploding bottle in the kitchen which still left traces on the ceiling 15 years later. Then in the late 70s Dad discovered Community Foods and a new venture was born.
Before I go any further, I must point out that my Dad wasn't an entrepreneur. In fact he leaned towards a Quaker lifestyle. He had a big heart, and a great belief that we only needed enough in life to survive - not too much, just enough. He wasn't a natural consumer and he wasn't out to make a quick buck. And through Community Foods, he simply saw a way to make life better and cheaper for his family & friends around him.
Four times a year, we three kids and mum would pile into our old second hand Ital (buy British!) estate, and drive over to New Southgate. We made this same journey far more regularly to visit a favourite family friend, but these trips were different. With Aunty we were rewarded with crunchy biscuits with wrappers (you mean you can buy biscuits?) and glasses of vivid orange squash, treats untold to our young minds. But instead of turning right to Aunty's we would pull left off the steep hill onto a little industrial estate and there, tucked in the corner, was a warehouse with big sliding shutter doors.
The air smelled sweet & very slightly yeasty and the huge space was dark, cool & calm. There was pallet racking piled high with boxes of dried fruit, huge sticky sultanas, dark plump raisins, chewy sweet dark apricots. Whilst the guys sorted out our order, we used to sneak off and climb up the piles of boxes on the pallet racks. Of course we knew we weren't supposed to do this, so at least that made us clamber around quietly, whispering instead of shouting and trying to swallow our giggles. But it was so much better than a playground. You climb up the stacks of boxes using the spaces where boxes had been sold as perfect foot holes so it was a bit like a warm indoor play centre. But at the top of each pile were untold spoils. Prising a cardboard lid up with 2 hands you could slide your fingers under the lip of the lid and scrape a few nuggets of fruit from the side of a box. And if no-one noticed, and the fruit tasted good, we would move onto another box and another handful.
I apologise now to anyone who did notice the missing fruit, or grubby finger marks on the side of their boxes, but this place was such fun, we were like squirrels collecting nuts for a long cold winter, and always left with sticky fingers and full tummies.
We were usually caught at some point and scurried down heads hung low in embarrassment whilst wiping our sticky fingers on the back of our jeans. If not caught, we would emerge from the dark warehouse to find the back seat folded flat and the whole car laden with boxes. We would crawl in through the boot door and make ourselves comfortable in amongst the boxes for the journey home. Inevitably our high spirits would start to fail us on the return and 3 tetchy kids would snap, bicker & snipe at each other. There were 2 big hills on the way back to our house and we would crawl up both at no more than 15 miles an hour with us hiding our heads (though bodies of course still visible) in embarrassment of our old over-laden car.
The point of this journey was not, of course, the journey itself. Our next job was to load up the wheel barrow with boxes of fruit at the bottom, sacks of wholemeal flour on the top and transport this into the old summer house in the back garden. This in itself was a feat, with a narrow sideway, 2 steps and an overloaded barrow pushed by a 9 year old, rarely did everything arrive intact! The haul unloaded, we would happily crowd round the kitchen table for some of Mum's crunchy baked jam sandwich (recipe to follow) and glasses of milk.
Over the course of the next few weeks, we would have a stream of visitors to the house, buying a few ounces of raisin, a couple of pounds of sultanas, half a sack of flour for homemade bread-making. Our costs, petrol & plastics bags - if you didn't bring your own - were factored in and the sales were carefully noted to make sure that the books balanced. And this, I think, was the real point of the exercise. No-one profited - the books had to balance, our costs were covered and in return we, and our families and friends, were able to share in a haul of great quality and cheap ingredients.
I don't remember buying dried fruit from a store for years, until my daughter was a toddler and my parents had left London, and once again dried fruit was back in my shopping basket. It didn't take long for a seed of an idea to grow, and soon I was searching out a warehouse and cases of juicy dried fruits. With great ingredients, it seemed only natural to create recipes to showcase them, and I suppose that links me directly to where I am today. Thanks, Mum & Dad.

daifuku mochi , recipe and method

2009-12-03T14:00:00.001Z

Being gluten free as well as unable to eat fat limits the sweet treats that I can indulge in. Whilst this is wonderfully healthy, I do crave the occasional sugary bite. I was entranced by these soft pillowy chewy treats called daifuku mochi when I first saw them and I was delighted to discover that they are naturally gluten free.
I have found them in long life packs at our local Oriental ingredients store and whilst they taste delicious and are immediate, but that hasn't stopped me wanting to try to make them for myself.
Handling the dough is a joy to anyone used to baking gluten free. The warm translucent paste is stretchy and pliable in a way that most gluten free doughs never are. Stretching and pressing gently will allow you to create a thin sheet of dough which can then be cut to form the sweets, though I was very tempted to roll it up and start again, just for fun!
These daifuku are filled with anko, which is a thick sweetened puree of aduki beans. The teen loves them filled with sweetened peanut butter paste but my favourite is a thick spicy squash or pumpkin puree. I didn't have any pumpkin around, so went for the more traditional filling of aduki beans.

This recipe makes 12-15 sweets. Making the sweets themselves took about 1 hour from beginning to washing up (using pre-cooked bean paste). The sweets can be stored covered for 24 hours before serving or frozen, so they could be made in advance to serve as desserts or sweets. I had wanted to take photos of the method but the whole process is both dusty and sticky that action photos were not possible, sorry!

Anko (sweet red pean paste)

175g aduki beans
85g white sugar
1/2 tsp salt

method:

put the aduki beans in 1.5L of cold water and bring to the boil.
let boil at a rolling boil for 10 minutes, then take off the heat.
put a lid on the pan, and set aside for 6-8 hours or overnight.
drain the beans and return to the pan with 1.5L fresh water
bring to the boil again and turn down to a simmer
continue to cook, topping up with boiling water as necessary.
cook the beans until soft for 45 mins to 1 hour
drain the beans thoroughly, rinse the pan then put the beans back in
add 175g sugar (or more to taste) and 1 tsp salt
return pan to the heat and stir to dissolve sugar and salt
mash beans: you can do this using a potato masher, a stick blender or a food processor
if you want very smooth puree, you can sieve the mashed beans to remove the skins (I didn't)

set aside to let the puree cool whilst you make the daifuku dough

Daifuku dough

100g glutinous rice flour
50g white sugar
165ml water

method:

line a lipped baking tray with baking parchment and dust thickly with corn or potato starch
sieve the glutinous rice flour into a rice cooker or saucepan
stir in 50g sugar then pour on the water, stirring continuously
stir thoroughly to ensure there are no lumps
turn the rice cooker on or set the pan over a low heat for 10 minutes
allow the mixture to cook, stirring once or twice until it is thick and sticky (you may find you need to add a little more water to ensue the paste cooks to a translucent mass without a hint of powder remaining).
scrape up the hot paste - it will look like a lump of gluey mashed potato, and completely un-usable, but don't worry, it's fine!
tip the hot paste out onto the lined baking tray
dust your hands and the top of the dough with more starch
press the dough out using your fingers / knuckles to create an even sheet about 4-5mm thick, this takes a little while but isn't that much different from pressing out a wheat dough for a pizza base.
when you have created an even(ish) layer, cut out one piece at a time using a knife, pastry cutter or glass 6-7cm wide. If you use a knife and cut triangles you will have no wastage at all, otherwise there will be some trimmings.
place 1 tsp of cold bean paste in the centre of the cut dough
bring opposite sticky edges of the dough together and squeeze to seal, then squeeze all the seals together to create a join underneath,
dust the bottom of the sweet with a little more starch to seal
set each sweet in turn on serving plate
if you are left with some trimmings from the dough, you can re-roll and make some more. you will have to knead the dough a bit harder to bring it all together before you can press it out again and cut into pieces. these last few daifuku mochi will have thicker sken and be a bit chewier - I actually preferred these to the rest I made!

When you are clearing up, don't throw away the starch, pass it through a clean sieve to remove any pieces of dough then store for future use. And finally, don't throw any pieces of dough down the sink as it will solidify as it dries and block the drain. Put your utensils to soak then scrape the wet dough off into the bin instead.

my recipe for apricot & almond snack bars (gluten free, sugar free, high protein)

2009-12-02T07:15:00.001Z

I posted a recipe for honey and apricot flapjack the other day, but mentioned that I don't eat them as I can't digest oats. I have been playing around with my own recipes for gluten free bars but I haven't been really satisfied with anything I had made until now!

As a bar goes, these are light, cake-y in texture yet really filling and so very useful as snacks during the day, or to put in lunchboxes. They are naturally gluten free and sugar free as well as containing no added fat and really high protein levels which will also make them good for pre- or post gym snacks. They are vegan as long as you use pea or soy protein isolate. You can find pea protein isolate from Pulsin' in the UK here with superfast delivery, alternatively stores like Holland & Barrett in the UK should stock it. In the states you buy a non-GMO version here (I haven't ever bought from this company so I can't recommend them).
To some people's tastes these will not be sweet enough without adding some sweetener. I didn't but it's up to you. One 45g bar contains 139kcal without using any sweetener in the recipe, that statistic might persuade you to omit it! Did I mention how filling they are? I ate one for breakfast 4 hours ago and I am still not at all hungry and even better, there is no sugar high or low as this contains protein and slow release carbs instead of sugar.
This recipe is a useful one for people who can't eat xanthan gum. You can make these using ready-ground seeds and nuts if you have them which will save you time. I haven't found any sources of freshly ground seeds, so as seed flours turn rancid quickly I still grind my own.
I have found that buying a coffee grinder has soon paid for itself as seed flour is so much more expensive than raw seeds. Even if you are grinding your own seeds these are still quick to make and you can have these in the oven inside 15 minutes. The bars will freeze fine and can be popped into a lunch box straight from the freezer. Not only will they defrost by lunchtime, the chill will keep the rest of your lunch cool!

Apricot and Almond snack bars

Ingredients:

200g chopped apricots
175g chopped dates or figs (or a mix)
175g boiling water
150g blanched almonds
70g pumpkin seeds
60g hemp seeds (de-hulled) or sunflower seeds
60g linseeds (flax)
50g dried pineapple or mango (or other slightly acidic fruit)
30g whey / soy or pea protein isolate
*honey, agave nectar or sweet freedom (if required)

Equipment:
12" x 9" x 1" baking tray, lined with non-stick paper + coffee grinder or mini chopper + food mixer/processor (or strong arm!) + oven

Method:

soak the chopped dates in the boiling water in the bowl of your mixer or food processor (if you have one)
grind the almonds in the coffee grinder to make a fine fluffy flour (do small batches of about 50g at a time to get a fine grind)
repeat the process with each of the seeds in turn
finely chop the pineapple or mango
beat the date and water mixture for 2 mins until you have a thick and slightly aerated paste
add the vanilla extract & the apricots and mix briefly to combine
add all the nut & seed flours and protein isolate
mix to make a thick paste and taste, sweeten if desired (I didn't sweetened mine at all)
tip into lined baking tin and spread evenly across tin
bake at 160° C for 30 minutes
remove from oven, let rest in tin for 10 minutes before lifting out on baking paper and placing on cooling tray
cut once cold, mine made 20 bars

To store: wrap and store in fridge or freezer (since they are unsweetened they will grow mould if left in a warm environment). If storing in fridge eat within 7 days. For frozen bars, wrap well & eat within 3 months.

chewy honey & apricot flapjacks

2009-11-26T07:30:00.002Z

There were just too many mentions of flapjack around me recently to ignore them. Autumn brings on our desire for comforting snacks full of slow release energy to keep us warm and snug, I used to bake flapjacks almost every day, soft chewy ones too, not crunchy ones but haven't baked any for ages. When it dawned on me that I hadn't any little snacks for tomorrow's lunchboxes then baking flapjacks seemed to be the obvious solution.

A quick disclaimer: I don't eat oats, (so this is a truly altruistic post)! if you are not gluten intolerent, feel free to skip the next bit and dive straight into the recipe.

I know that I am walking into a minefield by posting an oat-based recipe here. "Are oats gluten-free?" is the subject of much debate, with some people being able to tolerate them, others not.
Gluten free oats are now available in the UK as well as the states. In the UK you can now buy gluten free oats in all Waitrose stores under the brand "Delicious Alchemy". I haven't tried them (the recipe below was made with regular oats). In the states Bob's Red Mill, among others, supply gluten-free oats.
It is worth pointing out that gluten-free in this sense means un-contaminated with gluten. These oats are often grown on farms and milled on sites that do not handle wheat at all, so there is no possibility of harvest-related contamination. They are tested using ELISA testing to prove a gluten content of less than 20ppm.
However, some people still can't tolerate oats even with the gluten contamination removed. In the UK the contamination issue has meant that it really difficult for us to work out whether we are sensitive to the cellular formula of oats, or just the wheat-related contamination. The only way to find out is to try - of course it is up to you whether or not you do. If you do want to try, then these are the people who can help you:

UK: Waitrose

USA (& worldwide shipping): Bob's Red Mill
13521 SE Pheasant Court, Milwaukie, Oregon 97222. USA
Phone: 001 503 654-3215. Fax: 001 503 653-1339

Right, with that out of the way, here's the recipe - it is so easy and tastes fantastic!

Chewy honey & apricot flapjacks

Ingredients:

140g salted butter
125g light muscovado sugar
30g glucose syrup (from supermarket in cake decorating / home baking)
70g honey (eucalyptus gives a great caramel flavour)
175g apricots, chopped
300g rolled oats (GF if required)

Equipment: 9"x12" baking tin (1" deep) lined with baking paper.
Oven: pre-heat to 150°C

Method:

put the butter, sugar, glucose syrup and honey in a large saucepan (I use a wok!)
heat over a low heat and stir regularly to ensure it neither sticks nor burns
when the sugar has dissolved add the apricots
stir to cover the apricots in the caramel
add the oats and mix till all the oats are coated in the caramel
press the oat mixture into the tin
bake at 150°C for 20 minutes
take out the oven and leave to cool in the tin for around 45 mins
cut the flapjack into portions before it is fully cold
wrap each piece and store in an airtight container to ensure they stay soft

Beware - the pieces are inclined to crumble if you try to eat them before they are cold, but it is very hard to resist!

and now for something completely different ...

2009-11-24T07:30:00.000Z

A day spent in London walking, looking, watching and photographing when encounters with people bring humour, joy and amazement. And the 'Ghost Forest' is an amazing sight. Brought to London for just one week by the artist Angela Palmer, the installation consists of huge rain forest stumps positioned around Trafalgar Square. It was really worth the visit, both beautiful and thought-provoking. You can find out more about the Ghost Forest on Angela Palmer's website here. And there are some more photos on my flickr stream here if you don't have a chance to visit yourself.
Whilst reading and pondering the trees, my eyes caught (but my camera was not quick enough for) a crocodile of japanese business men in ill-fitting suits weaving across Trafalgar Square between the trees perceiving them as obstacles, each clutching a small camera at arms-length and eye-level recording their every step for posterity. I wondered if they were actually seeing anything around them and whether they would ever watch back their films to experience everything they missed.
A stroll across Picadilly Circus and down Picadilly lead to the RA with the aim of visiting the Anish Kapoor exhibition. Now comes a note to self - get there as early as possible and get in the queue. If you don't, the queue will just get longer and longer all day, we are planning another visit before the 11th now I have queue tactics!
A quick pit stop on Brewer Street for sushi lead us across Piccadilly Circus and into Soho. I was sad to see that the historic Windmill Theatre site has been razed to the ground but relieved to see that elements of the frontage on all 4 sides have been retained. I am always reminded of blitz photos when I see gaping holes in my familiar London streetscape - not because I was there (!), but because the hastily re-filled gaps stood out to me quite shockingly when I was a small child. Then I stuggled to understand the stark modern structures juxtaposed between the ornate 18th and 19th century terraces.
I grabbed the opportunity to photograph some of the few remaining food shops in Soho. I managed to miss Lina Stores but Camisa, Gerry's & Vintage House are all still there along with Patisserie Valerie. In a previous post I mentioned my Aunty Vera who was brought up living in Soho pre- & post-war. I love the fact that these few shops like Lina and Camisa have changed so little since this was her home. I didn't really have a food shopping head on, as i am still so limited in what I can eat but I am still kicking myself for missing the truffles from Camisa. Across the road Gerry's window as ever was attracting attention from passers by. I can stare and read and imagine the flavours of the different spirits and blends just like every one else, and not notice an hour slip.
Liberty's window displays are as stunning as ever this Christmas. I was interested to see the complete rejection of stark style & beauty in favour of kitsch home scenes with a scale that reminded me of my grandpa's 2-up 2-down in Lancashire in the 1970s. I loved the pantomime dames too.

A final stroll down Regent Street passing below the under-stated Christmas lights though I was looking for the giant spider which surely accompanies them, and back down to Trafalgar Square. I love the scale of the National Gallery and especially the Sainsbury wing. It took a while for it to grow on me, but now I love its' cavernous scale, graphic reworking of 18th century architectural finishes and stark lines. 'The Sacred made Real' is an exploration of the 16th century Roman Catholic iconography which is found mostly in the churches and monasteries of southern Spain. These are the figures that make up the tableaux which are venerated as they procession around the towns in Holy week leading up to Easter each year. I have seen these figures in churches across Europe but had never pondered on how or when they were created. Without thinking about it too deeply I realise that I had come to the conclusion they were 1950s shop mannequins! How far was I from the truth. This was also (& I have no good reason for this) the first exhibition that I had viewed with a really good audio guide which brought life and understanding to these surreal figures and paintings: I definitely recommend a visit.
And that's it, a quick wander round West One to try out a borrowed camera.

Braised duck and red cabbage

2009-11-23T11:48:00.001Z

For several years I have worked every Sunday, either on farmers markets or in the bakery. Happily our delivery scheduled has recently change and now I can roll out of bed at 9.50 instead of 5 or 6 am - a complete luxury. I can't quite stop myself gazing up at the leaden skies with horror at the impending rain, but it will take ages to get out of that habit!
Because of our work history we don't eat Sunday lunch in our house, but we do have a good Sunday supper. Selling at farmers markets every weekend meant that by Sunday evening our fridge would be stuffed full of delicious buys and swaps - enough to see us through the week and beyond. Sunday evening was a quiet moment to savour a fridge full of seasonality and carefully crafted products, a luxury that would have be unattainable on our normal income so we relished our luck. I really don't miss the hours, the cold and the back ache, but when it come to Sunday evenings and I start to put a meal together, I really miss the amazing foods that we used to enjoy everyday.
Nigel Slater had a recipe on Simple Suppers recently which elicite moans of delight in our living room - it was duck stuffed with red cabbage. However it wasn't the duck which garnered the emotion but the cabbage!

So this was Sunday's supper: duck legs braised with red cabbage, served with puy lentils and roast potatoes. As both the meat and potatoes are off limits for me, I baked a stuffed baby squash with brown rice, beetroot, leeks & fresh ginger and will blog this shortly.
You can cook this recipe with a whole duck, either by jointing or leaving the bird whole. If you do use a whole bird, prick all over before frying all over and adjust the cooking time according to the weight of the bird and the cooking instructions that came with it.
Most recipes add sugar to the red cabbage but with the prunes, pommeau and apple you should find that the recipe is sweet enough. If you need a little more acidity you can add the juice of half a lemon or 10 ml (1 dsp) red wine or sherry vinegar.

Braised duck and red cabbage

100g prunes, soaked in 50g of brandy or pommeau (I had run out of brandy)
3 ducks legs
450g red cabbage
1 dessert apple
1 heaped tsp (5g) cumin seeds
200ml red wine (I used an Australian Cabernet Sauvignon)
2-3 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
200ml chicken stock

Method:

Stab the skin of the ducks legs all over with a fork and then put them skin side down in a frying pan.
Cook over a gentle heat allowing the fat to render off the legs for about 15 mins
Shred the red cabbage finely and chop the apple (core but don't peel).
Put 2 dessertspoons (20ml) duck fat from the rendering legs into a heavy-bottomed casserole (with a lid) over a low heat.
Add the red cabbage and a sprinckling of salt then toss gently in the fat to soften.
Add the chopped apple and the cumin seeds, stir to combine then pour in the prunes and pommeau.
Pour in 200ml red wine and season well with black pepper.
Tuck the bay leaves into the red cabbage
Pour over the chicken stock then bring the pan to the boil, .
Strew over the thyme sprigs and lay the ducks legs over the top.
Put a lid on the casserole and put it into the oven at 160°C for an hour or so.

Lots of braised dishes benefit from resting 24 hours before serving and this is no exception. Stick it in the fridge and warm through the following evening and you'll find the flavours even more pronounced and delicious than if you ate it straight away. Of course, we couldn't wait and devoured the lot as soon as it was cooked, hence no plate shots!

gluten free chocolate cupcakes

2009-11-22T13:23:00.000Z

With no apologies, this is another recipe baked to cheer up the teen. She is already sorely missing the summer sunlight and the other day, life got a bit too much for her. She had a miserable day for no particular reason (we all know that feeling) and then got soaked on the way home. She was so down in the dumps, I wasn't sure what - apart from the new season's unaired Gossip Girl episodes - would cheer her up. As I am neither pirate nor hacker, she had to suffice with repeats and a plate of cupcakes!

I haven't baked cupcakes for years so I scaled down my old recipe and reworked it for us today. Naturally it's gluten free and for the benefit of my conscience, a bit healthier, using a natural sweetener as well as sugar in the cakes (but I forgot to do the same in the icing). The teen hasn't noticed the difference so far, well, not until she reads this!

Ingredients

2 medium eggs
175g castor sugar
75g light agave syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
125ml (1/2 cup) rapeseed or sunflower oil
200g white rice flour
60g cocoa
40g millet flour
30g tapioca flour
30g glutinous rice flour
6g (1 dsp) arrowroot flour
1.5 tsp gf baking powder
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
150ml (1/2 cup) rice or cow's milk

Icing:

125g (1/2 cup) margarine
125g (1/2 cup) butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
425g (3.5 cups) sifted confectioners' sugar
liquid colourings as required + 1 tbsp milk
75g cocoa powder (1/2 cup + 1 tbsp)
100g dark chocolate melted in 50g milk

Method

line 16 holes in 1-2 deep muffin pans with cupcake liners (I used 2.5" liners)
weigh up all dry ingredients and sieve together.
preheat oven to 180° C.
beat eggs and sugar in a mixer for one minute until the mix makes thin visible ribbons on the surface.
add agave nectar & vanilla extract, beat for another 30 seconds.
add dry ingredients, along with the oil and milk.
beat everything together for 1 minute.
using a dessert spoon, scoop a large spoonful of the mix and use to fill one liner
repeat until all the mix is used.
bake for 20 mins until firm and a skewer inserted into the tcake comes out clean.
leave he cupcakes to cool in the tin for 5 mins before removing to a cooling rack.
ice once cold.

Icing

this makes too much icing but I find it to fiddly to make smaller quantities
melt the chocolate in milk in the microwave (approx 30 secs in 800W oven)
stir to ensure it is fully blended and creamy
beat butter and margarine together in food mixer or processor until soft and creamy(unless you bravely do this by hand).
divide this mixture in half, leaving just 125g in the mixing bowl.
sift in 250g (2 cups) icing sugar and mix till combined - this will give a stiff mix.
divide this equally into small bowls - 1 for each colour.
add colouring as per instructions and mix into the icing
add milk, 1 tsp at a time to make a smooth but slightly stiff icing paste
cover each bowl with damp cloth and set aside whilst you make the chocolate icing
put the rest of the butter mix into your mixing bowl
sift 175g (1.5 cups) icing sugar & 75g cocoa powder into the butter
mix until fully blended
add milk, 1 tsp at a time, until the icing is creamy but still stiff
add the melted chocolate ganache mix to the chocolate icing
mix briefly and then scrape into smaller bowl or piping bag ready to use.

We decorated our cakes simply using teaspoons to spread the icing - not a professional job but lots of fun. The teen shredded some chocolate for decorating.
We also made very pink colouring by grating 40g beetroot and squeezing the juice through a piece of gauze. This gave about 2 tbsp juice which we used like normal food colouring. Our green colour was achieved using colouring (I haven't started squeezing spinach or wheat grass for colouring ... yet!).

Christmas is coming - Panforte di Siena

2009-11-18T18:24:00.004Z

I love Christmas food and especially baking, however it can be a bit tedious for gluten free eaters unless you have a bit of time to plan in advance. I normally become a bit obsessed in the weeks leading up to the holidays, baking to fill the house with aromatic spices & delicious snacks to ensure that there are enough tasty bites for us all to share.
This year I am starting a bit early with the baking as I'll be putting my feet up in hospital just before Christmas (the lengths some people go to for a rest!), so I am already thinking about my favourite snacks and squirrel-like, I'm making and storing some away. Parmesan crisps and Union Bar nuts are an absolute must in our house. I've started making a version of the nuts using fennel & lemon zest as well, which taste just great with a G&T.
Usually, I make traditional gluten free Christmas cakes but this year my diet restrictions have put this recipe out of reach. Trying to find a cake which was egg free and contained no added fat seemed like an impossible task, but I was wrong, thank you to the Italians!
Panforte di Siena packs a spicy punch wrapped up in sticky rich fruit and nuttiness - now isn't that the perfect festive combination? Lots of the recipes I found had a lot more sugar and honey, but this has a base of dried figs instead which are both naturally sweet and perfectly festive. If you can, use whole pieces of peel and cut them into rough chunks about 1cm square, this will give a more interesting texture and gives a rustic look to the cake. To make your own candied peel, you can use this recipe from the L.A Times, it is very easy to do and the results will lift this cake to another level. If I was going to the trouble of making my own peel, I would definitely use fresh spices, lightly toasted and fragrant, freshly ground.

The recipe may look really long, but it is very straightforward and, dare I say it, easy?! I have baked a couple of test runs to make sure I get the fruit and spicing combination right. The first attempt was definitely too peppery, though not too peppery to eat, of course! I think this recipe has a good balance of flavours, it certainly works for my tastes and I hope you like it too.

Panforte di Siena
This is lovely served at the end of a meal, either with cheese or with coffee (or both!).

Ingredients:

100g blanched almonds
100g hazelnuts, unskinned
240g dried figs, chopped (you could substitute dates, prunes or a mix of all 3, instead)
75ml water
50g honey
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp crushed cardamom seeds
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp finely ground black pepper
100g light muscovado sugar
70g whole glace cherries
70g organic apricots, chopped
70g candied orange peel, chopped
40g candied lemon / citron, chopped
60g rice flour
30ml pommeau or vin santo, or moscatel
1 orange, zested and juiced.
2-3 sheets rice paper
clean tea towel and a baking sheet
lots of icing sugar
1 x 21cm square or 25cm round tin, lined with baking paper

Method:

preheat the oven to 150°C
on a baking sheet make 2 separate heaps, one of the hazelnuts, the other of almonds.
toast the nuts in the oven for 12 minutes.
when they are done tip the hazelnuts onto the tea towel and wrap them up. rub the nuts inside the tea towel, the friction should flake the skins off. pick the nuts out and shake the dusty skins into the compost or bin.
layer the rice paper over the baking paper in the base of the tin - this will form the base for the cake
put the chopped figs in a medium sized sauce pan with the water (add more if required to just cover the fruit).
measure out the spices and add them, with the honey & sugar to the pan
heat the pan, stirring occassionally and cook for 10 minute until the water has been absorbed creating a soft and sticky paste
take the pan off the heat
add the fruits & orange zest and mix in thoroughly
add the nuts, and do the same
sieve the flour into the pan and stir to mix through
pour on the orange juice and alcohol
stir to mix
spoon the mix into the tin and spread gently to create a thick even layer
bake for 30-40 minutes
remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin
to serve, dredge with icing sugar*

*If you are not serving this immediately, don't dust with the icing sugar instead wrap the cake in cling film before storing in an airtight box or tin. Don't forget to the icing sugar before serving though.

sweet cucumber pickles & ginger-pickled carrots

2009-11-15T15:20:00.003Z

I've just discovered I really like making pickles! I usually write up my recipes as I go, to ensure that I don't forget any stages, but I was so engrossed with this from the beginning I almost forgot.
I've been reading blogs all autumn full of ingenious recipes for pickling but I was very unsure about how to create the right balance of flavours - it didn't really dawn on me to taste the spicing vinegar. The original plan was to make 2 completely different types of pickles using different types of vinegar to try out their flavours. As it turned out 1x568ml bottle of distilled vinegar was enough for both the cucumber pickles and the carrot ones, so I just added some additional spice to the carrot, which I made second. I used 2 x 0.5L 'Le Parfait' style jars along with 1 old Bonne Maman jar (this had +20% so a bit bigger than the usual size).
Both the carrots and the cucumbers look really good so will make good Christmas presents. I am sure that I will be making more of these in the next couple of weeks.

Sweet pickled cucumbers

Ingredients:

500g mini cucumbers, halved
25g (1 tbsp + 1dsp) salt
1.5 tsp mustard seed
1 tsp fennel seed
1 tsp coriander
10 white peppercorns
10 black peppercorns
1 bunch dill
568ml distilled vinegar
175g white sugar
1 x 1L sterilised pickling jar
1 x 500g sterilised pickling jar

Note: I tasted the dill pickles a week after I made them. They are really good: sweet yet slightly salty crunchy and spicy. If you like things a bit more toned down, you could use 150g sugar and 17g salt.

Method:

wash then sterilise jars in an oven at 140°C for 15 minutes, cool whilst preparing the cucumbers
fill a pan with water and bring to the boil
wash and halve cucumbers (quarter if very plump)
blanch the cucumbers in the boiling water for 1 minute
drain and rinse in cold water
allow cucumbers to cool and dry
add the vinegar, spices, sugar and salt to the empty saucepan used to blanch the cukes.
bring to the boil, and if you can bring yourself to, taste the vinegar to check the balance of sugar and salt.
adjust with extra sugar or salt as you wish
dunk a few sprigs of dill into the boiling vinegar for a few seconds to sterilise (I have no idea whether this helps, it just seemed like a sensible idea)
pack the cucumbers and dill into the jars
pour the spiced vinegar over the packed jars, ensuring the vegetables are fully covered
lid with acid-proof (ie not exposed metal) sterilised lids
store in a dark cupboard for 3-4 weeks before serving
store in fridge after opening and consume within 1 month

Ginger pickled carrots
Using the (250g) left over pickling vinegar so I decided to pickle some organic carrots with fresh ginger

Ingredients

300g organic carrots,
pan of boiling water for blanching the carrots
leftover pickling vinegar
15g peeled and thinly sliced fresh ginger

Method:

wash, peel and quarter the carrots length-ways (to create spears)
blanch the carrots for 1 minute then drain and rinse in cold water
bring the spiced vinegar to the boil and add the ginger
taste vinegar to check for seasoning
pack the carrots into a 0.5L sterilised jar
pour the vinegar and spices over ensuring the vegetables are covered
lid with acid-proof (ie not exposed metal) sterilised lids
store in a dark cupboard for 3-4 weeks before serving
store in fridge after opening and consume within a couple of weeks

gluten free gnocchi

2009-11-12T12:47:00.000Z

It's definitely Autumn now! Of course you can't have failed to notice that, the leaves are blowing from the trees, daylight fades at 5pm and the rain falls as much as the sun used to shine. Winter boots are replacing sandals and the central heating clicks on for the first time since spring. I haven't altogether let go of my comfy birkenstocks but I am embracing autumnal foods very happily.
Here is a recipe for squash & sweet potato gnocchi. These are free from potatoes and wheat flour so are great for both gluten free and nightshade free diets. I was really disappointed when I thought that I would have to give up gnocchi, so I was relieved to realise that this wasn't the case.

The first time I cooked this recipe with just squash, but the little dumplings seemed to be a little bit squeaky in your mouth and just not substantial enough. Adding the sweet potato gives a firmer dough which is easier to roll and much, much more satisfying to eat. The extra starch means that these freeze a lot better than squash only, so you can make more and freeze for quick mid week suppers
I was looking for a slightly bitter sauce to cut through the natural sweetness of the gnocchi, so - as pictured - I served the gnocchi here with a drizzle made of blanched dandelion leaves, garlic and olive oil. Making this again I will make the sauce with equal amounts of dandelion and either spinach or rocket to balance the strong flavour of autumnal dandelion, but I was pleased with the results as I have never tried cooking with dandelion leaves.

Gluten free Gnocchi with a dandelion drizzle (serves 4)

350g squash, or piece of (raw and unpeeled)
1 x 400g sweet potato stabbed with a fork all over
1 free range egg (medium)
120 g (3/4 cup) rice flour
30g (1/4 cup) glutinous rice flour
1/2 tsp xanthan gum

Preparation

Microwave* each vegetable for around 5 mins each for an 800W oven until they are soft and cooked throughout. Set to one side to cool whilst you prep the flour.
Sieve 120g rice flour with 30g glutinous rice flour and just under 1/5 tsp xanthan gum.
Once the vegetables are cool enough to handle, scoop the flesh from the skins (scrape to get every last morsel). Mash the vegetable flesh together with a potato masher (or whizz briefly in a food processor). If the puree is still warm, wait for it to cool (rather than cold) before you move on to the next stage.

Making the dough

Beat the egg gently and then add to the vegetables, stir through until the egg is combined making a smooth thick batter.
Season with a bit of salt and black pepper (taste if you don't mind the raw egg).
Some squashes are drier than other varieties and this will dictate the amount of flour you need to add.
Sprinkle one tablespoon of the flour mix at a time over the vegetable batter, and stir until throughly combined.
Continue doing this until the batter is too thick to stir and needs to be kneaded by hand (for me this was after adding 75g flour (i used a buttercup squash which is quite firm and dry).

Forming the gnocchi

Sprinkle your work surface with more of the flour mix and scrape the dough out onto the worktop. If the dough is still sticky, knead some more of the flour in until the dough holds it's shape.
Form into a block and cut into 4 pieces, roll out 1 piece to make a long sausage no more than 2cm wide.
With a wet knife, cut 2cm lengths along the length of the dough - it should make around 15-18 pieces per portion.
Form the dough into gnocchi (see below for over complicated instructions - why didn't I take photos of the process?!
Continue until you have rolled all the dough and then leave to dry for at least 30 mins before cooking.

To make the drizzle.

Pick about 20 small (less than 7cm) dandelion leaves and wash them. Fill a 1 pint bowl with cold water and set by the hob.
Bring a little pan of water to the boil, drop the leaves in and let them boil for about 30 seconds.
Lift them out with a draining spoon and dunk them straight into the cold water.
Allow to cool for a minute or two, the scoop them out with your hand and squeeze hard to extract all moisture.
Chop finely along with 1/4 clove fresh garlic.
Put both in a small bowl and drizzle over some olive oil.
Mix then taste, season with salt and pepper as required.

To cook the gnocchi

Bring a large pan of water to a rolling boil.
Salt - approx 10g per litre of water.
Add gnocchi and let the pan come back to the boil.
As soon as the gnocchi rise to the surface (1-2 minutes) they are cooked, so drain them and serve with the drizzle, and grated parmesan if you can eat it.

Instructions for forming gnocchi (if you need them)

Roll each piece of dough in the palm of your hand to make a ball (dust with a little flour if necessary).
Balance the dough ball between your middle finger and your 3rd finger (ring finger in the UK) then grab a fork and drag the fork gently over the top of the ball - the dough will lengthen slightly as it moves and pick up the markings of the fork.
If you drag the fork across your fingers, the gnocchi will be stopped by your ring finger and slightly squashed - that will make a little dent in the back of the gnocchi which increases the surface area and makes it cook quicker.
The fork grooves help your sauce stick to the gnocchi meaning you get a perfect portion of sauce & dumpling with each forkful.

*Microwaves: I recently contributed to forum chat on the UK Food Bloggers Association discussing microwaves. I realised then I don't really use mine much, and certainly not for cooking, just heating stuff up. Using the microwave to cook these vegetables was much quicker and much more efficient than the oven. I was suprised that the results were just as good as oven roasting, with a little caramelising on the cut surfaces of the squash. I will definitely try this again.

Apple and blackberry crumble

2009-11-09T16:57:00.002Z

I don't bake sweet treats at home anywhere near as often I as should, which I supose makes the name of the blog a misnomer.
Kate the bake comes from me being a baker by trade rather than writing a blog full of baking recipes. Perhaps I should include more baking recipes to rectify this.
As Autumn hurries on whipped up by strong winds and driving rain, we find ourselves craving comfort food. Today faced with a pile of fresh eating apples and the blackberries that I strained our out of our blackberry vodka, I realised that I really needed to find a home for both. So here is a blackberry and apple crumble (or crisp). I have made this with a gluten free topping of course,
and have used a mixture of rice and maize flour, but you could add gluten free grain flakes for a bit of texture and vary the spices depending on the fruit.

Blackberry & Apple crumble

Ingredients
400g (4 small) dessert apples, peeled, cored and chopped.
100g blackberries
1 lemon - zest only
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Fruit method:

Put the fruit in a pan with a splash of water (a tablespoon or so) and let simmer over a low heat for 5 minutes.
Taste the fruit & sweeten with dk brown muscavado (turbinado sugar) or agave nectar if very tart.
Add the zest and vanilla extract, stir through.
Pour the fruit into a baking dish - I used several small dishes for individual portions but I guess that an 8" or 9" square ceramic dish would be fine.

Topping
90g (1/2 cup) rice flour
80g (1/2 cup) maize flour
115g (1/2 cup) castor sugar
90g (1/2 cup) dark muscavado sugar (turbinado sugar, I think)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
125g (1 stick) cold butter

Topping method

weigh out flours and cinnamon, sieve together
weight out sugars and stir into flour
finely chop butter and add to flour mix
rub in as if you were making pastry until you have a sticky bread crumb mix ( you can do this in a food processor).
spoon the topping over the fruit in the baking dish creating a thick even layer.

Place the baking dish on a lined tray to catch any drips. Bake in a preheated oven for around 40 mins at 190 deg C, until the crumble is browning on top and the juices are oozing up the sides of the dish.
Serve with whilst still warm just as it is or with yoghurt, cream, custard or ice cream.

Hummous two ways

2009-11-08T14:47:00.004Z

The 16 year old just rolled in from her friend's birthday party (it was 12.40pm the day after). She is normally a remarkably well-behaved young lady but I had been forwarned by her text at 9am ("I just threw up!" said with some pride) that she may feel a little delicate.
I tried to think of something to snack on which would give her some energy and protein without resorting to the good old English breakfast routine laden in grease. So it was that I found myself skinning chick peas to make hummous.

I know it is completely unnecessary to skin them, as the skins are perfectly edible, but it makes a dramatic difference to the quality of the finished product, and, it's not as if I have anything else to do - according to the teen anyway!

I have been eating lots of hummous, and variations on this recipe using different beans. Large butter beans have become a particular favourite, especially since they are much quicker to skin than chick peas.

Don't be put off by the garish colours of the beetroot hummous and the carrots, they really do taste great together.

Hummous two ways

250g cooked chick peas (drained weight), popped from their skins if you can be bothered.
1 heaped tablespoon tahini (sesame seed paste)
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1-2 tbsp (15-30ml) water
salt and pepper
35g beetroot

carrot, celery and fresh coriander to serve

What to do:

Whizz the chick peas and chopped garlic in a food processor until they are finely ground.
Add the tahini and whizz again till combined.
Add lemon zest and juice, whizz again.
Add the olive oil and blend.
If the puree is still dry, add water as the processor is running until you get the right consistency for you.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Divide the hummous into 2 bowls - put 200g into one bowl and set aside, scrape the rest into another bowl.

Peel the beetroot, pop it back into the (unwashed) food processor and whizz till very finely chopped.
Add the smaller batch of hummous to the food processor and whizz again until all combined.
Check for seasoning then scrape back into the serving bowl.

Serve with sticks of fresh carrot and coriander.

If I was making this for myself I would have grabbed a quarter of preserved lemon (rinsed and flesh removed) and popped it in with the chick peas, however the teen doesn't like this so I omitted it just for her, now there is a caring mum!

Aux puces de la Mosson

2009-10-25T14:34:00.003Z

I find it is always either feast on famine at flea markets and car boots, and today was no exception.
I love wandering around & searching out long forgotten or discarded treasures but, easily distracted by people watching & evesdropping, I inevitably miss a bargain in the process. This flea market is so colourful, it is very difficult to concentrate on the task in hand. The faces and voices combine with the wafting aromas of frying merguez sausages, fresh oily coffee and cigarette smoke to create a hypnotic headiness which draws you away from here towards North Africa and far away from the task at hand.
Today I tried to keep my head down & focussed, so I did my best to ignore the Moroccan tagines, the drum-playing father & son duo and the guys strumming guitars to advertise their sales in the far corner. Now that I have my lovely canary yellow rectangular Le Creuset 1970's cocotte (bought here earlier in the year), I'm trying to find smaller items that are more useful for everyday cooking. The focus was again cast iron. The trick, I have learnt, is to check the insides carefully - by touch rather than by eye. Often rust and dirt is just superficial, but chips that look quite superficial can be deep into the enamel which will flake further in use. Today was a good day ...

I won't mention the set of simple fluted ice cream glasses that disappeared from before my eyes into the bag of a lady in front me ...
... nor the fruitless search for an orange 1970s trim-phone (never return to market with the hope of finding a treasure you forgot to buy on your last visit!).

By 12 we were back home & ready for lunch: pumpkin soup, salad, wine & cheese, shared with family and singing birds in the gentle autumnal sunshine.

I know there is a flaw in my plan. Budget airlines mean budget baggage allowances, so it will no doubt take me a few visits to get all this home, but patience is a virtue and maybe on our next visit we'll take the train instead.

Puces de la Mosson, Montpellier, France.Bus: 15 from the city centre to Pierre du Coubertin, get off at stop "Europe" (follow the crowds!)
Every Sunday from 6am to 1pm, check here for any known cancellations.

help please - the next day of the rest of my life

2009-10-20T07:00:00.003+01:00

My usually cast iron stomach is no more, and I have been mourning my loss.

At present, my diverse investigation into foods of the world has been interrupted, and my own body is doing the interrupting. I have scarcely recovered from the news that I have to exclude all things nightshade from my diet. This has now been augmented by my body's sudden aversion to meat, fat, dairy products, sugar and (almost worse) alcohol. To be honest I am not sure that the alcohol bit is entirely necessary so I will do some tests - for the sake of science, mind you - to challenge this theory next week. In the meantime though, all of the above means that I have suddenly become a vegetarian, no fat, gluten free teetotaller.

I'm not sure yet what I make of this change, it is really too early to say. On the plus side, I feel a lot better than I have done for months and I am looking forward to fitting into clothes that haven't seen daylight for a while! On the negative side, at first glance, almost everything that I enjoy for both nutritional and purely pleasurable purposes, is now denied me.

The effects of this are immediate. At work I am struggling to be able to taste the recipes that it is my job to design so I am having to learn to work in a whole new way. I have to be very careful how I taste products, and spitting a sample (so beloved of supermarket buyers everywhere) does not permit you to experience the the flavours & textures of a products in the same way as swallowing. At home, the enjoyment that I used to get from baking and creating sweet treats is no more, and in its' place is a new challenge I face (at least) 3 times a day - what on earth am I going to eat?

I am concious that this makes me appear incredibly boring and almost painful to other people, especially chefs and food bloggers. It is very difficult to imagine that such a restricted diet can be interesting - or, even more importantly, delicious. I know that I have tended towards to deafness when I met someone with 'too many' allergies, simply because it is dificult to understand the pleasure of eating when so much is forbidden. My immediate response was to feign deafness to myself and pursue a monotomous diet of rice noodles. It is probably a good thing that my body decided that wasn't an option for me. So I find myself with a real challenge. I am used to eating good food: fresh, locally sourced, tasty, flavoursome. Bounty and balance abound in my kitchen; sugar tempers acidity; a touch of oil or cream to balance a sauce and create a delicious rounded mouthful of food. It is going to be harder to create the same feelings of pleasure and satisfaction but it is a challenge I have to embrace if I want to enjoy my food.

On the weekend I will be going to visit my sister-in-law for a week. A week in the south of France is extremely pleasurable under normal circumstances so I feel a bit peevish for being wary of our upcoming visit. French chefs are not reknown for their welcome to even gluten-free customers, but I think this will make me positively unpopular, if not un-servable. I do still have to eat, somehow. Simple fish dishes, fresh local oysters, vegetables and salads are still on my menu, I can take crackers instead of bread, fresh fruit for dessert - maybe I won't be too unpopular. Home cooked meals will be a breeze in comparison, though I have to find something to replace the cheese and charcuterie with tomatoes which comprise our usual picnic choices.

Next week notwithstanding, I welcome my new diet with open arms. I thank my lucky stars that this has happened to me in Autumn. Squashes, beetroot, fresh ginger root and seaweeds feature in my diet daily & thankfully I can enjoy them all. I am delighted to have introduced umeboshi vinegar to my kitchen and already wonder how I ever lived without it. Seeds and gentle spices which were previous overlooked unless for curry powders, now feature in my daily diet and tofu in many guises is making regular appearances on my plate.I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep up my childish enthusiasm for the new and unknown but I do remember feeling just as excited the first time I ate Chinese foods; my taste for that cuisine has not faltered yet, so I have high hopes for my new diet too!

If you have any recipes or tips for creating a more exciting diet, please comment below - I am going to need all the help I can get!

I'm dreaming of eating... don't even ask!

tomato nomato

2009-10-16T15:18:00.002+01:00

Let me introduce to you to my new best friend: nomato soup.

Doesn't it look great? Bright red, juicy and fresh - you can almost taste the tomatoes. I didn't make a spelling mistake, by the way, this isn't Tomato soup, that is out of reach for me at present. This is Nomato Soup (I know, even by standards, that is an awful pun).

This is my first attempt at cooking food that doesn't contain the nightshade group of ingredients.
I appear to be having a bit of an allergic reaction to nightshades at present, so until the hospital says otherwise, they are off menu. That means out with the tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and potatoes along with chilli in all forms and paprika.
So this juicy bowl of soup which looks and even smells like tomato & basil soup is actually the recipe below which tastes suprisingly good with a bit of pesto and cream cheese stirred into it!

I cook this without using any added flavourings which means it will work as a tomato-style base for soups, stews or curries. If you wanted to, you could add herbs or spices during the cooking process but, for me, this would then limit the applications afterwards, so I prefer to keep it simple until I know what recipes I am going to use the sauce in.

Nomato Soup / Sauce

700g carrots
1 medium beetroot
5 sticks celery
2 medium onions
3 cloves garlic
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
1 apple
2 bay leaves
Boiling water
3 dsp (30ml) cider vinegar
1 vegetable stock cube

Peel and finely grate the carrots, beetroot and the apple.
Finely slice the celery.
Finely chop the onions and garlic.
Heat a large pan (I used a Le Creuset casserole) on a low hob with 1 tbsp of rapeseed oil.
Add the onions and the garlic and stir until softened - this will take about 10 mins.
Add the celery and allow this to soften for around 5 minutes.
Add the grated vegetables and apple and stir well until everything is blended and lightly covered in oil.
Add the bay leave and enough boiled water to cover the vegetables.
Bring to the boil and add the cider vinegar.
Turn the heat down to a simmer, cover with a lid and leave for 30-40 minutes.
After 30 mins, the vegetables should be softened and the juices should be deep red.
Take out the bay leaves
Puree the veg, I used a stick blender in the pan, but you can use a liquidiser or food processor.

At this point you have the soup. To serve it as soup, add the stock cube and allow to dissolve, then check the seasoning adding salt and pepper as required prior to serving.

If you want to make the sauce, don't season yet. Turn the pan up to a gentle bubble and leave uncovered until the liquid has reduced by a third. Now add the 1/2 - 1 stock cube, check for seasoning add salt and pepper to taste.

Volumes - this made me a big bowl of soup, then 2 x 500g + 1 x 300g freezer packs of sauce.

Chinese tea eggs

2009-10-09T14:53:00.004+01:00

Chinese food fascinates me but nothing caused me more confusion on initial discovery than this method of cooking eggs. The first Chinese recipe I book I owned was Marks & Spencer's book 'Chinese Cooking' by Deh-ta Hsiung and bought in 1981. I still have it and it brings back so many happy memories of my (retrospectively staid) introduction to this exotic and alien cuisine.
Chinese takeaways didn't feature on my radar until my mid-teens. My introduction came instead from a wonderful family friend, Vera, who took my younger sister and I to Chinatown in London for the first time when I was about 12. I was hooked from the first moment, the smells, the hustle and bustle, and the ducks hanging in the windows of the restaurants as we strolled by.
Vera took us to a restaurant on Shaftesbury Avenue where she was greeted as a long lost friend. It's only whilst typing this that I remember that she was brought up across the road in Soho, part of the close-knit Italian immigrant community who have introduced us Brits to the joys of Italian coffee as well as proper Spaghetti Bolognese and Parmesan cheese.
I can't remember the dishes we ate but I remember feeling elated as we strolled on down Shaftesbury Avenue, knowing that I would return as soon as I could.
Page 66 of the afore mentioned book has a photo of braised eggs.
When I first bought this book, I studied this photo for ages but couldn't grasp the perspective, so I couldn't work out what I was looking at. The eggs were braised out of their shell so the colour had evenly penetrated the smooth curved outside. Sliced in half, the yolks seem to sit proud of the egg as though they have expanded whilst cooking and popped out of the whites, and that is why the picture didn't make sense to me.Every time I see a recipe for tea or braised eggs, I think of this and giggle.

I had a few eggs which need to be cooked today and have been keen to try tea eggs, not the 1980s M&S version but instead a more traditional intricately patterned traditional version. I have used the recipe from Steamy Kitchen here. As I am only using 3 eggs in a little pan, I have roughly halved the quantities. If you are using a roomy pan, then be generous with your seasonings as the extra water will dilute the flavours.

The ingredients

3 eggs
1/2 tsp Szechuan pepper corns
1/2 stick cinnamon
2" piece mandarin orange peel
60ml (1/4 cup) tamari sauce
1/2 chicken stock cube (omit if desired)
1 star anise
1 tbsp black tea
1/2 tsp sugar

Boil the eggs in their shells for 3 minutes, remove and cool under running water, but retain the cooking water.
Add the rest of the seasonings to the pan.
Take each egg in turn and gently tap all over the shell with the back of a teaspoon. You are aiming to crack the shell all over . Do this gently as, especially if you are using old eggs, the shell can break and separate easily.
Return the cracked eggs to the pan and top up with water if necessary to ensure the eggs are covered.
Bring the pan to the boil then turn down to a low simmer and cover with a lid.
Leave the eggs to simmer for 40 mins before turning the heat off, leaving the eggs in the liquid.
Let the eggs rest for at least 5 hours - overnight is fine.

To serve, drain the eggs and remove the shell to reveal the interior.

I have looked forward to cooking these for so long, but wasn't great at tapping the shell delicately enough to create the pattern without doing too much damage.
I hadn't really thought about how these would taste. In fact, I have never given a thought to the taste - just the look, so I was really suprised to discover they are just lovely. So lovely, in fact, that I will be spending lots of time practising my shell-tapping techniques and enjoying the results. I wonder too, whether gently braised eggs (shelled rather than cracked) might be interesting inside a chinese spiced pork wrapped scotch egg ... or is that one step too far?!

Mark Bittman's crustless gluten free almond tart

2009-10-06T07:45:00.012+01:00

My first ever parent-free overseas visit was, like most English schoolkids, a day trip to Boulogne. This included the obligatory visit to Auchan which, thinking back, was more for the teacher's sanity than the kid's education! How influential that trip was - so much so that I still remember exactly what I brought back: 4 different cheeses, the stone pot of grain mustard and a crepe pan.

I fell in love with the array of pans, coffee filters and implements that greeted me in aisle after aisle in this enormous supermarket. This was heaven beyond my wildest 11 year old dreams. But what to buy? I settled on a crepe pan as it was the cheapest non-stick pan in the store. Non-stick was aspired-to but untested in our household. I relished the thought of arriving home and presenting my mum with this new modern pan in which we would create paper-thin lacey crepes flambeed with brandy, instead of our more familiar thicker pancakes rolled up with a sprinkling of Jif lemon juice and granulated sugar.
The dream didn't quite materialise but Mum put the pan to great use frying eggs.

My brother went on an exchange to California a couple of years later,
and also returned with a pan. This was most out-of-character for him, but the reason soon emerged. Where I was critical of Mum's pancake making skills, Ian was aiming straight at the heart of her omelettes. Apparently Mum's omelettes were just wrong. Actually, if Mum was wrong then so was Julia Child. But according to Ian, omelettes should be aerated and fluffy and - sin of sins to European kitchens - dry! To help produce these 3" high fluffy wonders, Ian presented another non-stick pan completely alien and exotic to our eyes.
I was reminded of this pan and the fluffy, eggy, dessert omelettes that my Mum generously produced when I read the recipe below on Mark Bittman's New York Times blog here

Mark Bittman's crustless almond tart (original recipe here)
(please see my notes below)

4 eggs
60 g or 1/2 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
90g or 3/4 cup ground almonds
120ml or 1/2 cup cream

1 lemon, zest and juice
20 sliced almonds for garnish
2 tablespoons butter
Icing (powdered) sugar to dust.

Preheat oven to 200 deg C (400 deg F).
Set the butter to melt in a non-stick fryingpan over a low heat.
Whisk to combine all ingredients - except icing sugar - in a bowl.
When the butter has foamed, pour in the batter and tilt to spread around pan evenly.
Cook gently until the edges begin to set.
Transfer pan to oven for 10-15 mins.
Tart is ready when the mix is set in the centre.
Take out of oven and place under a hot grill for 1 minute to brown the top, then dust with icing sugar and serve.

This is one of the quickest and easiest desserts you can make, so it is seriously useful to have up your sleeve in case of unexpected guests. Mark's recipe states this would serve 4, in my house it would serve 6 and at a pinch 8, but maybe this is about UK v. US portions.

Having made this once, I would make the following changes to the method if I had a couple of extra minutes and a food mixer to hand:

Zest the lemon but omit the lemon juice.
Set the oven on and melt the butter as above.
Separate the eggs and whisk the whites and salt on a food mixer till firm peaks achieved (get a spoon full and scoop a bit out - the egg whites should hold their shape on the spoon).
Gradually tip in the sugar whilst the whites are still whisking.
Mix the lemon zest into the egg yolks and the cream, tip gradually but quickly into the whisking whites mix.
As soon as the liquid is combined, stop the mixer and remove the whisk.
Gently fold the ground almonds into the sloppy egg mixture then pour it all into the warm frying pan.
Finish as per method above.

This should give you a tart with more lift which will look that bit more impressive, if you find the need to impress your guests! Serve with a drizzle of blackberry coulis (or another strong fruit, as the tart contains less lemon now) and a homemade shortbread.

slow cooked japanese mackerel

2009-09-29T19:02:00.001+01:00

I'll admit this now. These are still cooking but I thought I would share the recipe now before I get distracted again. I have had a day of measurements and maths: weighing ingredients, analysing my old wheat containing recipes, converting measurements and writing new recipes for work before I spend a happy day baking tomorrow. Anyway, all that meant that I didn't get into the kitchen at home till well after 5. The mackerel need a good 2.5 hours to cook, so they are now going to be tomorrow's dinner!

I picked up these mackerel from one of our local fishmongers today. They smelled lovely, were rigid with rigor mortis and glowing with beautiful fresh green, silver & blue tones - fresh from the sea. This is why I love living on the coast.

I'll be serving these with brown rice and simply steamed cavolo nero and I'll post a photo tomorrow when we eat them!

Slow cooked Japanese mackerel (Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall style)

1 small mackerel per person, gutted with head and tail removed.
1 x 3cm piece fresh ginger per fish
1 clove fresh garlic per fish
1/2 small dried red chilli per fish
10ml tamari (gluten free) sauce
10ml cider vinegar
10ml dark agave nectar /sweet freedom or 10g muscavado sugar
cloudy apple juice - about 1L

Finely slice the ginger and garlic.
Break the chilli into a couple of pieces.
Find a pan with lid that will hold the mackerel snugly (note from the photo, mine doesn't!).

Lay the mackerel in the pan and sprinkle over the aromatics, then add the tamari, cider vinegar and your sweetener of choice.
Now pour the apple juice over the mackerel to cover.
If you have been sensible in your choice of pan, you should only need about 500ml, in my case, as the pan was huge I used a full litre. If you are making this for 1 or 2 people I would cut the mackerel into steaks and lay flat on the bottom of the pan. Adjust the cooking times, as they will only need around 3/4 hr - 1 hr.
Set the pan over a heat and bring to the boil (stay close). The moment the liquid starts to bubble put the lid on and turn the heat down as low as you can.
Now just leave well alone. If you can see steam escaping from the pan, you can put a layer of foil under the lid to create a better seal. Check the pan every half hour or so to make sure the fish are still covered in liquid.
This will be cooked in 2.5 - 3 hours depending on the size of your fish. The fish should be firm but tender. Carefully lift the fish out on to a serving plate and turn the heat up. Let the liquid bubble away to reduce and create a thicker sauce - about 1/3 volume.
Test for seasoning, adding a touch more sweetener or tamari as necessary to create a hot and rich sauce.
To serve, spoon the sauce over the whole fish and serve with rice or noodles and simply steamed green vegetables. You can eat the bones when the mackerel are cooked like this as the slow cooking softens them.

Hope you enjoy them.

All PR is good PR?

2009-09-28T17:48:00.001+01:00

Here's a thing.
A small artisan producer decides to host an informal competition to guess the volume of product they make over a period of time. They ask entrants to send their entries via a public forum so all entries are visible to all other entrants. Shortly after closing time of the competition, they announce the result of the competition and the volume of product they produce in the specified time. Strangely the chosen winner of the competition hasn't picked the correct answer.
In fact 3 other entrants were closer. But they weren't the "chosen" winner.
This series of events really interests me. Twitter, Facebook etc are all about opening lines of communication. We use these forms to meet new people, share ideas and promote ourselves, our products or ideas. Most people are completely transparent about doing this which is great. As a producer or promoter, it is fine to contact people directly and offer free product in the hope - not a promise - that they may blog or tweet about how great the product is. It is a great and immediate route to both feedback and to your customer. But when you manipulate the results to promote your product, it seems to say more about you and your standards than you might initially think.
Why do it?

Did you think that the 3 other entrants might not say positive things about your product? If so, shouldn't you address the issues that you think they will perceive before you continue to sell the item.
Logically it can't be about protecting your products or concepts, as you are already selling your product on the open market.
If you think that the 'winning' competitor will give you good PR, why not just send him a box too and ask for feedback. Surely by manipulating the result, you leave yourself open to be judged by others.
And judge they may: are you honest? are you trustworthy? are you open to criticism? are you confident in yourself? are you confident in your product?
This may seem to be over the top, but this was the chain of thoughts that ran through my head after I read the results. It made me think that a decision made in haste and relayed immediately can cause untold damage to you and your brand, both at the time and in the future.
Much as these new channels of communication are all about immediacy, it is still necessary to think before you tweet. You never know who is listening and how they will translate your actions.

I know this is a bit off topic for me, but I don't hide the fact that I am a producer as well as a consumer. I am constantly intrigued by the way people promote themselves, and occassionally something I see or experience warrants a mention.

the foodie blogroll

2009-09-24T14:10:00.000+01:00

I'm a happy baker! Today my blog was listed on the Foodie Blogroll. If you look on the right side of each page on my blog, you'll find a box link to click on which will take you on a culinary adventure around the whole world.
The foodie blogroll can introduce you to posts from a huge variety of food bloggers from all over the world who are writing on every imaginable culinary concept or foodie feast.
I hope that you have a couple of hours to spare because once you start exploring, you will lose track of time!
Have fun ;)
Kate

A Hastings' fish roll

2009-09-20T08:00:00.005+01:00

You can find Tush and Pat Hamilton making these rolls on weekends, at the fish huts on Rockanore Road in the Old Town in Hastings. These photos were taken at the Hastings Seafood & Wine festival this year.

Taking little locally-caught dab fillets, they dust them with wheat flour and season before shallow frying the fillets in olive oil in huge paella pans.

Dabs are a small flat fish that grow no heavier than 400g - more often around 250g. They look similar to plaice and are found all around the coast of the UK.

The cooked fillets are simply served in a fresh bread rolls.

Fresh, delicious, quick and local - food at it's best!

If you are gluten free you will need to make these at home rather than sampling them at the fish huts, as these are prepared using wheat flour. Use rice flour to dust and serve in your favourite gluten free bread for the sandwich, they are just delicious.

Take 2 fresh dab fillets (or 1 plaice fillet) per person.

Dust in flour.
Season with sea salt & freshly ground black pepper.
Fry in olive oil til golden on both sides.
Serve on a roll with a squeeze of lemon juice.

Eat and enjoy!

dim sum, gluten free, yum!

2009-09-18T17:29:00.002+01:00

Another snack to share, this time from the far east. There is plenty of inspiration for gluten free eaters in the whole of Asia but I have missed some of those dimsum classics made with wheat wrappers, so here is a recipe for gluten-free chinese pot sticker dumplings. Inspired by a lovely photo taken by a fellow food blogger Matt over at Foodforfriendsyeah, I adapted the recipe for the pot stickers from a great recipe and guide by Kate at Glutenfreegobsmacked. I was so excited by the prospect of making elastic gluten free wrappers, I didn't shop for the filling for either of the recipes above however they came out really tasty (phew!).
I suggest making this dough by hand rather than a mixer as it seems to respond well to gentle handling. It is definitely one of those recipes that calls for many pairs of hands ( and probably a bottle of wine to share) to make them quickly.

Hope you like them!

* Apologies for the recipe being in cups, I will add the metric measurements next time I make them.

Pot sticker filling:

250g minced pork (I used belly that I minced myself)
200g raw shrimp
4 spring onions, shredded
3cm knob ginger, finely chopped
1 1/2 cloves fresh garlic, finely chopped (use other half in sauce below)
2 tsp chinese rice wine vinegar (or dry sherry)
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp corn starch
Blitz this all together in a food processor until it forms a paste.
Chill until the wrappers are ready to be filled.

Pot sticker wrappers:

1 cup rice flour
1/3 cup tapioca starch
1/3 cup corn starch
1/3 cup sweet rice flour
1 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp psyllium husks
1/2 tsp kuzu
1/4 tsp salt
1 large egg
1/2 cup cold water

Method:

Sieve all the dry ingredients together.
In this recipe I have subsistuted the suggested gelatine in the source recipe for a 50/50 mix of kuzu and psyillium husks. I only have gelatine in sheets so couldn't make an adequate substitution for the 1tsp required in the recipe. Luckily the kuzu and psyllium seem to work well to make a moist and flexible wrapper that doesn't crack or dry out too quickly.
Beat the egg into the cold water.

Whilst stirring your flour, gradually pour in the water making sure the flour absorbs the water as you go.
Bring the lumps of flour together in the bowl by hand.
If the dough is too wet or sticky add more sweet rice flour, if it is too dry add water 1 tablespoon at a time.

By some fluke the liquid levels were spot on for me and the dough quickly formed a smooth and elastic mass. I kneaded this for a couple of minutes on a work surfaced sprinkled with a little corn starch - mostly because it is so nice to be able to knead a gluten free dough, I don't know if it was strictly necessary!

Divide the dough into 4 or 5 equal pieces. Leave all but 1 piece in a bowl under a damp tea towel.
Dust your work surface with corn starch and roll out the small piece of dough until it is between 1/16th" & 1/8th" thick. Using a 3-3.5 inch round cutter, cut out as many shapes as you can. put the circles to one side under a damp cloth and carry on with each piece of dough in turn. I found that if you collected up the trimmings and sprinkled a couple of drops of water on them, you could combine them into the next piece of dough without any problems.
Carry on until all the pot stickers are cut out.

Now take your made filling and place a teaspoon full in the middle of each wrapper.
Fold the dough over the filling and pinch the 2 sides of the wrapper together to seal the dumpling. Now you need to niftly create 3 folds in the dough and seal each side tight together. There is an excellent instruction on how to do this by Jen at userealbutter here with pics too, which is far better than I can provide!

Carry on making the dumplings until you have used up all your mixes.

To cook:

Boil a large pan of water (I added 1/2 tsp salt to the water).
When the water is boiling add some dumplings, enough to create a layer on the bottom of the pan.
Leave the dumplings to boil for 6 minutes, they will float to the surface as they cook but do leave them the full time as, unlikely gnocchi, the wrapper won't be cooked when they first float to the surface.
Heat some rapeseed oil in a non-stick frying pan.
Drain the potstickers and transfer them to the frying pan for a few minutes until they are lightly browned and crispy. Whilst this batch are fyring booil the next batch, continue until all the pot stickers are cooked.
Serve hot with sweet chilli sauce and this dipping sauce ...

Dipping sauce (for 2 people):

2 tsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp tamari sauce (gf version of soy sauce)
1/2 clove finely chopped fresh garlic
1cm slice of finely chopped fresh ginger

You can freeze the potsticker dumplings uncooked. If you do they will need between 12-20 minutes to boil from frozen.

I hope you like these - do let me know how you get on with the recipe and any different recipes for fillings that you may use.

gluten free gougere bites

2009-09-17T19:04:00.007+01:00

I am so happy!

I'm standing in my little kitchen, blogging this amidst a pile of gluten free flour bags, cobnuts in 3 states - shelled, unshelled and heaps of the cracked and rejected shell as well as little plates of scones, plums and the general clutter of a day's work.

I took a break in the middle of my working day to try out a savoury idea. Taking the concept from a David Lebovitz recipe here, I attempted to bake a gluten free version of those little savoury choux pastry balls - gougère bites.
Choux pastry seemed a completely unachievable gluten free concoction but believe me, it is simple - you just need a strong arm to beat the mix and rudimentary piping or spooning skills.
So with a glass of wine and a little pile of these savoury gems, let me share the recipe. Please do try them, it is such a joy to eat something so light and delicious AND gluten free!

Gluten free gougère bites

100g corn flour (white starch not yellow maize flour)

1 tsp xanthan gum

1/4 tsp salt

ground black pepper

100ml milk

75ml water

50g butter

2 large eggs - beaten

90g grated cheese (mature cheddar, parmesan or a mix)

Preheat oven to 220°C

1. Sieve the cornflour and xanthan gum together.

2. Melt butter with liquid ingredients, salt and pepper in heavy bottomed saucepan.

3. Once butter has melted, tip all flour into pan in one go - take pan off the heat and beat until the flour is combined with the liquids. This will take some doing - and the mix may end up in large lumps rather than in one clump, but that is ok.

4. Put the pan back over a very low heat, immediately add the egg - a little at a time - beating again each time unti lthe egg is combined.

5. As soon as all the beaten egg has been mixed into the batter, sprinkle on 2/3 of the cheese and mix in thoroughly.

6. If you have a piping bag, spoon the mixture in to a bag with a 1.5cm plain nozzle and pipe the dough into cherry sized balls. If you don't have a piping bag you can use a thick freezer bag cutting a 1cm hole across one corner to pipe through. Alternatively use 2 wet teaspoons and form little balls on a lined baking sheet.

7. Sprinkle the finished balls with the remaining cheese and place in the oven for 10 mins.

8. After 10 mins turn the oven down to 190°C and bake for a further 10 mins.

At the end of the baking time, take the tray out of the oven and pierce each puff with the tip of a sharp knife then return to the oven for a further 5 minutes.

Serve the puffs warm - either fresh from the oven or gently reheated - preferably with a glass of wine and friends!

For anyone who has been following the photography steep learning curve - this is the set up that I took the photo above with. A huge development on the photos I was taking 3 days ago!

gluten free scones

2009-09-17T07:30:00.002+01:00

A few weeks ago Madalene at the British Larder posted about strawberry scones here. I read the recipe and enjoyed the prose but thought nothing more of it, apart from yum! But I woke up this morning with a real craving for scones, maybe it takes that long for the power of suggestion to permeate my brain (I pity advertisers if that is the case!). So earlier and more enthusiastically than usual, I leapt out of bed and made these for breakfast.

I haven't tasted scones for years, and for some reason I had decided that a gluten free version would be far to difficult to create. But it isn't, they are really simple and delicious, so here is the recipe for you to try too.

Simple sweet scones

175g rice flour
50g millet flour
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp psyllium husks (optional)
a pinch of salt
25g butter (room temp)
50g golden castor sugar
150g plain yoghurt
35g milk

Weigh & sieve the dry ingredients together then rub the butter into flour mix.
Sprinkle over the sugar and stir through the flour mix.
Pour on the yoghurt. At this point I found it easiest to grab a spatula and cut through the mix as though making pastry, not stirring but drawing the sharp edge through the mix as if cutting with a knife. Continue until you have brought the mix together into clumps, then add the milk and stir the mix until the dough comes together.

Now you can tip the dough out onto a floured surface and knead it briefly to create a smooth dough. There aren't many opportunities for gluten free bakers to knead so enjoy it - but don't get too carried away or the scones will end up dry.

Roll the dough out till 1.5cm thick.
Cut out scones around 5cm in diameter, gently roll the leftovers back together and roll again until the dough is all used. Beware though, that the scones don't like much handling so try to cut out as many as possible in the first go.
Place the scones on flour dusted baking tray and brush with milk to glaze.

Bake in pre-heated oven at 225° C for 8-10 minutes.
Serve warm with butter and jam - enjoy!

Floyd, my food hero

2009-09-15T11:25:00.001+01:00

For me, food divides my life into acts.
When I was very young, it was the time when I only ran into the kitchen to scrape out and lick clean the kenwood mixer bowl and the tongue-testing kenwood beater. As I got a little older I realised that if I stayed in the kitchen throughout the weighing and mixing process I could cadge more of the raw mix as well as lick the spoon as we formed the little mounds of batter on the biscuit trays.
Then I was twelve and desperate to experiment with cooking chinese foods at home, making very basic combinations but serving in (to my innocent eyes) the most exquisite bowls bought on my first awe-inspiring visit to Chinatown.
Soon after that came vegetarianism which, in a timeline, combined with our household gaining 3 extra teenagers at the same time as my mum starting teaching again full-time. And that was the catalyst for my learning to cook in huge volumes, on a budget, vegetarian chilli, curries and stews. Beans and vegetables with mounds of rice or home grown spuds to serve 6 seriously hungry teenagers and some left over for mum and dad.
And then came Floyd.
Bursting onto our screens in 1985 he was a larger than life figure who exhibited all the most exotic and yet, to my suburban existence, downright riské traits of drinking and sometimes even swearing on tv whilst creating truly exciting food. I loved every performance and taught myself to drink vast quantities of red wine (Sainsburys Jumilla in a tetrapak, genius packaging btw!) which was a great achievement after teenage years of cider and whisky (eurrgh!).
But more than that, Floyd taught me to look at and care about the ingredients - and therefore - and the food that I made. From him I learnt that you had to start with good basics, and, that good basics were not necessarily the ones with the poshest labels. He taught me that the food from our garden, which I had always dismissed as 2nd rate with blemishes and maggot holes, was better and fresher than supermarket transported ingredients. That fish from our local fishmonger or meat from the local farm would be better quality than the supermarket frozen packets (how did I know that before, I was 17?) and that these ingredients, prepared with care, some garlic and a glass of red wine, would make a delicious meal.
Cook's perks: the joy of cooking at home with a glass of wine, one for the gravy, one for the cook! As I pick up a glass of wine whilst I cook a sunday evening supper, I am often reminded of his sometimes joyous and sometimes frustrated performances which left me, as a viewer a safe distance away from his sharp tongue and sharper wit, always smiling and always, always more informed as a cook.
Thank you Floyd!

trade show exhaustion

2009-09-10T08:00:00.001+01:00

My silence over the past week betrays the fact that I have been completely consumed by the preparation and launch of our new products at the speciality & fine food show at Olympia. What an amazing few days! I could moan and say that i haven't had a day off for the last 3 weeks, that every day has been at least 16 hours long and i have talked myself hoarse. On the other hand, I am so excited about the success of the show, the complete enjoyment of Monday's evening's affair at Fortnum & Masons (along with the opportunity to taste most of the other 3* Gold Great Taste award winners) and a wonderful evening spent with my foodie friend Kate, that I don't feel the slightest bit inclined to moan. In fact, it has been a blast!
The strangest thing about the show was that I really found very little time to check out other producers. There was a wealth of new producers and products there and had it been a consumer show, I could have grazed from dawn till dusk. But there is something about being at a food show in a working capacity which does stop you taking advantage of every proffered freebie or morsel. So each lunchtime I found myself eating a salmon fillet and salad with my head in a book trying to block out the noise and frenetic activity going on all around me. By the time i got home after the final day and with a little time to rest, I was craving simple strong flavours and healthy home made food. You can imagine that the fridge and food shopping has been somewhat neglected over the past few days, so I was delighted to find a couple of ducks legs in the freezer, and with that, the makings of a hearty congee style dish.

Roasted duck soupy rice
2 ducks quarters - cover them in water in a pan, then double the volume of water (if that makes sense?)
2 cm ginger shredded,
1 large clove garlic sliced
1 whole star anise
a couple of black pepper corns (or szechuan pepper corns)

Bring the water up to the boil, then simmer the duck for 30 mins.

After 30 mins top up the pan with boiling water to the level it started at, then add:
250g brown rice (I use Sainsburys brown easy cook italian rice as it has a lovely chewy texture and is higher fibre than normal brown rice).
1 tsp salt or 1 organic chicken stock cube - of course homemade stock is best but i didn't have any.

Stir, then position the ducks legs on top of the rice and leave to steam over a low heat for 30 mins.

In the meantime turn your oven on to 200 deg C and make a basting sauce with
15 ml tamari (or soy if not gluten free) sauce
10 ml stem ginger syrup (poured off a jar of stem ginger in syrup)
10ml rice vinegar
5 ml hot pepper sauce (I love Frank's Red Hot Original)
15 ml tamarind & star anise jelly (ouse valley foods) if you can't find this, you can use plum jam instead.

After 30 minutes, remove the cooked ducks legs and allow them to cool for a couple of minutes before drying the skin with paper towel. Put them in a ovenproof dish and spread over 2/3 of the sauce. Pop the ducks legs into the hot oven for 20 minutes.
During the last 10 minutes, add some finely sliced courgette, peas and baby leaf spinach to the rice pan and leave to steam whilst the ducks legs roasted.
Serve the crispy roasted duck leg on a mound of soupy rice and vegetables with a drizzle of the basting sauce to finish.

I am sorry that I didn't manage to take a picture of the finished product, it looked so lovely, and I was so tired, I just had to dig in - forgive me!

food blogging madness

2009-08-30T19:24:00.011+01:00

I am coming to realise that I could not have chosen a worse time to start a food blog.
I am trying to lose some of the weight gained after several months of cake and biscuit recipe development for work. So my focus outside work is exercise, sleep and more exercise. Not exactly inspiring for anyone to read about! Couple this with the hottest few days for a while and my inspiration is drying up fast. So I was grateful to my daughter last night for suggesting a simple post-gym supper of scrambled eggs, smoked salmon and wilted spinach. Even more delicious as it can be knocked together in ten minutes whilst sipping a tiny glass of chilled fino sherry.

As i stirred the eggs and felt my body unwind from another stressful working day I thought about some of the recipes that I have been working on that haven't made the cut so far. Creating recipes is the most lovely part of my job, it is time to let loose my imagination and experiment with ingredients and ideas. Sadly though, the next part isn't such fun. Having created taste explosions, delicate crackers and iced fancies, I have to work out which, if any, can be made in our bakery and will stand the packaging, shipping and in-store handling that they will encounter to arrive on the shelves of supermarkets up and down the country. And that is before the final journey from shelf to home cupboard or fridge.

We are keen to avoid over-packaging our foods so the idea of polypropolene frames to corset our creations inside cardboard boxes doesn't really fit for us. And we are so concious that such packaging often costs as much, if not more, than the ingredients themselves and really, that irks. The packaging is thrown away when the product is consumed, so surely we should focus our budget on the best ingredients, not more packaging? Of course, this does mean that we limit the type of products that we can sell on a wide scale. We have stopped doing farmers markets at present too so creativity is limited to robust products that taste great but can be handled without care. So that leaves us working with the concept of great tasting foods made with high quality ingredients, and isn't that just the way it should be?

Scrambled eggs with smoked salmon & wilted spinach (more of an idea than a recipe!)

Per person -
2 large freerange or organic eggs
milk
butter
black pepper
60g smoked salmon
100g fresh spinach per person
1/4 lemon

Wash the spinach and shred if required (supermarket bagged baby spinach will wilt whole but farm or home grown spinach should be shredded). Put the spinach in a pan with a dribble of water and a sprinkling of salt over a very low heat with a lid on.

Crack the eggs into a bowl. Using a half shell from a cracked egg, measure out a 1/2 shell of milk for every egg you use. Add a little pinch of salt per serving. Beat the eggs and milk together with a fork or whisk until you break down the stringy white (albumen).

Grab a plate for each diner and artistically position the salmon on the plate. Quarter the lemon and put a piece on each plate.

In a thick bottomed saucepan melt a knob of butter, then pour in the egg mixture and stir gently but constantly with a flat bottomed spatula sliding along the base of the pan to ensure the egg mixture doesn't solidify on the bottom. Check the spinach to make sure it is steaming, add a little water if it is too dry or drain off liquid if you can see lots of juice in the pan. Keep stirring the eggs & the mix will gradually thicken and become creamy. Take the eggs off the heat when they are still slightly runny. This means that it will not overcook whilst you serve the spinach.

Drain the spinach and serve up followed by the soft scrambled eggs. Serve with the lemon squeezed over both salmon and spinach and a grinding of black pepper.

Photo by kind permission of cursedthing of flickr.