Gluten Free Goats Cheese and Dew Red Pepper with Caerphilly Stuffed Crust Pizza

This was the most delicious pizza I’ve had in a long time! I love being cooked for, and the boyfriend did a wonderful job with this one… but refuses to write the blog post! So, here I am writing it for him, despite his wonderful baking skills. I love the square shape too… it was a real surprise as he was being very secretive making this.

We had the pizza with our favourite Marks and Spencer Coleslaw and I made some Gluten Free Sweet Potato Wedges.

Ingredients

1 x Hale and Hearty Pizza Base Mix (the best flour blend i’ve found for making a pizza base and it doesn’t need resting, it just all goes in the bowl and you can start topping up the pizza!)

4 x Tbsp Lloyd Grossman Tomato and Garlic Pasta Sauce (or your own, or whichever you prefer, but this one is my favourite!)

1 x Red Pepper – roasted and then made all dewy and delicious and I don’t know how the boyfriend did this, so i’ll have to get him to go through it step-by-step so I can post it up for you)

50g Soft Goats Cheese (goats cheese is a brilliant alternative if you can’t have cows milk… it even says so on the pack of the packaging of the cheese we got!)

75g Caerphilly Cheese, crumbled (if you’re going low or no dairy, replace this with your alternative!)

Fresh Rosemary to garnish

Instructions

1. Make up the packet of Hale and Hearty Pizza Mix to whatever shape you want your pizza to be… we had square! I love it!

2. Sprinkle the crumbly cheese around the edge and roll up the crust.

3. Spread on the tomato sauce

4. Assemble the peppers and goats cheese on top

5. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes.

6. Serve up with sweet potato wedges and coleslaw.

Easy!!

Enjoy!

Rubelle’s Moon

Gluten Free Mince Pies with Streusel Topping

This was, I have to say my most successful pastry making attempt! I even had to photograph the pastry as I rolled it out, as, it didn’t break and crumble, it re-moulded back together once i’t cut the circles out, and, it baked really well! I was completely amazed by this as, I was expecting some pretty broken mince pies for my first attempt.

You will see from the pictures I made them a little thicker than usual, you can make your pastry thinner if you prefer, I just didn’t want to push my luck with the gluten free pastry and, this thickness made exactly 24! Although, I had to shape the last one by hand! Spot the dodgy one in the pictures…

So, here’s the original link to the recipe from Delicious Magazine:

http://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/mince-pies-with-hazelnut-streusel-topping

And, with a few alterations and using my own, homemade Mincemeat, here’s my recipe:

Ingredients

500g of my Homemade Mincemeat (click for the recipe)

For the pastry

350g Gluten Free Flour
1x Tbsp Organic icing sugar (it’s so much tastier than the bright white stuff… keep a look out, it’s golden, i’ll find out the name of it for you!)
1/2 x Tsp Table salt
180g Dairy Free Margerine (I used Asda’s Sunflower Margarine, Light)
Extra margarine for greasing

For the streusel topping

50g x Gluten Free Plain Flour
2 x Tbsp Dairy Free Margarine
25g x Light Brown Sugar
1/2 x Tsp ground cinnamon
25 g Hazelnuts, chopped in a blender and then toasted lightly

iNSTRUCTIONS

1. Pastry – In a bowl, sift in the flour, icing sugar and salt, add the margarine and mix with a hand whisk until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Or put it all in a blender and blend to get the fine breadcrumb texture. Be warned, when you turn on the whisk, you will be blasted with a smog of icing sugar and flour – I was, so stand back, get the extractor fan on, and get whisking!

3. Stir in 6 Tbsp of cold water, one at a time with a knife until the mixture comes together. Stop adding water when you have a dough, but I found I needed more water than the original recipe (gluten free flour needs a little more water than the regular which calls for 3-4).

4. Flour a surface, put the dough on the surface, cut the dough in two (so that you’ve got manageable amounts to deal with)

5. Roll the first half out to your desired thickness, i’d go for anything between 3 and 5mm any thinner and you’re treading on dangerous gluten free pastry territories and any thicker and you’ll be breaking your teeth eating them! Cut out the circles of dough and put them onto your greased patty tins.

6. Repeat this process with the other half of the dough.

7. Spoon 1 x Tsp of Mincemeat onto each dough circle and put the trays into the fridge to chill for between 20-30 minutes.

8. While the pies are chilling, make the streusel topping by combining the sifted flour and butter together to get a fine breadcrumb resemblance, add in the sugar and cinnamon and rub in with your fingers, finally stir in the crushed and toasted hazelnuts and you have your streusel topping!

9. Remove the chilled pies from the fridge and spoon 1 x Tsp of topping onto each pie – I ran out halfway through, so if this happens, just make a little extra or have some open top pies and some with topping!

10. Pop the Mince Pies into a preheated oven and bake for 20 minutes or until golden.

11. Once baked, remove from the oven, leave to sit for 5 minutes in the trays, remove and allow to cool or serve warm dusted with icing sugar and with your favourite festive accompanyment… cream, custard, brandy butter or a mug of my Mulled Cider (we chose that!)… anything goes! It’s Christmas!

Enjoy!

Rubelle’s Moon

Gluten Free Carrot, Parsnip and Quinoa Nut Loaf

This is my second attempt at a nut loaf, which is loosely based upon this recipe: http://gggiraffe.blogspot.com/2008/03/nutroast-in-time-of-vagueness.html
which was taken from Vegetarian Cooking Without by Barbara Cousins.

But i’ve changed quantities, ingredients and generally it’s now a Rubelle’s Moon recipe. The consistency was not as fantastic as last time, so I’ve put it in the fridge over night to see how it turns out, as even though the other loaf was yummy straight away, it did set too, so i’m hoping a night in the fridge will not only make this delicious roast taste amazing, but will also hold it’s shape together much better… I’ll report in!

Carrot, Parsnip and Cashew Loaf

Serves 2

3 Medium sized carrots,
80g Quinoa
50g Unsalted Cashew Nuts ground in a food blender (keep quite chunky and coarse)
Spray Olive Oil
1 Red Onion, finely sliced
1 Large Parsnip
1 Tbsp Mixed Herbs
Salt and Black Pepper to taste

Instructions

Preheat oven to 220 C

1. Peel and chop carrots and cook til soft (about 20 minutes).

2. Cook the Quinoa for 20 minutes in a pan of boiling water – boil for 5 mins, simmer for the other 15, drain and rinse with boiling water.

3. At the ten minute mark, cook the carrots until just soft (approx. 10 minutes)

4. Meanwhile, fry the red onion and garlic in a few sprays of olive oil until just softened (5 minutes, tip into a bowl and set aside for later.

5. Add the parsnips to the same frying pan and fry until browned – don’t put the pan on high and speed up the process or you’ll end up with burnt on the outside, raw on the inside parsnips, just cook slowly for 15 minutes and turn up the heat for the last 5.

6. Drain the carrots and blend to a puree in a food blender.

7. Take a large bowl and combine all of the ingredients together. Add in 1 x Tbsp oil if the ingredients are not combining well.

8. Transfer to an oil-sprayed load tin, make sure the top is even by flattening with a spoon or spatula, cover with an oil sprayed piece of tin foil and bake for 30 minutes.

9. After 30 minutes, remove the tin foil and bake for a further 30 minutes.

10. Leave to sit for 5 minutes, or, do what we did and leave it in the fridge overnight, heat up and serve the next day with vegetables and a tomato sauce of your choice!

Just to point out – don’t expect a proper ‘loaf’ with this roast as, it is egg-free and breadcrumb free, so nothing binds it together, so it will come out of the tin quite crumbly, but absolutley delicious!

Enjoy!

Rubelle’s Moon

Gluten Free Goats Cheese and Dew Red Pepper with Caerphilly Stuffed Crust Pizza

Mulled Cider

I love the smell of mulled cider, but sometimes I find it so strong and off putting that I can barely get through a glass of it! So, I’ve come up with my own not-so-strong but still winter spice delicious recipe that I hope you’ll enjoy!

If you want to make an alcohol-free version, substitute the cider for apple juice – i’d go for something like the new, cloudy Innocent apple juice as it isn’t too sweet and will really go with the delicious spice flavours!

Double the recipe, triple it or even make it in a big jam pan if you have guests over, just keep it gently simmering away, and away from the edge of the oven if you have kids, pets or mulled cider-filled adults meandering around the place! You can never be too careful…

This is one of the first recipes I ever wanted to do in Rubelle’s Moon’s Gluten Free Challenge, but I always had other things that came up, and since I’ve been focusing on Christmas stuff for quite some time now, I thought I should bring you all some more main courses… which I hope you’ve been enjoying!

This one is vegetarian, delicious and a great alternative to a Sunday Roast (we had it as our Sunday Dinner!) The best thing is, Butternut Squash seems to be in season and on sale at the moment, so you can get great squash and not spend too much! Also, you could serve this with something meaty if you like meat or you could halve it again and serve four and serve it with another vegetarian accompanyment or maybe some swede mash, stuffed mushrooms or simply some corn bread… it’s a really versatile dish!

Here’s the original recipe location:

http://www.channel4.com/4food/recipes/chefs/hugh-fearnley-whittingstall/stuffed_butternet_squash

Here’s a quote from the wonderful Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall from the Channel 4 website:

Hugh: “This is one of my favourite autumn main courses, another great vegetable idea that I’ve borrowed from my friend, Sarah Raven. It’s easy to adapt and alter the stuffing for the squash, according to what you have and what you fancy.” …

And, here’s the recipe now i’ve adapted it…

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat the oven to 190 C

1. Clean the squash on the outside (especially important to make sure this is clean to avoid any accidental glutening if you put it in the trolley, on the conveyor belt or even if it’s been anywhere in transit that this could have happened! Plus, get rid of anything else unwanted that may be on it! Give it a good scrub!)

2. Half the squash – you’ll need a big knife to cut through and also, be careful as it’s pretty tough to cut through.

3. Scoop out the seeds and fibre-y bits (this bit drives me mad, so the boyfriend had to take over!) Grab a pyrex dish big enough for the squash and put the two halves in – fleshy side up. Then put one Tsp of margarine in one of the holes you scooped the fibres out of, and one Tsp in the other half, pop in half the crushed garlic in each half, put the dish in the oven and bake uncovered for 1 hour.

4. Once baked, scoop out the flesh into a bowl (leave around 1cm of flesh in it, don’t be too vigourous with your scooping as I was as I broke the skin at one point – if you do this too, just patch it back up with some squash!) make sure you get all the garlic butter in with the squash, season well and give it a real mash up.

5. Sprinkle in the walnuts, thyme, honey and goats cheese, season to your taste and mix until combined.

6. Now put all the lovely goats cheese squash mixture back into the ‘shells’ of the squash, sprinkle with the crumbly cheese, cover with tin foil and put back into the oven for 15 minutes.

Serve up and enjoy!

I hope you enjoy all these recipes! More to come in this coming weekend’s challenge…

Rubelle’s Moon

I’ve been craving bagels for soo long! Proper American, deliciously sweet bagels with cream cheese and salmon! Yum.And now, my gluten free diet can fit them in… so happy! I hope you like the recipe, and, it’s a really fun one to make with the boiling of the bread, so it’s a good one to show the kids (maybe not for them to actually do given the boiling water element of this, but waiting for the bagels to bob up to the surface is great… I didn’t know this would happen, so when the breads popped up to the surface after being sunk initially, it was completely unexpected!)

I made these following my challenge from Kate (@katieboobaker), finally at the weekend and they were amazing! They even tasted great the next day after being warmed through in the microwave, so I think making a double batch and freezing or eating toasted or warmed through the week would be ideal, but I just made a small batch of four for us for lunch and one left over for me for a lunch at work!

In the end, we didn’t end up having salmon and cream cheese as I made the bagels the same day as I made the Cheesy Fish Pie… fish and cheese overload? As much as I want to say yes, my tummy is saying no in a big way! Too much dairy me! But, if you so desire, go ahead, maybe get some dairy-free cream cheese? Let me know what you put on your bagels… i’d love any new suggestions. I had mine with soup, salad and some of my Chilli Jam, along with my latest love of Sweet Tomato Relish from Marks and Spencer… a real Ploughman’s Style Lunch!

The recipe needs 1 hour to rise, so make it early in the morning if you’re wanting fresh bagels for lunch. I made ours, we went shopping and then it was ready for cooking once we were back!

Ingredients

1 x tbsp Active Dry Yeast, prepared to pack instructions 

2 tbsp caster sugar1 tsp Table Salt225g Gluten free Brown Bread flour (I used Dove’s Farm for this. You could also use White, I chose brown this time as I like to eat brown bread more than white, but of course it’s up to you!)

Spray Olive Oil (if you haven’t heard me going on about this already, I love it, it makes greasing trays alot easier and especially for this, you can give the tops of the bagels a little spritz before baking!)

Instructions

1. Make up your Dry Active Yeast and leave in a warm place (I put mine in a warm oven at around 50 C or in the airing cupboard) until it is frothy – about 10-15 minutes.

2. Remove the yeast from the warm ‘place’ and whisk in 1 X Tbsp sugar (this is extra on top on what you use for the active yeast).

3. Add 100ml warm water to the yeast mixture, whisk in the salt, then gradually stir in half of the flour (use a wooden spoon for this… your whisk will get claggy very quickly!)

4. Now add the rest of the flour to the mixture and get rid of the wooden spoon – this time you need to get your hands into the mixture and gather all of the ingredients together until you have a soft, smooth dough, add a little more flour if you need to, but don’t dry the dough out.

5. Once you have a nearly smooth dough, Isprinkle the surface with a thin layer of flour and roll the dough onto it to smooth it off, (gluten free flour tends to be a little stickier than ‘regular flour’) kneading the dough for 10 minutes or son – be gentle!

6. Spray the bowl you just used with spray oil, put the ball of dough into it, spray the dough once or twice and cover the bowl loosely with clingfilm.

7. Leave to rise for 1 hour (this can be longer if you’re out… Mine was about 1 1/2 hours)

8. Preheat the oven to 220 C just before the dough is finished rising. And, grease a baking tray with a few sprays of the oil spray.

9. Flour a surface and tip the dough ball out. Cut it into 4 pieces with a sharp knife.

10. Roll the pieces of dough into balls, then flatten them down onto to surface with the palm of your hand – they should be about 3/4 inch thick.

11. Flour the handle of a spoon and stick it into the center of each ball of dough and wiggle it around until you get a 2cm wide hole in the middle. Do this for each piece, re-flouring the spoon if needed.

12. Boil a large pan of water with the other 1Tbsp Sugar in it, then gently put the bagels into the water using a spoon – don’t splash them in, unless you love winding up with burns from boiling water… no? Didn’t think so, so definitly spoon them in (I’m saying this because usually I would just put things straight in, but I saw sense before the burn happened this time!)  Leave them to cook for 1 minute, flip them over in the water and cook for another minute or until they are bobbing happily on the surface.

13. Remove from the water with something that will drain the bagels as they are removed (slotted spoon, fish slice, slotted spatula, weird flat spoon thing with lots of holes in – my personal choice) and place on the baking tray. At this point you could sprinkle some poppy seeds or sesame seeds on top, but we just went for plain!

14. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, turn over then bake for 10 more minutes.

15. Remove from the oven, leave to ‘rest’ for 5 minutes and serve up!

Enjoy!

Rubelle’s Moon

This morning I have a gluten-over… a little like a hangover in that my head feels heavy and my body aches, only no drinking involved, just one almighty crash head-first into a load of wheat and gluten! Welcome to my Gluten-Over!

I’ll say right now, I’m no health expert and this advice is totally from my own experience and is what I do, if you are having a severe reaction, then of course feel free to ignorez-vous my advice and do the best thing for you in your situation (doctors, medicine, general medical advice etc.)

‘How?’ I hear you ask… ‘Do you not know how to look after yourself?’ Well yes I do, but when you go out for your work’s Christmas Party and the place your going to is a massive Christmassy event with Markets that are selling food that isn’t clearly labelled and the food you’re being served is being served to about 50 other people, the risk of cross-contamination and accidental glutening is going to happen… I knew it could have happened, and, even after being extra cautious, it still happened. Sometimes you can’t escape the dreaded gluten, and there was no way I was going to go overboard and leave before dinner or take in my own food (who do I think I am?!) So I tried what I thought would be okay (since we pre-booked my meal), however understandably there were a few mix-ups and a bit of miscommuncation along the way, and in amongst all of this, I got glutened.

The main culprits were:

1. Curious little crunchy bits on the sugar coated cashew nuts… were they biscuit? Tasted like popcorn but I couldn’t be sure! They looked so yummy as well and the nuts weren’t sat next to anything looking like it was gluten-filled… so I guess it was the coating and wherever they were made… language barriers made it pretty difficult to determine what was in the nuts, but I tried, and the nuts failed… Ah well, it couldn’t be helped, the stall looked beautiful and inviting and they weren’t to know, so now I know to stick to roasted chestnuts… at least they’re in the shell (and I love them!)

2. Vinegar on the prawn cocktail (yepp… please don’t look at me like that, and yes it was as vile as you are now imagining) … so they took the marie rose sauce off, but neglected to check what the prawns were marinated in, and I ended up with a mouthful of what I thought was the lemon juice, but then after a second taste-test, it was distinctly vinegary… so this leads me to believe not fresh and most definitley soaked in vinegar (I know this happens as I accidentally bought mussels in vinegar rather than fresh so its a common thing)

3. Bread served with the prawn cocktail… do not even try and tell me that was gluten free, I know a lot of gluten free bread is awesome, but this was simply ordinary bread… it didn’t have the springy nature of gluten free bread and the taste was way too similar to regular… I was shocked when I bit into it as the taste was like a memory if you get my taste-to-brain-sense drift and I instantly knew not to continue this little taste test! So with that, I waved goodbye to the whole starter!

4. Red cabbage – why oh why must people marinate the poor thing in malt vinegar? I love it raw, but it’s also nice just cooked, please don’t mess with it and make it all unavailable to me!! But this of course happened… it’s no-ones fault, it’s just that I definitley cannot tolerate Malt Vinegar because of the Barley Malt in it… I just go all bloaty and grumpy and tired… so unless you love and desire those qualities in a person, please do not feed me malt vinegar (I wouldn’t let you anyway, but just in case we’re in some strange situation where you have to choose my meals and one of the options is malt-vinegar based?!)

Overall a pretty unsuccessful gluten-ised Ruby occured! So after thinking I could sit and stick out the rest of the night, I realised that at 9.30 with an hours train journey ahead of me, I would call it a night. All in all I had a great night last night, and, because I know what to do in case of such a gluten incident occuring, I was okay by this morning, and thanks to all my lovely followers on Twitter I was able to talk to people who totally get where I was coming from! I really do appreciate the community of people on there as there’s always someone to talk to and we all offer lots of advice and general banter to each other, so it’s amazing to feel like you aren’t the only one!

‘But what do I do if I get glutened too?’

I can tell you’re wondering what I did and what you should do if a similar thing happens! I always make sure I’m prepared when I go away for a few days/am out for the day, but I now know to be prepared for mass-meals out with work. So here is my survival guide.

To take with you:

I always take these things on holiday, but i’m now going to make sure I have them on me for dinner parties etc.

Charcoal Tablets (ohmylife these are amazing – like natural anti-acids!)

A couple of peppermint tea bags (just in case, and also, if you’re am IBS sufferer like me, it will help soothe once you’ve eaten and means you can avoid the dreaded filter coffee that always sends my tummy into spasms after a heavy meal… just ask the waiter/waitress to bring you a pot/cup of boiling water) Do not feel you have to string them from the light fitting as in the picture – I just found this picture and thought it was sweet!

Zirtek (or whatever allergy medicine you use) – I always take one of these if I have a gluten incident as sometimes I can get an asthma/ecezema flare up as a direct result… always joyous when I’m sat there totally hit by everything! So, I take this just to be on the safe side!

Any other of your vital medications that you will need!

What to do at the time:

If you’re drinking alcohol, stop, this will make your tummy all acidic which will not help. (Also… you know what drinking too much will do to you, if you don’t, feel free to view the picture on the left, and if you haven’t seen the film it’s from… make your own story up with the information you have in the picture… have fun!)

Try and get some water inside you as I find this instantly cools my tummy down.

Don’t panic – I find panicking and stressing cause the flare-up to be worse, so just keep calm.

I tend to get the lethargic feeling within around 10-20 minutes of the gluten incident so if anyone asks what’s wrong, just be polite to them – I’ve learned that people don’t take kindly to you snapping at them, no matter how crappy you feel, being angry won’t solve it, so just explain as briefly as you can, and if they’re the Florence Nightingale type (ie. they want to help as much as they can and love nothing more than looking after people, then maybe ask them for the water I mentioned.)

Get some fresh air – mega help as it distracts you from the cramping and sometimes a simple walk around outside can be enough to walk off the pain a little.

What to do when you get home:

Rest! I have to get all relaxed with a peppermint tea, maybe a bath if I have time/am not overly tired and try and chill out as stressing and running around the place is never a good plan.

Don’t act like a royal princess and get all demanding and moody- you’ve been glutened, you know what to do, just remember that you don’t need to bark at everyone around you as, chances are they haven’t a clue what’s going on in your body and they are only trying to help out and do what they can (god I should listen to my own advice sometimes!!) If you can’t not be moody, then grab a book or a magazine and wait it out – I tend to become a bit of a grouch when I get hit, so either sit on Twitter and speak to people who have had similar experiences or, I grab my book and chill out for a while… or sleep, sleep is gooood!!

Sometimes I find a hot water bottle is brilliant to not only help any pains, but to also soothe and relax you (the same way a hot bath does!). Sometimes I’ll put a few drops of lavendar oil on the cover of the hot water bottle for a super-relaxing effect!

Make more peppermint tea – I can’t get enough of this stuff can I?! (Hope you like my peppermint-picture montage I found on the left…)

If you haven’t sought medical advice yet and you need to, do that, don’t worry about what i’ve said, you do what you need to do, this is just purely on advice terms from my own personal experiences!

Great information from websites:

What Alcohol Can I Drink? Can I use Malt Vinegar? Can I Drink Beer? And all manner of other questions you might find yourself asking on a night out can be found right here on the Gluten Free Diet FAQs page of Coeliac UK.

And, after my incident with malt vinegar here is a really useful guide from Gluten Free Kids Travel. I am really sensitive to Barley Malt, so I tend to steer clear, however I think it’s really great that a lot of products are saying what they contain AND if they are safe as this shows they have used only a small amount of Barley Malt.

I also have my own guide to eating out Gluten Free here  where I am beginning to add in my favourite places that cater and are accomodating of allergies and intollerances. I will list places that I have had no problem with, and if you have any suggestions for other places, please let me know and i’ll add them in so that we have a really big selection of places up and down the country. Just click the link and then go to the drop down menu ‘Eating Out’ in the black bar at the top. Add a comment if you have suggestions.

Heres a link to some Gluten Free Travel Cards which you can print out and take away with you if you need some help while you’re out.

And, here’s a link to eating gluten free on the go – http://www.gluten-free-onthego.com/ This is the blog for that site http://www.gluten-free-onthego.blogspot.com/ I hope this helps you out if you’re heading out and about this holiday season!

I hope this helps you!

Let me know if you have any other tips, hints or routines…

Rubelle’s Moon