One of the most requested recipes when I worked on the advice line at Juvela, was for gluten free dumplings. Within the same enquiry, I would generally be asked as to where you were able to buy gluten free suet from?
Gluten free suet is a little tricky to get hold of. However, I have a great tip that I’m about to share with you. Which will mean, you no longer have to specifically source gluten free suet to make dumplings or suet puddings!
Ooh I’m rushing in quick (and just in the nick of time), to share with you this rather fabulous festive recipe for delicious gluten free frangipane topped mince pies.
My recommendation, is to enjoy these moreish, soft frangipane topped mince pies, warm with a spot of fresh thick cream – and your feet up with a cuppa!
I’ve always loved cottage pie – it’s another one of the many tasty meals I’ve grown up tucking into, as it was something my mum and grandma would often make.
Cottage pie is such a comforting tummy warming meal. And after hearing Steve Wright on Radio 2 talking about the fondness of traditional hearty pub food (cottage pie was mentioned!), I felt inspired to share my own version of this yummy fork food, as I know when I worked at Juvela gluten free foods, what people mostly asked about, was how to make gluten free versions of traditional dishes that they had enjoyed before they had needed to follow a gluten free diet.
I’d heard great things about LEON restaraunts and their super gluten free offerings. So was delighted to discover that they had opened a branch at Cheshire Oaks (one of my favourite places to shop!). And on Wednesday, after a spot of Christmas shopping with my fabulous buddy Carol, we called in for our tea.
I have always loved cauliflower cheese, it used to be my ‘Saturday lunch’ of choice when I was a teenager, and very often when I came home from doing my weekend job in our local village shop, my mum would have rustled up a cauliflower cheese beauty ready for me to enjoy! It’s making me smile as I tell you about this lunch, as all those years ago, it wasn’t the done thing to cut up the cauliflower prior to cooking, so I usually had a whole cauliflower to tuck into!! What’s really great about the way my mum used to make it, was, despite the traditional way of making a cheese sauce is to make a roux, she would instead make it by simply thickening the milk with cornflour. So, despite not needing a gluten free diet at that point in my life, the cauliflower cheese in fact, was naturally gluten free and tasted tremendous!
As with many of the recipes (and other stuff) I share with you, it’s not always my first intention to do so, but instead, the fact that I’ve just fancied rustling up something particular for myself to eat, and when it turns out great, I get all giddy and think, Oooh, must tell you about it too! And that’s exactly what happened last weekend, when I whipped up some gluten free creamed mushrooms on toast for my lunch!
I do love to cook gammon/ham at home – I just think there is something very satisfying about the process, and if not being eaten straight away, it’s nice to have it in the fridge to cut at for butties, salads, or to enjoy with egg and chips etc! It’s also far more cost effective than buying ready cooked meat. I tend to keep the ham for up to 3 days in the fridge but if I’m not going to use it within this time, I just slice the meat (or cube it as it’s great to go in fried rice dishes), wrap in foil, then in a freezer bag and pop into the freezer to use at a later date.
The idea for these gluten free crispy cheese and onion potato bakes materialised from making basic potato cakes (which are simply, cold seasoned mashed potato, with a little added gluten free flour/mix, the mixture is then moulded into patties and pan fried…preferably in butter!). So yes, I popped these bakes together the other day and they were so good, that I needed to let you know about them too!
I was always a bit rubbish at making egg fried rice until somebody explained to me where I was going wrong. It was simply that I had been adding a raw egg to the rice rather than a lightly cooked one (basically it’s just a super quick omelette, which is then roughly chopped up). From that moment on I had egg fried rice sussed!
I consider myself to be a very lucky coeliac, as the route to my diagnosis was a quick and straightforward one, thanks to the keen eye of my GP. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for many people. It’s been said that in the UK it can take on average 13 years to get a medical diagnosis for coeliac disease. Alarming statistics, considering the crippling and serious health implications undiagnosed coeliac disease can have on so many people.