Socca bread (Farinata)

Reading through the fabulous "Free From Food for Family and Friends" by Pippa Kendrick, I came across "Socca bread", made from only gram (chickpea) flour, olive oil and water. This was a fabulous discovery, since chickpeas are one of the few protein rich foods my daughter can currently have!

I did some research on the internet, since the roasted vegetable version Pippa has wouldn't have been possible for us, and discovered it is really, really versatile! In France it is known as Socca bread, in Italy it is called Farinata.

You make it exceedingly thin, like pancakes - there is a great recipe here.

Alternatively, you can bake it deeper to make a more filling bread, which is what we decided to do.

Ingredients

• 150g Gram Flour
• 3 tbsp Olive Oil
• 250ml water
• Pinch of salt

Method

• Sift the gram flour into a mixing bowl. (Gram flour tends to settle and get lumpy.)
• Whisk in the olive oil and water until completely smooth
• Apparently the batter should ideally sit for at least 1-2 hours before cooking.
• Pour into a flan dish for a thick bread
• Bake at 180C for apprize 30 minutes until cooked.
• Cut into wedges and serve!

Tip: This is so versatile, you can add roasted vegetables, olives, caramelised onions, bake it thin like a pizza or thick like a bread. It can be pitta bread texture or soft wedges. You choose!


UPDATE

Today I tried a thinner version of the batter, with just a little more water, and it made a lovely pancake. When the batter started to cook I added roasted courgettes, carrots and puy lentils to half and flipped it over. Apparently it was delicious!

"Cheese" Straws

Growing up, my favourite things to bake were cheese straws. I've never been a fan of sweet biscuits and cakes, and being something of a cheese-aholic any opportunity to bake something cheesy has always been seized upon! So it always makes me a little sad that being dairy free, my children are denied this simple pleasure.

"Free-from" cheese has come a long way in recent years. In the past, all alternatives were based on soya, which we cannot have either. "Cheese" like VBites Cheezly is ok... but is difficult to cook with and really isn't "cheese" at all. Vegusto is lovely, but again - not *really* like cheese, and not safe for many with allergies since most of their products contain nuts. So the discovery of Violife cheese  has been little short of revolutionary!

Tesco sell some of their products, or online retailers like Goodness Direct but hopefully as more people get to know about these wonderful cheese alternatives supply will start to meet demand!

Ingredients of the original (used in this recipe) are here. They do not guarantee to be nut free as far as I can tell, but nuts (other than coconut oil) are not an ingredient. 
DO CHECK WITH YOUR DR IF YOU HAVE A NUT ALLERGY.

So, armed with this wonderful "cheese" I decided to make my daughter some cheese "straws" or biscuits!

Ingredients

• 6oz of your choice of flour. NB I would not use plain rice flour since it will be too breakable.
• 3oz your choice of margerine/butter substitute
• 3oz of diced Violife original cheese
• teaspoon of mustard if tolerated
• salt and pepper to taste
• EITHER 1 egg to bind and a dash of your milk substitute
• OR teaspoon extra (even if there is some in your flour blend) of Xanthan Gum and vegetable oil to bind. (roughly 2 tablespoons, but add one at a time)

Method

• Just like making pastry. Rub the fat into the flour
• Add the chopped/diced cheese, mustard, salt and pepper
• EITHER add the beaten egg and if required some milk to make a dough consistency
• OR add the extra Xanthan Gum, and oil to bind until a dough like consistency is achieved.
• Bake at 180C for 15 minutes

I made these with the egg version today, I have also made them egg free. I use a Kenwood mixer which makes it MUCH easier to achieve the required consistency as you can control the binding agents better.

My daughter informs me that she is making these herself next time. She also pointed out (correctly!) that the next time I have some pastry mix left she will add some cheese and roll it into these cheese biscuits!

Creative potato cakes - fun with food!

After reading Julia's potato recipe posts on her Free From recipe blog Alimentary Bites a few weeks back, I must have made potato cakes/farls six times since then. Never before have my twins willingly eaten (and more impressively, ENJOYED) potato before, other than chips. Memories of choking were hard to shift, potato is a sticky food which children with reflux can find difficult to swallow, and scary to reflux back up. But there is something about potato cakes that is reminiscent of chips, which as long as they are not too soggy they have always been able to eat safely and enjoy.

I'm not going to reproduce Julia's recipe, you must visit her Blog to find out how to make them but they only contain potato, or possibly another flour of your choice in addition. I sometimes add a little "Pure" margarine but this is optional.

Since the mixture the recipe creates is so easy to roll and shape, as well as the gnocchi I have yet to try, you can cut it into shapes. So today, we got creative!

The pizza has some of the Redwood Cheezly soya free cheese on the top, which I cut into chunks and freeze on opening, then lift out and grate frozen as required or take a wedge at a time out for the fridge - otherwise it tends to go bad very quickly.

For the bunnies, I used carrot strips for the whiskers, and raisins cut in half (watch your fingers!) for the eyes. I experimented with my stove-top griddle to try and burn on eyes etc too.

These potato cakes have revolutionised our lunch boxes too - they are fine cold and make a lovely change from sandwiches. Today, I also added some of the protein powder I wrote about before to make them a very healthy cold snack.

Spring Chicken Casserole

I made this for lunch today, and unbelievably EVERYONE enjoyed it! Since I have two of the fussiest eaters around and three on exclusion diets making a "one size fits all" dish is little short of miraculous.... so I thought I would share!

Quite honestly, I wasn't sure what to call it! It's kind of like a casserole.... except it isn't! A bake? But without a creamy sauce..... whatever you want to call it, it worked for us.

Feeds 4 adults (or 6 with smaller appetites)
Serve with rice

Free from dairy, soya, corn, (depending on your choice of stock), wheat, gluten (same) and egg.

Ingredients

• Pack of chicken breasts - each cut lengthways into half/
• 1 red pepper
• 1 large leek
• 1 large courgette
• 500ml vegetable/chicken stock or whatever your family uses
• seasoning (salt and pepper)
• optional - before the stock goes in, add some garlic and mix it well
• 4 rashers of bacon - diced
• Free From crumbs

Method

• Cut the pepper into long thin strips and lay over the base (stops the chicken burning on the base)
• Arrange the chicken on top of the pepper
• Dice the leek and courgette finely (I was playing with my new Magimix Food Processor!) and spread evenly over the chicken
• Pour on the stock (make sure it is cooled if like me you are putting this on a delayed start) until everything is almost covered (picture 2)
• Sprinkle over the chopped bacon, 
• Followed by the breadcrumbs 

Bake for 50 minutes at 180C, until the top is golden.

Carrot and Coriander Muffins

Since it's Easter Weekend I wanted to make the kids something a little more exciting than sandwiches for tea, plus we might go out tomorrow if the weather's nice. I'm also trying to be brave and bake egg free more often too!

So these are wheat free, gluten free, dairy free, egg free, soya free and depending which flour you use could be corn and potato free too. (I know many of our readers have problems with those two flours)

Turkey Burgers

Turkey is a meat well tolerated by many. This recipe is a few food recipe, and turkey works well in burgers as it sticks together nicely without binding agents like egg.

Ingredients

• Minced Turkey 
• Chopped onion 
• Seasoning 
• Chopped fresh parsley if desired. 
• Rice flour 
• Any safe Oil 

Method

• Fry chopped onion in a little safe oil. 
• Take off heat when soft and mix with mince. 
• Season mince and add chopped parsley. 
• Make into patties and roll in rice flour. 
• Shallow fry for 3 or 4 minutes in a frying pan with safe oil. 

These are great warm, freeze well and are a hit cold in the lunch box. They are also nice with sweet corn added before frying.

Marmite Pinwheels

A friend asked for this very simple recipe after her son enjoyed them so much at our house recently!

It's so easy (and quick) but they don't keep very well due to the usual problems with "free from" pastry mix.

Method

• Using a pastry mix, (such as Crimble's pastry or mix up the Juvela Harvest White bread mix as per the pastry recipe on the back of the box.) make up a ball of pastry.

• Roll out and spread with Marmite. (Not suitable for coeliacs sadly)

• Cut into strips and roll up, then cut the cylinder into rounds.

• Bake for 7-10 mins until the pastry is cooked.

Tip: Free From pastry can get very dry, warming for a few seconds in the microwave before eating is recommended.