Tag Archives: gluten-free

Recipe: Ratatouille for a ratty week

Posted on October 21, 2016 | Leave a comment

Taking a break from the travel diaries to write down a recipe that has been a bit of a lifesaver for me this year. It tastes like comfort food, it’s full of vegetables, it creates copious leftovers, and it takes maybe ten minutes of preparation time. Probably less, really. And because the vegetables are all soft, I can even make it when my wrist is acting up and doesn’t want me to chop things.

You can serve it with all sorts of things, really. It goes with bread and hummus (or you can fling some chickpeas in to bake with the rest of the ratatouille), or grilled haloumi (which you can also chop into chunks and throw in to bake for the last ten minutes); with roasted or boiled potatoes and felafel or grilled fish or chicken; it’s great over giant couscous (again, with chickpeas), or stirred through pasta, or even made into a bake with bocconcini and more pasta.

You can serve it hot, or warm, or at room temperature. Tonight, I’ll be serving it hot with some little pies from Zaatar – lamb, and haloumi, and spinach. And probably with some roast potatoes because everything is better with roast potatoes, especially when you are eating super late because it took nearly two hours to get home from work and your husband hasn’t even managed to leave work yet and it’s nearly 9pm…

This is not as fancy as my other ratatouille recipe, but it tastes very nearly as good and takes far less time. It’s Friday night-worthy, which is really saying something, especially after a fortnight like the one I’ve had, with lots of stress and very little sleep. (Though one of my scientists did bring me cake to cheer me up, which was possibly the nicest thing anyone has done for me ever.)

Oh, and it doesn’t create a lot of washing up, either. Just one giant baking dish. There’s really nothing not to like, unless you are entirely anti-vegetable.

Your Shopping List

3 large capsicums, preferably in different colours
2 red onions
2 medium zucchini
1 largeish eggplant
olive oil
lavender salt
black pepper
rosemary
dried mint
400g cherry tomatoes
500ml – 750 ml (whatever size bottle you have) tomato passata
dried basil

(I know these amounts are very vague. It really is a sprinkle of this and a sprinkle of that, and it is very much to taste. If you don’t have lavender salt, a pinch of salt with some culinary lavender is good, or skip the lavender and add a little fennel, and rather more rosemary. It will be fine.)

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, low glycemic index, main courses, nut-free, Recipes, vegan, vegetarian

Tagged capsicum, dairy-free, egg-free, eggplant, gluten-free, nut-free, ratatouille, tomato, vegan, vegetarian, zucchini

Recipe: Modular Salad for Lots of Dietary Requirements

Posted on September 10, 2016 | Leave a comment

My best friend lives in Darwin, and she’s having a baby (!!!), so I went up for a quick visit last weekend, to hang out, help out a bit, but mostly just have a good chance to catch up for the last time before there is an adorably cute little barrier to conversation in the house!

The beach at Fannie Bay, just outside the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory

The beach at Fannie Bay, just outside the Museum of the Northern Territory

My friend has gestational diabetes, and her husband has a number of allergies and food sensitivities, and when you add to these culinary challenges the fact that Darwin is appallingly hot and humid, figuring out dinner is a bit of a challenge.

On the road south of Darwin.

Like many people in Darwin, they don’t have family living locally, so we also talked a fair bit about planning for food that requires minimum preparation time when there is a small baby in the house. (Not that I have ever had a small baby in the house, but I am all about minimal food preparation in hot weather. Or grant season.)

Wattle, coming into bloom. In hot weather. Did I mention that Darwin was hot?

We came up with this modular salad, which has the capacity to tick lots of mutually-exclusive boxes. It’s more an idea than a recipe, and it’s pretty simple, but it’s a useful one and worth sharing, I think.

(It’s unofficial name is Franken-Niçoise salad, because originally, there was going to be tuna. But since we skipped the tuna, and the green beans were looking a bit dodgy, it’s just Modular Salad now.)

We liked it, and hope you will too.

Your shopping list (for about 5-6 serves, which can be held over for later if need be)

One lettuce
Two punnets of cherry tomatoes
Two Lebanese cucumbers
Two red capsicums
One tin of cannellini beans, drained
Six smallish potatoes, preferably waxy ones
Six eggs
A handful of olives (optional)
A few spring onions (optional)
A tin or two of tuna or salmon; or leftover poached or roasted chicken; or tuna steaks if you are willing to cook such; or marinated and grilled tofu; or pre-prepared felafel, or even toasted hazelnuts or cubes of cheese. You want about 100g per person of protein that is ready to eat, essentially.
Extra virgin Olive oil
Red wine vinegar (or cider vinegar if that’s what your friend can eat)
Salt, pepper
Tzatziki, or mayonnaise, or plain greek yoghurt with a teaspoon of dijon mustard

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, low fructose, low glycemic index, main courses, Recipes, vegan, vegetarian

Tagged allergy-friendly food, dairy-free, easy food, egg-free, gluten-free, low fructose, low glycemic index, modular food, nicoise salad, nut-free, salad, vegan, vegetarian

Recipe: Jacket Sweet Potatoes with Vegetarian Chilli and Guacamole

Posted on August 27, 2016 | 3 comments

I have no idea when I will escape this food blog hiatus! Even when I make and photograph food, there never seems to be time to write about it – and most of the food I’ve been making this year has fallen into the category if quick and simple. And they tend to rely pretty heavily on Gewürzhaus spice mixes, which isn’t so helpful for recording them here.

I’m very fond of jacket sweet potatoes. Actually, I’m very fond of jacket potatoes, but my husband has an unnatural dislike of them, and sweet potatoes are better for you anyway, so that’s how it goes. If I ever manage to achieve regular writing on this blog, you can expect a fair number of jacket sweet potato recipes going forward, as they are becoming a bit of a winter staple…

This particular recipe, though, I’ve made a few times recently. It’s a nice, healthy, vegan dinner that is straightforward enough for a Friday night at the end of a long week. It wasn’t vegan on purpose, which is one reason it is so good, I suspect – I always get the cheese out, but never seem to use it, and when I made a point of using it once, it didn’t taste as good. So this is a meal that really wants to be vegan! It also happens to be gluten free and low-GI, and reasonably healthy, and tastes lovely and fresh and comforting, which makes it a much better alternative to the Friday night takeaway which was becoming a habit.

Your Shopping List

3 medium sweet potatoes (I know that’s vague, but aim for a similar sort of weight to what you’d do for an ordinary jacket potato meal)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, brown or red
1-2 tsp cajun spice mix, or a mixture of cumin, oregano, garlic, paprika and chilli
1 tin of black beans, drained (these are suddenly available at the supermarket! Yay! But if you can’t find them, red kidney beans also work)
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
1/2 tsp chipotle chilli powder, or to taste
a little salt (lime salt is great if you have it)
2 spring onions (the long, thin ones that also get called shallots)
2 roma tomatoes
juice of one lemon or one lime (I almost never have limes, lemons do nicely)
2 tsp Gewürzhaus Guacamole Spice, if you have it, but failing that, a mixture of salt, cumin and chilli will do – probably a teaspoon in total will be fine.
2 avocadoes
chopped coriander, optional

Continue reading →

3 Comments

Posted in dairy-free, egg-free, everyday cooking, gluten-free, low glycemic index, main courses, nut-free, Recipes, vegan, vegetarian

Tagged avocado, chilli, chipotle chilli, dairy-free, egg-free, gewürzhaus, gluten-free, low GI, main meals, recipes, sweet potato, tomatoes, vegan, vegetarian

Recipe: Super Easy Tomato Soup

Posted on August 1, 2016 | Leave a comment

Hello! It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? Sorry about that. I got back from overseas, and dove straight into election mode, which meant a heap of work on my politics blog, and then I slept for several days, and then I went back to work, and then I got sort of low level sick for about a week and a half and then horrible things happened around the world and I got depressed about it, and then I had fiction writing to do, and then it was suddenly August. I shall try not to go on such a prolonged hiatus again, but I make no promises – politics happens, work never stops happening, and I’m really enjoying writing fiction on my Stories Under Paris site at the moment, more than I’ve enjoyed writing anything for years, so a lot of my energy will be focused there. I’m trying to reduce my hours at work, which should help a little, and I want to use some of the time I recapture to work on a cookbook, but I have to do things that aren’t writing sometimes, too, especially as my wrist is still not great…

Anyway, I’ve been doing a lot of very easy cooking recently, and I’ve made this soup a couple of times (without once managing to photograph it, alas), and really like it. I’m not going to claim that it is a work of genius, and it does rely rather on things from the pantry, but it’s a tasty soup for a winter night, especially when served with a toasted jarlsberg cheese sandwich. I like the combination of tomato flavours from passata, chopped tomatoes and freshly roasted ones – I think you get an interesting balance of tomatoishness from the different treatments the tomatoes have received. (But mostly I like it because it feels like a healthier version of my childhood comfort food of Campbells Tomato Soup from a tin…)

Your Shopping List

1 kg roma tomatoes
1 red onion
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp balsamic vinegarolive oil, salt and pepper for roasting
1 tin (400g) chopped tomatoes
1 bottle (500-700ml) passata

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free, Recipes, soups, vegan, vegetarian

Tagged dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, nut-free, recipes, soups, tomatoes, vegan, vegetarian

Recipe: Saffron and Cardamon Yoghurt (Shrikhand)

Posted on March 1, 2016 | Leave a comment

I originally encountered this recipe in a pack from the glorious (and sadly, now on hold) Curry Delights startup. It is a beautiful, pale-yellow-tinted, cooling yoghurt dessert flavoured with cardamom and the honey-like scent of saffron, and I absolutely loved it – so much that I made it two nights running, in fact.

Ambika and Vikram’s version of this dish was super-easy and very quick, but relied on a couple of products that I was unable to source in Australia, so once I ran out (i.e., about four days after first encountering the recipe), I was out of luck. I did have recipes for Shrikhand in other books, but none of them looked quite right (though I *highly* approve of the one that suggests adding popping candy, and I will be doing this at the first opportunity), and most of them, being more traditional, required a longer preparation time, as the recipes relied on drained yoghurt.

But I was really craving those lovely, cooling flavours again this week, so I decided that it was time to see if I could cross the various recipes, modified slightly to my tastes, and make a version that was feasible here.

Short version? I did, and it was glorious, and I’m writing it up right now, so that I don’t forget the quantities…

Your Shopping List

saffron strands – a big pinch, crumbled between your fingers into a little bowl
250 g light cream cheese
1/3 cup icing sugar (slightly heaped, to be honest)
1/4 tsp cardamom powder, also heaped
350 g low fat Greek Yoghurt (nothing wrong with full fat, but the low fat Black Swan one is nicer than the full fat anyway, and frankly, this dessert does not need to be any richer than it is)
200g raspberries, to serve. Trust me, you want something fresh and acidic. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in desserts, egg-free, gluten-free, low fructose, nut-free, Recipes, vegetarian

Tagged cardamom, egg-free, gluten-free, low fructose, nut-free, saffron, shrikhand, vegetarian, yoghurt

Recipe: Chocolate THING that is basically evil but really yummy

Posted on January 31, 2016 | Leave a comment

A couple of Thursdays ago, I read an article in the paper lamenting the fact that many Australians would be letting down their employers by taking a sickie on the Monday before Australia Day. (The article did, at least, point out that employers should be reasonable about granting annual leave on this day, but something about the way it was written still left an unpleasant taste in my mouth.)

My scientists work ridiculous hours, and don’t tend to take sickies, even when they probably should (leading to the fun phenomenon of the Lab Lurgy – we are a sharing sort of team on 5 West!), but I thought that if others were getting a four day weekend, legitimately or otherwise, we should do something to make it worth coming in to work that day. Accordingly, I proposed a casual lab lunch – anyone who wanted could bring a plate to share, and we’d set up in the meeting room for a couple of hours, with people dropping in, chatting and eating when they had time.

It turned into a smallish but pleasant gathering – certainly worth doing again, with an interesting variety of food ranging from Turkish bread and dips provided by our German lab head and vegetarian sausage rolls from one of our British postdocs, to a proper Gallette des Rois, brought in by one of our French scientists.

Normally, I would make Nonna’s pizza for this sort of occasion, but my left wrist is still giving me a lot of trouble, and kneading is definitely beyond me. So instead, I decided to pursue my current favourite confectionery strategy of melting a lot of chocolate, and then opening the pantry and flinging any sweet contents that seem plausible into it. The results were very tasty – it’s quite a sophisticated, dark chocolate thing, full of glacé and freeze-dried fruits, but I also couldn’t resist pouring in some popping candy, and I got a great deal of glee out of hearing people go “oh, this is really nice – ooh! Oh my God what is that?” at irregular intervals through the afternoon…

All in all, an excellent way to liven up the day before a holiday.

Your Shopping List

500 g good dark chocolate (I used half Lindt, half Green and Blacks, both 70% cocoa)
250 g glacé fruit (I used pineapple, peach and apricot, but cherries, pears, oranges, or anything else that takes your fancy would work. Probably not citron, though.)
50 g crystallised ginger
35 g freeze-dried fruit (I used strawberries and blueberries, but again, pick your own preferred flavours)
35 g popping candy
100 g praline paste (I used almond, but use whatever you prefer)

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in confectionery, dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, Recipes, vegan, vegetarian

Tagged chocolate, dairy-free, egg-free, freeze-dried fruit, glacé fruit, gluten-free, vegan, vegetarian

Recipe: Coconut Macaroons (Gluten Free)

Posted on December 16, 2015 | Leave a comment

OK, these are *marginally* trickier than my other super-easy cookies, but only marginally, and they are awesome, because I think I may have actually reverse-engineered the macaroons my Oma used to make when I was a child. They are perfectly chewy and delicious, and basically, I just love glacé cherries, so any excuse to use them is a good one for me.

Enjoy!

Your Shopping list

2 egg whites
100 g sugar
150 g shredded coconut (not the evil desecrated kind, the kind that comes in long strands)
150 g almond meal
glacé cherries

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in biscuits, dairy-free, gluten-free, Recipes, vegetarian

Tagged almonds, biscuits, cherries, coconut, dairy-free, egg, gluten-free, macaroons, recipes, sugar, vegetarian

Recipe: Cherry Ripe Cookies (Gluten Free, Vegan)

Posted on December 9, 2015 | Leave a comment

Look! It’s a slightly different (but still dead easy) biscuit recipe! This time, it’s vegan!

I love the idea of two ingredient cookies, where you get a sweetened nut butter and some flour – or chocolate tahini and rice flour and make a biscuit and then bake it. But let’s face it, sometimes two ingredients isn’t enough. I found myself eyeing off one of those chocolate and coconut butter spreads in the supermarket and thinking, you know, add a glacé cherry and you’re kind of half way to a cherry ripe here. And then I thought, yeah, but you need a bit more coconut.

And… that was it, really. So here you have them – cherry ripe cookies that are vegan and gluten-free. They are a little chewy and only just barely sweet – most of the sweetness comes from the cherries – but they are nicely chocolatey and coconutty. (There is a definite air of chocolate crackle to these, too. That whole coconut and chocolate thing will do that.)

Ooh, and I just realised how you could make vegan gluten-free LAMINGTON cookies, by replacing the cherry with jam! The possibilities are endless…

Your shopping list

150g chocolate coconut spread (I used Pure Harvest Coco2Almond spread, which purports to be a health food, but don’t worry, there’s nothing healthy about these cookies)
100g almond meal
50 g shredded coconut
12-16 glacé cherries

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in biscuits, dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, Recipes, vegan, vegetarian

Tagged almond, biscuits, cherries, chocolate, coconut, dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, recipes, vegan, vegetarian

Recipe: Chocolate and Hazelnut Cookies with Wattleseed

Posted on December 6, 2015 | Leave a comment

What’s this? Could it be… another nut based cookie? Why yes, yes it is! As you may possibly have noticed, I’ve been breaking out the Australian native herbs and spices for this little round of cookie fetishisation, and I decided to play with a brand new ingredient, wattleseed.

Wattleseed tends to get used in sweets, because it has an allegedly coffee-like taste. To me, it tasted a bit like burned chocolate, with hints of hazelnut and coffee. It’s pretty much an Andrew-repellant, because while he likes chocolate, he loathes coffee, and is also fairly firmly against people ruining perfectly good chocolate with hazelnuts.

Good thing he wasn’t going to be eating these biscuits, then, eh? I decided to expand on this flavour profile with hazelnut meal and cocoa, and would probably have considered garnishing the biscuit with half a coffee bean had I had such a thing to hand (though, on reflection, the flavour would probably be too strong).

Anyway, like the other biscuits in this series, these are very simple and leave you with a nice, slightly chewy little biscuit. That tastes like hazelnuts and coffee and a little bit like burned chocolate. Sorry, Andrew.

Your shopping list

185 g hazelnut meal
15 g cocoa
2 tsp wattleseed, ground (have a good sniff before you use it, so you know what you are dealing with)
1 egg
50 g sugar

Now what will you do with it?

You know the drill by now. Preheat the oven to 165°C, and line a baking tray with paper.

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. Taste to see if you like the flavour. Roll into little walnut-sized balls, flatten, then bake for 15 minutes.

Done!

Variations

As usual, this recipe is gluten- and dairy-free, also low in fructose, but full of nuts and contains eggs. There are a lot of ways you could vary it. I think, were I making this again, I might go half hazelnut meal, and half ground macadamias – the hazelnut flavour was quite strong, and nearly overwhelmed the wattleseed. You could also add more cocoa – my box was nearly empty – just make sure the nut + cocoa portion of this biscuits adds up to 200g.

Enjoy!

Leave a comment

Posted in biscuits, dairy-free, gluten-free, Recipes, vegetarian

Tagged australian herbs, biscuits, cocoa, dairy-free, gluten-free, hazelnuts, recipes, vegetarian, wattleseed

Recipe: Almond Cookies with Lemon Myrtle

Posted on November 30, 2015 | Leave a comment

I’m on a bit of a gluten-free biscuit roll at the moment. I pretty much have one super-easy recipe, which I vary by switching out the nuts for different nuts, and adding new flavour ingredients. Done. In fact, I spent half of yesterday afternoon making variations on this particular biscuity theme – five batches in total – because I am a little bit silly.

You could probably do this just as well yourself. Assuming that you are also silly. But I’m quite pleased with the way the flavour worked for these ones, so I’m recording the recipe here for my use, if not for yours.

Your Shopping List

200 g almond meal
1 egg
1 tsp lemon myrtle (you want this in a powdered form, not a form which is leafy for tea)
50 g sugar
mixed peel or pine nuts (optional, for garnish)

Continue reading →