Guest Post: Stevie's Super Duper Gluten-Free Spag Bog

Since I've been on my last legs over the past few weeks, young Steven gallantly offered to do a recipe for you guys,which he surprised me with a few weeks ago but which I have only just got round to posting today. After 6 years of trying to feed a fussy and belligerent Coeliac he's pretty much a pro at gluten-free dinners, and his spag bog is no exception. Where my cooking and baking equipment is mostly pink, Steve's is all very fancy and comes from those locked cabinets they have in John Lewis. He has these Japanese knives that I daren't even look at it, let alone pick it up.
If your a veggie the beef mince can easily be swapped for Quorn mince with no ill effects to the recipe and the same can be said if you want to swap the beef for turkey which is lower in fat for anyone wanting a 'lite' version.
I hope you all enjoy the recipe, although don't you lot go liking his better than mine now!

Serves 6 or 4 very hungry people

Ingredients

• 2 Medium carrots, peeled and finely diced
• 2 Celery sticks, finely diced
• 1 Medium onion, finely diced
• 6 Chestnut mushrooms, finely diced
• 250g Mince beef
• 3 Cloves of garlic, crushed
• 4 Tbsp Balsamic vinegar (Look for a g/f version)
• 1 Tin of chopped tomatoes
• A small handful of dried mix herbs
• A small bay leaf
• 6 Handfuls of gluten free dried pasta (Doves Farm/Sainsbury's Free From/Dietary Specials)

Method

1. Finely dice the carrots, celery and onion.  Then gently heat a large saucepan on the hob, add enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan.  Add the three vegetables to the pan with a pinch of salt and slowly sweat them down for 5-10mins, you shouldn’t hear a hard frying noise just a gentle cooking.
2. Now increase the heat and add the mince, season with a pinch of salt, pepper and stir until all the meat has browned.  Now add the balsamic vinegar (I just pour the vinegar for 4 seconds instead of measuring), it will hiss and make a lot of noise as it reduces.  Stir occasionally to coat everything.  You will hear a change in the cooking when you add the vinegar, when the noise returns to a frying one; you know it’s reduced enough.
3. Now stir in the 3 cloves of crushed garlic (or finely chop if you don’t have a crusher) and cook for 1 min.  Then add the finely diced mushrooms, mixed dried herbs, bay leaf and tomatoes.  Then fill the empty tin with cold water from the tap and add that also, finish with a big pinch of salt, pepper and a thorough stir to mix everything up.
4. Now turn the heat down to its lowest mark and leave on the hob for 1½-2 hours, stir every 30mins or so to stop it catching.  After that time it will have reduced considerably to a wonderfully smelling thick sauce.
5. 10mins before the end cook your pasta in well salted water, when it has gone soft to the bite, drain and add to the sauce.  Stir in the pasta for 2mins, this allows it to absorb the maximum flavour and then serve.

Additional notes

If you want to add an extra depth of flavour, fry some smoked pancetta cube before step one, if you do this don’t add any salt or as much oil to the three vegetable as the pancetta is very salty and fatty.  Also it wouldn’t do any harm if you add a small glass of red wine when you add the tomatoes.

Speedy Sides: Edition 1

This is the first edition of one of my new features Speedy Sides (racked my brains to think of that title didn't I?). The name speaks for itself, each edition will be a super quick and easy dish which will work great as a perfect side,with, or as an addition to a main meal (Depending on whether you eat for England or enjoy mini meals).

         Ingredients

• 700g New potatoes
• 100g Radishes
• 100g Half fat creme fresh (or you can use full fat if your already bikini ready!)
• Small bunch spring onions
• 1 Tsp Paprika
• Zest and large squirt of juice from 1 lemon
• 1 Clove of garlic
• 2 Tbsp Tarragon

                      Total Prep time: 10 Minutes            

         

Method

• In a large pan bring your potatoes to boil in salted water. Boil for 10 minutes or until they start to feel soft went you give them a poke with a knife.
• Drain then off and leave to cool down.
• Slice up your radishes and spring onions as finely as you can, don't worry if your knife skills aren't Jamie Oliver esq the chopping can be as rough as you like as long as its fine. Pop them in a bowl with your creme fresh.
• Finely chop your tarragon, add to a small bowl with the lemon zest, garlic (crushed), paprika and a big old squeeze of lemon juice. Give the lot a quick mix.
• Once the spuds are cool slice them into halves and add to the radish and onion mix, pour over the gremolata and give it all a good stir.
• Done!Fab for BBQ's, trying to pretend your a bit posh, and with fish.

Adapted from a recipe from Sainsbury's magazine.

Oopsy Daisy Upside Down Apple Cake

After you've finished yakking after reading my vom worthy 'Daddy Cool' post I thought you might like to indulge in a yummy-o, calorific Apple Upside Down Cake (the point being you turn the cake upside down,not eat it whilst upside down...but you knew that already).
I wouldn't have ever attempted an upside down anything due to my innate ability to pretty much drop anything I pick up, but my Dad found it while flicking though my new Rachel Allen cook book (a barginlicious £5 from W H Smith) and I had promised him a dessert of his choice for Fathers Day and this was what he chose, and blow me if it didn't actually come out pretty much perfectly! I refuse to revel silently in my success since nothing ever really goes exactly how I want it when I make it!

Ingredients

• 3 Eating apples (I used Pink Ladies,cos I like the name and the stickers on them)
• 250g Light brown sugar (you could use caster sugar but the darker sugar works well with the apple and the cinnamon)
• 50g Butter
• 200g Plain Flour (Doves Farm as per usual)
• 2 Large eggs
• 3 fl oz Sunflower Oil (veg oil would also do,but not olive oil-too strong in taste)
• 1 tsp G/F baking powder (I use Dr Oetker)
• 1/2 Salt
• A generous pinch of bicarbonate of soda (Dr Oekter again)
• A nice big heaped tsp pf cinnamon
• 7 fl oz Buttermilk

Extras

• You can make this in a largish oven proof frying pan (around 10inches across) or you can use a Pyrex dish as I did. (I'll give instructions for both methods)
• Sieve

Method

• Whack your oven up to Gas 4.
• While the oven warms you can get on with melting your butter over a gentle heat in a frying pan. Once its melted add in half the sugar giving it a good old stir and cook the mixture of a low heat for around 2-3 minutes. Keep the heat low to avoid burning the sugar. Burnt sugar on a pan is a pain in the arse to get off.
• Slice your apples to a decent thickness and add into the pan. If your cooking your cake in your frying pan, set to the side while you get on with making your cake mix. If your using a dish spoon the toffee/apple mix evenly over the bottom of your dish and set aside.
• Sieve your flour, baking powder, bicarb, cinnamon and salt together into a big bowl and give it a quick stir. 
• In a separate bowl crack in your eggs and whisk with a fork. Add in the buttermilk, the rest of the sugar and the oil, giving it all a proper good stir to combine.
• Pour the egg/buttermilk mix in with your dry ingredients, give it some welly and stir until you have a smooth cake mix. Don't worry if there's a lump or two here and there. Raymond Blanc isn't coming to tea.
• Pour the cake mix over the apples (whether in a pan or dish) and pop your pan/dish in the oven for around 30minutes or until the cake has turned golden and is firm to touch.
• When it's cooked, take the cake out of the oven and leave to cool. As it cools it will start to come away from the sides of the dish/pan.
• Now for the utterly terrifying bit. Find yourself a big plate and place (face down) over the frying pan/dish and flip the pan/dish and plate over quickly and in one motion if possible. If the cake doesn't quite come away, leave the dish upside over the plate, it will start to suction away after a few seconds.
• If like my Dad and I you can't wait and are willing to risk third degree burns to your gullet tuck in. It's also yummy a bit cooler with a drop of cream (I don't even know why I said that since I hate cream on puddings). 
• Take to Twitter and tell the world you have successfully completed an upside down cake.Back of the net.

Tasty Tempura Prawns with Mango Yogurt Dipping Sauce

I always use sparkling water for batters because you get a much lighter,less greasy batter. Feel free to use beer for the batter if you want, although with this recipe a beer batter will probably overpower the taste of the prawns.


Ingredients

• 200g King prawns (uncooked)
• 100g Plain gluten-free flour (Doves Farm,Glutafin)
• 250ml Sparkling water
• 25g Cornflour (or you could use potato flour)
• 1 Egg
• 2 Pinches of salt
• 200g Plain yogurt (I used Greek)
• 2-3 Tbsp's of mango chutney (Sharwood's is g/f. If anyone has a recipe for mango chutney send it over)
• 1 Lemon
• Vegetable or sunflower oil

If you omit the dip

Serves 4

Extras

• Wok
• Slotted spoon
• A few sheets of kitchen paper

Method

• In a bowl beat your egg and add in the sparkling water, giving it all a good stir. Add the flours and a few pinches of salt and give it a gentle whisk until everything is well mixed in. Don't worry if its still lumpy at this stage.
• Stir your prawns through the tempura mix making sure they are coated all over with the batter.
• Half fill your wok with the oil over a fairly high heat. It's hot enough when a tiny blob of the tempura batter (a bit without a prawn in!) bubbles and browns when dropped into the mixture.
• Cook a few of the prawns in the oil at a time. They should only take as long as 2-3 minutes to cook and for the batter to go golden. Be careful not to overcook them, prawns can get chewy easily and can be like chewing on a Michelin tyre if they're overdone.
• Using your slotted spoon (or something similar that will help drain the fat away when you remove the prawns from the pan) take your prawns out of the wok and pop on a plate covered with kitchen paper to absorb some of the excess oil.
• To make the mango yogurt dipping sauce, plop your yogurt and mango chutney into a small bowl and give them both a thorough stir until they're well combined.
• Dip away from my friends, dip away!

 Adapted from a recipe from Delicious magazine

Dietary Specials at The Co-op

6 years on from my Coeliac diagnosis the one thing I still um and ah over is mealtimes.
In a perfect world I’d be Jamie Oliver-ing it in the kitchen getting knife happy with exotic looking veg and cooking everything from scratch . This however, is not a perfect world and I don’t have the face shape or bone structure to pull off Jamie Oliver's hair, and the most exotic veg in my local green grocers is some questionably shaped carrots and swede.
On the days when you’ve got in after dropping an all time record of 7pint glasses at the pub, or tripped an old lady up whilst showing her the cod liver oil, or a day when you hoovered your own skirt up in the Henry Hoover and flashed your knickers to a line of waiting traffic outside the shop (just a few examples of the stressful working days I’ve had in various employments) the last thing you want to do is go out of your way to pick up a quick dinner at the Big Supermarket.

And by Jove that will not be me anymore (or you either if you have a local Co-Op) because my newly appointed Co-Op mere sneezing distance from my house will now be stocking various frozen delights from the Dietary Specials range. Yes, my friends I’m now one of those people who can say ‘yeah, I think I’m just going to pick up a pizza on my way home from work’… I will be a NORMAL person (well, y’know as normal as a nut like me can get). Its all very well and good cooking everything from scratch and yes sometimes I’m massively smug about it, but I want to be able to get home from a stressful shopping trip (during which I couldn’t find a)anything I wanted and b)my mate found everything she did) and pop something easy in the oven while I chill out on the sofa in my scruffs with the best of ‘em.
As well as the Margarita Pizza, the Co-Op will also be stocking my all time favourite and lunch box lovely the Sausage Rolls and also the never be beaten Yorkshire Puddings which as an honouree Yorkshire lass myself I can vouch are A-mazing!
I've said it once, and I'll say it again it ain't all about the biscuits and cupcakes, it's brilliant to see meal options locally available from Dietary Specials. Bon appetit!

Check out Dietary Specials site To find your nearest Co-Op stocking these goodies.

Cracking Good Crepes

A lot of peoples prevailing idea of gluten-free food is that it tastes profoundly different from non gluten-free food. This is another one of those recipes where I dare any non gluten freer to taste the difference. The original recipe is from the February issue of Delicious magazine and I've tweaked it here and there to make it gluten-free. It's not vastly different from a normal pancake recipe but I think the little differences that are there make for a far nicer pancake.

Ingredients

• 75g Caster sugar
• 150g Plain flour mix, I used Doves Farm but Glutafin also do a mix as well
• 1 Egg, plus 1 egg yolk
• 300ml Whole milk
• 100ml Melted butter
• Knob of butter for frying your pancakes
• 1-2 Drops of vanilla extract (Sainsbury's do a cheap vanilla extract for just under a £1)

Serves 6-8

Extras

• Large non stick frying pan

Method

• Get yourself a large bowl and sieve your flour into it. Add the sugar and a pinch of salt and give it a quick mix.
• Make a well in the centre with your finger and crack in your whole egg and the yolk and give it a stir, bringing the flour in from the edges (like when you mix cement).
• As you stir add a little of the milk at a time and continue stirring until its lump free and a fairly thin smooth batter mix.
• Pour your melted butter into the batter mix and add a few drops of vanilla. Cover over with some clingfilm and let it sit for around 5 minutes or the time it takes you to make a cup of coffee.
• Pop your frying pan over a medium to high heat and melt a few cubes of butter. When the butter is slightly starting to spit add a ladleful (or a small cup full) of your mix to the pan and swirl and tip the pan around until the mixture covers the bottom of the base of the pan.
• It won't take long for the batter to cook,when its ready flip and cook the other side. Repeat until all the mixtures gone and your belly is full. Awesome.

Filling idea's

• Lemon and sugar classic combo
• Strawberries and dollop of mascarpone continental
• Cinnamon sugar spicy
• Golden syrup tooth rotting
• Cheese and cubed bacon savoury
• Mini marshmallows and melted chocolate good for ankle biters

The Italian Job

Hurrah! Thankfully there was no 'act of god' or natural disaster in my neck of the woods in the night so as promised here I am to get a post up.
Before I start I have to tell you about the amazing discovery I made yesterday. There I was flicking through my six quid bargain copy of Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess, and O.M.G if the lady herself hadn't signed one of the title pages! I'm wondering if maybe there's some of her DNA on the page and maybe I could clone myself a Nigella.
Moving on.
In Brighton there's a FAB family run Italian called Donatello's. Its down the wibbly wobbly Brighton Laines and you can smell the waft of garlic ages before you see the actual restaurant. It's one of my favourite haunts and the Brucie Bonus is, is that they have gluten free pasta on the menu, hurrah!
As my friend SarahB likes to remind me, there was once a time when I couldn't even cook pasta, or anything else for that matter, but five years at uni made me quite a pro at pasta cooking, because it was cook pasta or starve. Spaghetti Bolognese was the first meal I ever cooked for The Boyf and it remains to this day, our anniversary dinner (none of that Claridge's crap for us).
What is so down-right-fan-dabby-dooby about pasta is its so quick and easy to make and there's so many variations on it that, no matter how fussy you are theres a pasta dish out there for you somewhere. Unless you don't like pasta. Oh.
My dad fancies himself a Heston Blumenthal type cook and makes all sorts of weird and wonderful pasta concoctions, but he gave me this great recipe and it turned out to be yum, and not so weird at all.
The recipe includes instructions on how to make homemade pesta which is included in the dish, although feel free to crack open a jar, but do be careful as not all pesto's are gluten free.
Pesto will until the end of time remind me of my flatmate at uni, Becky. she used to use whole jars in her pasta and the smell takes me back to days trying to cook on The Worst Hob In The World, in a kitchen which often reached temperatures hotter than the sun.
This recipe is grand if your a girl or guy on a budget and is also good if you have a lot of hungry gobs to feed. The pesto makes a fair amount, enough to bottle up and keep in the fridge for a few weeks so in times of economic strife it should stretch to a further two or three meals depending on how much you use.

Captain Kate's Fabulous Fish Pie

As if I could be the captain of a trawler, good grief!


Ingredients
Serves 4

• 450g/15 1/2oz Mixed, boneless fish cut into large cubes  I used a mixture of prawns, cod and haddock
• 600ml Milk
• I Large leek sliced
• 100g/4oz Butter
• 50g/2oz Gluten Free Plain Flour (Dietary Specials, Glutafin, Juvela, Doves Farm)
• 1 Tbsp Fresh or dried parsley
• 50ml White wine
• 3-4 Medium sized potatoes for mashing
• 1 Tbsp Olive oil
• Medium sized oven proof pie dish

Method

• Start of by frying your sliced leek over a low heat with the tbsp of olive oil and 50g of butter. Cook until they're soft, season to taste and leave them to one side for later. If you aren't big on leeks, one small white onion diced would be a perfectly acceptable substitute.
• Pour your milk into a large pan and simmer over a low heat, plop in the fish and the parsley and poach over the low heat for around 4-5 minutes.
• When its cooked, strain the fish out of the milk, keeping the milk to one side for later. Spoon the fish into your pie dish and mix the leeks through the fish.
• The sauce that goes over the fish is basically a roux. Melt the rest of the butter in a small saucepan over a low heat, stir in the flour quickly and cook for one minute. Your looking for a smooth, paste like consistency, it should look almost like a smooth cookie dough mixture, and when its cooked it will almost hold its own shape.
• Stir in the milk you used to poach the fish a cup full at a time, using a whisk to stir the roux and milk mix so it stays as smooth and lump free as Cindy Crawford's legs. Its important not to add all the milk at once as you may not need all of it depending on the thickness of the sauce, judge for yourself whether you think its thick enough, your aiming for a sauce that's ever so slightly thicker than double cream but not so thick that you could spread it on toast.
• Once your sauce is ready and waiting to roll, pour it over the fish, covering it evenly. Its not the most appetising looking sauce I admit, in fact it looks like wall paper paste but bear with me!
• Boil your King Ted's until soft and almost falling apart when you poke them with a knife. Drain your spuds and give them a good mash, I like using a good wedge of butter in mine for nice creamy (but not sloppy!) mash. 
• Spread your mash over the top of your masterpiece of a pie, you can use a fork like I did and make little patterns over the top of the pie, if you don't have endless hours to waste doing daft things like that, just smooth the mash over the pie. If you fancied you could top your pie with a good old handful of cheese for a cheesy-mash topping.
• Bake in the oven for a good 30minutes, at Gas 6/200c. It should be golden on top when its cooked.
• Dish up with some veg, shovel into your pie-hole, being careful not to burn your mouth on the near nuclear pie.

P.s. Its another sad day because I don't have a photo of the pie, I went out for dinner last night and wasn't here to take a snap when the pie emerged from the oven. However you can enjoy this picture of Flounder and Sebastian from The Little Mermaid (my all time favourite film), who, if they existed in the real world would have probably ended up in a pie by now.

Cod Piece

Fish and I aren't the best of friends. I go through phases of eating it two or three times a week, and then overnight I suddenly have a major aversion to it. I'm fairly fussy with fish even when I do eat it; I only eat filleted fish (I can't eat anything with a face), I can stomach prawns and crab, but the thought of being dished up a shrimp with its tiny face and beady black eyes still attached (which I would then have to pull with my own bare hands) makes me go cold and if you ever served me squid or something else with tentacles you would be forever erased from my Christmas card list (and probably my memory). Plus if watching Deadliest Catch doesn't put you off fish nothing will.
I have to confess that I actually don't like fish pie, which is today's recipe, but I can assure you though the recipe is good, and its been through several rounds of rigorous testing by my lovely Dad, who let me tell you is just about the fussiest person on the face of the planet (other than me).
I was umming and ahhing as to whether I would put this recipe up since I haven't actually eaten it, but I thought to myself, surely Jamie Oliver and Nigella don't eat every single one of their dishes before they go in their cookbooks (they actually probably do). Be reassured that I did do a taste test of everything along the way, the deconstructed pie as it were, I just couldn't bring myself to eat it after it was compiled!
Anyway, hopefully you do like fish pie! This is another easy peasy meal, and can be made the day before, covered with clingfilm and chucked in the fridge for the following night. Apart from needing a few ounces of G/F flour the rest of the ingredients are all naturally gluten free, hooray! It's also pretty purse friendly...an all round good fish (I can hear your groans from here).
Anyway, I've got to dash, Katherine has just come back on the Vampire Diaries and its getting exciting!I have a crumble for you at the end of the week so stay tuned!

Sunday Saver- Throw Anything in Risotto

Yes I know what your going to say, risotto can can either go one of two ways, not cooked or overcooked and its hard to get it spot on, right?. Wrong! If a numpty like me who thought Walsall was in Poland can cook the perfect risotto anyone can.
This recipe is an amalgamation of a few different tips and recipes I picked up in the quest for a right-on risotto and is your basic blue-print risotto before you start adding other yummy flavours or left overs you have, that's what makes this recipe so kind on your purse strings.
so, lets get started on the basic risotto.

Ingredients

• 350g Risotto rice, most supermarkets do an own brand version for less than £1.50 (naturally gluten-free, hooray!)
  
• 50g Butter
• 2 tbsp's Olive oil
• 1 Onion finely chopped
• 50g Grated Parmesan
• 1.5-1.75 Litres of gluten-free stock (any you like, I use veggie stock. Bouillon do various GF stock cubes)

Method
here we go, easy-peasy even a monkey could do it risotto method!

• Before you start of the risotto, pop a nice big pan of stock on to heat ready for when you need to add it to the rice. Apparently the first thing you should do whenever you cook anything is pop a pan of water on to boil because at some point you will need it!
• Heat your oil and half the butter in a big pan, they say a saute pan is best, I neither know what that is nor do I think I own one so I just you a heavy based wide pan with enough room for all the rice and stock that will be added later. Add the onion and cook until softened. If you wanted to add other vegetables, peppers, mushrooms,garlic etc now would be the time to add them along with the onions.
  
• Add the rice and stir through so that the rice is coated in all the oil and butter.
• I always add white wine to my risotto, it doesn't need to be expensive wine either, slug a large glass of wine in if you'd like and simmer until the rice has absorbed the wine. If you would prefer not to add wine add your first ladleful of hot stock instead. Working on the assumption you add wine as I do, next add your first ladleful of hot stock and let the rice absorb it before adding another ladleful.
  
• The rice should be cooked after around 20-25 minutes and should be al dente and nearly all your stock should be added to the pan. don't panic if you have some left over or if you've added all the stock, I've learnt that risotto rice can be unpredictable so don't worry if the amount of stock you use varies every time you make risotto. remember you will also have some stock left over if you added wine.
• Remove the pan from the heat and let the rice absorb whatever is left of the stock. Don't stir, I know the temptation is overwhelming sometimes to stir something your cooking but don't.
• A good risotto should be creamy (apparently) and the Italians call this all'onda or wavy (random fact to use at dinner parties!). Just before you serve it stir in the rest of the butter, Parmesan and season. Enjoy with the bottle of wine you added of glass of at the start!

....And here's a few things you could throw in..

• Lemon and Leek- Make like Phil Vickery and add lemon rind and fried leeks to your risotto just before serving
• Mushrooms- Soak 200g of dried porcini 'shroom's in hot water, add with 300g of sliced fresh mushrooms to the onion at the start of cooking
• Vegetable- Peppers,cook at the start with the onions, peas stir through later after the last ladleful of stock.
• Meat and Fish- Stir pre-cooked prawns in at the end of cooking to heat through, add pre-cooked chicken in the same way, or fry chorizo with the onions at the start to get that lovely paprika taste running through the risotto.