Sauce of Wonder

I have spent quite a bit of brain and kitchen power trying to come up with a decent Asian style sauce. One that could be drizzled onto phô or could be added to a stir fry and actually stick to the noodles. A sauce that stood up against a hoisin or oyster sauce. Thick and rich, not too sweet and not too salty.

I've finally done it.

I wanted to call it "Sauce of Wonder", but thought that was a buit pretentious so I enlisted my husband's help to name it. He suggested translating it to Vietnamese - nước sốt kỳ diệu. Not really a name that will come easily to most, and not really easy to search for. I translated it back to English and it is "Magic Sauce". I kind of like that. It has a nicer ring to it that "Hoisin Substitute". Plus it has been a while since I've had hoisin and this may be nothing like it.

Magic Sauce
Ingredients

• 1/2 cup Golden syrup
• 1/4 cup gin
• 1/4 cup syrup reserved from tinned pears
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp carob syrup **
• 1 tsp tapioca starch

 Method

1. In a small saucepan place all ingredients except one teaspoon of the carob syrup and the tapioca starch. Gently bring to the boil giving an occasional stir.
2. Simmer until the bubbling starts to look frothy, take off heat and add combined carob syrup and tapioca. Stir through and place back onto heat. 
3. Bring the mixture back to the boil. When it looks frothy again it is done.
4. Let cool (don't be tempted to taste it before it has cooled a lot as it will be incredibly hot) and store in a sealed container in the fridge.
5. Add to phô or stir-fry. Or use as a BBQ marinade for meat.

** If you don't have carob syrup then you could substitute something else. I haven't tried, but I think that half a teaspoon of carob powder mixed with two teaspoons of boiling water would have a similar result or the same amount of instant decaf coffee might too.

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.

Highly Strung

Having people over for meals gives me the opportunity to try new things out, things that I wouldn't necessarily cook for just any old dinner.

My mum recently celebrated a milestone birthday and that seemed like a good reason to do something a little bit fancy. So I flicked through all my cook books searching for inspiration and came across a recipe in my French book that I have been wanting to try for ages. It is so incredibly close to failsafe to that few changes were needed and the end result was really quite special. The meat is cooked for a very short time, which suits the amine sensitive and the cut is so very tender when it is done. Unfortunately the cost of the cut will relegate it to "special occasion" status.

Boeuf à la Ficelle
(Beef on a string)

Ingredients

• Beef fillet (allow about 200g per adult, less for kids - I cooked for 5 adults and 2 kids and used 1.2kg)
• 6 cups liquid (this could be stock, water, whiskey or a combination - I used 1/2 cup whiskey and 3 tablespoons of vegetable stock concentrate with 5 1/2 cups of water). If you are cooking less meat you won't need as much liquid.
• 1 large swede, cut into batons (sticks)
• 1 celery stalk, cut into batons
• 2 large potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
• 1/4 cabbage, sliced
• 6 shallots, trimmed and cut into long lengths
• A few sprigs of parsley

Method

1. Trim the beef of any visible fat and sinew and cut into portions. Tie a length of cooking string around each piece so that it holds shape leaving enough string attached to lower the beef into the pot.
2. Pour the liquid into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Add the vegetables and parsley and cook at a medium boil for about 8 minutes or until the vegetables are tender. Remove the vegetables with a slotted spoon and keep warm. Discard the parsley and skim and fat or foam from the surface.
3. Season the beef with a little salt and lower into the boiling stock. Tie the string around the pot handle or to a wooden spoon resting across the top of the pot. Cook for 6mins for rare, 10 mins for medium rare, 15 mins for medium and 20 mins for well done (for those who can't bear the sight of pink in their meat).
4. Place each piece of meat on a plate or shallow bowl, add the cooked vegetables and ladle some of the broth over to serve.

Variations

• Salicylates - Add a carrot cut into batons with the other vegetables (moderate) and a bay leaf and 2 sprigs of thyme (very high).
• Amines - use beef stock for the liquid.

We didn't eat all the cooking liquid on the night, so I reserved it and froze it. Normally beef stock would be too high in amines to use, but as the beef was only cooked very briefly it make a nice, mild beef stock that I would happily use again.

This dish was so succulent and was happily devoured by failsafers and non-failsafers alike.

Bread Success!

Some of you who follow my facebook page may have seen me cheering and sharing a dodgy phone photo of some bread I made the other day. In the real world making a successful loaf of bread is no big deal unless you are seriously challenged in the kitchen, but making an edible loaf of failsafe, gluten, dairy, soy, nut, egg *and* gum free bread is a different story. When I cut open that little roll and had a bite I honestly did a dance of joy.

After a few early attempts at my own gluten free bread I had given up in favour of packet mixes and more recently had been using Kersten's recipe with reasonable success. Our latest restrictions (no gums) meant that I had to ditch that recipe too, and start getting creative.

As a gluten eater I am highly critical of gluten free bread, but I devoured the whole roll with nothing on it and then waited very impatiently for the loaf to cool so that I could slice it and see how it turned out. The crust was soft, the bread bent, and it didn't have that gelatinous texture that I've come to expect from gluten free bread.

How do you think it looks?

I made some (flat) rolls a day later and took them along to a failsafe picnic. There was loads of food, so I didn't bother to get them out until the end when some of the other mums wanted to try. They passed that taste test too (or those lovely ladies were being very polite). The other big test was my daughter who has never willingly eaten gluten free bread. She ate an entire roll with her dinner last night and that is all I really need. There is nothing worse than slaving in the kitchen and no one wanting to eat it.

So after trawling through the internet for inspiration I decided to use a 'Gluten-Free Girl' recipe as my starting point, but that's where the help ended. Now I'm incredibly chuffed to present to you my very own bread recipe.

Bread!
Ingredients

• 2 cups warm water
• 2 Tbsp psyllium husks
• 5 Tbsp boiling water
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 3tsp yeast
• 1 Tbsp failsafe oil
• 100g brown rice flour
• 100g sorghum flour
• 170g white rice flour
• 170g tapioca starch
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking powder

Method

1. Put the psyllium in a small bowl or cup and pour the boiling water over them. Give it a quick stir and set aside.
2. Pour the water, sugar and yeast into a big bowl (preferably in a mixer, but this should be fine by hand) and leave while you measure out the rest of your ingredients.
3. Add the oil, the psyllium sludge and the dry ingredients and mix for a few minutes until it is all very well combined and smooth, like a thick cake batter.
4. Tip into an oiled bowl and cover with glad wrap and leave stand somewhere warm for about an hour. It will rise in that time and become a lot more like dough and less like batter.
5. While it is resting preheat your oven to 190°C
6. Tip into a greased loaf tin (my tin is 20cm x 11cm) or using wet hands roll balls for rolls use pie tins for large rolls, muffin trays for dinner rolls or place them in a slice tin for flatter hamburger style rolls.
7. Bake the loaf for about 50 mins and rolls for about 25mins.
8. Cool on racks.

As this is a very new recipe I haven't had a chance to try different things with it or check how long it lasts. The rolls I made yesterday were slightly dry today, but still edible. The loaf I made the other night was sliced and went straight into the freezer and toasted beautifully for dinner tonight.

The next steps for me are to play with different flour (as I realise sorghum isn't the easiest to find) and to experiment with other styles of bread. But I couldn't make you wait any longer for this recipe. If you try anything that works leave a comment, it would be great to hear what things you can come up with. My next thought is brown sugar scrolls or white baguettes.

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...

Hommus

A little while back I posted a few dip recipes, but didn't have one for the hommus. I'm normally a "cook by feel" kind of girl, tasting, adding a splodge of this, a dash of that and tasting again and again until I am happy with the results. Hommus is also something I make in large batches and freeze, so when I posted the other recipes I didn't actually have a concrete recipe. I made it again and recorded what I did.

We all love this and go through tonnes of it. My daughter takes it to preschool with rice crackers for her healthy morning tea or has it on rice cakes for lunch, my son has it on celery sticks for fruit time at school, we've also been known to have it with lamb cutlets for dinner too.

Hommus 
Ingredients

• 400g dried chick peas
• Big pinch of bicarb soda
• 3 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1/2 cup failsafe oil
• 3 Tbsp citric 'lemon' juice
• 4 small shallots, very finely chopped.
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp chopped parsley

Method

1. Soak the chickpeas over night in plenty of water
2.  Drain and rinse the chickpeas and put into a large pot. Cover with plenty of water, add the bicarb and bring to the boil. Cook until the chickpeas are tender. If you get one out and squeeze between your fingers it should squish easily.
3. Drain and let them cool until they are able to be put in the food processor.
4. Put the chickpeas, garlic and shallots in the processor and gradually add the oil while the motor is running.
5. Add the citric 'lemon', salt and parsley and process until you have a fairly smooth consistency (some chickpeas are drier than others, so it may need more oil).
6. Taste and adjust if you prefer.
7. Store in the fridge or pack into smaller containers (I use ones that are about a cup) and freeze until needed.

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.