What are your favourite GF/CF recipes?

[Wombat140]

I thought it might be good to start a recipe thread. What are your favourite GF/CF recipes you've discovered over the years, the ones you use all the time? Or any other handy ways of doing things you've discovered, that aren't actually recipes? We can pass them all on here. The person who posts the best recipe... er, is a clever cook. :-)

 

Also, you could post your requests for things you haven't found a good recipe for yet, and see if anyone can step forward with one.

 

Detailed measurements and all that are optional, unless of course it's something like baking where it actually won't work unless the amounts and timing are right. If other people on here cook anything like the way my family do, this thread will probably end up like Jane Austen's spoof History of England which began: "There will be very few Dates in this History". Well, there may be very few measurements in these recipes.

 

I'll start:

[Wombat140]

Nut pizzas

 

This developed from an already fairly unpizzalike thing we used to have with cheese instead of nut butter. They're no really all that much like pizzas but very nice and "fill the same shape of hole", as we say in our family.

 

Ingredients:

Gf/cf rolls or scones (I think scones are called biscuits in America?)

Nut butter (I used almond butter because it's what we had - no reason to think peanut won't work)
Cherry tomatoes - 2 large or more small
Dried mixed herbs

Split rolls in half, spread each half thickly with nut butter. Cut tomatoes into slices and arrange on top. Sprinkle with herbs. Bake for 10-20 minutes in a medium-to-hot oven - keep checking to see if they're done. Serve with pasta and veg.

 

Variations:

Like any pizza you can mix up the toppings - mushrooms and peppers are good, for one.

 

Note

We used to use the gf/cf scones from Marilyn LeBreton's recipe book ("Diet Intervention and Autism", from Jessica Kingsley Publishers) for this. If you don't already have this book, then I'd recommend getting it just for those scones - they're worth the price of the book by themselves. They look and taste exactly like good ordinary scones, but the remarkable thing is that unlike ordinary scones, they stay fresh for a whole week. I don't know what the trick is! Maybe gluten-free flour holds onto moisture better, or something.

Edited January 31, 2016 by Wombat140

[Wombat140]

Millet porridge

Per person:

2 tbsp millet flakes (not millet grain).

200 ml (a little under half a pint) water.

 

Mix together in a small saucepan. Bring to the boil, then simmer for another 2-3 minutes, stirring all the time. Turn off the heat and leave to stand for another few minutes. Add whatever bits and pieces you like, either before or after cooking - I like to put raisins in mine.

 

 

Millet flakes are very handy things. They make a nice muesli base as well as porridge; you can coat burgers with them instead of breadcrumbs; and they'll work in baking recipes wherever it says oatmeal (I've posted a great "oatmeal" biscuit recipe in the sugar-free recipe thread which we always do with millet flakes).

[Sheila]

Well, Wombat -- Since you began with pizzas I thought I'd share this link. It's got 15 gluten-free pizzas. For dairy-free, people will need to substitute for the regular cheese.

 

I haven't tried all these but there's quite an assortment of crusts! See here.

 

Thanks for starting this thread! I'll keep an eye out for other recipies.

 

[Wombat140]

Thanks muchly Sheila! These look very tempting... unfortunately, I'm not actually doing GF/CF right now, what I'm doing is an attempt at a low-free-glutamate diet... which excludes both mushrooms and cooked tomatoes. Bad timing! When/if I decide that some or all of those things aren't actually making any difference, I may well be back to those pizzas and, um, quasi-pizza-objects. (I've taken a fancy to the idea of the pizza-flavoured omelette.)

 

Question for anyone - I keep having problems with millet and quinoa that have somehow gone off, or something. Anyone else get this, or know what's causing it?

Some bags are fine, others (even from the same brand and the same batch number) have this faint weird, sickening aftertaste. It's so faint that at first I tell myself I'm imagining it, but it just gets worse as I go on eating until I usually can't finish the helping. And, as I say, some bags taste just fine to me, so it's not just that I don't like it. I've had it happen with several different brands and with millet flakes, millet flour, quinoa flakes and quinoa flour, but not (so far) whole millet. (I don't know about whole quinoa because I never use it, don't like the texture.)

Edited February 28, 2016 by Wombat140

[Wombat140]

Three pasta sauces
Being vegetarian we had to be a bit inventive about ways of getting plenty of protein without using cheese while I was on the diet. Here are our three.

1) Tomato sauce with beans
454 g (1 lb) tin chopped tomatoes.
454 g (1 lb) tin of beans - any kind will work; I think my favourite version's with chickpeas.
1-2 sticks of celery (depending on size), or 1 chopped onion.
2 bay leaves.
Tomato pureé.
Olive oil for frying.

Can add a red pepper, or some mushrooms.

Slice celery thinly, chop pepper or mushrooms if using. Fry in olive oil over a low heat for around 5 minutes, stirring all the time, until celery is transparent but not brown.
Add tomatoes, beans and bay leaves. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for at least 30 minutes. The longer it cooks, the better the flavour. Stir frequently to avoid sticking.
When ready, remove the bay leaves, and stir in up to 1 tablespoon of tomato pureé to thicken; if it's been cooked longer it will have boiled down more so you'll need less - if cooked long enough you won't need any at all.

2) Rich tomato sauce with almonds
Same, only leave out the beans and instead stir in a tablespoonful or so (I think) of ground almonds when the sauce is ready.

3) Cooked lentils make quite a tasty pasta topping by themselves - take about 3 oz (cooked weight) per serving, add water and some dried mixed herbs and heat them up. Or you can add fried mushrooms, peppers or celery too.

Lentils come in useful for filling all sorts of gaps on any special diet, in fact. Recipes always say that you don't need to pre-soak them (at least the red kind) like other dried beans, just cook them for 20 minutes from dried, but I don't trust that; sometimes it works, but more than once we've tried to do that and 40 minutes later they still weren't done! I don't know if this happens to anyone else!
So when we're planning on having lentils I take a lot - like half a pound at a time - and put them to soak overnight, then cook up the whole lot (still takes about 20 minutes), use some and drain the rest (as best I can) and freeze them for quick use later. Half a pound of lentils go an incredibly long way.
I have a trick for storing them: I put them all in a freezer bag, weigh the bag, then flatten it out a bit and divide it into roughly 2-ounce blocks by pressing the edge of a ruler into the bag - e.g. 5 blocks if there's 10 ounces - and freeze it like that. Then when you want some you just have to take out the required number of bricks!

[Wombat140]

Any biscuits made with rice flour tend to come out as shortbread, even if they aren't. Pretty good shortbread too. I've noticed rice flour among the ingredients of some ordinary (wheat-based) commercial shortbread, in fact, so evidently this has been discovered by other people too!