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