Macrobiotic Rice

This simple recipe is a store cupboard stand-by.  It requires just four ingredients - or five if you want to add prawns to it (alas our freezer had no prawns within so we did the 'basic' version.)

So, the items were gathered for making a meal for two... as it was a speed eat (prepared before a night of tv watching) we used boil in the bag wholegrain rice.  The onions were sliced and allowed to soften in a little sunflower oil over a low heat.  (If you have prawns you can add them, uncooked, at this stage and keep on a low heat, stirring well, whilst they cook through.)

Whilst the onions were cooking, the rice was boiled and then drained.  This was then added to the onions before having a good helping of frozen, pre-chopped flat leaf parsley added.

Finally, a decent slurping (Sous Chef J's description) of tamari soy sauce was mixed through.  






And that is it... the Macrobiotic Rice was ready for serving.

Toad in the Hole

It was a lovely surprise to arrive home from holiday last week and find a pack of Isabel's Yorkshire Pudding Mix waiting for us in the post.  We had been lucky enough to test some of the mix before it had been finally packaged and prepared for sale.  So, we decided that a good dish to use it in would be Toad in the Hole. 

With this in mind, we bought some Gluten Free sausages from the Good Little Company and were ready to make the most of the oven space when we were baking Banana Bread on Friday.
The ingredients in Isabel's Yorkshire Pudding Mix are naturally gluten free...

.... and the instructions are clear and easy to follow.

So, we got 2 eggs and 320ml of milk and started to prepare the batter.

We whisked the eggs into the milk.

Then added the milk/egg mix to the flour and whisked it together.

Then, the batter was divided between two baking trays which had been placed in the pre-heated oven.  Instead of the oil suggested on the packet, we used a little beef dripping in the bottom of each tray.
One tray had just batter added and the other had some pre-cooked sausages added to the mix.  Both trays were then placed in the pre-heated oven (180ºC fan) and cooked for 25 minutes.

After 25 minutes in the oven, this was the result.  Sous Chef J was most impressed with the 'plain' Yorkshire pudding as it had turned into a mountainous pud.

The Toad in the Hole was cooked well throughout although the sausages were rather 'well done'!

Sous Chef J didn't complain though, and his plate of tasty mouthfuls was demolished in record time.

Thanks, once more, to Isabel for yet another lovely Gluten Free mix that makes cooking simple and tasty.

Check out our earlier post about cooking with Isabel's Pizza Base mix here

Banana Bread

Sous Chef J was delighted to get a SUSTRANS leaflet through the post about Free Range Kids.  In it he quickly spotted a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe for Banana Bread and, eyeing up the spotty bananas on the windowsill, he asked if we could bake it.  Taking a look at the ingredients, I agreed, although we did have to swap the apricots in the recipe for dates... and, of course, the self raising flour was substituted by Dove's Farm Gluten Free Self Raising Flour.

With Sous Chef J firmly in charge, preparation commenced.  He got the ingredients together and weighed out the things that were needed. So, we assembled 75g sultanas, one lemon, 100g soft unsalted butter, 125g sugar (recipe says caster, we had granulated), 2 large eggs, 3 large ripe bananas, 200g self raising flour (we used Dove's Farm Gluten Free Self Raising) and 75g dried dates (although recipe says ready to eat apricots!).

Then Sous Chef J moved onto the task of making the dates the same size as sultanas... but was surprisingly adept at the task and completed it without a moan!




The sultanas and dates were placed into little pots (a la MasterChef) and I was told to cream the butter and sugar.  Next an egg was added to the butter/sugar mix and combined well before repeating with the remaining egg.  At this point, the dried fruit and lemon zest were added and mixed in.

Sous Chef J then mashed the three bananas and added them to the mix.  Finally, the sifted Gluten Free Self Raising flour was carefully combined using a metal spoon. 

Next, the whole lot was added to the lined loaf tin and placed in the pre-heated oven.  As we were cooking other things in the oven, the temperature was higher (at 180ºC) than the recipe's stated 160ºC so we have a rather more brown outer loaf than would be expected!

Mmmmm... lovely Banana Bread

We checked it after 50 minutes but returned it for another 15 minutes as the inserted knife came out with cake mix on... then checked again, repeating until the knife blade came out clean.  In the end it was baked for about an hour and a quarter.  It was cooled in the tin for 15 minutes, then turned onto a wire cooling rack.

Delicious!  And well worth the wait.

Update - 7 October

Today we found ourselves with three VERY ripe bananas so Sous Chef J thought another batch of Banana Bread would be a good way to use them up.  I had other ideas and convinced him to try making muffins instead.  So, we agreed on a mix of muffins and mini muffins. The mix was shared between 12 muffin cases and 6 mini muffin cases.  The mini muffins were cooked for about 10 minutes, whereas the muffins took around 20 minutes.  Here are some pictures to show the results.

 

These are some ready to be frozen as we like to be prepared with Gluten Free goodies!