Thorns

Adapted from this recipe (which is perfectly nice but not my thing) That page has some other great advice for making bread maker bread without soy and dairy.

Put into breadmaker:

1 1/4 cup warm water or milk
1 tablespoon oil
1.5 tablespoons treacle
1 egg
1 3/4 teaspoons salt
150g rye flour
450g bread flour
1 crushed Vitamin C tablet
2 teaspoons carraway seeds
2 teaspoons yeast

Cook using "whole wheat" setting. (This gives fluffy but overly big bread)

OR

Use "dough" setting on breadmaker.
Put into bread tin. Leave for an hour, covered, in a warm place.
Preheat oven to 220C then put in bread and turn down temperature, bake for 30 mins at 180C.

You can apparently buy unflavoured vitamin C, but as it happens we have a lot of half empty packets around the house and you really can't taste it.

And now I am done recipe wise :)

This came out so tasty I had beat distantcam off with a stick even though he can eat "real" icecream :)
( Read more... )

So, by request, for distantcam's birthday today I made him choc-orange icecream. None of the recipes I could find online were quite right so I made one up. It was apprently very tasty :)(*)

Choc-orange Icecream
Picture
( Instructions )

I wasn't aiming for gluten free, but that's what I got EDIT: Kind of :) (apart from the pudding, which I bought. Insert your own pudding)
I made these recipes up off the top of my head based on other recipes I have seen/done, there's almost certainly better versions of both but I wanted to record this. Nb not vegan.
( Potato salad )
( custard )
I haven't made milk-free custard before, I was worried it wouldn't work so am very happy it did. I was looking up soy-and-dairy free icecream today, part of me is seriously considering an icecream maker.

seaya suggested I try soft tortilla tacos, and I just made them and they were tasty. They were even bordering on authentic (for me) if you ignore the lack of chili and cheese :)

I found this site with lots of promising looking recipes but ended up making the traditional "mince +cumin" sort (plus green capsicum, coriander, onion, oregano, and cornflour) with lettuce, tomato, avacado, and left over Doritos mild salsa. (Which I really shouldn't eat since it sets off my reflux, but it was there) I've yet to try the "boil the ingredients without browning" cooking technique though, it goes too much against the grain.

The trick with soft corn tortillas I've found is to never eat them cold and fresh. Either eat them warmed up, or toasted/fried etc to crispiness.

Now I'm all inspired to try other foods from countries-in-the-americas-south-of-the-US, including making my own tortillas (they're expensive!). I think I need to track down some masa flour. A brief google implies it's not really available in australia :(

Almond roulade. I made this hazelnut roulade recipe using almond meal and Orgran chocolate mousse and it was tasty. I intend on making it with hazelnuts when my family comes over this weekend. This recipe uses the egg yolk too which could be interesting.

And again, that's a soy and dairy and egg free chocolate mousse mix from Orgran. It's basically cocoa, sugar, and vegetable gum and tasted kind of funny by itself, but made a nice cake filling. Obviously it's not vegan once you put it inside meringue but there's other options :) I could only find this is health food stores.

The soy&dairy free almond dark chocolate from the Woolworths health food section, it has a name like "Artisan". One of the nicer dark chocolates I've eaten.

Corn tortillas from Coles. They're small and dry and crack fairly easily so don't suit burritos, but make a nice toasted sandwich with chicken and avocado. Searching online they're often used in a kind of mexican lasagna which could be interesting. Would probably be much tastier with cheese :/

The gluten free muesli from "Food for health life foods", bought from coles. A bit over sweet, but nice mixed with more plain cereals like Amaranth, and unlike a lot of mueslis doesn't have coconut.

Also I just encountered the idea of tamales and am intrigued.

I just made this up with what I had to hand (and can eat, most people would add chilli), and it's tasty :)

Ingredients:
finely chopped:
1/4 onion
2 cloves garlic
1cm ginger

Small pieces:
2 skinless chicken thighs
1 small potato
1 small turnip

seeds from 3 cardomon pods, crushed
big pinch tumeric
small pinch cumin and coriander
salt and lots of pepper
1 cup chopped (frozen) spinach

Method:
Put a little oil in a non stick pan. Fry the onion, garlic and ginger until it looks a bit cooked. Add the chicken and spices and fry until browned.
Add the potato and turnip and fry a little. Add water to cover and simmer, covered, for 30 mins.
Remove lid and increase heat, simmer uncovered, stirring, until roughly the right consistency.
Add the spinach and simmer for a minute or two.

Makes 1.5 servings (the problem when you make things up as you go along is you don't know what you'll get :))

I read recently that chicken thighs make for tastier stews than the breast and they totally do.

On Saturday night I couldn't decide what to cook with the ingredients I had to hand, so looked them up in google, but I forgot to add "spinach" so just had "Beef mince recipe", and what with the internet being largely american, and american cuisine being, uh, intensely idtastic(*) I came across some very not-diet-friendly dishes, one of which was so bizarre I had to try it (modified to my tummy's requirements)

I give you: Adriana's Pasta Pie, a mix of pasta, sauce, and cheese, covered in cheese, in a crust made of cheese..and meat.

Of course, I made it without the cheese, which kind of defeats the purpose, but it was still quite satisfyingly meaty(**). You might be able to make a vegetarian version with chickpea patty mix I guess?

The other promising recipe (to my tastes) was Southwestern Baked Spaghetti (which might not suffer so much from a de-cheesing). Also, googling "meat crust" got me Low Carb Meat Crust Pizza, which gets my vote for most undiety diet food ever, I guess at least they tell you to drain the grease...

EDIT: Via lauredhel, the wonderful trashy_eats. Mm. Tasty.

(*)I'm trying to use less ablist language, or the term I would have used there is INSANE
(**) If you're curious, the changes I made were to replace the sauce with bottled sauce (1.5 hours to make pasta sauce?) plus garlic, basil, spinach and tomato paste and half an egg (to make up for the flavour and goopiness of cheese respectively), and I added some smoked garlic and tomato paste to the meat to make it tastier. Oh, and I only made two servings so cooked it for less time. It made a nice lunch today, too.

Over the holidays I decided to try out a bunch of foods, especially once the local asian supermarket/vegetable shop started stocking a bunch of interesting looking stuff I can actually eat.

Quinoa(pronounced keen-wah) from Kakulas brothers
This is a protein rich grain which is very popular amongst the vegetarians and the gluten intolerant on my flist. I first saw it for $8 a packet at the nedlands IGA which I decided was a bit much for a rice substitute, but then found it for $7.50 a kilo at Kakulas brothers in the city (which is still pretty pricy but at least I could buy a small amount)

Cooks and tastes like a cross between cous-cous and rice. Quite nice, works really well with a little stock added.

Buckwheat Pancakes From the nedlands IGA
Also gluten free. Ok, but in my opinion not as nice as these

Dutch Cocoa from Kakulas brothers
Mmm. Nice.

Taro (frozen) from local asian supermarket
Just cooked it up with some chicken, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, and chicken stock. Quite tasty, a bit like a potato. After some googling I realised what it reminds me of is taro cake from yum cha.

Jackfruit (frozen) from local asian supermarket
I miss the stalls selling fresh tropical fruit that were everywhere in singapore and malaysia. Anyway, this stuff makes for a nice jackfruit milkshake (Cam loves these, and I am always sad that I can't have them since they're made with full fat milk)

Takoyaki (octopus balls) from local asian supermarket
Like little tasty balls of chico roll mixed with octopus! So tasty!

Plus of course hazelnut macaroons.

The asian supermarket also has a bunch of other interesting looking veggies: manioc, purple yam, and lotus root
Anyone who's familiar with them got any cooking suggestions?
I'm not going to make frozen imported fruits and vegetables a staple of my diet since it's both expensive and environmentally unfriendly, but it's nice to try them out.

Other things I haven't tried yet are the red bean and lotus paste seed buns, and some nice looking chocolate mantou (which I've never tried, but they look nice, and are dairy and cocoa butter free!) Plus a bunch of savoury yum-cha-esque dumplings etc, with the ingredients conveniently listed on the side so I can see which ones are safe. I pass this place every day on the way home from work! I'm dooomed!

I bought a packet of frozen small red bean buns which I've been slowly eating at work, and today was thinking about the taste and how it might work with chocolate. Looking to see if such a recipe existed I found the sorts of fancy foodie blogs you'd expect from googling "adzuki chocolate", plus a bunch of recipes which looked delicious but sophie-unfriendly, and thinking about them gave me ideas for a bunch of new desserts I could eat.

Namely:
-steamed dumplings with a mixture of sweet red bean paste and cocoa/grated dark chocolate (I may try this tommorow by just sprinkling some cocoa into the bun, sounds messy but tasty :))
-Hazelnut Macarons sandwiched with nuttella
-Chocolate walnut cake filled with banana schmutz (adapted to be less buttery, sour, and alcoholic)

Also I found one recipe I could eat as is, Cocoa Hazelnut Macaroons.

And of course now I feel like cake and/or chocolate. *eats a carrot and is unsatisfied*

EDIT: I gave in and tried the cocoa/redbean bun. Not too bad, but would have been MUCH nicer with a thin bit of dark chocolate.