Coffee brownies and coconut cake

I've been baking sourdough bread from a homemade starter about once a week for a couple of months. This week was my first real success, and I'm very excited. It is one of my two SCD cheats (the other is cocoa) - in small quantities, properly prepared grains don't seem to be causing my digestive system any harm.

I've been reading a lot about bread-making to get to a recipe which works - mine seems to require much longer cooking time than most people say, and much less water than the original recipe I was using. Normally, when I try a recipe and it just doesn't work, I either give up on it and go on to something else on my list, or I try again and hope something works out differently. What the sourdough experience has taught me is not to give up on recipes that have something good going for them, and instead, think about what isn't right and give them a tweak and try again.

I've done this with a few recipes recently, and have been very happy with my results on just the second attempt. With both, I found the original recipe to be too wet - in one, I upped the coconut flour and in the other, I reduced the liquid. I also played with the flavours a little, less sweetness, more spice, to suit my taste. Without further ado, here they are

Coffee brownies

Find the original here

2 cups cooked red lentils

1 cup pitted dates

1 cup hot espresso coffee

1/3 cup cocoa

2 tsp cinnamon

4 eggs

1/2 cup butter, melted or coconut oil, melted

1/2 cup honey

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup coconut flour

2 tsp bicarb soda

1/4 tsp salt

The day before, put about 1 cup of red lentils to soak (make sure you use a much bigger contained, as the will expand to over two cups before you are done). Soak for at least 12 hours. 

Rinse thoroughly, and then cook the lentils in fresh water until well cooked (maybe around 15 mins). Drain, and then leave to sit in a sieve for another hour to get some more of the moisture out.

Brew a cup of coffee, and pour over the dates. Leave to sit for about 5 mins.

Preheat oven to 175C. Line a 9″ x 13″ baking pan with parchment paper and set it aside.

In a large food processor, combine the lentils, dates, cocoa and cinnamon and enough of the coffee that it all moves around. (You could put in all of the coffee at this stage, but my food processor doesn't deal with liquid very well, and if you put much in, it goes everywhere!) Blend until smooth (at least 5 minutes).

Add the eggs, and blend until combined. Then add the coconut flour and blend again. 

[If you want a denser, more mudcake-like cake, don't add the eggs until the next stage where you are hand-mixing the ingredients, so that you don't beat in too much air. You can also reduce the bicarb to as little as 1/2 tsp]

From here, I move the mixture to a large mixing bowl. If your food processor is big enough, and can deal with liquid, just keep going in that. Add the butter, honey, remaining coffee, bicarb (sift this in so it doesn't stay in lumps) and vanilla and stir to combine. Throw in a handful of nuts (I used walnuts, macadamias would also be good) at this stage if you want to.

Pour the batter into the lined baking dish, and cook for about 40 minutes. A skewer inserted into the centre will come out clean when it is done. 

Coconut cake

Find the original here

1 1/2 cups shredded coconut

1/2 cup boiling water
1/2 cup almond meal

3 tbsp coconut flour

1/2 tsp bicarb

1/4 tsp salt

3 eggs

1/3 cup yoghurt

1/3 cup melted butter, cooled

1/4 cup honey

1 tsp vanilla essence

Seeds from 1/2 a vanilla pod

Pour boiling water over shredded coconut and leave to sit.

Preheat over to 175C. Line a 8' by 8' cake pan with baking paper.

Mix almond flour, coconut flour, bicarb and salt together.

When the boiling water has cooled enough not to cook the eggs, add the eggs, butter, yoghurt, honey and vanilla to the coconut and stir to combine. Pour into the flour mixture and mix together.

Pour into prepared tin and bake for about 30 minutes until the top is golden and firm to the touch. Leave to cool in pan.

Enjoy, sitting inside in the warm and dry, while listening to the patter of rain on the roof, hot cup of tea in one hand and a good book in the other.

A blogging come back, and something hot and spicy for Valentine's day

Even though it is still summer, it is beginning to feel like we are well on the way to autumn already. Grey skies and rain, a nip of chill to the air most evenings, pumpkins ripening on the vine and the impending return of all of the pumpkin recipes I love, with the added pleasure of making them with home-grown pumpkins. The fruits of summer are still happening in the garden though - tomatoes, chillies and zucchinis - the former mostly still waiting to ripen, the latter two producing prolifically.

I've been preoccupied for quite some time, overseas holiday, work, garden, karate, jujitsu, relish-making and preserving, but was shocked to find that I haven't posted anything since last July! Since then, I've confirmed that my UC is in remission, and to celebrate the 3 month anniversary of that exciting news, I decided to introduce cocoa into my diet. Digestively, it has gone very well, but if I eat it more than occasionally, unfortunate skin reactions start to occur. So it is reserved for special occasions.

When I saw the theme for this month's go ahead honey it's gluten free, hot, spicy and heart shaped by Heather of Gluten Free Cat, I was inspired to try out something chocolately for Valentine's Day that I've been mulling over for some time. It covers 'hot' and 'spicy', and if I'd been organised enough, I could have managed the heart-shaped too… maybe next year.

Credit for the underlying idea has to go to Naomi - I've made an SCD+cocoa variation of this recipe a couple of times when I have had days of karate training - it can be difficult to get enough energy to keep going through the day, getting up at 5am to start training at 6, and I can happily confirm that these do the trick. They have a much higher ratio of fat to nuts compared to most energy bars out there, so they are packed with calories without the digestive problems that come with nuts. And they are so tasty I can happily eat them, even when I really don't feel like eating, and the mere thought of my usual go to energy foods (like avocado) make me feel sick.

Beyond being excellent energy bars, using the cocoa butter finely chopped, rather than melted, adds a lovely bitty texture, with the coconut oil holding the other ingredients together.

Ginger noms and choc-chilli noms

(nom is my favourite word to describe generic tasty food, particularly sweet things. It's late, and I'm not feeling very original right now!)

Ingredients

Nom base:

60g cocoa butter
60g dried dates
90g cashews
35g coconut oil

Choc-chilli additions:

5 green cardamom pods (seeds ground with a pinch of salt)
1 heaped tablespoon cocoa 
1 hot red chilli

Ginger additions:

1 heaped tablespoon finely diced glace ginger (to make an SCD version, just peel and chop the ginger, cover with water in a saucepan and bring to a boil, drain and repeat 3 times, then add enough honey to cover, and put back over a low heat, stirring every so often until the honey is absorbed and coats the ginger pieces. You can save the water for a ginger cordial. You could also do the same to the chillies for sweeter, less spicy effect)

1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

Method

Roughly chop the cocoa butter by hand, then add to a food processor with the dates and cashews. Blitz until everything is finely chopped, but not powder. Add the coconut oil and blitz again until everything just holds together.

Divide the mixture between two bowls.

To the first, add the cardamom, cocoa and finely chopped chilli. Stir to combine.

To the second, add the glace ginger, ground ginger and cinnamon. Stir to combine. (cocoa would almost certainly be good in this one too!)

Spoon each of the mixtures into little (ideally heart shaped) moulds, press down firmly, then refrigerate until set.

Share with someone special, with a little glass of something robust (a nice whiskey perhaps?), to complement the rich flavours. Or eat them all yourself in the same fashion, or just lick the mixture off the spoon before moulding and refrigerating… so long as you have plans to work it off later!

Overwhelmed! (and sweet chilli sauce)

Ben (my other half) read a book or article or something on psychology, and how men and women mean different things when they say the same words. It was pretty corny and I can't remember many examples, but one thing stuck with us both: often women are simply overwhelmed and need a hug! Cringe-worthy, but right now, it is exactly how I feel.

Yesterday was moving house day. When the removalists arrived, we were just realising that the rest of our stuff was not going to be just one car more and trailer load, and that we'd have to come back for a second load. When we got back for the second load, the cleaners arrives 3 hours earlier than arranged, and started cleaning around us while we were still packing. (They did do a fantastic job though!). Then there is the fact that the lounge room floor in the new house is still not finished. Oh, and I have a sinus infection.

So half our furniture is still in the garage, most of our other stuff is in the attic or in the garage, we can't use the toilet for the next 24 hours, have no showerscreen, or kitchen splashbacks, and have built in wardrobes with no doors.

But it's home. I love our new king size bed (mostly assembled, at least enough to sleep on) and latex mattress, and new bedlinen. And the gas cooktop is fantastic (at least the 3/5 of the gas rings that are working...). The tiling in the bathroom is beautiful, and I can't wait for it to be warm enough to go out in the garden.

For now, I'm exhausted and ready for bed, so a very token recipe. I've been missing that very fake sweet chilli sauce, you know the bright red one with lots of seeds in, for a while now, and the other day I had a stab at it, and it worked remarkably well.

Sweet Chilli Sauce

750mls apple cider vinegar
500gms honey
3 red capsicums
3 long red chillies

Add vinegar and honey to a large saucepan over a medium heat.

Cut the flesh from the capsicums and chillies and roughly chop. Put them into a food processor and puree.

Add them to the saucepan. If you like the look or texture of seeds in your sweet chilli sauce, add the capsicum seeds to the saucepan as well. (Use the chilli ones if you want it hotter).

Gently simmer for 30-45 minutes, or until the sauce darkens and thickens. Pour into a sterilised bottle.

Keeps in the fridge for at least 3 weeks.

Lazy weeknight curries

Towards the end of my 3 weeks free of dairy, eggs, nuts, fruit and honey, I ran out of in season vegetables to add to my diet, so I decided to start of spices. While I've gained a greater appreciation of cooking without herbs and spices, just letting the flavours of the ingredients speak for themselves with the aid of a good chicken stock, I also find I miss foods with a bit more punch. Cumin, coriander, ginger and turmeric were all successfully added, and I'd decided it was just about time to take a baby step in the direction of nuts, so I whipped up a quick batch of coconut milk, and decided to try something vaguely Thai styled.

I've recently started buying my meat from a local butcher, who does fantastic discounts on bulk purchases, and free delivery on orders over $80. He seems to be able to get in just about anything (for example, suet for my fruit mince and Christmas pudding last year, which I hadn't been able to find anywhere), and almost everything is grass fed and free range. Because of this, I've been eating a lot more pork than in the past. It's seems to be fairly easy to find free range chicken and beef, but pork has been much more difficult to get hold of, so I've tended not to eat it much.

So I had some pork mince (minus the little bit for the kitten, who tells me that pork is her favourite food! nom, nom, nom, purr), and could eat some spices and had a batch of coconut milk soaking (I don't use a recipe for this, just chuck dessicated coconut in with some boiling water - at a guess maybe a cup of dessicated coconut to 750mls water). Then is was just a matter of scouring the bottom of the fridge for the remnants of vegetables from last weeks shopping, before the arrival of the groceries for the new week. I found: 2 carrots, an onion, 5-6 mushrooms, 2 zucchini and some green beans.

So more a method than a recipe:

Pork green curry

Dice the vegetables, while preheating a wok or large frying pan, and start some coconut milk. 

Add a heaped teaspoon of cumin, coriander, ground ginger and turmeric (and chilli, if you feel so inclined) to the wok and toast for a few seconds before adding and browning the pork mince (about 600g). 

Once cooked, remove it from the pan, then added the longer cooking time veg

gies (onion, carrot and beans in this case) and cook until they were most of the way done, then added the shorter cooking veggies (here the zucchini and mushrooms).

Add the pork back to the pan together with some coconut milk and chicken stock, enough to make a good sauce for the curry. Add some salt before serving. Serve with fresh coriander, crushed nuts, and/or a wedge of lime.

More recently, I had put all of the ingredients for yummy lemon-thyme lamb shanks (which I'll post another time, I promise) into my slow cooker, but forgotten to turn it on before leaving for work. In arriving home, I noticed the absence of the smell of dinner as I walked in the door. Disappointment!

I had to come up with something, and quick, because I was starving. I remembered there were some little frozen prawns in the freezer, about the only thing there I could easily use from frozen. Next, the fridge turned up some zucchinis, carrots, a leek, a bunch of spinach, and some green beans. Again, you can throw this together with pretty much anything you've got.

Prawn Laksa

Chop your veggies (I sliced the leek in rounds, chopped the beans in half, washed and destemmed the spinach, and julienned the carrots and zucchini with my julienne peeler). In the mean time, preheat a wok or large saucepan, and get some coconut milk happening.


Add a heaped teaspoon of cumin, coriander, ground ginger and turmeric (and chilli, if you feel so inclined) to the wok and toast for a few seconds before adding some oil, and the veggies that need frying (I threw in the leek and beans). At the same time, put the julienne carrots in a steamer.


When the frying veggies are well on the way to being cooked, add a good amount of coconut milk and chicken stock (maybe 1.5 - 2 litres in total). Add the zucchini to the steamer, and the prawns to the wok. Stir through the spinach just before everything else is done. Add some salt before serving.


Serve noodles into deep preheated bowls, and top with the laksa. Serve with crushed nuts, coriander and/or a wedge of lime or lemon.


Enjoy! (Both were even better reheated for lunch the next day)

My life has been sugar (ie sucrose) free for almost 18 months, but more recently, I've also almost completely eliminated anything sweet. No fruit, no honey, the closest thing to dessert I had in 3 weeks was soup made from butternut pumpkin and carrots and seasoned with coconut oil and nutmeg. This was to get the healing from my latest flare into the fast lane. I also eliminated eggs, nuts and dairy, as per Jordan and Steve's four horsemen.

Two interesting observations arose from this experience. After a couple of days, I had no sugar cravings at all. And my sense of what is sweet has totally changed.

After 3 weeks and now feeling really good, I decided to have a play with some very low sugar confectionery  This fits in well with the theme of this months Go Ahead Honey, It's Gluten Free, It All Ends here (a la the final Harry Potter film), hosted by Diane of the Whole Gang.

My aim for my confectionery was to keep the fat content as high as possible (I'm still trying to regain a few more kilos), and the sugar as low as possible (as I'm still aiming to minimise the amounts of inflammatory foods in my diet).

My first port of call was coconut oil - I love the taste of the oil, and it combines well with other flavours. So my starting point was to melt coconut oil, a tiny amount of honey and some lemon oil. I have to say, I thought it was pretty good at the time, but now I realise I was just in a totally sugar deprived state and anything vaguely sweet tasted good. So I had to branch out a bit more for the next attempt. This brought to mind coconut concentrate. For those of you who haven't heard of it, it is basically finely ground coconut meat. It has a very high fat content (around 70% I think), and is also fairly grainy, kind of like coconut flour. It is solid a room temperature, and if you want to melt it, you have to do so on a really low heat, otherwise it burns.

I find it convenient to melt a lot of it at a time (I get in in 1kg bags) and pour it in to ice cube trays to have convenient little portions of it, which I throw into anything in which you might use coconut milk. (I do the same thing with coconut oil (in winter, when it is solid at room temperature) and cocoa butter too).

Anyway, back to the confectionary. I did go through a phase of just eating the ice cubes of coconut concentrate - I find there is something oddly appealing about the grainy thick texture, and the coconut flavour is really strong, and it has something candy-like about it, even though it isn't sweet. So, I figured it's 70% coconut oil, why not dilute it with more coconut oil to keep the coconutty flavour, but minimise the grainy texture (and the fibre content). I've concluded that a ratio of 2:1 oil to concentrate is my preferred ratio, and that it needs minimal honey - maybe a teaspoonful to a cup of coconut mixture. But I think the quantities are very much a matter of personal taste, so here's the method; play around with the ratios as you see fit

Coconut candy
Coconut oil
Coconut concentrate
Honey
Flavour oil (optional)

Melt the oil and the honey on a low heat. Remove from the heat and add the coconut concentrate. Cover and leave until it is all melted (if the concentrate does not melt, you can place the whole lot over a very low heat, but watch it carefully). At this stage add the flavouring if you want to. I have done lemon and orange oil, both if which are nice, but possibly a little subtle against the strong coconut flavour. I think mint might be good, but don't have any oil to try it out.

Bearing in mind that you have 3 substances, all with different melting points, the trick is to get everything thoroughly combined and then into moulds before it sets. If you have the time and the patience, I recommend allowing it to cool at room temperature as this give you a lot more time in which the mixture is at a temperature that it will thoroughly combine. If you cool it in the fridge or freezer, you might miss the moment and end up with a triple layer effect with sticky honey on the bottom, and not be able to spoon it into the moulds.

Either way, stir it regularly (more often the colder the temperature) and when it starts to turn into a paste, check whether the honey is settling out at the bottom. If it is, leave to cool a little longer. 

Once the ingredients are able to be thoroughly combined, spoon it into moulds (chocolate moulds, ice cubes, or just spread as a block onto greaseproof paper). Leave until thoroughly set, or refrigerate depending on the ambient temperature.

Serve after dinner with a good black coffee.

Vaguely chocolate like confectionary

(sorry for the long winded name, but I do get annoyed at the SCD thing of saying 'this is just like X' and then making it, and it isn't much like X at all. Particularly when what you've made is tasty in it's own right. So this is somewhat chocolately, but I'm not going to call it chocolate)

Cocoa butter
Ghee (you could probably use unsalted butter, but I'm not eating butter at the moment. If you want to make your own ghee, check out how here.

Honey

Again, the quantities are somewhat in your hands. I've found a ratio of 1:1 cocoa butter to ghee gives a fairly smooth buttery consistency. (My previous attempt of 1:2 resulted in something much too reminiscent of whipped butter for eating by itself). The honey ratio need to be a fair bit higher than the coconut one. Maybe a big tablespoonful to a cup of the butter mixture.

Follow the above method. You can certainly flavour it if you like, too, or add chopped dried fruit or nuts. I most recently used a vanilla bean which I split, scooping the seeds into the mixture, and leaving the pod in while I melted the fats too.

The cooling process for this one is even more temperamental than the coconut candy. Be very careful that the honey is not separating out, but don't stir too vigorously or you will end up with whipped butter.

Spoon into moulds, or use to coat other thing, like nuts, or balls made out of energy bars, or spread into a block.

Serve with dessert that would go with something chocolatey (like this), or on its own with after dinner coffee.

And this is where it ends (dinner... and the post)

Excuses and GAPS and breakfast soup

So first the excuses. I've been slack with the blogging lately (not much of an excuse really...), but only with the blogging. Life has been quite busy between karate training, doing a jujitsu beginners course, work has been crazy (not to mention preparing for an interview for a promotion), going away for my birthday, booking a holiday to Canada and the US later this year and deciding to do the GAPS intro diet. So, where to begin?

Things have been less than fantastic digestion-wise since January, and i was getting rather sick of it. My Dr had played around with my meds to no avail, and I was feeling a bit down. I restarted the SCD intro diet... almost 6 months ago now... which was great for a fair while, then the improvements tapered off and then...

Anyway, I'd read a bit about GAPS and decided it was time to give it a go. So I've been making sauerkraut, and bone broth, and soups and stews, and more soup, and I feel fantastic. I've had a few days of die-off (I'm fairly impatient, and have been adding more sauerkraut and yoghurt faster than recommended, and am eagerly awaiting the arrival of my kefir grains). Coincidentally, Naomi of Straight into Bed, Cakefree and Dried, has been posting fermented vegetable recipes, and I've already had a go at the Lacto fermented beetroots and am going to try the Carrot and Ginger pickle on the weekend.


But what I really wanted to post about is the joy of breakfast soup, a post well-suited to the theme of Hallie of Daily Bites challenge: build a better breakfast. I'm with Hallie in that breakfast is my favourite meal of the day. I love eggs, and mushrooms, and tomatoes, fried, or combined in a omelette, with cheese, and salt and pepper... mmm... it's making my hungry just thinking about it, even though I'm still full from dinner.

The GAPS diet advocates eating a late breakfast, because the body detoxes until about 10am and apparently you don't get hungry until then. I'm a bit dubious about the latter point, but I did notice that, when I thought about it, I didn't really feel like eating my omelette, mince and veg at 7am.


In the spirit of doing the diet, heart and soul, I decided to put off eating breakfast until a bit later than usual. This meant having to come up with a work-compatible breakfast, where all that is available is running water and a microwave (I know, GAPS does not approve of microwaves, but you can only take these things so far, and I don't have one at home).

So on the evening of day one, I piled zucchini, carrots, onion, mushrooms, cassarole beef, a good splosh of tomato juice and another of beef stock into my slow cooker and set it to low overnight. We awoke Saturday morning to the smell of rich tomatoey goodness, which I waited until almost 9am to eat. I figure if not being hungry is a sign your body is detoxing, that being hungry must be a sign it's ready to eat.

Turns out it was a bit too rich, and a bit to close to karate training at 10:30, and I spent the morning trying to keep my breakfast in my stomach and not of the floor of the dojo (successfully, I might add).

So I tweaked it a bit for the next time, and now, together with pumpkin soup, is a staple breakfast dish. The quantities are a bit rough, but that's handy in that you can just throw it together out of whatever you've got lying around in the way of vegetables.


Beef and vegetable breakfast stew
3-4 good size cassarole steaks
3-4 zucchinis
3-4 carrots
1 red capsicum
1 brown onion
250mls tomato juice
500mls beef stock
2 bay leaves
Dried oregano

Roughly dice all the ingredients.

Layer the carrot and onion of the bottom of a 4-5 litre slow cooker. Place bay leave and a sprinkle of dried oregano over the top, then the the diced cassarole steak, then the zucchini and capsicum.

Pour over the juice and stock, and top up with water (or more stock) to cover the steak (the zucchini and capsicum don't need to be submerged). Turn onto low and leave for about 8 hours.

This quantity of liquid in a slow cooker will probably give you something more akin to a soup than a stew (mine come out different each time). If you want it thicker, simply ladle off some of the liquid and boil it on the stove top, before returning to the stew.

The meat, no matter the cut, is by this stage disintegratingly tender, and the warm and hearty tomato base it perfect for cold mornings. It also goes well with the early additions to the GAPS diet: ghee, sauerkraut, yoghurt, avocado and olive oil, and you can pile them all on to it, once you get far enough into the intro diet!

Another, even simpler, breakfast discovery for me is microwave scrambled eggs. You'll need to play with the timing, depending on your microwave. With the one at work, 2 eggs take about 1:30, stopping to beat them every 30 seconds. I add a good size teaspoonful of ghee to the bottom of the bowl, and a drizzle of olive oil once they are done. I recently tried adding the sauerkraut to the eggs, instead of my soup, and was pleasantly surprised. The crunch and the tang of the cabbage perfectly compliment the smooth fluffiness of the eggs (don't forget to let the eggs cool enough before you add the sauerkraut, otherwise the heat will kill the beneficial bacteria).

Some of each of these gives you all the protein, fat and vitamins (not to mention the warmth and comfort of a full belly) that you need to get the day off to a perfect start, and to keep you full until lunch (or brunch anyway, the planned topic of my next post for Go Ahead Honey, It's Gluten Free, hosted this month by Maggie of She Let Them Eat Cake with the theme of Springtime Brunches).

Pumpkins and pumpkin recipes

It is, apparently, pumpkin time of year. My own ones haven't done so well, having been grown in pots and left to their own devices for a week and a half of the hottest part of summer, the plants disintegrated. But I have watched the prices in the shop drop from $4 per kg, to $3, $2.50 and now $1.89. For a household that usually eats at least a whole butternut pumpkin a week, this has been fantastic, and I think it's now at least 2 pumpkins a week. They are so wonderfully versatile - as nuts are currently excluded from my diet, and I'm trying to keep honey to a minimum, they are the basis of desserts as well as part of breakfast, lunch and dinner. So I thought I'd share some of the creations I've been enjoying with pumpkins recently (and my contribution to this month's Go Ahead Honey, It’s Gluten Free!).


Veggie mash


I've been getting a good supply of spinach from a friend of mine for the last couple of weeks, and it doesn't agree with me, other than in pureed form. However, pureed spinach always seems to me to taste more like dirt and less like spinach than any other way of eating spinach. So I've been pureeing it with other vegies to great effect.


1/2 butternut pumpkin
3 carrots
2 zucchinis
Big bunch of spinach


Cut the 1/2 pumpkin into 2 pieces and rub with a little oil. Roast the pumpkin at 180C for 40-60mins, or until cooked through.


In the mean time, peel the carrots, and cut into big chunks. Steam 15-20 mins depending on the size of the pieces. You want them quite well cooked, but not so much to that they disintegrate when you try to pick them up. Place in a large bowl.


Cut the zucchini into chunks and, when the carrot is done, chuck them in the steamer. After a couple of minutes, add the spinach to the water in the bottom of the steamer.


When everything is cooked, put it all together in a big bowl, and blend until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste.
I eat this for breakfast, by browning some mince, adding some of the puree and serving in an omelette, or on the side of some fried eggs. It's also a convenient veggie side dish for whatever meat you are eating for lunch or dinner.


Sweet orange dessert soup


I find it is better with all things desserty if you don't put vegetable names in the title, but yes, this is a pumpkin dessert soup.

The theme of this month's Go Ahead Honey, It’s Gluten Free! is seasonal soups, hosted by Linda, the Gluten-Free Homemaker, and this seems like a fitting contribution. 

It's autumn here in the southern hemisphere, and we are already heading into the cold evenings, and early darkness of winter. So there is nothing better to come home to than a steaming hot bowl of thick soup, and better still that it tastes like dessert. I mean, you could have dinner first, but given it's just vegetables, why bother?


1/2 butternut pumpkin
3 carrots
Cinnamon
Nutmeg
Coconut oil to serve
Lightly dripped yoghurt/sour cream to serve
 
Cut the 1/2 pumpkin into 2 pieces and rub with a little oil. Roast the pumpkin at 180C for 40-60mins, or until cooked through.


In the mean time, peel the carrots, and cut into big chunks. Steam 15-20 mins depending on the size of the pieces. As for the veggie mash, you want them quite well cooked (In cse you haven't noticed, this is exactly the same as the veggie mash. I make them at the same time, and just double the quantity of carrot and pumpkin and use half for each).


Puree the pumpkin and carrot until smooth. Add cinnamon and nutmeg to taste, at a ratio of 1:1. Add water to achieve desired consistency. I like it fairly thick so only add about 1/2 cup of water to this much veg.


To serve, put a generous serving in a bowl, stir through a good dessert spoonful of coconut oil, and top with a blob of lightly dripped yoghurt (I drip my SCD yoghurt for about 30 mins - which tastes the tangy edge off a bit, and gives a lovely sour cream consistency)


Pumpkin soufflé/pudding


Another favourite dessert and snack of mine at the moment is this pumpkin soufflé and/or pudding (a slightly different method with the same ingredients yields a quite different texture. The soufflé is lovely straight out of the oven, while it is still puffed and steaming. They are also both great cold, which brings out the coconut flavour a little more, or reheated, for a warm and satisfying snack at work.


4 egg whites
2 cups of the dessert soup vegies (before you add any water - if you are doing the soufflé, it is also a good idea to sit the veggie mash on a tea towel for 15 mins or so to soak up some of the extra moisture, though this isn't absolutely necessary)
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup coconut oil


Whisk your egg whites until they form stiff peaks. (I highly recommend an egg white attachment for your food processor, or a mix master)


In the mean time (assuming you can wander off and leave your egg whites beating), combine the vegies, egg yolks and coconut oil and mix well.


If you are making the soufflé, mix about 1/3 of the egg whites through the pumpkin mixture, then carefully fold in the remaining egg white.


If you are making the pudding, add the pumpkin mixture to the egg whites and beat until just combined.
 
I like taking these to work, so I make them in a combination of 250ml pyrex dishes, with lids, and in slightly larger ramekins and 500ml dishes for home. 


Arrange your dishes in an over tray, and add mixture to dishes. This makes about 8 small serves. Place tray in oven and pour water into tray around dishes to come about 2-3cm up the sides. Bake at 180C for 40-50 mins, until turning golden on top and slightly firm to the touch (they won't be solid, but they need to cook until they are no longer liquidy).


For those of you following SCD, these are all pretty early stage recipes. Just remember to add the spices as individual foods one at a time. Earlier on in the diet, I boiled the carrots and pumpkin with whole spices tied in a piece of muslin, so I wasn't eating the solids of the spices - not as nice a flavour, but a pleasant change from chicken soup.

Enjoy!


(159(!) days and counting...)

A moth invasion (and red wine reduction)

Life has been busy, and I haven't had a weekend free to sit at home and do whatever I want to in ages. That is, until the weekend just gone. I'd had plans to read my new book (The Paleo Solution, a book I bought on the recommendation of someone who responded to my post about doing intensive exercise on SCD and what to eat), write a blog post, and just generally relax and unwind. It didn't happen - it very rarely does, I suppose - life always gets in the way. But it was a good weekend all the same, apart from the moth invasion.

It's been going on for a couple of weeks now, these tiny little moths, fluttering around the kitchen and hallway, and occasionally in the cupboards. The kitten loves them - she watches them with the intensity of a hunter, with concentration that she doesn't have for anything else. And when they sit on the ceiling or high up on the walls and she can't reach them, she runs back and forth, making this little "aackaackaack" noise. Then when they come within her reach, they are pounced and devoured, and she looks around forlornly, wanting to know where the fun went.

Mid Sunday afternoon, I discovered the source of much kitten-fun in my pantry, in packets of nut meal, jars of nuts, cocoons in corners and under shelves. So Sunday afternoon turned into kitchen spring (or more technically correctly, autumn) cleaning. Those nuts that could be salvaged have now been soaked and dried, packets have been removed and cleaned, shelves and walls have been washed, and contents have been restored, to reveal much more space in my cupboards than I knew I had. So not all bad really.

The other exciting event of the weekend was making a red wine reduction that a friend of ours served at dinner last year, delicious with blue cheese and dried pear, or brie and dried peach, or I'm sure any other cheese you care to think of. I've been meaning to try it since then, and a 10% voucher, and discovering the same bottle shop had some $2.99 bottles of red (ghastly stuff, but it doesn't matter for present purposes) finally instigated action. So 6 bottles of cheap, nasty red in had (plus a dozen good drinking bottles!), we headed home.

The directions we had were to add some spices (we went with 1 cinnamon stick, 6 cloves and 6 allspice) and to steam, not simmer, the wine over a low heat until it reduces. The consistency is like a thick molasses, and took almost 8 hours to achieve. We started out in a huge thick bottomed pot, keeping the temperature at around 80C, and when we got down to about 1L of liquid (still quite liquidy at this stage) transferred it to a smaller pot. We took the spices out after maybe 4 hours. Once it started to thicken, a quick taste made mouths pucker, so we started adding some honey. Then some more, and a bit of salt, then some more honey. In the end, we had about 300mls of syrup, containing maybe 150mls of honey (though that would have reduced somewhat too) and about a tsp of rock salt. 

There were several test pieces of cheese over the course of the afternoon, and when the reduction was transferred loving to a storage container and the fridge, a trip to the supermarket yielded some Tasmanian brie. The verdict: quite delicious, if somewhat pricey. If you can find some really cheap red, it is well worth the effort, and I expect the 6 bottles of wine to last much longer than the 12 bottles for drinking!

Valentine's Day (and February's Go ahead honey it's gluten free)

Valentine's Day was lovely. I'm rather cynical about the whole buying roses and chocolates (not that I can eat them now anyway), but it's a great excuse to eat a nice meal, have a glass of wine or two, and relax and enjoy each other's company.

My UC has been playing up a bit lately, so I'm eating fairly carefully, so we decided to have dinner at home.

The evening started with a glass of red and brie. No crackers, because I'm off nuts, and we didn't have any crackers for Ben either, though there was my mum's home made quince paste to go with his cheese.

Then we had steak - a lovely locally grown, hormone and antibiotic free steak - with mushroom sauce, and a side of roast vegies, and another glass of wine, of course.

I've recently got into eating mushrooms - I've never liked them in the past, but a friend of mine told me I had to try this lovely recipe of hers, and I was converted. 

And finally orange yoghurt jelly, topped with candied citrus peel and white chocolate.

Yum.

The mains are staple SCD meals for us, tried and true, but the dessert is something I've been playing with for a little while, and it worked so well this time that I've put to forward for the February Go Ahead Honey its Gluten Free with it's suitably Valentine's theme, love potions and charmed foods.


Missing chocolate is something I'm sure every SCD'er can identify with, and with its rich and creamy, melt-in-your-mouth sweetness (and, of course, traditional Valentine's connection) I couldn't resist a little bit in the dessert.


But more than that, it is about sweet fresh citrus, and thick creamy yoghurt, for a thoroughly indulgent and very healthy dessert.

All of the evening's recipes are below, and head to Naomi's fab blog for all of the GAHIGF recipes later this month, or by 24 Feb to get involved.

Mushroom sauce, two ways

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp butter

1/4 medium onion finely chopped

2 cloves garlic

4 medium cup mushrooms

1/4 cup of yoghurt or 1/8 cup red wine

parsley

Melt the butter, together with the oil, over a medium heat, then add onion and garlic and saute until soft. Add mushrooms and saute until cooked.

Just before serving, add the yoghurt or wine and the parsley, stir through and serve - as a sauce on steak or a side. Don't heat again at this stage if you use the yoghurt as it will seperate.

Roast vegies

Olive oil

2 carrots

1/4 butternut pumpkin

2 zucchinis

1/2 eggplant

1/2 punnet of cherry tomatoes

6 cloves of garlic

1 tbsp finely chopped rosemary

Preheat oven to 200C.

Cut all of the vegetables into chunks about the size of cherry tomatoes. Add a good splosh of olive oil to a roasting pan and toss through the carrots. Roast for about 15 mins.

Add pumpkin and roast for another 5 mins. Add zucchini and eggplant and cook for 10 more minutes. Then add tomatoes and garlic and cook until everything is done (at least another 10 minutes).

5 minutes before it is done, sprinkle overe the rosemary.

Orange Yoghurt Jelly

125g honey

grated rind of 1 orange

120ml cold water

2 tsp gelatine

160mls freshly squeezed orange juice

40mls freshly squeezed lemon juice

370mls yoghurt

Heat the honey, orange rind and 60mls of water and allow to simmer for a minute then remove from heat.

Soak the gelatine in the remaining water while doing this, then add the soaked gelatine to the hot honey mixture and stir until dissolved.

Add the orange and lemon juice and yoghurt and stir thoroughly to combine. Pour into 4 small bowls and refridgerate for at least 4 hours.

Top with a spear of white orange chocolate and candied peel.

Citrus White Chocolate

55gms cocoa butter

1tbsp butter

2tsp creamed honey

Piece of vanilla pod

tbsp of candied peel

 

Melt cocoa butter in a double boiler over medium heat. Add the butter, creamed honey, and seeds scraped from the inside of the vanilla pod. Heat until the butter and honey are melted, pour into glass bowl and put in fridge. 

After about 10 mins, remove from fridge and beat with electric beaters. If mixture separates when left to stand, return to fridge for another 5 mins. Once mixture holds together, mix through candied peel (as much or as little as you like) and pour onto a piece of greeseproof paper. Store in the freezer.

Candied peel

Peel of 2 oranges (or other citrus fruit)

Honey

Cut the peel into small chunks (approx 8mm square). Put peel into small saucepan and cover with water. Simmer peel for about an hour, adding more water as necessary.

Pour honey over the peel to about half way up and return to the heat. Simmer until honey is absorbed, and pour peel onto greaseproof paper. Depending on how sticky you like it and what you want to use it for, you can either bottle it once cool, or dehydrate in a food dehydrator.

Another relish day (zucchini relish)

I've been pondering the food related traditions that run in my family for the 'family traditions' December Go Ahead Honey, it's gluten free. Tastes have changed over the years, and I have fond childhood memories of foods that haven't been cooked in years, and that I couldn't eat anymore even if they were.

I've realised that there is a trait passed down the female line of both sides of my family - a squirrel-like addiction to food hoarding. Being in the southern hemisphere, we start getting wonderful crops of fruit and vegetables around this time of year, and I love giving homemade things for Christmas. I remember from my early years my paternal grandmother's pickled onions, lined up in rows in the shed behind the garage - somehow both incredibly sweet and painfully sour at the same time. The smell of rosemary still always makes me think of their garden. The pickled onion recipe is lost as far as I know, and my one attempt at SCD pickled onions didn't yield fantastic results - I mustn't have sterilised everything properly as they developed an interesting fluorescent yellow mould after a few weeks. 

Later, my maternal grandparents used to live on a little farm, with some cows and chickens, and lots of fruit trees and a vegetable garden. Nan would make wonderful jams and jellies, and fruit preserved in syrup, and my brother and I would gorge ourselves on cherries and blackberries whenever we visited at the right time of year, and mum would make summer pudding. (Some time soon I'll have to think about an SCD bread that would work for that… maybe if the cherries are out when I'm in Tassie in January.)

I have made another attempt at modifying Mum's zucchini relish for SCD, which I may submit. While the recipe itself isn't very traditional (Mum kind of made it up from a very bland zucchini relish recipe a few years ago), it goes with the family tradition of hoarding food in pantries and sheds and anywhere else it fits!

My first attempt at the relish a couple of weeks ago was okay - the flavour was excellent as always (how can you go wrong with turmeric and cumin, coriander and mustard), but I cut the vegetables a bit too chunky, and didn't add enough gelatine to achieve the 'finely cut pieces in a viscous sauce' that cornflour creates. I've had some assistance on the chopping front this time - my best friend Maddi, a former chef and a master of knife skills, was visiting; so I thought I'd take the opportunity to exploit those skills for my own gain. (She did get to take some relish home, too!)

Two things about the recipe that I cannot emphasise enough:
- chop the vegies really small, 3-4mm cubes; and
- leave the zucchini and onion in the salt for as long as you can, at least 8 hours, but preferably more like 12.

Zucchini relish

2.5 cups finely chopped zucchini (a combination of green and yellow is nice if you can find them)
1 cup finely chopped onions  

1 tbsp salt

Combine zucchini, onion and salt in a bowl and leave overnight. Don’t be tempted to skimp on this step or your zucchini will end up mushy.

 

1 red capsicum, finely chopped (if I’m making double quantity, I use a red and a yellow capsicum)
70g honey

1 tsp turmeric

½ tsp mustard seeds
½ tsp coriander seeds
½ tsp cumin seeds

½ tsp gelatine

150mls apple cider vinegar

The next day, add the gelatine to some of the vinegar and leave to sit while you do the next step.

Rinse the zucchini and onion. Place in a pan with the remaining ingredients. Bring to boil and simmer until the zucchini is cooked but still firm – about 20 minutes. You still want all of the vegetables to have some bite.

Add the gelatine mixture and stir until the gelatine is thoroughly dissolved. Test that the consistency is correct by pouring some of the liquid onto a frozen plate. Soak and add some more gelatine if it is too runny. (You want it to be thickened, not set).

Place in sterile jars and seal with sterilised lids. Makes 2 medium jars, which lasts us a few weeks. This time, I tripled the quantity!

Black cake (fruit cake)

I don't usually like fruit cake all that much - it tends to be a bit dry or too rich - but this is really moist, almost pudding-like. Very more-ish. This will be my first Christmas on SCD and, although I eat this cake all year round, I think it will make a pretty good Christmas cake. You could even ice it with SCD-legal marzipan, but I can't think of any replacement for royal icing (not that I really want to - too sweet for my taste).

 

The recipe has been played around with a fair bit, derived from a non-SCD legal recipe my mum came across about when I was starting SCD. The first time mum made it, it was a bit over cooked (still tasty though) and didn't have a name, so Ben christened it black cake and the name stuck, even though it usually turns out a nice golden brown.

 

Black cake

 

2.75 cups of mixed dried fruit (I usually just use sultanas and currants, but raisins are good too and I'm sure some homemade candied peel would work perfectly)

grated rind of 1 orange

1 cup orange juice

up to 1/2 tbsp of honey (I don't usually use any as the dried fruit is sweet already)

1 tsp bicarb soda

1 cup cooked carrot/pumpkin, pureed (about 3-4 large raw carrots)

1.5 cups of almond meal

2 eggs, lightly beaten

2 tsp mixed spice (I used 3/4 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ginger, 1/4 tsp ground cloves, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, 1/4 tsp ground cardamom last time, which was a good combination)

 

Combine the fruit, orange rind and juice and honey in a saucepan and bring to a simmer for a few minutes until the fruit is swollen and most of the liquid has been absorbed.

 

Take off the heat and allow to cool for a few minutes. Add the bicarb, then the carrot/pumpkin and eggs and mix thoroughly. Then add the almond meal and spice and mix until combined.

 

Pour into a 6 inch square cake tin lined with baking paper and bake at 160C until the top of the cake is firm to the touch.

Over doing it (and caramelised pineapple)

I was a bit dubious about going to the public service Social Network of Graduates (yes, SNOG!) ball. Having been a grad myself some 5 years ago, I wasn’t really sure about doing the whole 22-23 year olds getting drunk in the National Museum thing again, and then there is the whole diet thing with mass catered events, and the fact that I turn into a pumpkin at about 10pm (I blame the fact that I’m still having trouble getting my calorie consumption above about 1500, and I figure I should be eating more like 2200).

But having said yes some time ago, bought a ticket and sent off my restaurant card, I figured I’d better go. Oh, and I had a new hat!

To try to delay the inevitable sleepiness, I decided to have a coffee before heading off (first one in over 4 weeks). Even black, it was sooooo good.

Pre-dinner drinks were fun – seeing some quite unexpected faces, like a karate friend from Tassie who we didn’t even know was in Canberra, and meeting new people, and my first glass of red in almost 3 months.

Dinner was remarkably good, after a 15-minute wait for my special entrée, and some confusion over the specifics of the diet. Seriously people: bocconcini – which side of the hard, aged cheese/soft, fresh cheese divide does it sit? Not the worst confusion I’ve had – I once got brought a bright purple jelly topped with lemon sorbet with the line ‘I checked all the ingredients myself’. I’m fairly sure it had sugar in! Oh, and there was that time with the gluten-free pasta…

A couple of glasses of red wine later and I was really enjoying myself. I even got talked into dancing.

I still turned into a pumpkin at about 11:30pm and couldn’t be persuaded to go to the after-party, but still a pretty good effort, all things considered.

Having not got any dessert (they went the rather lame effort of petit fours rather than individual desserts), I needed something sweet when I got home. I had half a pineapple, and decided it needed to be caramelised (recipe below).

Anyway, long story short, I didn’t feel great yesterday. Nothing illegal, but between the wine, coffee, pineapple, yellow squash, eggplant and brussle sprout, my digestive system was a bit overloaded. But two days of strict adherence to the basics of the SCD, and I’m feeling pretty good again (30 days and counting).

Caramelised Pineapple

½ pineapple – cut into 1cm thick quarter circles

1 tbsp coconut oil

1 tbsp honey

juice of half an orange

Heat oil on medium heat and add pineapple pieces, and cook through. Turn up the heat towards the end to get the outside a little golden. Serve pineapple over yoghurt. Add the honey and orange juice to the pan on a high heat and boil for a couple of minutes. Pour over the pineapple and yoghurt and eat before it cools down too much.