Festive Preparations

I've never made any pretenses about my organisational skills. In fact I quite regularly go on about my extreme lack of them. So, I had a little heart attack when my co-contributors to "At the Failsafe Table" decided to have a Christmas edition this week. It's a truly great idea and I'm sure you would all like to be a bit prepared and maybe even have a trial run of what you would like to make. For me this week is last minute birthday party preparation for my daughter's 4th birthday - Christmas is not even on my radar until next week.

I have managed to fit something in this week though, so this year you get a Christmas recipe from me before Christmas instead of in March.

While I was deciding what to make I was thinking about all the different yummy foods that are usually eaten over the holidays and one of the things that came into my mind was those rolled pieces of pork that are stuffed with fruit and nuts and are sweet and moist with that naughty bit of crackling on the top. I have done a failsafe version of that. "How is that even possible?" you say. "Massive substitutions" I say; that and a bit of imagination.

Christmas Chicken Roll
Ingredients

• 2 large Chicken breast doubles
• failsafe oil

Stuffing

• 3 Tbsp ground raw cashews
• 1 pear, peeled, cored and diced smallish
• 2 shallots, finely sliced
• 1 Tbsp maple syrup
• 1/4 cup crumbs
• 1 tsp salt
• few sprigs parsley

Glaze

• 1 Tbsp Maple syrup
• 1 tsp whiskey (optional)
• 1 tsp failsafe oil
• 1/4 tsp salt

All tied up

Don't worry about being neat, just make sure it is tight.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C and lightly oil a roasting tray.
2. Leave the cartilage that joins the breasts intact, but trim any other sinew or excess fat from the chicken.
3. Mix all the stuffing ingredients together in a bowl.
4. Lay out the breasts rough side up and spread one half of the first one with about a third of the stuffing. Lay the second piece so half of it covers the stuffing of the first. It's best if you do it with the thicker part covering the thinner of the first ("top and tailed") so it is not really thick at one end once it is rolled.
5. Spread all of the second breast double with the remaining stuffing and then roll carefully so the cross section is like two interlocking "C's". 
6. Tie it tightly with kitchen string and place into roasting dish.
7. Push any bits of stuffing that have fallen out back into the end of it.
8. Mix the glaze ingredients together and brush some over the chicken.
9. Bake for one and a half hours (or until cooked through - depends on the chicken size). Take it out at intervals and brush with more glaze.
10. When ready remove from oven and rest for 10 minutes, then remove string and slice.

Ready to be sliced

Variations

• Nut free - No problem, just leave them out and add a little more crumbs or substitute for chicknuts as they could add another bit of flavour.
• Salicylates - Apples would be nice instead of pears as would some herbs like sage or thyme.

Served with crispy herbed baked potatoes and steamed beans and cabbage  tossed with nuttelex, salt and sprinkled with crispy fried deli chicken.

We all enjoyed this, it really did remind me of the pork ones. Hubby said he would like to have more stuffing. It would be nice, but it would also make it trickier to roll.

L'addiction s'il vous plait

Apparently I have been in denial. Or maybe just underplaying it. It seems that I have an addiction. It was only last night as I added more photos to my Facebook page that I truly realised the extent of it.

Hi, my name is Trish and I am addicted to French Food.

 My favourite French band

There. I said it. It is out there now. 

I loved it before failsafe. Buttery croissants, coq au vin, boeuf bourguignon, baguettes with lashings of butter, tarte au fraise, crêpes, crème brûlée, cheese, wine and I'm getting quite worked up just thinking about it all (I may also be addicted to dairy looking at that list).

It seems only natural that I would be converting as much as I can to failsafe. It helps that a lot of it is easy to convert.

My latest attempt was soupe à l'oignon or as you would know it - French onion soup. Onion is out, but leek is in. Leeks are about as cheap as they get at this time of year. They aren't as big as they are at other times, but try to get the thicker ones so you get more bang for your buck.

Not the golden brown hue of its onion counterpart, but equally satisfying.

Soupe aux Poireaux  (leek soup) (Serves 8 as entree)

Ingredients

• Leek, halved lengthways, washed and sliced - Aim for about 1kg chopped which was 5 short fat leeks for me.
• 3 Tbsp failsafe oil (or nuttelex or ghee if tolerated)
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 1/3 cup rice flour (or other tolerated flour)
• 2 1/2 Litres of liquid (water or stock or whiskey. I used 1/2 cup whiskey, 1Tbsp stock concentrate and the rest water)
• Bread to serve.

Method

1. Heat the oil in a heavy based saucepan and add the leeks. Cook over a medium to low heat for about 30mins stirring occasionally until they start to caramelise.
2. Add the garlic and flour and stir for a few minutes.
3. Gradually add the liquid while stirring to ensure there are no floury lumps.
4. Cover the saucepan and simmer for about 25 mins.
5. Serve with slices of grilled garlic bread on top

Variations

• Salicylates - Use onions (duh), add a bay leaf and a few sprigs of thyme.
• Non Failsafe guests? Serve with slices of baguette that have been grilled with grated gruyere cheese on top.

 This was a brilliant starter for my Mum's birthday dinner of Boeuf à la Ficelle. The kids had garlic bread slices on top of theirs (I had a few pieces of gluten free garlic bread in the freezer) and the adults had the cheesy baguette option. It was enjoyed by all.

Take Two

This elimination road has been a very long a windy one and baseline has been very hard to hang on to. What started with me telling my boy that we would cut out food for a few weeks and slowly add things back has actually been over two years and nothing new has been added, but more has been taken away. Because baseline has been hard to come by it has been really difficult to pin point exactly what causes these reactions even when we were being super strict.

The sudden realisation that citric acid was looking like the culprit sent me into a spin. It seems that the way it is made means that it is contains glutamates which lead me to some more research which bands them into a group called excitotoxins. And now we seem to have our missing link. A few weeks of reduced excitotoxins and we have a new found baseline that has actually been sustained for more than a couple of days. For our family this is brilliant, for my cooking adventures it has been quite traumatic. Now we are trying to minimise citric acid, gelatin, corn, extracted pectin, anything with malt in the name and all vegetable gums.

So now I am relearning to cook gluten free and without gums. There are quite a few recipes floating around the internet for this type of cooking, but trying to find things that are failsafe is nigh impossible. People use ground chia or flax - Not failsafe, but there is also a few that use psyllium which is failsafe. So now the conversions begin. I apologise to those who avoid eggs as I am going to be using them a bit more now.

The first conversion is the iced biscuits recipe. I just made this a triple batch straight up as the dough still freezes well, so this makes a good quantity of biscuits.

Iced Biscuits - Take two

• 300g nuttelex
• 1 1/2 cup caster sugar
• 3 egg, lightly beaten
• 1/2 tsp vanilla (optional)
• 2 1/2 cups white rice flour 
• 2 cups tapioca flour
• 3/4 cup sorghum flour (if you can't find this brown rice would work fine too)
• 2 Tbsp psyllium husks
• natural sprinkles (optional)
• bamboo skewers (soaked for half an hour and with the sharp end cut off if you prefer)

Royal Icing

• 1 egg white, lightly whisked
• 1 1/2 cups pure icing sugar, sifted

Methid

1. Cream nuttelex and sugar together. Add eggs and Vanilla. Beat to combine. Sift flour over mixture. Stir to combine (or if you have a stand mixer use a slow speed until dough comes together) Place dough onto plastic wrap. Knead gently. Shape into a disc. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in fridge for a couple of hours or until firm. If after this time your dough is still to sticky add flour one tablespoon at a time until it is less sticky (this is still a little softer than the other ones) little things like the size of your eggs can make this adjustment needed.
2. Preheat oven to 170°C. Line baking trays with baking paper. Roll dough out between 2 sheets of baking paper until 5mm thick (don't get carried away and roll it too thin as the biscuits will be too hard). Use whatever shaped cookie cutter you have to cut shapes form the dough. Press remaining dough together and repeat.  Place on baking trays leaving a little space around them. If you are putting them on stick, carefully slide the skewer at least halfway into the dough. Bake for approx 12 mins (depending on the size of you shapes) or until slightly golden on the bottom edge. Stand for 3 minutes. Cool on a rack (biscuits firm up when they are cooling, so don't think they are not done because they are soft straight away).
3. Make icing. Place egg white in a bowl. Gradually add icing sugar, whisking until smooth. Spread over cookies. Top with sprinkles. Set aside for 20 minutes or until set.

These taste good! The texture is slightly different, but I've finally had a gumless baking success. The next thing I need to get my head around is bread, just when I had finally got a good handle on making Kersten's recipe...

Taking Stock

There are a couple of recipes floating around for vegetable stock paste. The Diva has one and so does Frilly Pants, but they are both done for the Thermomix and those instructions are double dutch to anyone who doesn't have one. So I gave it a whirl and was really happy with the results, but had to wait until I ran out so I could make more and actually measure what I did.

The good thing about stock is that you can use all the bits of your vegies that aren't too pretty - the celery that went floppy in the bottom of the fridge, or the upper bits of the leek. A good habit to get into is to freeze your vegetable off cuts. I have a zip lock bag in the freezer that I add to all the time. The light green bits of leek that can be a little on the tough side to cook with get thrown in the freezer ready to be made into stock, so does the odd bit of celery too.

Vegetable Stock Concentrate
Ingredients

• 350g celery 
• 4 shallots
• 350g leek
• 3 cloves garlic
• small handful parsley
• 1/3 cup salt

Method

1. Roughly chop and wash all the vegetables and place in a large saucepan.
2. Sprinkle the salt over it all (it will start to draw the water from the veg quite quickly)
3. Put pan over a low-medium heat and cook, stirring often to begin with. As more liquid comes out of the veg less stirring is required.
4. Turn it down to a simmer and reduce until most of the liquid is gone. It took me about 1hr from turning the pan on to get to this point.
5. Cool and puree. Pack into a freezer container and freeze. (It doesn't freeze solid and can be scooped straight from the freezer)

This made 1 1/2 cups. Use one tablespoon to make one cup of stock. That is almost 19 cups of stock and it doesn't take up the entire freezer. Genius!

Variations
- You can use whatever quantity of veg you have, just make sure you don't over do any particular thing or it will dominate.
Salicylates - Add carrot or onion
Celery tops - I've heard that the celery tops may be higher in salicylates than the stems, I use the tops, but you may chose not to.

Use it to add flavour to risotto, stews or soups, just about anything really.

Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!

These are the words with which Albus Dumbledore kicks off the welcome feast in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

The boy loves Harry Potter a lot. He started reading the books late last year and has just started the last one in the series. His food was even further limited recently due to some medication he needed to take and it really upset him. When you have a narrow diet to begin with, taking away all his favourite things was very traumatic, even if it was only for a few weeks. So he was talking about when he could eat properly again and how he wanted some Harry Potter food. Our little talk about a couple of meals got completely out of hand and ended up with us inviting some friends over for a Hogwarts Feast. To be honest it was like a party and you could use these ideas to create your own failsafe Harry Potter party. I threw this together in six days, so with a little bit more time something far grander could be created.

The living room was decorated along the lines of the Hogwarts Great Hall. The boy made candles by cutting a sheet of white cardboard into long rectangles and sticky taping a piece of cellophane to the top. I strung fishing line around the room and stuck the candles to it. The rest of the decorations were wizard portraits (found via google) printed and stuck to the walls, and Hogwarts and House crests printed and hung on odd bits of black fabric I had. We had a trestle table for the kids table and the teachers (grown ups) got to sit at our normal kitchen table.

A Hogwarts style feast is incredibly easy to do failsafe. It is all English style food; the first feast in the first book describes roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes and chips, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy and ketchup. Obviously not all of that is failsafe, but a large part of it is. My son got to choose what he wanted and that was lamb chops, sausages, baked potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, brussel sprouts, cabbage, beans and bread. The visiting kids mostly ate sausage sandwiches and Yorkshire pudding, but he helped himself to extra vegies. All of this was washed down with bottles of "butter beer".

Serving themselves from big platters was fun.

The grown ups got bonus pumpkin and mulled wine

Dessert was going to involve more choices and be more feast-like, but I ran out of time, so there was just ice cream sundaes from "Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour". I used Kersten's rice milk ice cream recipe as the general base for five different flavours. We had vanilla, carob fudge, caramel, pear and vanilla and banana (moderate amines), with mini marshmallows and natural sprinkles on top. There were plans to make some sort of caramel sauce to go on top, but again, time dictated otherwise.

No visit to Hogwarts would be complete without a trip to "Honeydukes" sweet shop. This is where failsafe went slightly out the window. We had "Bertie Bott's Every Flavoured Beans" (natural jelly beans), Sherbet Lemons (also natural ones from the supermarket), Sugar Quills (homemade), Acid Pops and drops and Pear pops and drops (homemade), Werewolf Fangs (milk bottles), Vanilla and Carob Fudge (Carob made to Kersten's recipe, vanilla was experimental I'll make it another time before I post a recipe for it) and Cauldron cakes (homemade carob muffins with natural green tinged icing, a natural snake and a pipe cleaner handle).

The big Honeydukes logo came from here

Dumbledore has a dish of these on his desk	Another Dumbledore favourite
The labels for the bags were printed from here	Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans-A risk with every mouthful
Cauldron Cakes	Snakes are optional extras

My son absolutely loves the Butter Beer. It is sweet and buttery, has an amazing head and looks like a cross between beer and coke.

Butter Beer
Ingredients

• 60g nuttelex
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 80ml rice milk
• dash vanilla essence

Method

1. Place nuttelex and sugar into a saucepan and cook over a low heat until melted and combined.
2. Add rice milk and increase temperature. Boil for about a minute.
3. Store in the fridge until you need it.
4. Before serving heat gently in the microwave as the nuttelex sets.
5. Dilute to taste with soda water. This made five serves for the kids - about half a beer bottle each.

We served it in clean, empty beer bottles that had new labels put on them. There are loads of different labels to choose from when you google it. I printed them and used double sided tape to stick them to the bottle.











 Sugar Quills

The sugar quills were made with my standard lollipop recipe  with vanilla flavour. I added a white food colouring to them, but this is not really necessary. The major difference is in the method. These need to be pulled. You will need to have the oven on at about 80˚C to keep the pieces you aren't working with soft.




Method

1. Once your candy is cool enough to pick up (with protective gloves) stretch and fold it over repeatedly until it is opaque and glossy.
2. Using scissors cut a portion of soft candy (I made five large quills to a batch of candy), put the rest in the oven. 
3. Cut another small piece from what you have and gently shape it into a longish stick. Lay it down.
4. Shape your other piece into a flat oval and lay it lengthways onto the other piece. This will be you feather.
5. Using scissors snip the edge of the feather in towards the spine on an angle to make it feathery.
6. All of this needs to be done very quickly before the candy hardens.
7. Cut a portion from what is in the oven and repeat until all candy is used.
8. Wrap in cellophane.

There are so many ideas online for Harry Potter parties and you are really only limited by how much time and effort you want to put in.

Mayonnaise

Mayonnaise is one of those things that can cause a lot of heart ache. People avoid making it as they think it is too hard or tricky and there are a few tricks to it, but once you know them you shouldn't have a problem. The only time I ever seem to stuff it up is when I'm trying to cut corners by using a different appliance.

Making mayo takes a little bit of time and some sort of electric mixer can save your arms. So electric hand mixer is great, a stand mixer is better, but does make larger quantities. I've tried using a stick blender and that is usually behind all my failed attempts. I'm pretty sure I've also made it in a food processor successfully.

A good homemade mayonnaise can transform raw cabbage into a desirable salad, add a European pizzazz to your french fries or glorify a chicken sandwich.

The kids' favourite Friday dinner - chicken nuggets and chips with pear ketchup and homemade mayonnaise

Mayonnaise
Ingredients

• 4 egg yolks
• 1-2 cloves of garlic, crushed (according to taste)
• 1 1/2 Tbsp citric 'lemon' juice
• 2 cups failsafe oil (I prefer canola, but any would work)
• Salt 

Method

1. Place egg yolks, garlic and citric juice into the bowl of your mixer (with whisk attachment) and whisk until pale.
2. Very slowly start adding the oil while still whisking. Start by adding a little dribble at a time. As that gets incorporated add a little more. It is important to not add too much at once as the mayo will "split" which means the oil will separate from the egg, very unappealing.
3. As the oil starts to emulsify with the egg you can add the oil a little quicker.
4. Once the emulsification really gets going the mayonnaise will get very thick and pale.
5. When all the oil is added taste and add preferred amount of salt.
6. Blob it onto anything you can.

This can be done by hand with a whisk. If you chose to do it that way then you are a far better person than I. You would have better luck making a smaller quantity doing it by hand or with smaller electric beaters

Actually, I think I quite like Friday dinners too

Like My Nan Used to Make

Australia is made up of so many different cultures all with wonderful food traditions. So many different flavours and cooking methods. Me? I come from a long line of Brits and am only second generation Australian. This means childhood meals weren't full of spices or unconventional meats or vegetables. For a while I felt a little miffed that I had no ability to eat chilli and that the smell of certain cured meats made me want to gag. It has paid off in the end because I seem to have a fairly sound knowledge of failsafe friendly food.

One set of grandparents were from Scotland and we used to eat with them quite a lot so it wasn't always fancy. The thing that my Nanna used to make quite often was Mince and Tatties a very traditional scottish meal. It is a savoury mince stew which is cheap and filling and is one of my comfort foods. My Nan would use gravox or vegemite to add a kick of flavour to the gravy and there was always peas and carrots in it. My version probably bears very little resemblance to hers or a traditional one, but it hits the spot.

Mince and Tatties
Ingredients

• 500g Beef mince 
• 2 tsp failsafe oil
• 1/2 large leek, finely chopped
• 1 small stick celery, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1/2 cup whiskey
• 2 cups stock (I used vegetable)
• 1/2 swede, finely diced
• 1/2 cup lentils (I used a mixture of red and french this time)
• 1/2 choko, finely diced
• 3 brussel sprouts, finely chopped
• large handful of beans, chopped
• salt to taste 
• 1 Tbsp rice flour
• Mashed potato to serve

Method

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan and gently saute the leek, garlic and celery.
2. Add mince and fry, breaking up the mince as it is cooking.
3. Once the mince is lightly cooked add the whiskey and turn the heat up so that it starts to boil.
4. Add the swede, lentils, choko and stock, bring to the boil and then gently simmer for about 15mins, stirring occasionally.
5. Add the sprouts and beans and simmer until the lentils and veg are cooked.
6. Mix flour with a little water and add to thicken.
7. Check seasoning and add salt to taste.
8. Serve with mashed potato.

Variations
 Salicylates - Use onions instead of leeks and add diced carrots.
Glutamates - Use green peas.

Leftovers are particularly nice on toast for an easy meal or thickened a bit more and used as a pie filler.

Lucky Dip

I added a picture to my facebook page the other day that generated far more interest than I expected. Or maybe I should have expected it as a platter of failsafe, dairy, gluten and soy free dips is hard to come by. Yes there was the standard failsafe hommus, but there were three more there.

L-R Parsley pesto dip, caramelised leeks, Cashew cream cheese and hommus

Besides my intolerant son, there was another guest who is lactose intolerant, so the normal cheese platter and something else for the kids was not going to cut it. So I invented and hoped for the best. I still have some cheese left over, but these were demolished.

I bought one of those pesto dip thingys, so wanted to make a failsafe equivalent. Since the only herb available is parsley, that's the one I used. Parsley is still high in salicylates and it is only recommended to have a sprinkle. This is a little more than that, but with three other dips to have there is no need to pig out on that one alone. This recipe only makes a small quantity, as much as you can see in the picture, so that also makes it hard to go overboard.

Parsley Pesto Dip
Ingredients

• 3 Tbsp chopped parsley
• 1 long green part of shallot, chopped
• 2 Tbsp chick nuts (commercial roasted chick peas)
• 2 Tbsp failsafe oil
• 1/2 clove garlic, crushed
• 1 tsp citric "lemon" juice
• salt to taste

Method

1. Put all ingredients except salt into a mini food processor and blend until a nice dipping consistency.
2. Taste for salt - add a little at a time.

Caramelised leeks
(this makes a reasonable amount, but it keeps well and is nice with roast meats, on sandwiches or as a condiment for anything, really...)

Ingredients

•  1 large leek
• failsafe oil
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp brown sugar

Method

1. Remove harder green parts of leek and split the leek lengthways, make sure there is no dirt caught in it, rinsing if you need to. Slice finely.
2. Heat a medium frying pan over medium to low heat and add enough oil to coat the base. 
3. Add the leeks. Your pan may be very full at this point, don't bother changing pans, it won't stay this way for long.
4. As they start to heat sprinkle the salt over them to help draw out moisture.
5. Cook slowly stirring frequently
6. Add sugar and keep on stirring
7. They will be slowly reducing and turning a slightly golden colour (with a bit of a green tinge if you had a fair bit of pale green leek). Keep stirring occasionally, making sure they don't dry out and catch on the bottom. If they start to brown or dry out add a small quantity of water.
8. Once they are gold(ish) and look like a small pile of soggy string (this takes about an hour), they are done. They should be very sweet when you taste them.

Cashew Cream Cheese
There are a lot of recipes floating around the internet for raw cashew cheese, but not one of them is failsafe. They pretty much all contain nutritional yeast which is glutamates, not just a little bit of glutamates, but "you may as well be eating MSG" type glutamates. So that is out. What I have made is probably not even close to tasting like those ones, but it was incredibly good.  My son, who hates nuts, scoffed it and I've had to make more for the week.

The nuts require soaking, so a bit of forethought is needed. I've read that soaking doesn't increase the amine levels in the nuts, but there are a lot of cashews in this one, so moderation may be required for amine responders.

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cup raw cashews, covered with cold water and soaked overnight (or for a few hours if that works for you), drained and rinsed.
• 3 tsp citric "lemon" juice
• 1 tsp whiskey
• 1clove of garlic, crushed
• 1 1/2 tsp salt flakes (if you don't have these use a smaller amount of salt and add to taste at the end)
• 2 Tbsp rice milk (or water)
• 2 tsp chopped parsley and chives.

Method

1. Put all ingredients in a small food processor or blender and blend until smooth.
2. Taste for seasoning and adjust to taste.

This was particularly good on a cracker with the caramelised leeks.

This was particularly good on a cracker with the caramelised leeks.

I don't actually have a recipe of my own for hommus. I make it to taste every time, sometimes using canned chickpeas, sometimes dried ones. I usually make a huge batch and freeze it in smaller portions as we go through a lot of it. Next time I make it I'll write quantities down.

I served these dips with rice crackers, broken buckwheat crispbreads and mini cracker sized rice cakes. You could also use celery sticks which have been my son's vessel of choice for the cashew cheese this week.

More Soup.

I'm totally loving this cold weather. There has been frost in the mornings in the reserve next door and this evening I watched fog rise up there too. This weather just makes me want meals like this. Soup that is thick and heavy and warm, that warms your belly and is just good for your soul.

This recipe is almost a straight rip off of a Jamie Oliver recipe from his first book. There were minor modifications to make it failsafe and due to ingredients I had on hand. It is incredibly easy and has few ingredients. Hubby is very soup critical and he gave it a big thumbs up. Unfortunately it seems Miss 3 has decided she doesn't like soup and mostly ate toast. Mr 7 also scoffed the lot.

This made enough for us with a little left over, so would probably happily feed four adults for dinner.

Chickpea and Leek Soup
Ingredients

• 3 medium leeks, split lengthways and sliced finely
• 2 cloves garlic, sliced
• 1 large potato, peeled and chopped
• 2 400g cans of chickpeas, rinsed (you could soak dry ones for 24hrs. I was not that organised)
• 2 Tbsp failsafe oil
• salt
• 1L home made stock (veg or chicken or water with a bit of whiskey if you don't have stock)

Method

1. Cook the potato until tender (boil or steam)
2. Warm oil in large pot. Add the leeks and garlic and a big pinch of salt. Cook very gently until very tender (about 15mins)
3. Add the chickpeas and potato. Stir in and cook for a minute.
4. Pour in the stock and simmer for about 15mins. Add salt to taste.,
5. Now you can serve as is, or puree the lot, or puree some and mix back together (this is my preference as you get the lumpy bits as well as the thick creaminess)

  
Variations- Salicylates - Add a grind of pepper

It really doesn't need any other variations. It's great as is!

Not Quite Curry

So my son had a friend over today who is Indian. He was telling me about the food he normally eats and it got me craving curry. Hubby and I had real curry about a month ago when we went out for our anniversary, we go out so rarely that something so incredibly un-failsafe is a fitting choice. But I wanted curry tonight so I experimented with what I can use here and the results were surprisingly good. Actually, it was seriously delicious.

Clayton's Chicken Curry
Ingredients

• 1 large leek, split lengthways and sliced finely
• 5 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 2 Tbsp failsafe oil (or ghee if you can tolerate it)
• 600g chicken breast, diced
• 2 tsp salt
• 2/3 cup rice milk
• 1/2 tsp saffron threads
• 1/4 cup gin (optional, you can just add more rice milk)
• 2 Tbsp ground raw cashews

Method

1. Heat rice milk and add saffron and let soak. Set aside.
2. Heat oil in a large saucepan and cook leeks and garlic until soft and pale gold.
3. Add chicken and seal on all sides. Stir in salt
4. Add gin and rice milk with saffron, cover and gently simmer for about 20 mins or until chicken is cooked and tender.
5. Add ground cashew and cook for another few minutes.
6. Serve with steamed rice and flat bread.

Variations - Dairy - use cream instead of rice milk.
                    Salicylates - add a tsp of garam masala with the salt and a Tbsp of fresh coriander to garnish


This was so easy to make and everyone liked it, so I think this will be a regular feature at dinner time.

Bringing the Tagine Back

Once upon a time I had favourite types of food that I just loved to cook and that the whole family loved to eat. Just before we started the elimination diet, my absolute favourite was Moroccan. The rich sauces, fragrant spices, the sweet and savoury combinations did it for me. It was fun to make, there were so many things that I could do with it. I had, up until now, been far too apprehensive to try a failsafe equivalent, there was no way it could possibly measure up to the past efforts. Tonight I gave it a go and while it was nothing like the dishes that I used to make it was still good in its own way. It was flavoursome, it has the sweetness and the meatiness and it was rich and filling. Plus it gave me the opportunity to use my tagine which has mostly been gathering dust the last few years.
For those who are unfamiliar with it, the tagine is a Moroccan earthenware cooking vessel. It has a shallow dish for the food to sit in and a conical lid. These are traditionally cooked over hot coals, but can be used over a gas flame too. If you don't have one, never fear! A large frying pan with a lid or a lidded saucepan or a flameproof casserole dish would do the job quite well.

Chicken and Pear Tagine with Quinoa
Ingredients

• 700g (approx) Chicken breast fillets cut into large cubes.
• 1 medium leek, halved lengthways and sliced thinly.
• 5 cloves of garlic, crushed.
• Large pinch of saffron threads, soaked in 1/4 cup boiling water
• 1 Tbsp oil or ghee**
• 1/2 swede, grated
• 400g tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed
•  1-2 tsp salt
• 3 pears, peeled, cored and cut into wedges
• 2 tsp nuttelex
• 2 Tbsp rice malt syrup

• 1 cup quinoa, well rinsed (I used a mixture of white, red and black for colour)
• 2 cups water

Method

1. Heat oil or ghee in tagine base over medium to high heat. Cook leeks and garlic until soft.
2. Add chicken and seal all over.
3. Stir through the swede and mix in the saffron and water.
4. Turn heat down to very low, cover and simmer for 20 mins
5. While this is cooking bring water for quinoa to boil in a medium saucepan, add quinoa, cover and turn down to a bare simmer. It will take about 20mins to cook
6. Heat nuttelex in a frying pan and add pears. Stir and turn often so they don't burn. Cook for about 10mins then drizzle the rice malt syrup over them and cook for another few mins.
7. While the pears are cooking add the chickpeas to the tagine and add the salt to taste, cook for another 10mins.
8. Serve up, placing the pears and syrup over the chicken and the quinoa on the side.

My son mumbled "This is really good" through his first mouthful. So I'm taking it to mean this is a winning dinner here.

Variations- Gluten - Serve with couscous instead of quinoa
                    Salicylates- Add ras el hanout just before you add the chicken and sprinkle with chopped coriander for serving. You could also use honey instead of the rice malt.
                   ** The ghee - There has been a bit of talk amongst some failsafe groups lately as to whether ghee is ok for those who can't eat dairy as the lactose and proteins should no longer be in it. Some people say they tolerate it, some don't. Use your own judgement or treat it as a challenge, or if you are unsure just don't use it.

This tagine is not for cooking in, just for serving and display. The cooking ones are far less ornamental. So don't buy one like this if you want to cook in it.

A Gingerbread House

Without the ginger... Which seemed to go down pretty well with everyone at Christmas as not many people in the family seem to like ginger.

I was completely unsure if this would work, gluten free baking can tend towards brittle and crumbly and there was a chance it would lack the structural integrity needed to hold its own weight. But it did work. It possibly needs a little tweaking as it was slightly dry, but it was pretty.

It was adapted from a recipe on Taste that was recommended to me. How many it makes depends on how big you make them. I made three smaller ones. You will need a template for cutting your house. There are quite a few of varying complexity to be found via google. The one I chose was quite simple as I really didn't have time to waste and still didn't know if it would work. I enlarged and shrunk it before it was printed so there were a few different sizes to work with. If you do the same, don't get the pieces mixed up or your houses may not go together.

Gingerbread House
Ingredients

• 4 1/2 cups (600g) plain GF flour (I used whitewings this time)
• 7 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup (280g) firmly packed brown sugar
• 185g nuttelex
• 1/2 cup (100g) golden syrup
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• Icing sugar (for dusting)
• Allowed lollies (eg. marshmallows, pear drops, musk sticks, sprinkles)

Royal Icing

• 2 egg whites, lightly beaten
• 3 cups pure icing sugar

Method

1. Put the flour, baking powder, sugar and nuttelex into a food processor. Process until it looks like breadcrumbs.
2.  Mix eggs and syrup together and slowly add to food processor while it is running. When it is starting to come together, remove and knead on a floured surface until smooth. Divide into portions, wrap with cling wrap and refrigerate for at least 4hrs
3. Roll the dough between 2 sheets baking paper until 5mm thick. Remove top layer baking paper. Place your templates onto the dough and cut shapes. Place gingerbread on lined baking trays. Freeze for 15 minutes or until firm. 
4. Heat oven to 180°C and bake for approximately 15 minutes or until cooked and firm. Cool on the tray.
5. To make icing, beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually add sifted icing sugar while still beating until it is all incorporated
6. Build your house on a flat, solid plate. Use the icing as mortar to join the walls together. You can use food cans or other containers to prop the walls up until the icing sets. Attach the roof in the same way. (I was unsure if it would hold, so I used two dressmakers pins on the top corners to make sure).
7. Place the rest of the icing into a zip-lock bag and snip off the tip. Make patterns and decorate your house. Use the icing to stick any lollies to the house- the kids love helping with this. (I also cut little people and a tree from left over dough. I used the icing to stick them to the plate aswell). Dust it with icing sugar.
8. Wrap it all in cellophane so it keeps a bit better.

Please note that smarties and jellybeans are not FS. They did not contain any nasty additives and were considered a super treat by my son who was only allowed to eat a few of them.

Noteworthy

I've made no pretenses about my organisational skills so far on this blog. Basically I suck at it. Everything happens at the last minute, but I usually end up pulling things off to a certain degree. I've also had to change the way I cook for the purpose of blogging. I was always a "cook by feel" type of girl, you know, a splash of this, a splodge of that a handful of something else and cook it until I think it's done... That doesn't really translate well when you are trying to give someone else instructions. So I decided over Christmas that I would take notes as I baked with weights and measurements, times and temperatures. Generally I love notebooks; lists make me feel more organised and I have a plethora of exercise books that I buy at the back-to-school sales for that purpose. So I took Christmas notes with the intention of blogging them (albeit after Christmas, as I was too last minute to get it done beforehand) and then when the time came for me to do it, I couldn't find them. I went through every notebook I could find and came up with nothing. Disappointed isn't a strong enough word for how I felt. My dear husband bought me a lovely new notebook, all hard covered and pretty, so that I would write in that one alone and wouldn't mix it up or accidentally throw it away.

Then, two days ago, I found it! Next to the sewing table with sewing notes on it too. I looked there! I know I did, but there it was. And so now I bring you Christmas (or any other time really) baking recipes.

Pfeffernüsse
These are a traditional European Christmas/winter biscuit that are usually full of spices and pepper. These are not. But they are still delicious. This recipe made a *LOT* of biscuits. They kept very well in an air tight container, but you could probably portion the dough and freeze. I used saffron when I made these as I thought there should really be at least one spice in it. Not sure if it really made any difference to the flavour, but it made me feel better about it.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup (200g) Golden syrup
• 1/4 cup(100g) Rice malt syrup
• 1/2 cup nuttelex
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 4 cups (580g) Orgran plain GF flour
• 3/4 cup (170g) white sugar
• 1/2 cup (100g) brown sugar
• A big pinch of saffron threads (optional)
• 1 1/2 tsp bicarb soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup icing sugar for dusting

Method

1. Put golden syrup,  rice malt syrup, nuttelex and saffron into a saucepan, cook over a medium heat while stirring until it combines and goes a bit creamy looking. Leave to cool to room temperature.
2. Remove the saffron threads and stir in the eggs.
3. Put flour, white and brown sugars, bicarb and salt into a large bowl and add the syrup mixture. Mix until you have a nice dough. Cover and put into the fridge for about 2 hours.
4. Preheat oven to 165℃. 
5. Roll the dough into walnut sized balls and place on trays lined with baking paper approx 3cm apart. These do spread.
6. Bake for 10-15mins. The longer you bake them, the harder they are.
7. Cool on racks and dust with icing sugar.

Pfeffernusse front and centre. Spritz cookies on their right, iced biscuits at the back and meringues on the left

The spritz cookies are a recipe I found on Gluten Free Homemaker. These needed almost no tweaking to be failsafe. Simply omit the almond essence and substitute nuttelex for the butter. If you don't have the individual flours on hand, you can substitute the same quantity of Orgran flour and the results are pretty much the same. They don't need to be iced and if you don't have a cookie press you could always put blobs of dough on the tray. Equally delicious!

Happy Baking!

Pear Season!

Pears. What would we do without them?

March is the peak season (in Australia) for William pears and a bunch of other varieties, which makes it the perfect time to make your preserves. Pears are cheap, plentiful, high quality, and in theory you could make your whole year's worth of preserves right now.

Quite some time ago my best friend sent me a link to recipe and asked if it could be done failsafe. A really quick look at the ingredients told me that it practically was. It was a recipe for Pear and Vanilla Bean Honey and quite frankly, it looked divine. I made it and, lo and behold, it was divine. My son ate it at every opportunity, on toast, on sandwiches, on (homemade) crumpets, on scones, on ice cream and straight from the jar.

Here is my adaptation (it makes way more than the original, because really, why bother to make one jar when you can make five).

Pear and Vanilla Bean Honey

Ingredients

• 12 ripe pears, peeled, cored and quartered 
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1/2 vanilla bean
• 3 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1/2 tsp citric acid

Method

1. Pop your pears into a large saucepan with the water, bring to the boil and simmer until the pears are very soft and squishy.
2. Push the pears and the liquid through a sieve - and no you can't just put them in the food processor, because with the sieve you get rid of all the thick fibres which would get stuck in your teeth and ruin the texture.
3. Put back into cleaned pot. Split the vanilla bean and add the seeds and the pod. Add the sugar and the citric acid.
4. Bring to a gentle boil and cook for about 45 minutes.
5. Pour into hot, sterile jars and once it is cool store in the fridge. This is not preserved as well as jam, it is far too liquid and I can't say that it would keep safely out of the fridge.
   
   

It's Another Party!

We recently came home from a holiday and got caught up in a lot of stuff that was happening, then suddenly realised that it was less than two weeks until our daughter's third birthday. Talk about a massive rush job party! Her party was on a much smaller scale than her older brother's was, partly because she is only three and partly because she doesn't have anywhere near as many friends as he did at that age.

Being three, she loves Charlie and Lola, so after a bit of messing around we settled on that as our theme, which is actually quite easy as it is all a mish-mash of colours and patterns. If we had planned it in advance we could have found a whole bunch of merchandise online for parties, but most of it would had to have come from overseas and there just wasn't enough time. So after a bit of searching online I came up with a colour theme and bought some of the items.

The food was a little different this time around. My daughter is not really failsafe, but almost becomes so by default since most of the food in our house is failsafe. Nor is she gluten or dairy free, but I wasn't going to make different food for everyone, and if we go to a party elsewhere my son has to eat different to every one else, so I figure that at home he should be able to have the same as everyone else. We also had a friend with an egg allergy, so I needed to make sure the majority of the food was egg free.

On the menu was fairy bread - too easy - I asked my friend to bring it as she wanted to help out. Bakers delight bread with nuttelex and some natural sprinkles. She also made some sandwiches. I pulled a couple of slices of gluten free bread out of the freezer for my son so he had some fairy bread and jam sandwiches.

There were also some doughnuts made with "egg replacer" instead of egg. I had plans of icing them, but ran out of time so just tossed them in caster sugar.

I made biscuits on sticks (these contained egg) and using the same dough I made some jam fancies. They were made by rolling the dough out thinner, using a scalloped round cutter to cut rounds, and then using a smaller round cutter to cut holes in half of them. Bake them and then spread jam on the ones without holes, and then top with the holey ones.

A large selection of biscuits, because biscuits are Lola's favourite and best.

I opened a packet of Orgran shortbread hearts and dusted them with a bit of icing sugar.

Using the same dough as my melting moments I made checker board cookies and honey comb biscuits. The honey comb ones just have smashed up failsafe honey comb mixed through the dough. I rolled it into a log and put into the freezer until firm, then sliced and baked it. For the checker board cookies I divided the dough in half and mixed a tablespoon of carob into a portion of the dough. Roll both portions to approximately 5mm thick and roughly rectangular (or press/roll it into a slice tin to get the shape). Cut it into thirds lengthways and stack on top of each other in alternating colours. Put back into the freezer until firm again. Slice lengthways about 5mm thick and stack again in alternating colours. Freeze again, then slice crossways and bake (this sounds a bit more fiddly than it really is).

To nibble on, we also had failsafe chips, some homemade lollipops, white musk sticks and marshmallows. 

The hot food was meatballs and chicken fingers. I used egg replacer and psyllium to make sure my meatballs stuck together and added less vegetables that I usually would. I used a cornflour slurry (with a bit of egg replacer mixed in for "insurance" - I had no time for stuff ups) to stick the crumbs to the chicken and added crushed garlic to it for flavour.

The cake was also a last minute decision and kids always love cupcakes and there is far less chance of them failing than with a big cake. I searched around for a recipe that I liked and that would adapt quite easily. I found one that I liked the idea of, but it needed a little bit of adapting. The cakes worked well without egg or dairy, but I had recently been experimenting with flour blending and the resulting flavour was not the best. I'm not sure quinoa flour is right for a mildly flavoured cake, it just overpowered it. So just stick to the flour that is suggested in the original or use a pre-blended pack like Orgran. The other thing that I found is that the sprinkles didn't really make much difference in the cake. I'm sure the bigger artificial ones would work better, but they are completely out of the question from a failsafe perspective.

Confetti Cupcakes
(I doubled this so that there would be plenty)
Ingredients

Cake

• 2 eggs (lightly beaten) or equivilent egg replacer
• 1/3 cup rice milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
• 100mls canola oil (or other FS oil)
• 1 1/4 cups flour (if your blend doesn't contain it - add 1/4 tsp xanthan gum)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 Tbsp natural sprinkles (optional)

Topping

• 3 Tbsp nuttelex
• 1/4 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 1/4 cups icing sugar 
• 1 Tbsp rice milk (optional)
• cochineal (to desired colour)
• Dollar Sweets Butterflies (Be aware the label says "contains ingredients derived from wheat", although I can't figure out what it could be)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180℃ 
2. In a large bowl mix all dry cake ingredients
3. Make a well and add all the wet ingredients
4. Mix until just combined (if you want to use a mixer, just make sure you don't over beat it)
5. Spoon into patty pans and bake for 12-14 mins or until cooked and a skewer comes out clean.
6. Cool on racks before icing
7. Beat nuttelex and vanilla in a small bowl until soft and gradually add sifted icing sugar.
8. Add rice milk if a softer consistency is required or more icing sugar for firmer icing (not too firm if you want to pipe it)
9. Add cochineal drop by drop until you get the shade of pink you want
10. Pipe or spread onto cold cupcakes and top with butterflies.

"Pink icing always tastes the best."

A very happy birthday girl

 The cake was served with pink milk, another Lola favourite.  Vanilla flavoured milk with enough cochineal to make it pink (rice milk for my boy, dairy for the others). The kids don't even notice that the pink milk isn't strawberry flavoured, it is sweet and pink and that is all that matters.

Organised fun was kept to a minimum since the birthday girl was only three and didn't really care. There was a game of pass the parcel and we set up a colouring-in table with Charlie and Lola printables and butcher's paper covering the table.

Party boxes consisted of a small amount of failsafe lollies and a large amount of pencils, crayons, mini gel pens, mini highlighters, little erasers, colouring in sheets and curly straws all purchased at a cheap shop.

Even though it was a rainy day and everyone was stuck inside (and my poor time management skills meant that I was still cooking when people walked int the door) we all had a great day.