Gnocchi with Broccoli and Parmesan Cream Sauce

Gnocchi is something that I used to love a lot, but since going gluten free it's not as easy as picking up a pre-prepared pack from the supermarket. This is quite possibly a good thing, as home made has a better texture and taste anyway but takes a little more time to prepare. With this in mind though, there's no harm with making double or triple the recipe needed and freezing them before you cooking, so that you can take them out and cook them any time you want.

The flavour of sauce was good, with a nice creamy taste and rich flavour coming of the cheese coming through. We did increase the amount of sauce made, as we made a little more gnocchi but found that the amount that it made was pretty spot on. You can always taste and add a little more crème fraîche if it is too rich, or add some more cheese if it is not rich enough.

Serves 3 - 4

The recipe for making the Gnocchi is is follows:

Ingredients

1 kg Maris Piper Potatoes

300 g plain flour (gluten free)

1 whole egg

1 egg yolk

1 tablespoon of olive oil

Salt and white pepper

Method:

1. Boil the potatoes, whole with the skin on for approximately 20 minutes for medium sized potatoes or until they are cooked through.
2. Leave the potatoes to cool, then peel the skins and mash the potatoes trying to ensure that there are no lumps (a potato ricer would help you here).
3. Add the flour, eggs, oil and seasoning, bring this together to form a dough. Put this onto a floured work surface and knead for 1 minute, adding a tough of flour if it is too sticky. 
4. Tear off a fist sized portion and roll out into a long sausage. Cut into inch sized pieces with a sharp knife. Put into indentations on the top with a fork and repeat until you have used all the dough. 
5. You would then boil the gnocchi, when it floats to the top of the water it is ready to eat. 

We used this recipe to serve and incorporated the cooking of the gnocchi with the broccoli in this recipe.

Note: We did double the ingredients in the sauce recipe, as we made quite a lot of gnocchi. As mentioned earlier though, you don't have to eat it all at once and it does freeze before cooking.

Wild Mushroom and Chestnut Cottage Pie

As we've been trying to put more vegetables into our diet and stop eating quite as much meat, this seemed like a really good recipe. It was actually my boyfriend who found and cooked this recipe, who assures me that it was fairly simple  and one where you didn't have to hover over the stove for the full cooking time.

The portion size of this is quite large and serves 4 people, but we found that you could probably get away with serving 6 with some more vegetables on the side. We'll freeze ours into portions and have some later in the week when we're having leftovers.

The flavour was earthy and rich with the mushrooms in the dish.  The chestnuts added a lovely nutty sweetness and made it that bit more substantial. 

The only change we made was to use a 390 g carton of tomatoes instead of 200 g. This gave the cottage pie a nice sauce, as we noticed some of the comments on the original recipe suggested that theirs came out slightly dry. If you don't want as much sauce as we had, you can always stick to the original recipe.

We're definitely meat lovers and every dinner normally comes with a hunk of it on the side of the plate, but we found that we didn't actually miss the meat in this recipe.  It's on the list to be made again, I can see this becoming a firm favourite in our household.

You can find the recipe we used here.

Gluten Free Crumpets

I noticed gluten free crumpets a couple of weeks ago and have been looking for an opportunity to make these. They're something that I love and I am looking for a cheaper alternative and also a way to cut out as much processed food as I possibly can. You can buy the Livwell crumpets for £1.98 (based on prices from asda.com on 25/03/13).

I was pretty pleased with the outcome of these crumpets and think they weren't bad for a first attempt. The texture was pretty close to a standard crumpet you'd buy in the shop and I think with a bit more practice, I could perfect them a little. 

I was also surprised at how little effort it took to make these and how little time to get the ingredients ready. They did have a bit of standing time, but this just means that you can get on with other things for a couple of hours while you get them ready.

The recipe calls for crumpet rings, but if like me you don't have any then you can use a tuna can and take off both sides with a tin opener. You can also get away with using the small tins of beans. They made for a pretty good substitute I think, if not entirely perfect.

They were lovely, toasted with some butter on and cheese melted over the top. A success in my book, so I will definitely be trying to make these again. You can find the recipe that I used here.

What's your favourite topping on your crumpet?

Meal Plan 24/03/13 - 29/03/13

This week we have five meals planned, I've decided to put down what we're having today as well in this menu as for us this came into the same budget. On one of the days, we will be having leftovers from one of the meals (there are only 2 of us, so we tend to have quite a few leftovers!). We normally leave 1 or 2 days without planned meals, as this helps us use up all of the leftovers in fridge / freezer.

All of the meals will be gluten free and we've made an effort to incorporate more vegetables into our diet. I do admit that the toad in the hole is a bit of a treat, but it's something that I've not had since going gluten free so I'm really looking forward to it.

I have some bananas that need using up and I have leftover nutella, so I think we'll have some of this as a light after dinner treat on sunday after our roast chicken dinner.

Meal Plan for 24/03/13 - 29/03/13

Roast chicken dinner with vegetables (runner beans, carrots, broccoli and roast potatoes)

Baked potatoes with tuna, sweetcorn and cottage cheese (I prefer cottage cheese with chives, but the boyfriend likes it with pineapple)

Gluten free Toad in the hole

Home made gnocchi with tenderstem broccoli in a creamy parmesan sauce

Vegetarian cottage pie with chestnuts and mushrooms

Leftovers (Cottage pie, Toad in the hole or Gnocchi)

The shopping list for this, verified on asda.com on 24/03/13 is as follows:

4 x Princes Tuna Chunks - £3.00

Cottage Cheese with chives £1.00

Cottage cheese with pineapple - £1.00

2 x 350 g mature lake district cheese - £4.00 (these are on offer)*

Butchers Selection Gluten Free sausages (8) £3.50 (or £1.80 per pack)**

Maris Piper Potatoes (2.5 kg) - £2.40

Parsnips (loose - 275 g) - £0.41

Asda jumbo baking potatoes - £1.50

Butchers Selection Whole Chicken Extra Tasty - £4.51

Onions (3 or 4 per pack) - £0.85

Swede - £0.68 (I think this was based on £1.00 per kg, this was pre packaged)

Runner Beans (160 g) - £1.00

Extra special tenderstem broccoli - £2.00

Creme Fraiche (300 ml) - £1.10

Shallots (450 g) - £1.00

Carrots 500 g - £0.50 (or you can get loose carrots)

Asda Jumbo Mushrooms (250 g ) - £1.15

Chestnut Mushrooms (250 g) - £1.00

Chestnuts (200 g) - £1.47

Marmite (125 g ) - £1.43

Clover (500 g) - £2.00
|Creative Cooks Mixed Mushrooms (Dried Oyster, Shitake and Porcini Mushrooms) - £1.98 ***

Total Price - £37.28 (Updated price as of 26/03/13)

* We will not use both of these, but as it will keep we will save this for next week. You can also freeze cheese.

** We will be freezing one of the packs of sausages, for use at a later date

*** Updated on 26/03/13 as we realised that we had forgotten these

We do already have some items in our cupboard such as flour, sweetcorn and parmesan.

Double Chocolate Chip Muffins

These double chocolate chip muffins were very easy to make, this did make 12 muffins, but next time I think I will use 3 eggs as this seems to enough for 12 decent sized muffins, unless of course you want to make cupcakes.

Makes 12 muffins

I weighed my eggs and then weighed out the butter, sugar and flour to be the same as the eggs. As these were chocolate, I subbed part of the flour for cocoa powder.

Ingredients:

125 g eggs (this is what my eggs weighed)

100 g plain gluten free flour

25 g cocoa powder (unsweetened)

2 tsp of baking powder

125 caster sugar

100 g milk chocolate chopped up (or you can is milk chocolate chips, or dark if you prefer)

Method:

1. Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl until the butter starts to turn light and until it is completely mixed together and smooth
2. Add the eggs and continue to mix with an electric whisk until the mixture becomes smooth again.
3. Sift the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder into the bowl and mix until fully combined. If the mixture is a bit stiff, then you can add a little milk.
4. Add the chocolate chips / chopped chocolate and stir in.
5. Add the mixture into 12 muffin cases and put in the oven on 190 C
6. Cook for approx 20 minutes or until the muffins are fully cooked and

I'll be looking into improving my piping skills next, so feel free to share any tips with me for those of you who are more experienced at this.

Easy Vanilla Muffins / Cupcakes

Tonight for dinner were having Jacket Potatoes, so I thought I would post one of the baking recipes from the weekend, as I made a few different cakes. These were made as large cupcakes / muffins and they were very easy to make. 

You can easily increase or decrease this recipe by however much you want, I tend to weigh the eggs and then use equal weights of caster sugar, butter and plain gluten free flour.

Mine made 12 muffin sized cupcakes

Ingredients:

3 eggs (mine weighed 185 g)

185 g caster sugar

185 g butter

2 tsp vanilla extract

185 g gluten free plain flour

3 tsp of baking powder

Method

1. Preheat oven to 190 C.
2. Cream butter in a bowl, then add the sugar and whisk with an electric whisk until it starts to go pale in colour.
3. Add the eggs and whisk until the batter becomes smooth again.
4. Add the vanilla extract and sift the flour and baking powder into the bowl and mix until it is all combined. Make sure to whisk fully to get a really smooth batter. If the mixture seems really thick then add a little milk, but personally I didn't need to put any into my mixture.
5. Put the muffin cases in the muffin tin and fill them with the mixture.
6. Bake in the oven on 190 C for approximately 20 - 25 minutes, poke with a cocktail stick until it comes out clean and the top of the muffin springs back when you touch it.

I used vanilla butter icing on top of mine, for which I used the following recipe:

Ingredients:

150 g of butter

300 g of icing sugar

1 tsp of vanilla extract

Method:

1. Soften the butter in a bowl.
2. Add the icing sugar little by little to the bowl and start to cream by hand with a spoon (Personally I find that it ruins the butter icing if I use an electric whisk).
3. Add the vanilla extract to the butter icing and stir. 
4. Spread the butter icing onto the muffins with a teaspoon or you can pipe these on if you have a piping bag.

Asparagus, Pea and Bacon Risotto

Tonight as we were deciding what to have for dinner (from our menu), we decided on risotto. I do love it and though you do have to stay by the stove whilst cooking it, I personally think it's a fairly straight forward and simple dish. 

I would advise that you do not add salt to this recipe. As you are adding bacon, which tends to be quite salty you really don't want to add any more salt. You can always season at the end to your own taste.

Ingredients:

1 onion, chopped

1 knob of butter

320 g risotto rice

1 litre of hot vegetable stock

150 g asparagus, chopped

1 cup of peas

Approx 8 slices of bacon, chopped - you can use less than this, particularly if it is quite salty

50 g of parmesan cheese

Pepper

Method

1. Put the medium based saucepan over a medium heat, add the knob of butter to the pan.
2. As soon as the butter is melted, add the onions and cook for 2 minutes until the onions begin to soften slightly, then add the chopped bacon and cook for a further 3 minutes.
3. Add the rice to the pan and stir round to coat, cooking until all the juices are absorbed.
4. Put the stock into the pan with the rice, one ladle full at a time. You should wait until the stock is absorbed before adding another ladle full. This will take approx 20 - 25 minutes, keep adding until rice is fully cooked through but still has a bit of bite, season with pepper.
5. Meanwhile cook the asparagus and peas on a high heat for about 3 minutes.
6. Take the rice off of the heat and add the cheese, asparagus and peas and serve.

Next time, I just need to be careful with the levels of salt as it was slightly salty!