Almond Red Pepper Dip from The Wheat Belly Cook Book

We were asked if we'd like to review the Wheat Belly Cookbook by Dr William Davis and jumped at the chance... it's always good to get a look at new recipes and were delighted, on the first flick through, to find 4 recipes we liked the look of.  This is the sign of 'our sort of book'... we are always keen to find new, simple, recipes.

The first recipe from the book we liked the sound of was Almond Red Pepper Dip.  For this we needed -
1 jar roasted red peppers, drained well
24g flaked almonds, toasted
40g parmesan cheese, finely grated
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 garlic clove
Pinch of ground red pepper (we didn't have any)
1/8 tsp sea salt
1/8 tsp ground black pepper

Putting the first five ingredients in our mini blender, they were whizzed together until smooth.





Seasoning was then added and the dip was served with lettuce leaves, celery sticks and cucumber slices.

This was a really easy-to-make and tasty recipe.  Sous Chef J enjoyed his dip with some spicy potato wedges.

The recipe was judged to be a "real hit" as it was super-tasty and was made using store cupboard ingredients.  It's definitely a dish that will be made more than once!

Looking more closely at Dr Davis's Wheat Belly Cookbook, it has two parts - Part One deals with Health, Weight and Life the Wheat Belly Way and Part Two is the Recipes.

In his introduction, a statement that caught our attention was ".. to help you recreate delicious foods without wheat and without the rice starch, cornflour, potato flour and tapioca starch of commercial gluten-free foods.  The recipes presented herein are tasty, don't screw with blood sugar, don't trigger appetite and are truly healthy - a novel concept!"  Seeing as we're all about cooking from scratch and finding simple, easy to prepare food, this sounds great. 

Reading, quite swiftly we admit, through part one we were provided with a good overview of what the Wheat Belly diet aims to address, why Dr Davis thinks this is necessary and how to assemble the goods/ingredients needed to follow the regime he recommends.  As was said at the start, when looking through part two, we found a number of recipes which caught our eye and were marked for making.  It's a book we'll enjoy reading and referring to and will definitely be trying out more recipes as we continue to 'cook from scratch'.

Disclosure - we were sent a free copy of the book but were not required to write a positive blogpost.  The opinions are our own.  We were not paid for this post.

Curry Houmous

 Sous Chef J likes to eat finger food and dips are a particular favourite of his.  Up until now, we've had a bit of a stand off in relation to the tastiness (or otherwise in his opinion) of houmous.  However, bearing in mind that he likes all things yellow and mango chutney is good, we hit upon the idea of making a curry-style houmous dip.

We gathered the meagre ingredients - ready made houmous (we do make our own but this was for a speedy lunchtime 'solution'), a tablespoon of curry powder and a dollop of mango chutney.

The ingredients were combined and mixed well.  

Finally, the dip was served with tortilla chips... although we have used mini poppadums as dippers which work well too.

We now make it in larger amounts, then halve the batch and store one lot in an airtight container in the fridge for up to two days.

Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Berry Bonanza (with Chocolate!)

Finally, we woke up to find the sunshining and blue skies here in the UK.  Having tried, and failed, to go "Pick Your Owning" last weekend, we decided it was worth another try today.

Once at the local farm, we were not disappointed with the rows and rows of raspberries and strawberries waiting to be picked.  We split into two groups so B and Sous Chef J went to pick raspberries and I went in search of strawberries.  It is great that strawberries are now grown about a metre off the ground in an irrigated bag system.  The fruits literally drop off the plants - no grovelling around in mud and straw to locate an unblemished specimen these days!

The haul we had in less than ten minutes of picking was 2.5kg strawberries and a kilo of raspberries.  Once home, the challenge was what to do with them.  Obviously, some didn't make it home, some were eaten on arrival and we did  a 'healthy' chocolate fondue with some more.

For the fondue (a favourite "dish" of Sous Chef J) we used a few pieces of an Aldi Swiss chocolate bar, heated in the fondue and then dipped in a selection of goodies.  This time, as well as the berries, we used cashews and walnut pieces for dipping.... but you can use sliced bananas, nectarine pieces, chopped kiwi fruit, marshmallows, dried fruit and so on.

Sadly, Sous Chef J was more keen on eating than taking a picture of the dipping... so here's a shot of the fondue once he'd finished!

Summer Dipping Sauce

We have been eating outdoors a lot in the hot weather we've had in the UK over the last week.  This has prompted a seasonal interest in dips and dippers.  Sous Chef J particularly likes such food as it means NO CUTLERY required!

So, having decided to look at our range of dip recipes, we went for a simple version of Marie Rose Sauce.

As ever, few ingredients are involved.  Sous Chef J found all the items we needed - mayonnaise, lemon, tomato puree and Tabasco (pepper sauce).







Placing a couple of tablespoons of mayo in a bowl together with about a heaped teaspoon of tomato puree, a good squeeze of lemon juice was added (the more lemon juice you add, the runnier the 'dip) and mixed well.  Then a healthy dash of Tabasco was added and stirred through.  Et voila.  Dip ready!

Next the dippers were prepared.  This time we had some spicy tortilla chips, chopped up peppers, cucumber, apple, tomatoes and cheese.  If you want you can also use prawns, crabsticks (although we don't these days as they aren't gluten free) and/or crisps.