Thursday, April 30, 2009

Cheap as Chips

Parsnip and Carrot Crisps

I made something a bit different tonight...vegetable crisps (or chips if you're in the USA).

Easiest thing ever.



Ingredients:

  • 1 parsnip
  • 1 carrot
Preparation

  • Peel the parsnip and carrot.
  • Using a sharp knife or vegetable peeler shave the carrot and parsnip into wafer thin lengths.
  • Heat some oil for deep fat frying and add the veg pieces carefully (there's a lot of water in the veg and they can spit).
  • Let them cook until brown and crispy (don't worry if they're not entirely crispy when you life them out, they should harden in a few seconds).
  • Sprinkle on salt.
Enjoy!

oh, and I also tried to make corn flour wraps (FAIL!).

Shep

Follow up 02nd May 2009: The proof of the pudding is in the eating ... and Conor loves these!!! Stumble Delicious

I Don't Want Your Money Honey (Well not all of it)

Great Value Honey From Lidl

I was bemoaning the price of shop bought honey and cursing the mystery honey bee killing disease when someone in work mentioned that Lidl do honey cheap.

Boy do they! 2 euro and 39 cent for a 500 ml jar.

Super stuff! Stumble Delicious

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Better Scones?

New Scone Recipe

A simple twist on the original classic (from last week)
This is a definite success.

  1. 100 g Garam Flour
  2. 200 g Corn flour
  3. 1 tsp salt
  4. 150 ml Milk (I used both almond and rice milk in different batches with equal success)
  5. 6 tsp Baking Powder
  6. 1 tbsp oil (I used omega 3 oil)
  7. 4 tbsp protien (see below)

To cook
  1. Preheat oven to 180 Centigrade
  2. Sift the flours, salt baking powder together and add in the protien from step 3 if desired
  3. This is an excellent recipe for disguisiung other foods you want to be included in the diet. So far I have made this with chicken, sausage (GF of course!) and bacon. Simply get a few tablespoons of the meat (not the sausage!) and grind it down to a smooth consistency. I've been using a coffee grinder for this as it's quicker and easier to clean then the full mixer.
  4. Add oil and milk all at once and mix to a firm consistency (slightly sticky is fine too)
  5. Turn out onto a floured board and roll (I just use my hands) to about 1/2 inch thick
  6. Cut out scones and place on a floured baking tray
  7. Cook for 10-12 minutes ... the tops may not brown as much as you'd expect so check them!
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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Milking it.

Making My Own Milk.

OK, so my milk making machine arrived yesterday. It came from www.soymilkquick.com and I couldn't recommend them more highly as an organisation, they have been really helpful.

Anyhoo...first attempts at making rice milk have failed. I tried with 2 measures of rice then 1 measure, then a 1/2 measure.

The first 2 were too thick and the 1/2 measure was too watery.

Guess I'll try 3/4 measure tonight!

I contacted soymilkquick and they helpfully told me:

Hi Stephen,

Not to worry, you're no bother! I'd be happy to give you some tips with making rice milk.

From my experience, rice milk is the hardest milk to perfect. There are so many types and variations in results from type to type and even crop to crop. For instance, when I use American grown brown jasmine rice vs Thai grown brown jasmine rice, I get different results. Even organic vs non-organic rices can yeild differently. I've not really experienced this with other types of milks I've made, such as nuts, hemp, flax, quinoa, etc.

The best tip I can give if you're interested in working with rice milks, is to visit a local shop that sells bulk food items, and purchase small quantities of different varieties of rice. This way you can experiment with them and find one that works well for you.

Another tip I can give is to use brown rice exclusively. I find brown over white rice will yeild a much nicer product. Rinsing will help, but be careful not to soak it too long. What some people will do is actually roast their rice in the oven slightly, and they claim this helps alot. I can't speak to this myself, as I haven't tried this trick.

I also prefer to use slightly less than one cup of rice, as I like a thinner consistency too. Just out of curiousity, what measuring cup did you use? Make sure you're using the little clear plastic cup that came with your machine rather than a standard kitchen measuring cup. They are actually quite different in volume, so that would alter your results greatly. Your other alternative is to dilute, or thin out your milk as soon as the milk is complete.

One of my team members swears that when she adds some salt to the rice milk, it prevents it from thickening up too much. She adds it to her transfer jug prior to diluting her milk slightly. Again, I have yet to try this tip for myself, but she says it works great.

The other thing I'd suggest, is to try a mixture of brown rice and other ingredients, such as quinoa, flax and hulled hempseeds.

I have a pdf file with a recipe and tips for rice milk which I will attach. You might find it helpful as well.

Best of luck in trying out these suggestions Stephen. I know how important it is for you to make a milk that your son can enjoy.
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Yeast is the Word

In Search of Good Bread.
Well so far I've tried making my own bread with limited (no) success. Thusly the recipe for stuffing and croutons!

I've tried shop bought rice bread and while Conor ate some of it it cost €8.50 for a small loaf!

Yesterday I tried the Orgran white bread mix. Results? Super. Highly recommended. Really easy to make (water and oil), and it makes a lovely risen fluffy white pan. The mix was still pricy at €4, but the results were great and it was still twice the size of the rice bread.

Still in search of a good recipe for home made bread, but this will do for now!

Shep. Stumble Delicious

Monday, April 27, 2009

Every Little Helps...

Finding Good Value Ingedients

Heath Food Stores
I started off buying all my baking ingredients in health food stores. They carry a wide variety of quality products and mixes BUT and I have a BIG BUT they are expensive.

Ethnic Food Stores
After my trip to the Health Food Store today I wandered into the Oriental Emporium across the street. The stuff here was way cheaper...for example a small jar of Ghee was 12 euro in the Health Food Shop and a large one was 4 euro in the Chinese Store. All kinds of flours were cheaper too...corn, rice and potato flour were all on offer and all at much lower prices than even at the supermarket. They also had stuff like rice noodles, rice crackers etc at great price.

A note of caution to this tale...check the ingredients carefully. If in doubt leave it out.

Every Little Helps! Stumble Delicious

Run run run, as fast as you can...

Gingerbread Recipe


 
Seemed to get this one right 1st time! Of course Conor hasn't tasted it yet, so can't tell for sure.

Ingredients

  • 1 and 1/3 (200 g) cups of corn flour (or other gf/cf flour)
  • 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 tsp ground ginger
  • 2 tsp xanthan gum
  • 1/4 cup oil
  • 1/4 cup black strap mollasses plus
  • 1/4 cup agave
    or
  • 1/2 cup honey
  • 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp water
Cooking
  • Preheat oven to 180 degrees Centigrade
  • Mix all the stuff together all at once
  • If it's not binding then add some more oil a little at a time (I used some Ghee)
  • Form into a ball and roll flat until it's about an inch thick.
  • Cut into fun shapes and put on a baking tray.
  • Bake for about 15 minutes


 Enjoy! Stumble Delicious

Gimme Some Sugar Baby!

Sugar Replacement

So...for this GF/CF/Soy Free diet to be effective we also need to drastically reduce the sugar content of the daily food intake.


A note on "fake" sugar. Do not use artificial sweetener (like the stuff you get in diet drinks) they contain BAD stuff...the problems with using them are well documented elsewhere, but to name a few they can:

  1. Make kids (more) hyper
  2. Increase the chance of weight gain (in studies the people who drank non-diet drinks had a smaller chance of becoming obese)
  3. It acts as the reverse isotonic drink!
  4. More stuff
OK, so on to sugar substitutes that are not "fake".


Natural Sugar Substitutes

Agave
Nectar from cactus plants, comes in a syrupy form that looks (and tastes) like honey. Pretty easy to find in health food shops (I got mine in the health food shop in Georges Street Arcade - €4.20 for a medium sized jar).

I've only used it in cooking once...and the results were not great...but it was a new recipe so I can't really blame agave.

Honey
Natural and sweet. Easy to find, but Bloody expensive!

Xylitol
Extracted from veg as I understand. Can be bought in granulated form and used as a one for one substitute for sugar in baking etc. I got it in the health food shop on Georges Street.

Pretty good results with this so far. But it is pretty expensive.

Stevia
This is a very concentrated liquid sweetener. One drop is like 40 spoons of sugar or something like that I imagine.

I still haven't found a supplier that carries this in Ireland...I've been told to try up north?



Ok, well that's that for now.

I'll add more as I learn!

Shep. Stumble Delicious

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Starting The Adventure

Starting off the GF/CF/SF journey.

So...we got back to Ireland from the DAN! conference in Atlanta last Monday. Fired up to start our son (who turned nine this weekend (happy birthday!)) on the Gluten (wheat), Caesin (Dairy) and Soy Free diet. Oh, yes and we want to cut the sugars out too.

Challenges:

  • Replace his current diet with a healthier one. his diet mostly of:
    1. Toast & crusty bread rolls
    2. Scones and cheesy scones
    3. Cheesy crackers
    4. Cheese
    5. Crackers
    6. Apple juice
    7. Sweets
  • Find an alternative to butter that has neither dairy nor soy in it.
  • Find an alternative to milk in baking
  • Find out how to bake 1-5 above.
  • Celebrate his birthday with a cake.
Ingredients

Flour
The first challenge was to find alternatives to wheat in baking. There are lots of good natural alternatives out there. Unfortunately there's no magic bullet 1 for 1 replacement. Odlums have a product (Trytamil) which is excellent, but sadly contains soy flour (Odlumns, if you read this please try and reformulate without the soy).

So...we have found in various places various flours you can buy. Tesco in Naas have a small gluten free section and Superquinn have a bigger one. Sadly these don't have many products that are also caesin free and soy free too. Health food shops (which I'm now enjoying for the first time in a long and unhealthy life) have better selections. We have bought many types this week and the key (from what I've read) is to mix certain ones to get a good base. So far we have bought Buckwheat, Corn (maize), Rice and Trytamil along with a flour mix (Dove Farms) and a brown bread mix.

The flour verdict (so far)....we'll I haven't been able to recreate all the things I need to cook using the ingredients yet, but the white flour mix seems pretty good so far as does the rice flour. The brown bread (also from Dove Farms) smelled great while cooking, but tasted so-so (noone here would eat it!)....I did find a great use for it though (see recipes below)

Butter
Butter has been more of a challenge. In baking I'm trying to substitute with veg oil, nut butter or coconut oil...but with varying degrees of success.

I'm still no closer to a butter as a spread on toast solution...ghee (clarified butter from Indian stores) has been suggested in the books as the clarification process removes the caesin, but I haven't tried that yet. Another choice is to make my own GF/CF/SF mayo...which may work out fine for me I can't see Conor going for that.

Verdict: For cooking plain old veg oil often works, for spreading on bread...watch this space...

Milk
This has been slightly easier. We got Rice Dream from Tesco. There is some debate about whether Rice Dream is actually totally gluten free. (Apparently) There is no gluten in the ingredients, but there is some in the production process which can contaminate the milk (1 part per 20 million). I'm willing to accept those odds for now, but there are people who have noticed a difference when they replaced Rice Dream with another totally gluten free brand.

I also got some Almond Milk from the health food store.

Both are pretty good.

Anyway, the shop bought milks are just a stepping stone as I've ordered my milk making machine (www.soymilkquick.com) and it should arrive this week.


Cooking

Recipe 1: Scones
This is a definite success.

  1. 150 g White Flour Mix (I used Dove Farms one)
  2. 150 g Rice flour
  3. 1 tsp salt
  4. 230 ml Milk (I used both almond and rice milk in different batches with equal success)
  5. 6 tsp Baking Powder
  6. 1 tbsp oil (I used omega 3 oil)
  7. 2 tbsp protien (see below)

To cook
  1. Preheat oven to 180 Centigrade
  2. Sift the flours, salt baking powder together and add in the protien from step 3 if desired
  3. This is an excellent recipe for disguisiung other foods you want to be included in the diet. So far I have made this with chicken, sausage (GF of course!) and bacon. Simply get a few tablespoons of the meat (not the sausage!) and grind it down to a smooth consistency. I've been using a coffee grinder for this as it's quicker and easier to clean then the full mixer.
  4. Add oil and milk all at once and mix to a firm consistency (slightly sticky is fine too)
  5. Turn out onto a floured board and roll (I just use my hands) to about 1/2 inch thick
  6. Cut out scones and place on a floured baking tray
  7. Cook for 10-12 minutes ... the tops may not brown as much as you'd expect so check them!
Recipe 2: GF/CF Stuffing

Strange, but true...you can make such a thing and it can taste great! The following recipe was created by my wife and I. It's a byproduct of the brown bread I made that noone wanted to eat.
Simple to make and an excellent accompanient to any meal.

  1. 4-5 slices of gf/cf bread made into breadcrumbs
  2. 2 onions diced
  3. 4 tbsp sage
  4. 1 egg
  5. flax seeds
  6. Gogi berries
To cook
  1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees centigrade
  2. Fry the onions in some veg oil. I added some almond butter, but this was probably not necessary. Make sure you use plenty of oil ad the breadcrumbs tend to be on the dry side.
  3. Add onions and sage to the breadcrumbs and mix.
  4. Whisk an egg and add as a binder.
  5. Optionally add flax seeds and gogi berries to taste.
  6. Judge yourself how moist the mix is ... if it looks dry add another egg, or some oil or some almond butter.
  7. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees centigrade for 60 minutes.

Recipe 3: Croutons

Another bread that noone wanted recipe.

Still not perfected...but close I think.

  1. Oil
  2. Tomato puree
  3. Bread
  4. Herbs (to taste)
To cook
  1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees centigrade (seems to be my favourite temperature!)
  2. Marinate the oil and tomato for some time
  3. Seive the oil from the paste...you should now have a tomato oil!
  4. Cut the bread into crouton sized pieces (leave the crusts on ... these help keep the croutons together)
  5. Heat a small amout of the oil in a non stick pan
  6. Roll individual pieces of bread in the oil and then add to pan
  7. Flash fry on on sides
  8. Remove from pan and transfer to an oven proof dish and bake for about 10 minutes.
Viola! Croutons.

Now sprinkle with basil or whatever you like.

Enjoy.


Recipe 4: Chocolate Birthday Cake.

I have to admit I cheated and bought a shop mix. It was excellent...from a company called Orgran (please send me free stuff for the name drop!). I'm going to buy more this week!





Ok, well that's all from me for tonight....it's very late and I'm tired.

My objectives would be to find recipes for the following:
  1. Scones (done!)
  2. Cookies/biscuits
  3. Breadsticks
  4. Bread
I guess I've a ways to go...but I'll get there.

Shep.


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