Aubergines in honey and almond sauce

The photo really doesn't do this one justice!  We had a couple of aubergines to use up, and I really fancied making it with the Al'fez Honey and Almond Tagine Sauce that I adore but the cupboard was bare.  Doh!  Not to be deterred, I thought back to the vegan carbonara sauce that I'd tried a while back and though that I could probably do something similar here.  The result was just what I was looking for.  Almondy with hints of honey, cinammon and nutmeg.  We had it with quinoa for a low carb, high protein feast for the senses!  Here's how I did it...

Heat some sunflower oil in a pan and add a cinammon stick, fry until the flavour is released and then add a chopped onion and the aubergine, cook until soft adding water if necessary.  Meanwhile in the blender whizz up 1 cup of almonds with 1 tbsp of peanut butter, a clove or two of garlic and a couple of tablespoons of honey. Take 300ml of stock and add just enough to get the nuts blended, then when its houmousy in texture add the rest of the stock.  Pourt this onto the cooked aubergine and onion, cook through (it will thicken up when heated) and then add grated nutmeg.  Enjoy!

Not quite Naan Bread

Naan bread is one of the things I miss about being gluten free.  There's something very special about dipping chunks of warm, flavourful, buttery bread into curries and delivering it to your tastebuds.  Wonderful!  Now this recipe is a very happy accident.  It came about when I was trying to make my frying pan corn bread and wanted to go lower carb so tried using gram flour in the place of the polenta.  It came out great and slightly naan bready in flavour, so the next time around I tried it with just gram flour.  It's not quite a naan bread, but if you're on a gluten free diet, or just going low carb, this is a great way to almost get a naan bread.

Not quite naan bread
1/2 cup of gram flour
1/4 cup of milk
1 egg
1 tsp baking powder
1tsp ghee or ground nut oil

Heat a small frying pan and add the ghee or oil.  In a bowl mix the other ingredients together to make a smooth batter.  Pour into the pan and cook on a medium heat until the bottom is golden, then turn and cook the other side.

We've had this plain and we've had this Peshwari style, by adding dessicated coconut, raisins and flaked almonds to the pan once the bottom has started to cook and patting them down into the mixture.