Quick gluten free lunch - Aduki bean salad

This recipe is:

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

This is a light but satisfying gluten free lunch, which is pretty versatile so you can use what you've got in the cupboard / fridge.

Gluten free lunch - Aduki bean salad

400g tin aduki beans - preferably in water with no salt/sugar
A handful of crunchy leaf such as chinese leaves, pak choi or similar, finely chopped
A spicy leaf such as rocket, watercress or similar, finely chopped
A fresh herb - basil or flat leaf parsely best, finely chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Finely ground black pepper
Salt to taste

Mix it all together and tweak the flavours to your preference by adding more or less oil, lemon juice, pepper and salt.

From start to finish, 5 minutes? A pretty quick, highly nutritious gluten free lunch. And because it's so healthy, I'm having mine with last night's leftover homemade beefburgers. I know, crazy.

This recipe is:

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

Howdy peeps, this is my first blog so bare with me!

I've fairly recently discovered I have a few (!) food intolerance's so have joined the food freak club. Which I have been very warmly welcomed in to (i don't know what I'd have done with out the Gluten free food freak and his lovely wife!)

Any way on to the important stuff... food!

I didn't have enough time to make a packed lunch yesterday morning but lucky work is fairly close to home so I whizzed back and manged to cobble together a surprisingly tasty salad.

Bunch of mixed salad leave
Handful of fresh herbs of your choice
Avocado
Handful of grapes, chopped
Handful of almonds, chopped or flaked
2 tbs Apro soya yog (or dairy if allowed)
Lemon juice
Salt and pepper

Chop the avocado and cover in the lemon juice then mix all the rest in a mix bowl and serve. I had this with some corn crackers and home made humus (not the best humus but getting there, its difficult without the tahini and garlic!)

Gluten free curry - blackeye bean and spinach

This recipe is:

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

Not just a gluten free curry... a vegetarian gluten free curry! How virtuous do we feel after tea tonight?

Using tinned beans, this is a quick curry to make. It's very mild (baby Edie was partaking, although in the end she thought it was minging. Chaqu'un a son gout and all that).

Actually, this was going to be chickpea curry, but then we discovered we had no chickpeas. But we did have a tin of blackeye beans and a tin of aduki beans, so that's the sort of gluten free curry it ended up as.

Here's how...

Gluten free blackeye bean curry

1 tin blackeye beans
1 tin aduki beans (as mentioned above, this was just what was in the cupboard)
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, peeled
1 inch fresh ginger root, peeled
1 heaped tsp ground cumin
1 heaped tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 peeled, grated apple (actually, if you quarter the apple and remove the core, you can grate it by holding the skin side and grating off the flesh, meaning you don't have to peel it, plus you have an in-built finger protector. Nice.)
Handful sultanas
100g spinach, roughly chopped
50ml apple juice (optional)
Oil
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Salt to taste

Put the onion, garlic and ginger in a blender and puree. Heat about a tablespoon of oil in a frying pan and cook the spices for 30 seconds, then add the puree and cook over a medium heat for 5 minutes or until it stops tasting raw.

Add the rest of the ingredients except the spinach and simmer for 20-25 minutes - about how long your oh-so-healthy brown rice should take to cook. 2 minutes before you serve, add the spinach and stir it through so it wilts.

Aren't all curries gluten free?

This is a great midweek gluten free curry. Most curries are, of course, gluten free - at least indian curries should be if they're made properly. The main thing you've got to watch out for in an indian is gluten contamination from the tandoori ovens. Breads tend to be cooked by sticking the dough to the side of the oven, and if your chicken tandoori is in there too, woe betide you.

So stay away from the tandooris and your curries should all be gluten free. If course, we would always recommend you check with the appropriate foreign language celiac card.

Gluten free salmon and caper pasta salad

This recipe is:

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

2 gluten free pasta salad recipes in one day? Have we gone pasta salad mad? Well firstly, we didn't eat them both today, but you do get into a habit with your cooking don't you? Don't you? Well we do. Gluten free pasta salads are the order of the week. This one's well tasty.

Gluten free pasta salad - salmon and capers

400g fresh salmon
3 tbsps capers in brine, finely chopped
1/4 cucumber peeled and cut into thin matchsticks
250g cooked gluten free pasta - spirals or penne are probably best
Juice 1 lemon
4 tbsps soya/dairy yoghurt (optional)
Salt and ground black pepper to taste

Poach the salmon until just cooked, or microwave if you prefer. Flake with a fork. Mix with capers, cucumber, lemon juice and yoghurt if using. Mix in with gluten free pasta and season to taste. Add more lemon juice if you want it sharper.

Very tasty gluten free pasta salad, and perfect to pop in your bag for lunch on the run. Not that we're recommending you run while eating, you just get pasta salad up your nose, but you get the drift.

Gluten free pasta salad - avocado & beans

This recipe is:

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

I used to hate salads, because lettuce just doesn't fill you up. Then someone told me you don't have to put lettuce in salads and kaboom! Filling salads are on the menu.

Properly filling gluten free salad recipe

200g/7oz gluten free pasta (spirals or penne is best)
400g/14oz tin of mixed beans - black eye beans, kidney beans, pinto beans etc
Handful diced cucumber
1 medium avocado, diced
Juice of 1/2 lemon
3 tbsps chopped basil
3 tbsps toasted sunflower seeds (toast on dry pan until light brown)
Salt and ground black pepper to taste.

Stir the avocado and lemon juice together. Then add all ingredients to a bowl and mix thoroughly. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Much it all down - have consideration for your living companions and chew those beans properly now!

Gluten free salad, and oh so healthy.