Gluten Free, Vegetarian Toad in the Hole

Because of my dietry quirks, I sometimes end up making a dish with ingredients that are so far removed from the original that you wonder if you can really call it the same thing.  But tonight I really wanted to eat toad in the hole.  I craved the soft stodginess of the middle and crisp edges of the outside.  The salty flavours in the egginess of the batter.  Now I have made veggetarian toad in the hall quite succesfuly with Quorn sausages before, but that wasn't what I wanted tonight.  No.  Tonight I wanted roasted veggies.

I started with a past its best aubergine, half a butternut squash, some almost at the end of their useful life mushrooms, a few cherry tomatoes and a couple of onions that were chopped into small pieces, tossed in rosemary infused olive oil and then roasted for 30-40 minutes at GM7.  Whilst that was cooking I whipped up a batch of this Gluten Free Popover (US term for Yorkshire puddings) batter which I've used in the past.  Combined the two in a large baking dish, back in the oven at GM8 for 15 minutes, and then down to GM4 for another 10.  Meantime I whipped up a little batch of onion gravy to go with it - although my SO declared that the toad was better without as you got the full flavours of the veggies.

Wild Garlic and Soft Cheese Gnocchi

Home Baked blogged about wild garlic and ricotta gnocchi a few days ago, I mentioned this to my SO and said it sounded good and so the next time he came across a patch of the stuff he brought it home for me. Wild garlic is wonderful stuff. All the aroma of the 'real' thing with none of the heat, it has a subtle flavour and wilts like spinach into any dish you care to put it in. Soup, stew, stir fries, curries; you name it, it tastes good in it.

We didn't have any ricotta in the fridge, but we did have a tub of soft cheese, so I checked out a few ricotta gnocchi recipes and adapted to come up with this:

Wild Garlic and Soft Cheese Gnocchi (serves 3-4)
1 1/4 cups of plain flour
8 ounces of soft cheese
1 egg
A bunch of wild garlic, finely chopped

Mix the ingredients together to form a dough, adding extra flour as needed until you can work it into small balls.  Make your sauce.  Boil some water and add the gnocchi, cooking for 2-3 minutes.  They will rise to the top during cooking but leave the in for the full time to ensure they are cooked in the centre.  Eat with the sauce!

Mushroom and Goats Cheese Risotto

Risotto is one of my standby, last minute lunch or dinner ideas.  I admit I don't make it 'properly'.  I usually don't have time to stand there stirring in a little stock at a time, so I tend to bung it all in at once and let the rice cook.  It tastes good, but I will make it the proper way one day just to see if there's a difference :)  Today I was still revelling in the delicious goodies that had come from Ocado, and wanted to use the chestnut and oyster mushrooms I had in the fridge.  Had I been more organised I'd have pre-soaked some dried porchini for that extra mushroomy flavour but...I didn't.

Mushroom and Goats Cheese Risotto
1 red onion
2 cloves of garlic, crushed.
About 250g of mushrooms, best if a couple of varieties are used
1 cup of risotto rice
Vegetable stock
Soft goats cheese
A little olive oil

Add oil to pan and heat, then gently cook the onions until transluscent before adding the mushrooms and garlic and cooking for a while.  Then add the rice, stirring well before pouring in the stock (you need to have about a thumb nails height above the level of the rice in the pan).  Cook until all the water is absorbed then stir in the goats cheese and serve!

Potatoes with Red Onions & Tomatoes and Filled Aubergine Rolls

Last year for Christmas I asked for a copy of The New Cranks Recipe Book by Nadine Abensur.  Cranks was a chain of wholefood restaurants that pioneered veggie cuisine, but sadly closed in 2001.  I can't remember where I came across the book to ask for it, but Santa bought it for me in 2008 and it has sat unopened on my kitchen bookshelf ever since.  We get a vegbox delivery, so can't order in specific things for recipes usually, and when I do want to try something different I usually google for a main ingredient and pick something from the list.  My recipe books are therefore sadly neglected but I wanted 2010 to be a year of experimentation and so, as we were having to order from the wonder Ocado this week, I chose a few recipes I wanted to try from Cranks.

I picked two dishes that were recommended to go together; Potatoes with Red Onions and Tomatoes, and Filled Aubergine Rolls.  The potatoes were tossed in olive oil with crushed garlic, salt and pepper, had slices of tomato and red onion nestled between and popped into a low oven for an hour.

Whilst they baked away nicely, the aubergines were halved and the flesh taken out, then the shells were baked at gas mark 6 for half an hour until they were soft.  Meantime the centres were sauteed with garlic, tomatoes and a touch of balsamic until soft.  Fennel and peppers were quick fried next (the recipe called for courgettes which I didn't have).  The recipe also called for a can of kidney beans, but I could see I was going to have way too much filling anyway so just tossed in some edamame and mixed all the veggies together.  The aubergines came out of the oven, were spread with pesto, topped with thin slices of smoked cheese and topped with the veggie mix before rolling and securing with toothpicks.

Then back in the oven surrounded by the rest of the filling, this time with the potato dish now with the lid off.  A quick blast of heat to get it all crisped and melty.  The aromas wafting from the oven were incredible.

Unfortunately as it was getting late the potatoes were a little less cooked than I would have liked, but it was still a really flavoursome meal and a nice change of pace in the midst of winter and its roots and squashes.  Mmmmm!

Corn Bread and lentil pate

Ah Christmas.  Lovely gifts for using in my kitchen.  This year I got a pretty Ciroa Miniamo Cupcake Stand and some of their silicone cupcake cases too.  Unfortunately I also got on Wii Fit Plus and found out I'd piled on 1/2 a stone in the last few months between comfort eating and celebrating, so making cupcakes was out of the question.  Doh!

I've been inspired lately by reading Cafe Karma which is the blog of the wife of an online friend of mine.  She makes some incredible vegan food and has recently posted about cornbread which reminded me how easy and delicious it is to make and suitable for my gluten free diet!  I sorted out my printed out recipes yesterday and found a few cornbread recipes I meant to try, and some of the lentil pate recipes I used to make quite often for lunch so when my SO asked me today "What's for lunch?" I had an immediate answer!  But more exciting was the prospect of using my cupcake cases to bake the cornbread.  Yay!

Cornbread muffins
2 cups of cornmeal
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 egg, beaten
1 1/2 cups of milk (I used rice milk)
2 tbsp of vegetable oil.

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 8.  Combine dry ingredients in one bowl and wet in another, then mix together.  Pour into muffin cases and bake for 10-15 minutes until they're golden and pulling away from the tin slightly.  Makes 12 muffins.  You can also bake this in a 9inch cake tin and cut into slices.

Lentil Dip
1 tin of lentils
1 onion
Butter or margerine
2 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp tomato puree
Balsamic Vinegar
Mushroom Ketchup

Fry the onions and garlic gently in a little butter or margerine until caremallised.  Add to the blender with the lentils (drained and rinsed) and the tomato puree and blend until smooth.  Add dashes of vinegar and mushroom ketchup until you have the taste you want.

The cornbread popped out of those muffin tins leaving them squeaky clean, wonderful!  The lunch was enjoyed by all of us, especially my 3 year old who had great fun working the food processer with me and 'tasting' the dip!  I am sad to report the loss of my Global mini-cleaver though, which broke into two pieces on being dropped today.  It was a great knife, but at least I now have an excuse to go knife shopping for the first time in a decade - those Global Knives are sheer awesome.

GF Flat bread delight!

Long time no post! Life has been busy for us, but I just had to stop and share this fantastic site for any of you who have to cut wheat and gluten out of your diet for some reason. Gluten Free Gobsmacked is a blog written by a brave pioneer in the cooking of all things gluten free. I first came across the blog when looking for something interesting to eat for breakfast one day, and google turned up the GF Croissant recipe that I haven't got around to trying yet. Croissants are sort of my holy grail in GF cooking so I look forward to giving them ago when I have the time.

I've never been the sort of GF baker to mix my own flour blends, instead sticking to Dove's Farm Gluten Free plain and self-raising blends which work well for a lot of things; the exceptions being bread and scones (sob!) I thought I'd give the wrap recipe a try with it though, as some of the flours in the blend recommended on the site are hard to come by. To my delight, it worked a treat with the plain blend! I wasn't sure if I had spread it thin enough (about 5mm) and it rose quite a bit in the baking, but settled back down once out of the oven. It took a little persuading to come off the baking tin so I must grease and flour it more thoroughly next time, but after a few minutes it had settled down into a delicious looking flat bread. I cut it into four, and started making up a nice red lentil dip to go with it!

Reading my ecstatic tweets and status updates about the result, my SO came downstairs to investigate, tore a strip off and asked hopefully if this was his lunch. I told him no, he had to eat the shop bought bread :) I am just kidding though, I will share, this was really easy to make and I can see it becoming a regular fixture.

Next stop, croissants!

Aubergine and Potato Bake

Tonight's culinary adventure needed to involve aubergines and potatos, and google was kind enough to provide a link to a recipe for Aubergine and Potato bake at cookitsimply.com.

This was basically a moussaka/lasagne type dish and made vegetarian by leaving out the garlic sausage also omitting the cheese would make it vegan easily enough. The cheese did add to the flavours but I think it would have been tasty without it. It was quite time consuming to prepare, taking me an hour to get all the potato and aubergine slices prepared and the tomato sauce made, but I could have done this quicker if I'd used two pans; I was just being economical as my dishwasher is broken at the moment! Once it was layered up I baked it for 15 minutes without the cheese, then added it and baked for the remaining 15 before finishing it under the grill to get it nice and brown.

It was a very tasty dish with some nice flavours, filling and comforting, and would have been accompanied well by a salad and some nice foccacia or similar. I would cut the potato into thinner slices if I made it again, they were about 1cm thick this time and that made them a bit chunky.