Bulk Cooking

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Posted on September 27, 2015

Since there are only 2 of us to cook for, I do not prepare huge quantities of food but it is nice to have a few meals planned and prepared. The other factor that influences my decision is that I prefer to use the oven efficiently when it is turned on.

Yesterday I sorted out what was lurking in the freezer and decided that this week we would eat what I could make using freezer and pantry ingredients. I should really only need to buy some fresh fruit and vegetables.

I started by making gluten-free pizza bases. I par-cook these in the oven then freeze them for later use.

Here they are ready to freeze. I have some old cereal packets which I use to separate the bases when they go in the freezer.

It is simply a matter of adding the toppings and cooking in the bench-top pizza-maker.

Next, I decided to make some gluten-free muffins which turned out to quite acceptable using a standard recipe and simply substituting gluten-free flour. I made 2 batches – orange, walnut and sultanas in one and the other were banana, walnut and mixed spice. The catalyst for these were the sad looking banana that I rescued from the fridge at work on Friday and some orange pulp I found in my freezer.

At the same time I made some gluten-free wraps for lunches.

These are cooked in a hot, dry frying pan and can be stored in the fridge for a few days.

A pack of sausages which had been left in the freezer by our house-sitters were grilled and sliced then made into a sausage casserole which made 4 serves.

I usually cook a bulk amount of dried red kidney beans in the slowcooker and freeze them in portions ready to use. I found a pack in the freezer as well as a pack of diced beef so I put them in the slowcooker with frozen cherry tomatoes from last season, frozen diced onion and some spices to make 4 serves of chilli beef. That bubbled along all day while I was doing the other cooking.

So, I have the basis of 15 serves of dinners, 6 serves of lunches and 20 muffins.

Do you cook more than one meal at a time? A big occasional cook-up, perhaps?

Gluten-Free Pasta – An Update

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Posted on June 29, 2015

A couple of weeks ago I wrote this post about making my own gluten-free pasta which includes the recipe.

The fettucine and lasagne sheets were packaged and frozen for later use.

I made a large dish of lasagne last week and GMan declared that it was really good. That is high praise indeed, especially since he can happily eat conventional pasta if he wishes.

Tonight was the big test when I boiled the fettucine to add to sliced sauages in a spicy sauce. I made sure the water was at a rolling boil and I added the frozen bundles of pasta. Once it had come back to the boil it was only about 2 minutes until the pasta was ready. My worst fears of a gluggy mass at the bottom of the saucepan were not realised and I will definitely continue to make my own gluten-free pasta.

Made from Scratch

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Posted on June 10, 2015

I have previously written a post about making your own pasta from scratch. Barely 6 months after I wrote this post I made the decision to eat a gluten-free diet for the sake of my health. The pasta making attachment has languished at the back of the pantry and I keep promising myself that I will try making my own gluten-free pasta. Well yesterday was finally the day.

After searching the internet and using some ideas gained through making other gluten dough such as pizza bases, I decided to give it a try.

Here is my recipe:

2 cups gluten-free flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
10g psyllium husk
3 eggs
25ml water
25 ml olive oil

Combine the dry ingredients, add the eggs and then gradually add the water and oil. The mixture will not roll into a ball as it does if using wheat flour but it should be damp enough that you can squeeze it together in your hand. Mix thoroughly for about 3 minutes. Cover bowl with a damp teatowel to retain the moisture and work as quickly as possible.

Take a small ball of dough and knead well in your hands, press out into a thick disc and feed through the pasta roller on thickest setting. The dough will crumble but persevere and do it several times until the dough starts to feed through in sheets. Continue to fold and feed through until you have a good consistency and then feed it through progressively thinner settings.

Once you have the thickness that you want you can cut it into lasagne sheets or attempt the next step of making fettucine.It is certainly more difficult to make than conventional pasta but I am hoping it will be worth the effort. Both the lasagne sheets and fettucine have been frozen so the final verdict will be when they are cooked. I am very confident that the lasagne will be successful but I will have to wait and see with the fettucine.

Based on what I have done so far, I would say that this has been a worthwhile exercise and I will tweak the recipe further if required.

Watch this space………..

Eating In – Pizzas

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Posted on May 19, 2015

I made a batch of gluten-free pizza bases on the weekend and tonight we are having pizza for dinner.

Here are the partly cooked bases thawed and ready to add the topping. I find that pre-cooking these for about 8 minutes makes them much easier to handle when assembling the pizzas.

The dough recipe I use comes from this recipe book.

If you are looking for good gluten-free recipes I would recommend that you look for it in your local library or you can buy it here. The updated version has a different cover.

Otherwise just make or buy your favourite bases.

I assembled all of the toppings.

The ice-cube tray contains frozen basil and you can read about how I prepared it in this previous post.

Once the basil had thawed, I mixed it with a small amount of tomato and spread the mixture on the bases.

Then the rest of the toppings………

Pumpkin slices roasted with balsamic vinegar, shredded baby spinach, diced salami, sliced olives, strips of red capsicum and topped off with some grated cheese. I use low fat cheddar with a bit of strong cheese like partmesan to give a bit of added flavour.

This is the pizza maker which we use and it takes about 5-6 minutes to cook the pizza to perfection.

One quarter had disappeared before I had time to grab my camera!

The toppings are never exactly the same. It just depends on what we have. This is the first time I have used the basil mixture for the base. I usually just use a tomato mixture and a sprinkle of mixed herbs. I have also been known to use mango chutney spread on the base. The only thing limiting you is your imagination.

More Pancakes

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Posted on February 17, 2015

Last year I wrote about Shrove Tuesday. You can read the post here. This year I decided to be a bit more creative and I managed to make gluten-free, egg-free crepes.

I modified the basic batter that I posted last year. Here is my recipe for the crepes.

100g gluten-free flour *see note below*
20g flaxseed meal
1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
250ml milk
Whisk all ingredients together and allow to stand for 5 minutes.

Pour a small quantity of batter onto a hot griddle, spreading thinly with the back of a spoon. Cook until just set then flip and finish cooking.

NOTE: The gluten-free flour that I use is a combination of 4 different flours in specific proportions that I learned about in a gluten-free cookbook. I cannot put the details of the flour here as that would not be fair to the author. Here is a link to the book if you are interested. No, I do not receive any commission. 🙂

Like any crepes these can be eaten in a variety of ways, either sweet or savoury.

I decided to use them to make a main course for dinner and filled them with a bolognaise sauce. As you can see from the photo they are a bit delicate to handle once they are cool, especially if you make them fairly thin as I did.

The crepes will be heated through then topped with a little grated cheese and finished under the grill. I am going to serve it with a green salad.

Are you making pancakes today, gluten-free or not?

Gloriously Gluten-Free

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Posted on October 15, 2014

I made a gluten-free lasagne for dinner tonight. That is not particularly earth-shattering as I know that you can buy gluten-free pasta and I have used it on previous occasions. However, this time I was inspired by a Facebook post from a friend and decided to substitute the lasagne sheets with sliced zucchini.

I use a combination of potato flour and chickpea flour to make the bechamel sauce.

Here are all of the components prepared before I assembled the lasagne.

The last layer in place.

Ready to serve.

Plated up.

The verdict?

The zucchini did not provide as much support as lasagne sheets, therefore, the lasagne did not translate neatly in one piece onto the plate. The taste was excellent which means it was a success by my standards. I would definitely make this again with a few adjustments. I would make the meat sauce drier which I think would help in maintaining the shape. The zucchini could perhaps be sliced a little thicker. You could also make the serves in individual ramekins.

Going Shopping & Gluten-Free Muesli

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Posted on July 20, 2014

As many of you would be aware, I buy most of my dry goods from the bulk bins at Simply Good. This means I can buy as much or as little of an item as want with no packaging and no waste. This is a topic dear to my heart and one which is being encouraged during ‘Plastic-Free July’. I use re-usable mesh bags for things like dried fruit, seeds and nuts and reuse paper bags for flours and almond meal. Once I get home they are decanted into storage jars.

These are the ingredients I use to make my gluten-free muesli. You can adjust the quantities to suit yourself.

2 cups coconut
3 cups pumpkin seeds
3 cups sunflower seeds
4 cups almonds (roughly chopped) – I use the food processor
2 cups sultanas
2 cups flaxseed meal
1/4 cup cinnamon
1/4 cup ground ginger (optional)

Combine all ingredients thoroughly.

I store my mix in a large airtight container.

To serve – I use 1/4 cup of muesli and add 1 dessertspoon each of chia seeds and psyllium husk. I usually add 1 apple (grated) and 1 kiwifruit (chopped) plus a spoonful of plain yoghurt. It makes a delicious and satisfying breakfast.

Culling the Cookbooks

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Posted on November 24, 2013

Today I decided that it was time to bite the bullet and seriously consider what cookbooks I really needed to keep. I did not have a large collection but I knew that there were some that had survived previous attempts to reduce the collection.

I did not photograph the shelf before I removed all of the books but here they all are on the kitchen bench.

I sorted through and recycled lots of loose sheets of paper – scribbled recipes or ripped out of magazines. If I had not made them up till now it is unlikely that I will. Most did not fit with our current eating plan which is mostly gluten-free. Quite a number of the books were very easy to let go of as they were quite dated and the recipes are simply not to our taste any more.

The pile on the right are ready for the op shop bag. The 3 books on the left each have 1 or 2 recipes which I would like to try, so rather than keeping the whole book, I am going to type them into my recipe file on the computer and then the books will be added to the op shop pile.

I keep two binders with plastic sleeves which are for loose recipe sheets but even these had go a bit out of hand so I spent some time refiling them into the plastic sleeves.

The remaining cookbooks have been returned to the shelf.

Some of these books have barely been opened, let alone actually used so I have promised myself that I will use them. In order to achieve my goal, I am going through each book and making a list of the recipes that I would like to try and the relevant page number. I plan to create a spreadsheet of all of the recipes with a reference back to where I can find it. Today I went through 4 of the books but still have quite a number to go. It will be an ongoing project.

The Duke suggested that I just scan the recipes that I want to keep and then get rid of the books completely. That may be an option for the future but at the moment my goal is to actually try out some of the recipes instead of having a shelf full of books that I do not use.

I have a new cookbook on my Christmas wishlist. It is a gluten-free cookbook. I have made a couple of recipes from it and if the rest are as good it will be a worthy addition to my pared-down bookshelf.

Time To Think

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Posted on July 30, 2013

Sometimes I have a precise menu plan for the week and other times I make it up as I go along. Today I had not even taken anything out of the freezer so spent a little time while I was on the train this evening planning what to eat for dinner. I decided on grilled sausages with vegetable patties and fried mushrooms. Of course we have home-made tomato sauce with the sausages. This was all prompted by knowing that there was some leftover sweet potato mash and some leftover cooked rice in the refrigerator.

I picked some bok choy from the garden.

I chopped and lightly stir-fried the bok choy before adding it to the mash/rice mixture.

I added some herb salt, black pepper and 1/2 teaspoon of cumin to the mixture along with a small egg and some chickpea flour. The mixture was very soft so it was a matter of placing dollops of it into the pan and frying both sides. Finally, I fried some mushrooms and dinner was ready.

A filling dinner and the verdict from The Duke was, “Yum”. You can’t ask for much more than that.

How do you deal with leftovers?

Long Forgotten Original

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Posted on June 18, 2013

Once upon a time there was a recipe for Oven-Baked Sausages. I think the book has been moved along to the op shop in one of the culls of my recipe books, however, the general idea remains.

The original recipe consisted of a sweet/sour/spicy sauce made in a saucepan. Sausages were grilled, cooled, sliced and added to the sauce. Pasta spirals were cooked, drained and added to the mixture and combined. Finally, the entire contents of the saucepan were placed in a large casserole dish, topped with grated cheese and breadcrumbs and then baked in the oven.

This was a filling meal for a hungry family but being time-poor I quickly cut out what I regarded as unnecessary steps. It really did not need to be baked in the oven as all of the ingredients were already well-cooked. Once the mixture was combined in the saucepan it was ladled directly into serving bowls. If I was feeling particularly generous I would sprinkle a little grated cheese on top. The casserole was always received enthusiastically so the cheese was not really necessary.

The original recipe for the sauce is a little hazy but here is the general idea.

1 onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 can tomato soup
1/2 can water
1/3 cup fruit chutney
1/4 cup worcestershire sauce

I remember that I was always checking that I had fruit chutney when I wanted to make this.

Like many recipes, this one seemed to run its course and then was forgotten once the girls left home.

I thought of it not long ago and have made it a couple of times recently with some amendments.

Some of these were necessary because I now eat a gluten-free diet. Canned tomato soup contains gluten so I substitute home-made tomato paste and some additional water. Naturally I no longer mix pasta into the dish. The sausages I buy are gluten-free but you would need to check that, too.

The jar of tomato paste looks over full as I store it upside-down in the refrigerator which inhibits the growth of any mould. This also applies to commercially produced tomato paste as well.

The recipe has evolved and varies depending on what is in the cupboard/refrigerator. I made it this morning using the following ‘recipe’.

1 onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
Remainder of tomato paste (home-made) – about 1/4 cup
Water – enough to rinse the jars and create the right consistencey
Handful of sultanas
Vinegar – about 2 tablespoons
Rosella jam (home-made) – about 2 tablespoons – bottle rinsed out
1/4 cup worcestershire sauce (home-made)
Tomato sauce – home-made (remnant in the bottle) – rinsed out

Here are some of the jars – on the left is the worcestershire sauce. The middle jar is the rosella jam mixed with vinegar and the last of the tomato sauce (empty bottle on the right).

I had cooked the sausages on Sunday night and cut them up ready so they were added and the mixture simmered for about 10 minutes.

Like so many casserole-type meals this sauce will benefit from standing and the flavours will develop further by the time we have dinner tonight. There is some home-made pasta in the freezer which The Duke will have with the suasages in sauce and I will have stir-fried shredded sweet potato with mine.