Gluten free air travel

The nice folks at FlyBe just sent me on article on gluten free air travel. To be honest, it's nothing earth-shattering but it does serve as a reminder for all the basic precautions to take and preparations to make when travelling by plane. Here it is...

Gluten free air travel article

If you've got any tips for flying gluten free, be sure to leave them in the comments and I'll add them to the article.

Gluten free, egg free, dairy free waffle recipe

This recipe is:

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

I know the waffle is part of the American psyche, but here in the UK I reckon the pancake is the lead sweet breakfast player. And in our gluten free household, waffles hadn't graced the table in decades.

Until my birthday that is. When Gluten Free Wifie presented me with a gorgeous wee waffle iron that makes heart-shaped waffles. Cute :)

So I've been messing around with gluten free (and egg free and dairy free) waffle recipes. Those I've found on the web have been pretty complicated so this morning, I tried simplifying. Here's how...

Gluten free waffle recipe

1 cup Doves Plain Gluten Free Flour
Large 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
3 tbsp agave syrup (maple syrup will do)
Large 1/2 tsp sodium bicarb (baking soda)
3 tbsp walnut oil (use whatever oil you like)
1 tbsp Orgran egg replacer
1/2 tsp salt
Rice milk or water

Add enough liquid to the dry mix to make the waffle batter thick enough to just heap up a bit as you spoon it onto the waffle iron.

Now trying a new gluten free waffle recipe first thing in the morning is a risky strategy. If it goes wrong, you've got a 15 minute turnaround to get the next batch ready, and that makes for grumpy, waffle-demanding ankle-biters.

Happily, this recipe turned out perfectly. Next on the development list is a healthier, lower-GL gluten free waffle. Time for the nuts!

Roast sea trout recipe

This isn't going to be hard.

Take one whole sea trout. Roast it at 200C/400F until just cooked at the shoulder. (you can tell by prying the flesh apart with the tip of a knife and looking). Don't overcook it. Rest for 5 minutes. Eat it.

You don't need to season it, herb it, or otherwise mess around with it. Reason being, sea trout was created by angels and raised by gods. Therefore it is perfect.

Great Granola Bar Challenge - Recipe 1

This recipe is:

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

I'm starting a quest to make the ultimate granola bar - with the challenging caveats that it must be gluten free, dairy free, soya free, egg free AND should be robust enough to handle a bouncy day in a kid's rucksack.

I know, not so easy.

It's easy enough to go and buy a nut bar, but I find they're too hard and too big-nutty for the kids. Plus, I'd like to be able to put in what I want - less sugar and more nuts!

Today, the little 'uns and I made a start. Taking our lead from this peanut butter granola bar recipe , 4 year old Edie started by greasing the baking tins (we should have done as we were told and used baking parchment), and 1 1/2 yr old Alex poured water from the sink onto the floor and into the drawer full of flours. Excellent start I thought.

Here's the granola bar recipe we cobbled together from the guidelines above.

Our very first gluten free granola bar recipe

Preheat the oven to 170C / 350F. Line an 8*10 inch baking tray with baking parchment, or as we did, two smaller trays.

Gluten free granola glue 1/4 cup agave syrup
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup brown sugar
Knob coconut oil (solid) (optional - just going for a better 'set')
1/2 cup peanut butter (crunchy)
1 tsp vanilla

Grunchy gluten free granola base 1 cup buckwheat flakes
1/2 cup ground almonds
1/2 cup shredded coconut

Crunchy nutty mix Roughly equal amounts, making up 1.5 cups of:
Crushed toasted hazlenuts
Chopped pecans
Pine nuts
Sunflower seeds

Dried fruit combo Basically what we had in the cupboard:
1 cup of roughly equal amounts of sultanas, cranberries and chopped dried apricots

Making your granola mix Heat the syrup and sugar in a pan until boiling family and add the vanilla and coconut oil if using. Then stir in the peanut butter and stir until melted and mixed completely.

Then stir in your granola base (flakes and stuff) - keep stirring longer that you think you need to. Then add the nuts and fruit and stir in too.

Put the mix into your tin and get something flat to press down hard with - I used a tupperware box as close to the size of the baking tray as I could get so I could really press hard.

Bake for 20 mins at 350F 170C - you want to avoid burning which is the main danger and will quickly render your precious granola bars bitter and inedible.

When they're done, remove from the oven and let cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then put onto a wire cooking tray. When completely cool, you can cut them into bars, pop them in an airtight box and hide them from everyone. Apart from the kids, of course. No really.

So that's our first attempt at lunchbox friendly gluten free granola bars, with no other allergens allowed (nuts excepted).

Verdict: Tasty, and the kids loved them - possible because they are quite soft, but they came out a bit crumbly. Fine for a delicate afternoon cup of tea at home, but shrapnel after 5 seconds in a grasping toddler's sticky mitt.

Do you know a great gluten free granola bar recipe (and everything else-free!) you could point me at? Or have any tips on how to make the above recipe more crunchy and less crumbly?

Deep fill sweet potato, tuna and roast pepper tortilla

Years ago, when we were travelling in New Zealand, we visited a cafe in Little River on the Banks Peninsular near Christchurch. Filled with local arts and crafts, the cafe also did a deep-filled sweet potato tortilla, which Gluten Free Wifie enjoyed several times (on different visits ;-)

This tortilla has become part of legend, until recently, when ducks eggs became accepted to my insides again, and I decided to give the mighty tortilla a try.

Being somewhat of a construction project, the tortilla is still a work in progress, but I'm going to keep at it until I've got a reliable recipe you can use. (Gluten free wifie claims it's already good, but I'm a stickler for these things and I haven't quite got the appearance or the flavour right yet).

That said, the current attempt is in the oven right now, so by the end of this post we may have a successful formula! (Yippee! You can see from the pics we have a working recipe! :-)

Sweet potato, tuna and roast pepper tortilla
1 kg sweet potatoes, sliced lengthways 1cm (thin 1/2 inch)
Handful parsley, finely chopped
Tablespoon capers, finely chopped
1 red roast red pepper, sliced
6 eggs, beaten
2 tins tuna in brine, drained
Salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 180C.

To roast your red pepper, hold over a gas flame until the skin is blackened then put in a plastic bag for 5 minutes. The charred skin will then rub off easily. You can blacken your pepper under the grill if you don't have a gas flame.

Cook the sweet potatoes in a covered container in the microwave for 5-6 minutes or until just cooked - you don't want mushy sweet potatoes! Remove and lay out to cool a little and steam off some moisture.

Grind a good amount of salt and pepper into your beaten egg, and mix in the parsley.

Line an 8-inch cake tin with baking parchment.

Put the still warm sweet potatoes into the egg and gently mix round with your hands. Place a layer of sweet potatoes into the bottom of your cake tin. Sprinkle over one tin of tuna, half the capers, half the roast red pepper. Then do another layer of sweet potatoes, tuna, capers and pepper. Finish with a layer of sweet potatoes.

Pour over the egg mixture and give your tin a wee shoogle (translation: shake it a bit) to get the egg through the whole tortilla.

Bake in the oven for 45 mins - 1 hour, or until the centre of the tortilla reaches 65-70C, at which point the egg will be cooked. Let cool a little then cut into wedges.

I think that the flavour is still a little lacking, and that perhaps a smoked fish or ham would be better in place of the tuna. I've also made it with cooked sprigs of broccoli, which gives a nice effect when cut through.

Phew. A bit of a mission, but worth it - and this recipe will feed 4 for a good sized lunch.