Monthly Archives: November 2010

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    FreeFrom Nut Roast FreeFrom Nut Roast

    FreeFrom Nut Roast

FreeFrom Nut Roast

Sainsbury’s have kindly shared this recipe for a gluten free nut roast with me – and given me permission to share it with you!

You may remember that I went to a FreeFrom Christmas dinner at Sainsbury’s HQ recently; this was one of the vegetarian options, and is the invention of Mary from the Sainsbury’s Try Team.

It’s fabulous: moist and tasty. When you read the list of ingredients, you’ll see why… I was amazed to discover that there is no bread at all in this nut roast.

Enjoy! (I plan to).

FreeFrom Nut Roast

Rediscover nut roast with this moist, light, tasty recipe, made without breadcrumbs. Nut roast is the classic vegetarian alternative to the roast dinner, but it doesn’t end there. It’s an excellent dish for entertaining and special occasions, with the added benefit that leftovers are delicious served cold or in sandwiches.

Serves: 4

Make and cook time: 30 minutes preparation plus 1 hour cooking time

85g nuts (eg Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Marcona almonds), chopped to the size of a pea
255g finely ground nuts (eg Sainsbury’s ground almonds)
300g root vegetables, coarsely grated (eg parsnip, celeriac and carrot)
1 medium onion, very finely chopped
2 x 15ml spoonfuls vegetable oil
2 medium size eggs, beaten
½ x 5ml spoonful white pepper
1 x 5ml spoonful dried thyme
1 x 5ml spoonful salt

You will need: an 850ml capacity loaf tin, lined with non stick baking parchment

1. Preheat oven to 170’C/ Gas 3
2. Gently cook grated vegetables and onion with the oil, in a non stick pan until tender (10-15 mins).
3. Mix cooked vegetables together with all other ingredients. Press mixture into the prepared loaf tin.
4. […]

By |November 23rd, 2010|Living Gluten Free, Recipes|4 Comments
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Allergy Alert: The Soupery Minestrone

The Soupery has had to withdraw a batch of its own-brand minestrone soup due to a labelling error: a wheat ingredient has not been declared in the ingredients list.

Product: The Soupery Minestrone Soup
Use by date: 19/11/10
Pack size: 600g

I’m not familiar with The Soupery products, but I gather that this product has only been sold in some Tesco stores in the East and West Midlands, so perhaps that’s why. No other The Soupery products are known to be affected by this labelling problem, and the products have been recalled. The chances are, of course, that you wouldn’t even have picked up the pot in the shop, since minestrone contains pasta, and so wouldn’t be likely to be gluten free. If you did, though: don’t eat it, and take it back to Tesco.

The soups look delicious (have a look at the soups yourself) and, commendably, the descriptions on the website say whether they are wheat / gluten free. I do love it when manufacturers make this clear!

By |November 19th, 2010|Alerts, Living Gluten Free|1 Comment
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Going Gluten Free: Sample Menus

Thanks to all those who contacted me after receiving the new Free From newsletter. (If you haven’t signed up yet, why not? See top right and do it today!)

You raised some very interesting questions, some of which I’ve answered by email, but there are some I thought I’d answer here. Here’s the first:

I’ve just discovered I can’t eat wheat or gluten. Can you recommend some websites to help me put together a sample menu for the week?

This must be an issue for a lot of people: where to start? I know what it’s like: you open your cupboard, and everything you see contains gluten. What are you going to eat?

I did a bit of research on this, and there are indeed many great websites to help you get started. Here are just a few I found:

  • The Gluten Free Week gives ideas and recipes for main meals, a week at a time. There are 18 weeks of recipes up there today, so I hope you could find something you’d like.
  • Then there’s the Gluten Free Cooking School, who offers weekly menus:
  • Some time ago, Gluten Free Mommy started a menu swap to provide ideas for dinner each week. Every week, a different gluten free blogger is the host, lots of gluten free bloggers post their menus for the week on their own blog, and the host collates the links to everyone else’s meal plans. Again, this tends to be main meals only, but a bit of digging reveals lots of fab ideas.

    Start here but do follow the links to the other participating gluten free bloggers, all […]

By |November 16th, 2010|Getting Started, Living Gluten Free|4 Comments
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Getting Saucy with The Black Farmer

The Black Farmer sent us some sample jars of their sauces to review – ages ago, and they’ve been sitting on the side in my kitchen for months, so you can see how hectic life has been here!

The Black Farmer is of course famous for their sausages (and just won an award at the British Sausage Week 2010), but these sauces are a re-release. Apparently they used to be available, but have been absent for a while.

Based on our tastings, I think they’re likely to be a successful venture, though I haven’t noticed them on the shelves at my local supermarkets.

We’ve tried all three: ginger and lime; spicy muscovado, and sweet and spicy tomato.

The spicy muscavado was excellent as a coating for salmon: this was my favourite. We tried the tomato one with salmon too: though I thought it was a little chunky to make an ideal coating sauce, my daughter loved it. Definitely her favourite (and it was tasty), as she loves a tomato sauce. I preferred it as a dipping sauce, or as an accompaniment to cheese.

I was less keen on the ginger and lime sauce, as I found the aftertaste a little bitter – perhaps I should try mixing it with creme fraiche, as the Black Farmer recommended. However, just to show that everyone is different, my husband really liked this one.

So I guess you could conclude that there’s something for everyone here.

Another idea for a complementary product for the Black Farmer would be hearty soups (fresh ones, not tinned): I think both meat soups and vegetable soups would work. Or maybe country pickles, to go with the sausages? Or even […]

By |November 10th, 2010|Living Gluten Free, Shopping Gluten Free|3 Comments
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Feedback from the Free From Aisle

Do you find yourself chatting to complete strangers in the free from section of the supermarket?

(Oh. Just me then.)

People reviewing the options in Free From are often very willing to chat, share their experiences and recipes, and ask for opinions about this and that. Much more so than in the other aisles (and no, I haven’t been trying that supermarket dating thing!)

I met a couple in Sainsbury’s recently who had some interesting suggestions:

  • that the gluten free fruit pies should be in a mixed pack, because people don’t necessarily want to eat four/six apple pies in a row
  • and that they should be ‘innerwrapped’ in two’s, to help keep the ones not eaten fresh for longer. I know that extra packaging isn’t very green, but neither is expensive gluten free food waste!

Often, there is only one coeliac in a family – like in ours – and prepared gluten free goods tend to be too expensive to feed to the whole family. So thought needs to be given to how to package the foods for one person.

I did make these suggestions to Sainsbury’s Free From team when we met recently, and they not only said they appreciated the feedback, but that they’d been discussing this issue. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

I think that if they sent a team down with a couple of camping chairs, a thermos of tea, and some gluten free biscuits to sit in the Free From aisle for a day, and talk to all Free From shoppers who wanted to stop to chat, there’d be even more useful feedback to be gleaned. And everyone likes to be heard…

By |November 8th, 2010|Living Gluten Free, Shopping Gluten Free|2 Comments
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