Brown teff flour has become a real favourite of mine!  I buy it online from Shipton Mill; easy to work with and it has a delicious flavour.
Teff grain is gluten free and native to Ethiopia where it’s used to make the flour for their Injera fermented bread or pancakes.  I found this recipe in Naomi Devlin’s book, “Food for a happy gut”, but replaced her dairy ingredients with coconut yoghurt & milk to see if the pancakes would still work – they did!
The recipe is easy and quick but you need to plan ahead as the intial combination of milk, yoghurt and flour has to sit at least 6 hours.  I whisked these together just before bedtime the night before, covered the bowl with a tea towel ready to mix in the rest the next morning and cook up a storm for breakfast.

My first pancake is always wonky, whatever flour I use, but after that I was flying and made about 10 – all odd shapes as you can see by the photo 🙂
They freeze easily (just defrost and warm up in a dry, hot pan), so I’ll be trying out Naomi’s burrito recipe soon as well.
We ate ours with soft boiled eggs, grilled tamari mushrooms, shredded greens and smoked salmon, yummm.

 

Ingredients:

130g brown teff flour
300ml coconut milk
1 tbsp coconut yoghurt (from fermented young coconuts, not coconut-flavoured dairy yoghurt!)
2 organic eggs
30-40g black sesame seeds
large pinch of sea salt
light olive oil or coconut oil for frying

 Method:

Plan ahead!
You need to whisk together the milk, flour and yoghrut at least 6 hours before you want to make the pancakes.  Leave at room temperature for up to 24 hours.
When you’re ready to cook, whisk in the eggs, salt and sesame seeds – add more milk if the batter is too thick.  Brush a frying pan with olive, pour in some pancake batter and swirl to give you a thin crepe – with preferably a nice round shape, unlike mine 🙂
Cook for about 2-3 minutes on the first side, then carefully loosen and flip over for another minute.
Keep warm in a low oven using baking or greaseproof paper between each pancake so they don’t stick, or freeze up to a month if you want to make wraps or burritos at a later date; just defrost at room temperature and warm in a dry frying pan.

Enjoy with fruit and more coconut yoghurt, or stewed apples, or savoury pancakes with a chicken filling, or with eggs….anything really.
Have fun!

This is a deliciously tasty and light option for those who may not want a traditional Christmas cake. Adding mini rosemary leaves and toy deer can make it very festive indeed!

The cooked organic oranges give it a fresh and zingy flavour.  It also happens to be gluten and dairy free; goes down easily after endless days of festive eating – although it’s for every day, not just for Christmas 🙂

 

Ingredients:

(20cm/8″ spring-form tin – or any shape you fancy!)

2 medium organic oranges
Zest from 1 unwaxed or organic lemon
4 organic or free-range eggs
140 g caster sugar
100ml olive oil
180g ground almonds
2 tsp gluten free baking powder

For the Syrup

12 g caster sugar
juice from a large lemon

Topping (optional)

100g dark chocolate
approx 2 tbsp butter

Method

Grease and line your tin with baking paper and preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/Gas 4.

Place the oranges in a pot and cover with water then bring to the boil before letting them simmer for about 1/2 hr until tender.  Take out and cool, then halve and remove any pips before blitzing in a food processor until a paste is formed.

In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, lemon zest and caster sugar then add the oil and beat well until it turns a bit lighter.  Stir in the orange paste and then fold in the baking powder and ground almonds.  Done, easy!

Now spoon the mixture into the tin of your choice and bake 50 mins.  When ready it should have a little bounce to the touch of your finger.

Meanwhile, for the syrup, warm the sugar and lemon juice in a small pan over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved.  When your cake is slightly cooled make lots of holes with a cocktail stick or suchlike and drizzle over the syrup.

Let cool completely, turn it out and either dust with icing sugar, or add the melted choc/butter mixture – and when cooled, dust it with snowy icing sugar.

Enjoy on its own or with yoghurt or cream/ice cream of your choice.  Wishing you a merry bake x

 

 

 

This is a porridge that isn’t a porridge, and it’s creamy without having any cream. Perfect!  Gluten and dairy free, it has a deliciously smooth texture and is a yummy breakfast for a cold morn.  With the warming spices – cinnamon, allspice & cardamom – it really feels like Xmas is coming, although it’s definitely not just for Christmas.

The original recipe is from Naomi Devlin’s fab gluten free cook book but I’ve changed some amounts and ingredients to work for me.  You can play with this recipe to your heart’s content.   Try stirring in roasted nuts to the final porridge, or using prunes instead of dates, seeds instead of pecans,  fresh berries or chunks of separately stewed pear…So many options!  

You can cook up a batch of the porridge and keep it in the fridge 2-3 days; I also don’t see why it couldn’t be frozen then reheated (although I’ve not had any leftovers yet in order to try this out!)

Butternut Porridge

(serves 4 with left-over topping you can refrigerate)

2 tsp coconut oil
2 organic red apples, roughly chopped
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
280g butternut squash, peeled and chopped into small chunks
1 heaped tsp ground cinnamon
Pinch of cardamom
pinch of allspice
1/2 tsp vanilla

Crumble Topping

150g pecan nuts
5 tsp ground flaxseed
4 pitted dates, roughly chopped
1 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of nutmeg

Top with dairy-free coconut yoghurt, or Greek.

Method

Melt the coconut oil in a pan and add the cored and roughly chopped apples.  Saute about 15 mins over a medium heat until they soften.  Add the carrots and butternut, lowering the heat and stirring for another 10 minutes.

Pour enough boiling water over the vegetables so they are just covered; not too much ot the blended result will be too runny.

Add the spices, cover and simmer for about 45 mins, topping up the liquid only if necessary.  Allow to cool.

Meanwhile, to make the crumble, put all the ingredients into a food processor and blitz until finely ground.  Add a couple of drops of water so that it just starts to form crumbs.  If you add too much it’ll become a paste, so be frugal with the water.
What you don’t use in this recipe can be kept in the fridge for 2-3 days to use as a topping on yoghurt  etc.

Blitz the cooled veg and any cooking water in a blender until smooth, adding the vanilla as a finishing touch.
Ready to eat!  Just serve with some of the crumble topping and, if you want, a dairy-free or Greek yoghurt. Yum at all times of the year!

 

A delicious fig dish to try out, based on two recipes I found online – with just a few health-conscious tweaks that still keep the great mix of flavours.
Roasted sweet potatoes, raw figs and fried spring onions, what a combo!

 Ingredients (to feed 4-6 as a side dish)

3 large sweet potatoes, (c.1 kg)
6 figs (c. 250g), quartered
12 spring onions, green part only; halved then cut into one inch pieces
6 tbsp virgin olive oil
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
freshly ground black pepper and sea salt to taste

 Method

Preheat the oven to 160C degrees.  Peel the sweet potatoes (or scrub if home grown/organic), then halve lengthwise, and halve again so they look as much like wedges as possible.

Mix 3 tablespoons olive oil with some salt and pepper and rub over the sweet potatoes.  Spread them out on a baking sheet (skin down, if keeping it on).  Cook until done but not too soft, usually around 20-25mins, then remove from the oven  and scatter with the quartered figs.
The combination of roasted and raw really makes this dish.

Add the rest of the oil to a pan together with the balsamic vinegar, then fry the spring onion pieces for about 5 mins until they are well coated and slightly soft – and not burnt!  Add more oil or vinegar if you find your liquid has vanished (if you overfry the spring onions) 🙂

Spoon the mix over the wedges and figs and serve at room temperature.

What to do with 30 freshly picked lemons without spending endless hours drilling them out to make lemon sorbets (more about that in a later post!)

There always seems to be a glut of lemons here in Kefalonia, which is perhaps why all meat dishes – well, most recipes here in fact – have a lemon added to them, or at least a lemon sitting decoratively on the side of the plate.
There’s just so much lemon juice a freezer can take!  And my recent foray into the world of filling citrus fruit with sorbet is definitely not energy, or quantity, efficient.

When I was given all these lemons by our neighbours I had a momentary panic.  Like most people, I hate wastage, and I just couldn’t think past lemon ice cubes and drizzle cake.  Then I pictured our kitchen counter back home; we still have a jar of preserved lemons – a lone lemon left – that I made a year ago, a recipe taken from Ottolenghi’s first cook book.
So that’s what I’ve started.  Two jars for us and some smaller jars for presents.  Patience is required because the end result takes a minimum of  5 weeks 🙂

 

Ingredients per jar:

6 organic unwaxed lemons
6 tbsp salt
3 sprigs rosemary
3 small hot chillies (optional)
juice of 6 lemons
olive oil

 Method:

Sterilize your jar – I put mine in a hot oven.  Make a horizontal, then a vertical cut (yes, otherwise known as a cross!) in the lemons, about 3/4 of the way down so they stay attached at the bottom.  Fill each one with salt and then place into your jar, squeezing them down so it’s a really nice tight fit.
Seal the jar and leave for a week on the kitchen counter.

Part 2: one week later

Push the lemons down with a wooden spoon, or anything that will apply pressure and release the juices without squashing the lemons completely out of shape.
Add the rosemary, chilies and lemon juice, and then finish off with a thin layer of olive oil.
Seal the jar and leave another 4 weeks in a cool place (THAT will be the challenge here in these Greek 35 degree summer days!)
Add it chopped or sliced to any meat dish or stew for that lovely lemony flavour.

 

For anyone who has given mushrooms a dismissive shrug in the past, this recipe may just be the one to change your mind.
Packed with the flavour of mixed, exotic mushrooms (or just flat and portobello if you don’t want to stray too far into the world of fungi), with hints of lemon, thyme and garlic and the thick creaminess of blended butter beans, you will be wishing you’d had that proferred second helping instead of letting someone else have three bowls!
I thank Sarah Britton’s ‘My New Roots’ inspiration… although I have played a bit with her original recipe.

Ingredients:  Serves 4

250g assorted mushrooms or a mix of flat and portobello (give button mushrooms a wide berth)
1 litre vegetable broth (you can use Marigold powder instead)
2 red onions, chopped
1 large leek, chopped
1 generous tbsp coconut oil or olive oil for cooking
2 tsp fresh chopped thyme (or 1 tsp dried if you can’t find fresh)
3 garlic cloves, squeezed, minced or otherwise mushed
juice of 1/2 lemon …or lime
400g can butter beans (235g drained), or any white bean you like
freshly ground black pepper
sea salt
garnish of chopped coriander, parsely or basil
olive oil to drizzle at the end

 

Method:

Wipe the mushrooms clean with a damp cloth then chop into rough chunks (they’ll end up blended so don’t fret about size).
Heat the coconut or olive oil and add the chopped onions and leeks as well as thyme.
Cook over a medium heat until they are soft.
Add the garlic, lemon juice. some sea salt and the mushrooms. Stir until these are also soft –  ensure nothing catches or burns.
Remove some of the smaller mushrooms, or decorative, exotic ones and put aside for decoration at the end.

Meanwhile (and for those who don’t ‘do’ meanwhile, this is an easy one), blend the butter beans and vegetable broth until creamy.  That’s it! .

Add this creamy mix to the mushroom/leek/onion pot and simmer for about 5-10 minutes before blending the lot.  Add more broth or water at this point if it’s too thick – I found that the consistency depended on the type of mushrooms I’d used.

Taste and season as desired.  Ladel the soup into separate bowls, garnish with the cooked mushrooms you put aside as well as some chopped greenery and a drizzle of virgin olive oil.

Deelicious!!

 

When the days are as warm as they’ve been of late, here in Dorset, I really don’t want to spend too much time in the kitchen.  Not only is it the hottest room in our house, but also no one seems to have much of an appetite for cooked or heavy meals.

This lentil dish is quick and easy.  For some extra colour – and phytonutrients – I added butternut cubes and carrot to the final dish as I already had the oven on to roast the cauliflower.  A mixed salad would work too!

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 head white cauliflower
200g green lentils (soaked overnight; discard the water & rinse the lentils before cooking)
Coconut oil or olive oil for frying the spices and for the cauliflower
2 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp fennel seeds – fennel fronds (if you like that aniseed taste)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
Sea salt and black pepper
2 red onions, sliced
Grated zest of 1 organic orange
2 tbsp juice from the above orange
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
A generous handful chopped mint
A less generous handful chopped parsley

Method:

Line a baking tray with parchment and heat the oven to 150 degrees centigrade.  Cut the head of cauliflower into slices and toss them in melted coconut or olive oil; add a pinch or two of sea salt and lay the slices next to each other in the baking tray.

Roast for about 20 minutes until they brown on the edges – but are not too soft.  If you’re roasting some root vegetables to go with the dish, make sure you add the cubed butternut or sweet potato at the same time.

Rinse and drain the lentils and cover with water.  Bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer until tender – about 20 minutes.  Shortly beforehand add some sea salt (don’t be tempted to add it from the start as the lentils won’t cook properly).

Heat some oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat and add the cumin seeds, cinnamon, fennel seeds and black pepper.  Cook until fragrant, about 5 minutes, then add the sliced onions and stir until lightly caramelized – 15-20 minutes.  Finally, add the cooked lentils.

Whisk together olive oil, the orange and lemon juices and zest.  Add the chopped parsely and some pepper and sea salt to taste.  Pour over the lentils and add the roasted cauliflower to the dish.  Sprinle with the chopped mint – or I used fennel fronds from the garden –  and serve warm or at room temperature.  Bon appetit!lENTIL

 

–

An easy meal to prepare ahead of time.  The longest part to this recipe is letting the grated courgette and sweet potato rest 30 minutes (which can be whilst you have a cup of tea, do a quick post or sit in the sun!)

We’ve eaten these for lunch with a throw-together salad, or as a meal with guests. Why not add a dollop of pesto or yoghurt on the fritters and serve alongside roasted vegetables.  Also good for breakfast on its own 🙂

Ingredients:

Makes 12 small fritters

250g sweet potato, grated
500g courgette, grated
pinch or two of salt
80g ground almonds,
3 eggs
dill and coriander, finely chopped (use at least 2 tbsp each – by all means go for more!)
freshly ground black pepper
1 heaped tsp ground cumin
2 tbsp coconut oil for cooking

Method:

Place the grated sweet potato and courgette into a colander, sprinkle with a pinch or two of salt and let sit at least 30 minutes to draw out some of the moisture (best to put a plate or bowl underneath).  Then squeeze out as much liquid as possible and add to all the other ingredients, apart from the coconut oil.

Mix well.  Form into balls then flatten to fritters.  Heat the coconut oil in a pan and when hot add the fritters, turning down the heat a little so they don’t burn.  They literally ony take minutes to cook.  Ensure you flip them over so that both sides brown slightly.

Eat on their own (a great gluten free breakfast option).  Add a dollop of yoghurt or tzatziki or a mashed avocado and lemon/garlic mix (like a guacamole) for more interest.

With salad or mixed vegetables alongside, you really can’t get much easier than this for a lunch or supper!

 

I found this recipe a while back online.  I think it’s a Deliciously Ella one, but if not, apologies! I made some changes to amounts but otherwise it got the thumbs up from one and all,  even the meat-eating family community.
I have a friend who doesn’t like ‘meanwhile’ recipes, but don’t let the separate components put you off – this recipe is easy!

 

Three parts to this gem:  the pastry, the filling and the cashew creamy mix which sort of holds it together and gives the whole pie a deliciously cheese-like flavour.

Ingredients:

For the pastry:

100g gram flour
100g ground almonds
50g corn flour
75g coconuty oil
6 tbsp cold water
freshly ground pepper and sea salt to taste

For the Filling:

1 red onion, finely sliced
4 cloves garlic, pressed
300g butternut squash, peeled and coursely grated
250g pre-cooked (or vacuum packed) chestnuts, halved
220g portabello or chestnut mushrooms, roughly chopped (save a big one for decoration)
3 handfuls young spinach, roughly chopped
1/2 lemon, juiced
olive oil
1 tsp freshly chopped rosemary and lemon or regular thyme

For the Cashew cheese

75g cashew nuts soaked at least 4 hours (easy to do it overnight – if you remember)
3 tsp nutritional yeast
1/2 lemon, juiced
2 tbsp water
sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Method:

Start with the pastry.  Mix all the ingredients together with your hands in a bowl – easy, and enjoyable!  Roll into a ball, and place in the fridge for c 30 mins to firm up.

Preheat the oven to 180c (fan oven).  Press the pastry into a 24cm greased tart dish or tin.  Pierce with a ford then bake in the oven until it begins to turn a golden brown, about 15-20 mins.

Meanwhile….
Make the filling.  
Heat some olive oil in a pan and add the sliced onions until they begin to turn translucent, then add the pressed garlic and sliced mushrooms (remember to save a big one, or a couple of small ones for decoratoin).  Stir around so they start to become a little limp, then add the grated butternut, the roughly chopped spinach, salt, pepper, herbs, and the lemon juice.
Cook for about 5 minutes.  

Meanwhile…
Make the cashew cream/cheese, so easy!
Drain the cashews and blend with all the other ingredients.  When smooth, stir it in with all the veg that have been in your pan, and then add the halved chestnuts (I’m guessing that if you add them before, the cheesy mix may break them up too much).  
Spoon it all into the pastry case, then slice the remaining mushroom (s) and arrange them on top.
Bake for about 20 minutes until the mushrooms on top look cooked.  

A mixed rocket salad alongside made this a delicious and easy meal.

Once upon a time I would’ve cringed at seeing this recipe.  Peleeeeze, I would’ve thought, real cheese for those who can – and just abstain for those who can’t.  Simple.

But it’s not that simple.  You miss the foods that you’ve stopped because they cause digestive problems, or you have intolerances causing mega inflammation in the body… or they are ruining teeth or piling on kilos.
Luckily a lot of people can have the ‘no-go-to’ foods occasionally without any of the above effects – but loads of peeps can’t.
This recipe is for both groups plus those addicts who have absolutely no problem with their cheeses, but just love trying new, delicious food – that tastes like cheese!

It’s based on a favourite cookbook recipe – ‘My New Roots’ – however my version turned out to be a cream cheese (or thick dip!) rather than the cheese ‘log’ – even the second time around.  Nonetheless, very delicious indeed.  And keeping the GF/DF theme going, I spread it onto slices of cucumber, apple, and plantain bread).

 Ingredients (for c 500ml):

280g cashews
175 filtered water
1 garlic, squeezed
1 tbsp nutritional yeast
1 tsp fine sea salt
grated zest of an organic or unwaxed lemon
juice from that lemon
1 probiotic capsules
3 tbsp finely chopped dill or fennel
1 tbsp finely chopped dhives

Method:

Soak the cashews overnight, or at least 4 hours.  Drain and rinse, then place in a food processor.  Add the water and blend on the highest speed until the whole mixture is smooth. Add the garlic, sea salt, the nutritional yeast, lemon zest and juice. Blend until well mixed.

Place in a ceramic or glass bowl and empty your probiotic capsules into it.  Stir with a wooden spoon and fold in the dill and chives.  Cover with a clean tea towel and place in a warm place (warming cupboard or the like) and wait 12-24 hours depending on the heat.
The resulting ‘cheese’ should be a bit tangy.

At this point, if it’s mouldable, try rolling it into a log shape and then roll it again in some more dill or some cracked pepper and refrigerate.
Or, like my cheese, just refrigerate in your ceramic container, then use a knife or spoon to spoon it onto slices of whatever takes your fancy – cucumber, apple, plantain crispbread….

It’ll keep up to a week in the fridge (ours lasted one day because we loved it!)