I was delighted to be asked by Katie over at Apple & Spice to take part in her first bloggers event “Go Gluten Free” as part of Coeliac UK’s Gluten Free Challenge for Coeliac Awareness Week .

Coeliac disease is an autoimmune disease that affects an estimated 1 in 100 people (though only 3% of these are likely to be diagnosed/know they have the disease). Gluten, which is found in wheat, barley and rye triggers an immune reaction in people with coeliac disease which means their immune system incorrectly identifies gluten as an allergen causing an inflammatory response which damages the lining of the small intestine. My Dad, my Brother, myself and one of my sons all have coeliac disease.

There is no cure for coeliac disease and the only way to manage the condition is to avoid eating any and all gluten so that your intestine heals – and stays healed.

The internet is a great resource for gluten free recipes but as I blogged recently I think the best, least confusing approach – especially for those recently diagnosed – is to focus on simple recipes that can be made gluten free just with a straight substitution of gluten free flour.

As part of the Go Gluten Free challenge we were asked to post a recipe that we had converted to gluten free.  My immediate thought was waffles!  Waffles are a great addition to the gluten free diet as they are so versatile.  When you are looking to replace toast for breakfast, or sandwiches for lunch, waffles work.  They also make great standby desserts – just add a little sugar to the batter and top with maple or golden syrup, fresh fruit, ice cream… you get the idea!  These are made using Dove’s Gluten Free Plain Flour, readily available in all supermarkets as well as health food shops.

If you don’t have a waffle maker, you can use this batter and make thick fluffy pancakes in a non-stick frying pan or omelette pan.

Gluten Free Waffles

300g Dove’s Plain Gluten Free Flour
1tsp baking powder (make sure it is gluten free)
Pinch of salt
250ml milk
110g unsalted butter, melted
3 eggs, beaten

Weigh out the flour, add the salt and baking powder.  Sieve these dry ingredients into a large bowl.  Sieving aerates the flour which is important when you want anything light and fluffy.

In a separate bowl beat the eggs, add the milk and beat again.  Pour this wet mixture into the bowl with the flour and mix.  Pour over the melted butter and mix again to get a relatively smooth batter.

Oil your waffle maker or pan and add the mixture.  We find that a Half Cup measuring cup or a full ladle is about the right about of mix to make one waffle in our waffle maker and we end up with 9 waffles, but you may get one more or less depending on how you are cooking them.

Our waffle maker is rather old and well used and we find that we need to turn our waffles over for 30 seconds once they looked cooked on top in order to get a nice crispy top and bottom.

Today we used these for lunches.  One of my kids had his spread with jam, two others topped their with cheese and ham, and my other son covered his in cheese and topped it with sliced pepperoni.

I had mine with three cheeses, crispy spicy chorizo and some sauteed cherry tomatoes – yum! Who needs bread anyway?!

Three Cheese Gluten Free Waffles with Spicy Chorizo

Friday 11th May is our South African themed dinner.  Sadly it won’t be a braai – partly down to the English weather and partly down to needed Roarke to stay front of house instead of being Braai Master!

We are still going to be enjoying a lot of classic South African dishes, so come along and find out more about their marvellous cuisine.

The menu is expected to be:

Slappap dumplings, boerewors balls, Frikkies, served with Annie’s chakalaka

(Fried cheese & maize balls, SA sausagemeat balls, spicy meatballs)

“Bunny Chows”

(Bread roll “bowls” filled with curry)

Bobotie with yellow rice

(lightly spiced mince topped with a savoury custard)

Rooibos Sorbet

(refreshing sorbet flavoured with SA’s famous tea)

Melktert, Dadelpoeding, Vetkoek with golden syrup

(Milk custard tart, a date brandy pudding, deep fried dough balls)

Coffee & Koeksisters

(syrup coated pastries)

Book your place(s) here.

Saturday 21st April saw us hosting a St George’s Day themed dinner – the aim being to celebrate classic “English” dishes.

Sadly for me, the day was also the sixth anniversary of Dad’s death.  I was hoping that being busy would help the day pass – and I nearly managed it.  A memory-ladened song on the radio not long before guests arrived broke the barrier and I struggled for half an hour to regain my composure before I could carry on.  Mucking up one of the desserts later in the evening didn’t help my mood (more on that later) but asides from my collywobbles, judging by the comments in the visitor’s book our guests had a good evening and that is what matters!

There were no photos of the food!  The problem with having just me cooking, and Roarke helping to plate then serving is neither of us has the time to take any photos.

We didn’t have lots of kitch St George’s day stuff on the table – but we did have some lovely red and white roses supplied by our florist which I artfully arranged in the shape of St George’s flag (no one noticed other than the one guest I pointed it out to!)

We started with an English Fry Up.  I had slow roasted some baby plum tomatoes for eight hours.  Gluten free sausage meat from Rook’s was baked into little “cups” (using a mini muffin tin) and then filled with the roasted tomatoes.  The “fried egg” was a quail’s egg – a perfect mini size for an amuse bouche yet also very rich – and we served some toast (Warburton’s gluten free brown bread) with bacon jam.

Next up – Fish and Chips! Actually there were no chips as we figured the carb count of the meal was going to be high enough without them. Guests failed to identify the fish – lovely Talapia fillets were cut into long strips and dipped in a freshly made batter and fried until crispy.  The batter was lovely and puffy with a good crunch.  A nice light golden colour, because I don’t like overcooking the fish to get the very dark coloured batter that one gets from most chip shops.

As usual, we served it with our home made tartare sauce and our own mushy peas.  Guests always find it hard to believe we make the mushy peas ourselves but we do!  Based on Heston’s recipe for mushy peas – do give them a go as they are likely to win around anyone who says they don’t like mushy peas.

Roarke had made newspaper cones and lined them with parchment paper (to keep within health and hygiene rules!) to serve the fish in. We served it all on our wood boards to keep the rustic feel.

What would English food be without a roast?!  Actually this wasn’t really a roast but an excuse to serve beef wellington.  Instead of roast potatoes we served a lovely light, twice cooked mash with simply, lightly cooked Tenderstem broccoli.

I had decided to try not wrapping the beef and duxelle in either pancakes or my usual parma ham – serves me right for reading up too much and seeing how some food snobs would say it detracted from the taste of the beef – result: soft pastry that falls apart when you carve.

I had a whole beef fillet that made one monster Wellington and a second little one using the filet mignon.

I used my own recipe pastry.  For pasties and similar I usually use just vegetable suet or Trex to give a nice crunchy pastry.  Pie toppings are often made with just butter to give a softer, layered pastry.  This time I used 2/3 butter and 1/3 vegetable suet.

Other than the fact that the pastry didn’t hold on carving I was happy with it.  To be honest, I would just sit and eat plates of this pastry with nothing on it or in it, it is that tasty! Hopefully our guests agreed

Both beef joints had been seared, with the whole fillet also being part roasted before being fully chilled, then smeared with a mushroom duxelle mixed with my home made liver pate and encased in the pastry.

We had requests for 2 well done, 2 rare, and 6 medium – fortunately I was able to accommodate that because of the way a whole fillet cooks (the mignon provided the well done cuts).  Personally I like mine rare and I was happy with the way it came out.

We had one guest who was unable to have any milk, cream or cheese (but was ok with butter thankfully!) so we made sure that she had her own portion of twice baked mash made with butter and soya cream.

Then came the dessert course – and my first serious culinary failure since starting the supperclub.  Firstly, we didn’t notice the steamer had run dry and secondly I had either forgotten the raising agent or picked up the wrong flour – either way, our steamed Spotted Dick didn’t work!

It should have looked like this (taken from our test kitchen one the week before)

Instead it looked like this (top right):

Two guests stupidly bravely ate theirs but everyone else left it (as advised!).

Hopefully dessert was redeemed by the other two puddings.  I had roasted off some rhubarb, adding (Spanish) strawberries in at the end, and then made a crumble topping.  The other classic English dessert (as voted for by my twitter followers) was a Trifle.

As I had said on twitter, I dislike trifle – but as it was my Dad’s favourite I decided to still serve it in his memory.  My “take” on a trifle was a somewhat loose interpretation though.  I made a gluten free genoise sponge and drizzled it with red wine.  This was topped with slices of strawberry that had been macerated in a balsamic/sugar mix.  Finally I piped a mascarpone cream on top (using soya based custard for our milk-free guest).

To go with coffees and to finish off the meal I had made some clotted cream fudge and some chocolate coated peppermint creams.

To be honest, this wasn’t the easiest evening I’ve ever had at Annie’s but I am reassured by some lovely comments in our visitor’s book, and by the generous donations that guests left, and am happy to realise that front of house at least the evening was a success.

I raised a glass to toast Dad in the quiet after guests had gone home.  Love you Dad.