Recipes

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. […]

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to win a jar of McQuade’s Celtic Fig and Ginger chutney from Blake Makes. If you’ve not been over to visit there yet, you should visit at least once. It isn’t a gluten free blog, but it is definitely a foodie one.

The task was to suggest how you might use this chutney in a recipe. I was rather surprised to see in the comments that some people were unfamiliar with chutney, but there were many excellent and mouthwatering suggestions. This was mine:

Lucy:

I think goats cheese too.

I’m thinking pastry shell (gluten free, naturally), layer of fig and ginger chutney across bottom, goats cheese either sliced or shredded and sprinkled, depending on whether it is a hard or soft cheese, and then cooked in the oven to crisp the pastry and melt the cheese.

Or (perhaps and, if I’m being particularly greedy), fig and ginger icecream, served with (gluten free!) ginger biscuits or flapjack. Depending on the size of the chunks in the chutney, might need to blend the chutney a bit first …

And Lo: a jar of chutney arrived on my doorstep at the end of April.

For various reasons, it took me a while to complete my mission, and actually to cook something with this chutney, but I’ve done it. I used Lifestyle ready-made gluten free pastry rather than making some from scratch, because it was there in the freezer, and needed eating, and also – if I’m honest – because I’m run off my feet with work, and didn’t have time to make my own […]

Sorry: this isn’t it, but I know one of you out there has it …

Once again, I spent 20 minutes scouring the kitchen to find the tiny scrap of paper that came with our waffle-maker 10 years ago, because coeliac daughter decided she fancied waffles this morning.

It happens every time – this piece of paper enjoys playing hide-and-seek. So I’m documenting the recipe here, for my own benefit, really (you have no idea how many times I’ve had to print off the recipe for chocolate brownie from my own site).

My preferred ready-made gluten free flour mix here in the UK is the Wellfoods version. No doubt you’ll have your own preferred blend – perhaps even specially for waffles – and I’d be really interested to know what blend you use for waffles. The problem I have is that although the waffles puff up nicely while hot, they deflate sadly once they start to cool. I’m sure the ones my mother used to make when I was small (using non-gluten-free flour and a proper heat-on-the-hob American waffle iron, imported by her from the days when we lived in America) didn’t do this.

What am I doing wrong?

I wonder if its the electric waffle iron, not the flour mix or the recipe?

Recipe

6 oz plain flour
2 tsps baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsps sugar
2 eggs (separated)
8 fl.oz milk
3 oz melted butter

Method

Combine the dry ingredients.

Mix the egg yolks and milk, then add the melted butter. Beat well, and then add to the dry ingredients. Beat again.

Whisk the egg whites, and fold into the other ingredients.

Add dollops to the wafflemaker and cook until golden brown.

Eat with proper maple […]

Just over a year ago, I gave you my recipe for seville orange marmalade. Well, guess what? Seville oranges are back in season again …

Yes, I made marmalade again, but I had a few oranges left over that I just couldn’t fit into my preserving pan, and weren’t quite enough to make a new batch of marmalade, so I needed something to use them up.

This is a great cake. Very adult, in that seville oranges are really bitter, so none of my children like it, so don’t offer it at a children’s birthday tea!

Seville Orange Cake

Ingredients for the cake:

150g gluten free white breadcrumbs
200g ground almonds
300g caster sugar (which might be called superfine sugar, in the US?)
3 teaspoons gluten free baking powder
8 eggs
400ml sunflower oil
4 Seville oranges

Extra ingredients for the topping:

100g caster sugar
handful of cloves
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C or gas mark 4.

Mix together the breadcrumbs, ground almonds, sugar and baking powder. Add the eggs and oil, and mix gently.

Grate the zest from the lemon and oranges and add to the mixture.

Pour the mixture into a greased and lined 20cm cake tin, and bake for between 40 minutes and an hour – until the cake is firm.

Meanwhile, squeeze the juice from the lemon and oranges and put the juice, sugar, cloves and cinnamon into a pan. Boil, and then reduce the heat and simmer for about 3 minutes.

When the cake is cooked and cooled, pierce it several times with a skewer. Spoon the syrup over the cake, letting it soak in.

Serve by itself (delicious when warm) or with creme fraiche or greek yoghurt.

Now here’s a challenge …

The Gluten Free Goddess recently discovered that she has a plate-ful of other allergies and intolerances:

Cow’s milk/cheese/whey/casein/goat’s milk, egg whites/yolks, chicken/turkey, gluten, peanuts, almonds/walnuts, sunflower seeds, soybeans, lemon, avocado, pineapple, papaya, green beans, kidney beans, oysters.

Gluten is familiar – but can we create a meal without any of these things? Gluten Free By the Bay has challenged bloggers to come up with a recipe that Karina could eat. Always up for a challenge, here’s my offering:

If Karina came round to my house, I’d cook black-eyed bean cakes with ginger onion marmalade, followed by drunken fruit.

I’m hoping that since only kidney beans and soybeans were listed, that Karina would be able to eat black-eyed beans and lentils – I would phone her to check first! Also, my menu assumes that sugar and alcohol are OK – something else to check. Honey would make a good replacement in the onion marmalade and the drunken fruit dish; you could use a simple stock (check it is gluten free!) in place of the white wine for the marmalade.

And here are the details:

BlackEyed Bean Cakes with Ginger Onion Marmalade

(adapted from a recipe by Delia. Delia is one of the most famous cookery writers here in the UK – so well known, that she no longer needs a surname, like Madonna. Her recipes are not aimed at the gluten free – hence the adaptations, but always work well).

Ingredients for the beancakes

4 oz blackeyed beans, either soaked overnight or boiled for 10 mins and soaked for 2 hours. Or just buy tinned ones!
4 oz green or brown lentils, rinsed and picked […]