Lamb & Sweet Potato Pate

This recipe is:

• Gluten free
• Dairy free
• Egg free
• Yeast free

It was another of those 'what the heck am I going to have for breakfast' mornings. The fridge was bare apart from some leftover lamb. There were a couple of wrinkled looking sweet potatoes in the cupboard. What was a starving coeliac to do while the kids tucked into steaming hot rice and cashew butter porridge? (Can you hear the violins? ;-)

I've been into a lot of blender action recently, making bean dips for lunch, and I think it was this that gave me the idea. Here it is...

Lamb & Sweet Potato Pate

200g cooked lamb
200g cooked sweet potato (the quickest way is just to cook them in their jackets in the microwave, then scoop out the flesh)
3 tbsp fresh mint, chopped
2 spring onions, chopped
Salt and ground black pepper

Blend the lamb and sweet potato until smooth, adding a little oil to loosen if necessary. Stir in the mint and spring onions and season to taste. Spread on something crunchy or gluten-free-bready. I used gram flatbreads.

The flavour seems to develop overnight in the fridge, and the pate is nice and firm for breakfast again the next day.

Sweet potato mash with fennel

This recipe is:

• Gluten free
• Dairy free
• Egg free
• Yeast free

I've followed this Gordon Ramsay sweet potato recipe a few times, but there comes a time when every man must go it alone. So I tweaked it. Not radically, I'll admit, but noticeably, and with the dover sole I ate it with, I might even go as far as to say it was better. (Don't tell Gordon ;) )

Sweet potato mash with fennel
3 medium-large sweet potatoes, diced and cooked - just underdone is perfect; on this I agree with Gordon. I do mine in the microwave - no loss of flavour or nutrients to water that way.
1 tsp fennel seed, ground up a bit (I use a pestle and mortar)
6 large sage leaves, chopped fairly finely
Small handful coriander leaves, chopped
1 medium onion, sliced finely
1 garlic clove, squished, chopped and mangled
Olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Gently fry your onion and garlic in a couple tbsp of olive oil until soft. Add the fennel seed and fry for a minute. Add the sweet potato and squish with the back of a fork. Fry for around 10 minutes - I like to get a little colour into them to add a caramelised flavour. Throw in the herbs and season to taste.

There, reaaaaally tasty, gluten free of course, and rather good with fish. And cabbage.

Other sweet potato recipes

Moreish roast sweet potato recipe
Sweet potato muffins
Coconut sweet potato with white fish
Sweet potato and orange soup
Baked sweet potato and bacon
Smoked mackerel and sweet potato cakes
Sweet potato and lamb pate

Blimey, I knew we ate a lot of sweet potatoes, but that's a heck of a lot of recipes. Hmmm... wonder if you can overdose on beta-carotene... ;)

Savoury gluten free muffins

This recipe is:

• Gluten free
• Dairy free
• Egg free
• Yeast free

I must admit, I'm a latecomer to the concept of savoury muffins, gluten free or otherwise. Apart from your standard cheesy muffin, I've never really come across them - don't know if they're an American thing or what.

Anyway, as I often do, to escape from the corner that various food intolerances keep trying to paint me into, I was trawling the net for stuff I can eat. I'd known about the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) for a while, so I thought I'd check it out.

The good thing is, SCD recipes are gluten free because (I think) the diet is totally grain free. The bad thing is, SCD recipes seem to use a whole ton of eggs, which aren't my best friends at the moment.

So when I came across these egg free SCD recipes I was kind of excited:
http://sanjayamma.blogspot.com/2007/08/more-non-egg-breakfast-ideas.html

I thought I'd give the eggless chicken muffins a go (towards the bottom of the page) and so adapted the recipe a little. So far so good.

But have you ever followed a recipe and thought afterwards "There's no way that worked"? I mean, there is no way, no WAY this could have worked the first time round, unless I'm missing something (which has been known). Anyway, here's what I did and what happened:

Savoury gluten-free chicken and butternut squash muffins

3 chicken breasts, chopped and cooked (I microwaved mine)
4 cups cooked butternut squash (again, microwaved - keeps so much more flavour than boiling it)
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
Good handful pine nuts, toasted
Salt and pepper
4 tbsp olive oil

You blitz the chicken and squash with your oil and salt and pepper until fairly smooth, then mix in the baking soda and pine nuts - work quickly and don't over stir.

Put good dollops into muffin tins (I made 16 with this amount of mix) and put in the oven at 180C for 25 minutes.

Now, the problem is, these are wet. And look at the original recipe - it had pears AND water in there too. When I turned these out, several just fell apart. I rescued them by putting them back in the oven on the cooling rack to dry out the undersides.

One thing I can improve on next time is not to include the water that came out of the (free range) chicken. And I reckon the addition of some sort of flour would help a lot. I don't know what would adhere to SCD guidelines (I suspect the olive oil didn't), but gram flour would work pretty well I think - perhaps half a cup.

The reason for the effort is that these are actually really tasty. And surprisingly eggy, considering the egg-free-ness of them. So I'm going to give them another go soon, so keep your gluten free eyes peeled - or subscribe top right so you hear when I next update.

I'm off for some rescued savoury gluten free muffins. Mmmmm...

So easy dairy free rice pudding recipe

This recipe is:

• Gluten free
• Dairy free
• Egg free
• Yeast free

Dairy free gluten free wifie is a bit of a fan of the rice pudding, but since the dairy intolerance was diagnosed, we've not been able to make a properly creamy one.

However, a moment of inspiration in the supermarket the other day led to this tasty little number, that does everything a real rice pudding should do, and perhaps a little more...

Dairy free rice pudding recipe
500ml gluten free soya custard (we used the Alpro carton)
500 ml gluten free rice milk (we used the purple Provamel)
Large handful sultanas
Good grating nutmeg
110g pudding rice

Mix the rice milk and custard well in a bowl. Put the pudding rice in an oven dish and pour over the milk/custard mix. Add the sultanas and grate over the nutmeg. Put in a 150C oven for about an hour and a half, or until you have a nice brown skin on the top. Dairy free rice pudding heaven.

We took ours camping, had it for pudding, then the kids had it for breakfast the next morning. Yes I know, sugary and unsustaining, but heck we were on holiday! :)

How to eat gluten free in Majorca

Majorca (Mallorca) is a favourite holiday destination for us Brits. And now we coeliac Brits can be confident in eating gluten free when we get there.

Carmen Barcelo contacted me recently to ask if she could use the Spanish gluten free restaurant card in the book, and now she's completed it, she has sent it over and we've popped it on the website.

If you are considering going to the Balearic islands on holiday, your decision over which one may just have been made for you. Carmen's son is coeliac and as a result she too eats gluten free. Her guide includes:

• Gluten free labels used in Majorca (Spain) and what they mean
• Where you can buy gluten free products, and what sorts at each shop
  
• Restaurants with gluten free menus, and details on each (this is is valuable, and something only a local can provide)
• Details of a hotel chain with a specially adapted gluten free menu
• Useful web resources for coeliacs
• General stuff to do with Carmen's comments

Thank you Carmen, this is invaluable to coeliacs. Now all we need is one for every other area in the world. Anyone? ;)

Download 'Gluten free Majorca' here