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Gluten Free Shortbread

- Alex 2 Comments

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I’ve been doing a ton of cooking lately – a first birthday party, followed by a Christmas party and I’ve still got a Christmas Eve party AND the big day itself to go!

For the first birthday I was on the hunt for gluten free (or coeliac friendly) recipes.  As with vegetarian food, I find it better to seek out those things that are naturally gluten free, or very nearly so, rather than try to adapt a full fat version of a recipe.

A few years ago I went on a bit of a shortbread baking spree and remembered that many of the recipes made use of rice flour and/or polenta so I figured that I should be able to find, or at worst adapt, a gluten free recipe.

And I was right – I found this recipe on the That’s Life site. It’s really simple and I think you’re probably better off not even bothering with the food processor in the first place. I did and just had to transfer the mix to a bowl to bring it to a dough!

Sift together ½ cup of corn flour (do check that the corn flour is 100% corn and is gluten free if you’re catering for coeliacs), ½ cup of icing sugar (again, check it’s pure icing sugar and not an “icing mix”) and 1 cup of rice flour. Add 180g of unsalted butter. Now the butter can be cold and hard and you can grate it in, or you could use it slightly softened. If you do this first part in a food processor it doesn’t really matter.

Mix with your hands until the mixture comes together in a very soft dough. Chill for an hour. To make life easy for yourself, roll the dough into a sausage or log – this way, when you come to bake the biscuits you can just cut off slices.

So, while the chilling is going on, preheat your oven to 180°C (or 160°C fan). Line some baking trays with baking paper and then take a sharp knife to your log of shortbread. Take thin slices of shortbread, spread out on the baking tray (they’ll expand a little while cooking) and bake for 15-20 minutes. The edges of the shortbreads will start to go brown but you don’t want to over cook them.

Remove from the oven and carefully place on racks to cool. Hot they will be very very fragile so use a slice and allow them to cool before hoeing in.

Then make yourself a cup of tea and indulge!

Carrot and Coriander Galette

- Alex Leave a comment

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This is really a very pared down version of Marcus Wareing’s recipe in One Perfect Ingredient. I’ve owned this book for ages and I love it. I’ve also been looking at this recipe for ages and never got around to making it. Either we have the coriander but not the carrots, or vice versa.

It turned out that we had plenty of both in the fridge and I thought this would be a brilliant way of feeding the baby carrot.

I was in a bit of a hurry (a small person was watching me, and dinner time was fast approaching) so I used just the outline of Wareing’s recipe. If he were to read what follows, he wouldn’t recognise it!

Preheat the oven to 180°C fan (200°C normal).

Begin by grating one large (peeled) carrot. I used the Magimix for this – you get carrot that’s like very fine spaghetti. Put the carrot in a frying pan with a generous splash of water (add more as necessary) and cook until the carrot softens and the water has evaporated. I also added some very finely grated ginger.

For the one large carrot I used 2 eggs and a handful of chopped coriander. Whisk the eggs, add the coriander and pepper to taste. When the carrots are done, tip into the egg and coriander and mix well (and quickly – you don’t really want the egg to start cooking). Pour into a baking paper lined baking dish (mine was about 20cm x 10cm) and bake for 15-20 minutes, until set. Serve immediately (or allow to cool, if serving to a baby!).

Even this very quick and dirty version of the recipe tasted pretty good. If I’d been eating it I would have had to add salt and more pepper, but the slight spiciness of the ginger with the sweetness of the carrot worked well. The coriander adds some much needed colour variation to the dish (even so, it looks very orange!) and the egg makes it filling enough for a quick snack.

Now I really do need to try out the proper recipe!

Spicy Fried Potatoes

- Alex 2 Comments

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Everyone loves potatoes (don’t they?) but sometimes it’s tricky to do something other than sauté them, mash them, turn them into chips and so on.

Last night I was faced with an Asian style fish dish (recipe to come) that needed an accompaniment. We’d had rice the night before, there were no noodles in the cupboard and we had just two potatoes.

This is a great way to stretch those two potatoes a little further.

Start by taking your potatoes, peeling them and cutting them into approximately 1 cm square cubes. Cook them in boiling water – slightly under is better than slightly over. Drain. You can leave them to cool or not.

Heat a generous tablespoon of ghee in a frying pan. If you have no ghee a combination of butter and a light oil (such as peanut, or a very light olive oil) will do. When the ghee is hot, add a little very finely sliced onion (I used about a quarter of an onion as that’s what I had left over – but if you love onion then a whole one will be fine!) and one clove of garlic, finely chopped. When the onion starts to take on a little colour, add 2 tsp of ground coriander, 1 tsp of ground cumin, about ½ tsp of turmeric and chilli flakes to taste. Fry these spices for a minute or so and then add the potatoes.

Now, this is best done a little in advance because you don’t want to be hurrying the potatoes. You want to get them plenty of frying time so everything gets good and crispy. You don’t have to worry about serving them immediately they look done – they keep hot very nicely. The only problem might be snacking on them while you finish off other things … if you do that you’ll find your potatoes don’t go quite as far as you hoped!

I needed to season the potatoes reasonably generously with salt. I almost never add salt to cooking so my idea of “reasonably generous” is probably nowhere near enough for many people. As always … season to taste.

Serve with whatever you happen to be eating. These would be awesome with any type of curry, or at a BBQ – any meal with robust flavours that can stand up to a bit of chilli. Delicious!