Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Today I've been shopping in Meadowhall with my friend and amongst other things, spending the vouchers that I got for Christmas in Lakeland. It took much restraint, but I managed to walk out with only a new flan tin, baking sheet and some chocolate shape moulds. My bank balance is thanking me for this though and I may well visit again soon ;) .

Putting the baking sheet to good use when I got home, I decided that it would be a good time to try out a gluten free chocolate chip cookie recipe. They are something that I've not tried to make since cutting out gluten. 

I think if you're looking for a fairly simple recipe with not much effort then this is your recipe. It didn't take long to make and only 10 minutes to bake!  I'm sure you could get your children involved too .

The recipe that I used is here, but I did make some changes to the recipe:

I used Asda Free From Plain Flour

I used milk chocolate chips and chunks of dark chocolate

If you fancy treating yourself, give them a try and let me know what you think.

Lentil and Smoked Bacon Soup

So after reviewing Baxter's Lentil and Bacon soup, I decided that it would be nice to make my own soup. I try not to eat too much convenience food and I always enjoy trying to make something from scratch. The smells coming from the kitchen were also good so it bode well for tonight's dinner.

I firstly looked on the back of the Baxter's tin and took some inspiration from here and I also took a bit of inspiration from this recipe of Delia Smith's. To be honest, I was pretty pleased with my lentil and bacon soup and I put enough smoked bacon in for the taste to come through.

I chopped the onion and bacon first and put these in the frying pan for about 5 minutes, until the onion started to soften and the bacon started to cook through. I don't know what it is, but I love the smell of onion and bacon frying in the pan.

After these had started to cook through, I put the rest of the ingredients in and brought to the boil.

Once you've brought this to the boil, you need to turn the heat down and let it simmer for about an hour. The lentils and the vegetables should all be fully cooked through at this point. I then blitzed mine with a hand blender. You don't have to do this, if you prefer you can leave all of the vegetables in chunks and have a thinner soup, but I blitzed mine and I was quite pleased with texture and consistency.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon of oliver oil

slices of smoked bacon (we used some good quality bacon from our local butcher)

1 large onion - chopped

2 carrots - peeled and chopped

1 medium potato - peel and chopped

2 celery stalks - chopped

1 tablespoon of mixed herbs (Approximately)

1 cup (approx 180 g) of lentils (I used a mix of red and green lentils -  ensure that you wash these)

1.7 Litres of Vegetable Stock (Ensure that your stock cubes are gluten free)

1 tablespoon of tomato purée

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

Salt and Pepper

Method

1. Put oil into a large casserole pan and put onto a medium - high heat.
2. Chop the bacon and add this along with the onions to the pan. Cook for about 5 minutes.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients to the pan and bring to the boil.
4. Lower the heat and bring back down to a simmer, cook for approximately 1 hour. The lentils and vegetables should all be fully cooked through.
5. Take off the heat and blitz with a hand blender (this is optional, you don't have to do this but I prefer this). Make sure that you taste the soup and season if necessary.

Notes: if you want some bacon chunks in your soup, chop up a slice of bacon and fry this off. Chop and add to the soup at the end if you want to blitz. 

Pulled Pork with Coleslaw and BBQ Sauce

For the pork joint that we bought at the weekend, I thought it would be nice to make pulled pork...or I should say the boyfriend made pulled pork, he does make it really nice though ;) . Slow cooked pork in a nice low oven whilst you are busy or at work, then finish it off when you get home. Serve with some crunchy home made potato wedges and home made coleslaw. It's safe to say that we all really enjoyed this recipe!

I had mine with toasted gluten free white ciabatta bread, which were really nice with the pulled pork. 

The bbq sauce was made from our own recipe and with the cooking juices that the pork was cooked in with some added extra ingredients.

I don't think you can go wrong with this and personally I absolutely love leftovers the next day at work. 

Ingredients:

Pork:

Approximately 1 kg Pork Joint (we used shoulder)

Approximately 1/2 cup Dry Smoked Seasoning (We used an american brand oaky and smoky dry rub)

1/4 cup of light brown sugar

1 tablespoon of liquid smoke

1 bottle of cider (500 ml)

1 tablespoon oil

Salt and Pepper

BBQ Sauce:

The cooking juices leftover from the Pork (approximately 1 1/2 cups)

500 g carton of passata

60 ml cider vinegar 

2 tablespoons dijon mustard

4 -5 tablespoons of light brown sugar

1 tablespoon liquid smoke

Coleslaw

1/2 white cabbage

1 large red onion

3 medium sized carrots

1 red pepper

1 1/2 cups of mayonnaise - ensure that you use a gluten free brand

2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard

4 tablespoons of cider vinegar

2 teaspoons of salt

1 tablespoon of ground black pepper

2 tablespoons of paprika

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 140 C 
2. Seal the pork in a large pan over a medium - high heat in a little bit of oil
3. Mix all of the ingredients for the dry rub together (sugar, dry rub and liquid smoke) and cover the pork completely 
4. Place the pork back into the large pan / casserole dish and pour the cider into the pan.
5. Put into the oven and cook for approximately  6 to 8 hours (8 if you can), until the meats starting to fall apart when touched.
6. Drain the cooking juices into a smaller sauce pan and set aside.
7. Shred the pork with 2 forks and cover with foil, which will be finished in the oven later.
8. For the BBQ sauce add the passata to the juices, together with the mustard, sugar, liquid smoke and vinegar and cook on a medium heat for 15 minutes until it reduces by about a third.
9. When you are reducing the BBQ sauce, grate the carrots and shred the carrots, onion and peppers (we do this in the food processor).
10. Tip the shredded vegetables into a large bowl and add the rest the ingredients. Mix well to combine. Leave to rest in the fridge whilst you cook the wedges and pop the pork back into the oven for the last 10 to 15 minutes of the wedges cooking to crispy up and get sticky.

Serve with some toasted gluten free Ciabatta breads, potato wedges, some mayonnaise and BBQ Sauce. 

I hope you enjoy this as much as we did.

Slow Roasted Shoulder of Lamb

On our weekend visit to the market, one of the things we picked up was the shoulder of lamb. We both love lamb so were excited to try out some recipes for this. So whilst browsing the internet, I came across a recipe  that I'd like to try.

I'd like to say that this recipe turned out perfectly and the lamb was so tender it was falling apart, sadly.... it wasn't! Unfortunately I think this was not a great option for a mid week meal, as we both work. The flavours in this recipe were really good, but it just needed cooking for a lot longer than the time we had. I think if I did this recipe again then we would pot roast it in the slow cooker, so it should be nice and tender by the time you get home without any fuss.

If you want to try  this recipe then just make sure that you have enough time to be able to do it justice as it does have potential for a great dish. I'd recommend this for a Sunday Dinner rather than a mid week meal.

Review: DS Gluten Free Margherita Pizza

Today, I was planning to blog about a lovely slow roasted lamb dish that I had planned. However, due to a bit of drama over dinner and lack of time, we decided instead to have Pizza. Although this is not something I wish to eat all the time (mainly for health reasons and the fact that I couldn't get away with it!), I do really enjoy it. This is one of the things I missed the most when when I initially stopped eating gluten. It's getting a lot easier now though, with Dominos and Pizza Hut providing a gluten free alternative as well as some of the local fast food restaurants.

Today I tried the DS Gluten Free Margherita Pizza, which I must admit was not bad. It didn't take long to cook and it tasted pretty good for a frozen meal. I added a few slices of Prosciutto Ham to mine to make the topping a bit different, as I didn't really fancy the pepperoni alternative today. 

I enjoyed this as convenience food, I will try and make my own gluten free pizza base again soon. I love pizzas with a crème fraiche topping more like the french have, so I'm going to put this on my long list of things to try and make!

Taste:

It tasted ok for a frozen meal, the tomato and cheese flavours came through. Though I did add proscuitto ham to mine to liven it up a bit.

Texture / Consistency:

The texture of the pizza was ok, fairly crispy which I enjoyed. I prefer the thin and crispy bases to deep pan in general.

Price

Price was £2.68 from Asda 26/02/13, which I'd say is a little more than you're average pizza but I didn't find this too expensive in comparison.

Calories

335 calories per 1/2 pizza or 670 for the full pizza, which isn't bad compared to other pizzas. The calories do not include my extra topping of prosciutto.

Ratings: 

3.5 / 5

I would buy this again for convenience, but if I'm honest I do prefer Dominos Gluten Free Pizzas, but these are slightly more expensive to order. I've read on the site that there are several safety precautions put in place to ensure there is no cross contamination, but this still means that they're being made in the same place as normal Pizzas.

What are people's thoughts on this, do you think its enough to say that there are procedures in place to prevent cross contamination? Has anyone had any adverse affects from eating Dominos gluten free pizzas?

I'm personally not Celiac so can tolerate it more if I do have some gluten, but I know there are some people out there who are more senstive that I am.

Roast Beef with Potato Gratin

So we went to our local market (we prefer to go to the market for our meat and fish wherever possible) and had a really good deal on a pork, lamb shoulder and silverside beef joints. So we went away thinking of some good ways to put these to use.

We decided to make a Sunday roast as this and Potato Gratin and Dauphinoise Potatoes are some of my favourite things. I was really looking forward to our meal, it was even better as it was all cooked for me as well.

The meat was roasted with garlic, herbs and mustard so the flavour really came through. With this particular joint, he did cook it for a little longer as it tends to be a little chewy if you don't leave it in long enough.

We served this with roasted carrots as we prefer the taste to boiled, so these were put in the oven with balsamic vinegar and honey.

The Potato Gratin was creamy, garlicky and had a nice topping of cheese on the top. A really good accompaniment to the beef and the other vegetables.

Serves 2 (with plenty of leftovers)

Ingredients

For the Beef joint:

Approx 650 g beef (silverside / topside or whatever you can afford

2 garlic cloves - sliced

Tablespoon of mixed herbs

2 tablespoons of dijon mustard

2 tablespoons of Doves Farm Gluten Free Flour

Pepper

Potato Gratin:

You can find the full details of the potato gratin here

Roast Carrots:

4 medium carrots

Drizzle of honey

1 Tablespoon of balsamic vinegar

Olive Oil

Method:

Roast Beef:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C
2. Pan fry the meat  on all sides to seal, then take out of the pan and rest.
3. Slice some onions and lay them on the bottom of a roasting tin
4. Insert the sliced garlic in and around the beef
5. Cover the joint in the flour, spread on the dijon mustard, herbs and pepper all over and place on top of the bed of onions
6. Put into the oven and cook for approximately 1 hour, then take out and rest for about 10 minutes before serving.

Roast Carrots:

1. Wash the carrots and drizzle with the olive oil, balsamic vinegar and honey.
2. Place into the oven at the same time as the meat (approximately 1 hour)

Potato Gratin:

You can find the full recipe for this here

Notes:

1. Please ensure that you finely slice the potato to ensure that this cooks evenly.
2. You can start preparing the ingredients for this, just before the meat goes into the oven. It will take 45 minutes to cook, so should be put in around 15 minutes after the joint.

Serving Suggestions:

We also served ours with some peas and used the onions which were roasted with the beef to make onion gravy.

Gluten Free Bread

I decided I was going to give gluten free bread another go this weekend, it's one of the things that I haven't had much success in yet. For those of you who do not eat gluten, you can probably understand when I say it's one of the things I miss the most. There are some pretty good free from breads now out of the market, but I don't really think it compares to baking your own. There's something both comforting and exciting about smelling the freshly baked smell and eating a slice that's still warm out of the oven.

The bread was nice and crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. This recipe was adapted from the original, which can be found here . I did change the ingredients slightly, as this was what I had in the house. I was going to make this in the slow cooker as I've seen this being talked about on some other blogs. Sadly, my bread tin would not fit into the slow cooker so I did just stick to the regular method of putting it in the airing cupboard and then the oven.

Ingredients:

475 g of luke warm water

1 sachet of fast action yeast

100 ml of natural yoghurt (I used Lancashire Farm natural yoghurt)

300 g cornflour

150 g Doves Farm Gluten Free white bread flour

1 tsp caster sugar

1 tsp salt

50 g psyllium husk powder

50 ml olive oil

Method:

1. Mix the water with the yeast and natural yoghurt.
2. In another bowl mix the flour, sugar, salt, psyllium husk.
3. Pour in the yeast mixture and the olive oil until a batter starts to form.
4. This should turn into a sticky dough after 5 minutes.
5. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes.
6. Put into an oiled loaf tin for about 30 - 45 minutes and cover with a damp tea towel and put into the airing cupboard. You can also put it next to a radiator or next to a warm oven.
7. Meanwhile, please preheat your oven to 240 C.
8. Put the load into the oven for approximately 40 minutes.

I did like how this turned out and will definitely try again, I may have to play around with the mixture a little and possibly try the linseeds. I may also try making a sour dough, as I believe other people have had some success with this.

**Edit - it does not refreshing in the microwave or toasted on the 2nd day before use again**

Let me know your favourite gluten free bread recipes and if you've had any success.