Summery Sausage Salad

We heard from Sainsbury's that their Taste the Difference sausages are now all gluten free and were asked if we'd like to try some.  Of course, we said YES, please!  

Having gone into store, it was easy to see the great new packaging for the TTD sausages and made a selection of the ones Sous Chef J will eat (thin ones... aka chipolatas or cocktail sausages).

As it was a sunny weekend, we decided an 'all-in-one' sausage salad dish would be a good meal to create. Pairing the sausages with some freshly cooked charlotte potatoes, a few salad onions and a homemade dressing/sauce, we thought we'd have a simple and tasty meal for eating outdoors.

The dressing was made using store cupboard standbys -

2 Tablespoons tomato ketchup
2 Tablespoons cider vinegar
1 Tablespoon grainy mustard
1 Tablespoon honey

All this was mixed together and half of the sliced salad onions were added.

The sausages were separated and added to a hot frying pan to cook through.

Adding half of the sauce to the sausages and cooking to make it sticky...

.... whilst the sausages were cooking, the charlotte potatoes were boiled.  Once cooked and drained, the potatoes were put in a bowl and the remainder of the sauce was poured over and stirred through.

Finally, the sausage and sauce mix was added to the potatoes, stirred and the remaining onions were sprinkled over.

The sausage salad was delicious!

We'll definitely be adding TTD Sausages to our shopping list... and particularly liked the "snap and keep" packaging - allowing half the sausages to be saved for another day/frozen.

DISCLOSURE - we were sent a gift card by Sainsbury's to be used for buying sausages and ingredients for this recipe.  The recipe and opinions in this post are our own.

Coconut and Blueberry Cake

Spotting a tasty sounding cake recipe that made use of coconut flour and was also dairy free, we took a look and decided it was something we had to try.

The ingredients we used were -

4 medium eggs

125g caster sugar

100g Lucy Bee Coconut oil, melted

50g coconut flour, sifted

1 tsp gluten free baking powder (we used Dr Oetker)

50g desiccated coconut

150g blueberries

Quite a simple to make cake.  The eggs and sugar were whisked together using the electric hand mixer until they'd doubled in volume.  

The melted coconut oil was then slowly drizzled into the egg/sugar mix to combine.

Next, the dry ingredients were folded through to incorporate fully.

Finally the blueberries were added and stirred into the cake mix.

Pouring the cake mix into a lined, round 7" cake tin, the cake was then baked in a 160º fan oven for 30 minutes... after this time the oven temperature was reduced to 150º and the timer set for 20 minutes.  We checked the cake when the timer went off and saw that a knife blade came out clean so removed the cake from the oven.

Placing the cake on a wire rack to cool in its tin for 10 minutes, we allowed it to cool a little before turning it out of the tin and leaving

it to cool fully.

Dusting the top of the cake with icing sugar, we sliced it and served with fresh strawberries and cream (obviously leave out the cream if your aim is a
dairy free cake/dessert).

It was a lovely moist cake and, surprisingly, the texture was airy and light.

Rhubarb fool with ginger crumble

It seems that quite a lot of the time, shop bought packets of gluten free biscuits are a mass of crumbs when we open them.  Given their cost and being of a thrifty Northern persuasion, methods to use them up are sought.  So, when we found one of our favourite packs of Lazy Days Ginger Snaps were already beginning to crumble it gave us an idea.  We'd had a bundle of rhubarb in the veg box and thought we'd try to make 'something' tasty.  Being the type of 'cooks' that opt for simple stuff with very few ingredients, it was then a question of whether to go with rhubard fool or rhubarb crumble... in the end we went for a 'combo pud' as you will see.

The ingredients were simply - rhubarb, honey, rice milk and custard powder, gluten free ginger biscuit crumbs and some double cream for decoration (for Sous Chef J)... you can leave out the cream if you want/need a dairy free pud.

Preparing the rhubarb was a matter of washing, peeling and slicing.  This was placed in a stainless steel pan together with about a tablespoon of runny honey and a dash of water.  A tight fitting lid was placed on the pan and the rhubarb was cooked over a low heat until it began to soften.  At this point, the heat was turned off and the mix was left to one side to cool.





Meanwhile, the custard was made.  We used about half a pint of rice milk and a tablespoon of custard powder.  A bit of milk was added to the custard powder to make a paste.  Then, having heated the milk to almost boiling point, the warmed milk was added to the paste, then the whole lot was put back in the pan and heated, over a moderate heat, stirring all the time until the custard thickened.  This was also set to one side to cool.





Whilst the rhubarb and custard was cooling, the ginger biscuits were turned from bits to crumbs. Sous Chef J made full use of a rolling pin to assist the crumbling process.

 Finally, it was time to assemble... so we found a few jam jars to use for our 'rustic' presentation and some smarter glasses for the 'posh' puds.

Assembly entailed layering the rhubarb in the bottom, adding some custard (carefully or else it can sink) and finally topping with the ginger biscuit crumble.

For the full 'posh' presentation in the martini glasses the crumble was topped a trio of whipped double cream "eggs".








The end result was clean crockery which is always a good sign.

The rustic presentation in jars would make a good pud for taking on picnics - although ours didn't last long enough to make it out into the sunny UK weather!  A simple free from pud that isn't chocolate or a piece of fruit.

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.