Gluten-free chocolate, orange and hazelnut biscotti

I love all food that comes from around the Mediterranean: paella, cassoulet, dolmades, hummus, tagines... The list goes on. But I have to say that my true passion is for all things Italian. I fell in love with the country as a small child. There was something so romantic about the language, the art, the architecture and the food. I have absolutely no idea where this came from. When I was growing up, my family tended to holiday, in the early years, in northern France and later, further south in the Quercy region. I remember one holiday in the Algarve in Portugal, another in the south of Spain and another in Malta. But we never went to Italy. It can’t have been as popular as a package holiday destination back then. My passion for it was so strong that I started to teach myself Italian when I was about 18 and took it as an extra subject in my first year at university. By the end of the year, I had dropped the French component of my degree (I really struggled to get to grips with Racine and Molière) and taken up Italian in its place. I had committed myself to spending the third year of my degree somewhere, as yet undecided, in a country where I had never been and where I was still, really, only able to speak a smattering of the language. A real leap of faith.

But my year in Florence was to be the best of my (unmarried) life and I have to say that the food was not an insignificant part of this. One of the saddest things I felt, when I realised that I was gluten intolerant, was that I would no longer be able to enjoy Italy in the same way that I had before. It’s the home of pizza, pasta and focaccia, right? It is, but it also happens to be a country where everyone is routinely tested for coeliac disease. Hence the supermarkets have a wide array of gluten-free goodies, processed food doesn’t seem to be automatically stuffed with wheat and barley to make it cheaper and go further and when you explain in a shop or restaurant that you can’t eat gluten, you’re not immediately greeted by a raised eyebrow and a sneer which clearly says “You’re not another one of those faddy eaters, are you?!?”.

I used to love dipping biscotti into frothing cappuccini but needless to say, I haven’t had any in nearly two years. I thought it was about time. And now that we’re in December and on the home stretch towards Christmas, chocolate, orange and hazelnuts seemed the perfect festive touch.

Gluten-free chocolate, orange and hazelnut biscotti

These biscotti aren’t massively heavy on the sugar (my philosophy is the less sickly something is, the more of it you can eat!), but if you’re a bit of a sweet-tooth, you might want to add a little more.

125g gluten-free plain (all-purpose) flour
25g cornflour (cornstarch)
25g cocoa powder
115g caster sugar
1tsp gluten-free baking powder
½tsp xanthan gum
160g hazelnuts (shelled weight), roughly chopped
zest 1 orange
2 eggs, beaten
1tsp vanilla essence

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Line two baking sheets with baking parchment.

In a bowl, sift the flour, cornflour, cocoa powder, caster sugar, baking powder and xanthan gum. Stir in the hazelnuts and orange zest. Make a well in the centre and fold in the egg and vanilla essence to make a sticky batter.

Spoon onto one of the baking sheets to make two rectangular logs, about 25cm long by 5cm wide (normal raw biscotti mixture is like a sticky dough which you can roll into the log-shapes but this is more like a cake batter). Make sure you leave space in between them to allow for spreading. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes, then remove from the oven and allow to cool. The loaves are easy to remove from the baking parchment with a palette knife and place on a wire cooling rack.

Reduce the oven temperature to 140°C (275°F). Cut each loaf into thin slices (about 5mm wide), using a sharp bread knife. Spread the biscuits out over both the baking trays (I use fresh baking parchment on the tray I’ve already used) and bake for a further 20 minutes, turning them halfway through. Remove from the oven and place on wire cooling racks.

Gluten-free Christmas-spiced baked ricotta cheesecake

I’ve been feeling very festive recently. And it’s still only the middle of November. I don’t know what it is. Possibly that we’ve already done half of our Christmas shopping because it has to be sent off to Canada to my husband’s family nice and early. It’s difficult not to feel festive when all the shops have got their tinsel out. It could also be because we’re due to move in the next couple of weeks from our current home in Bristol to a new one in Cheltenham. If we’re lucky, we’ll have three weeks to get the house straight before the whole family descends on us for the holiday. So it feels like Christmas is upon us already. I think, though, that the real reason that I’m feeling this way is because last Christmas, I was eight-and-a-half months pregnant and the size of a house (well, a small semi, anyway). I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything that is the usual Yuletide fare, i.e. any alcohol, Stilton, Parma ham, pâté... and it was also my first Christmas as a glutenfreebie. I gallantly waddled around the kitchen, breathing through Braxton-Hicks contractions, making gluten-free sausage rolls and Harry Eastwood’s gluten-free plum pudding, all the while feeling somehow deprived. This year, I intend to eat, drink and be merry because I’m so much more confident and at ease now with my diet. But I’m a firm believer that Christmas is the most magical time when you’re a child so I can’t wait to watch my beautiful son enjoy his first of many.

Gluten-free Christmas-spiced baked ricotta cheesecake

I was feeling in need of eating something sweet and Christmassy but I’m the kind of person who cannot bring themselves to eat plum pudding outside of the Christmas week. So this, I think, is the next best thing.

Serves 8-10

100g sultanas
50g candied mixed peel
200ml orange juice (juice 2 large oranges)
40ml rum (I used white rum but that’s all we had)
1tbsp mixed spice
¼ tsp nutmeg
¼ tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp allspice
150g gluten-free stem ginger cookies (I used Sainsbury’s Free-From)
50g Mesa Sunrise breakfast cereal flakes
80g butter
500g ricotta
250g half-fat crème fraîche
3 eggs
100g caster sugar
zest 1 large orange
2tsp vanilla extract

You will also need a loose-bottomed tin, either flan or springform, with a diameter of 23cm, at least 2.5cm deep, a wire rack and a baking sheet.

Put the sultanas, mixed peel, orange juice, rum, mixed spice, nutmeg, ginger and allspice into a small saucepan and bring up to the boil. Turn down the heat and simmer gently for 20 minutes until the dried fruit is tender and most of the liquid has been absorbed. Take off the heat and allow to cool.

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C. Grease the bottom and sides of the tin with a butter paper. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over a very low heat. Put the cookies and the cereal flakes in a food processor and pulse until they are coarse crumbs. Pour them into a mixing bowl and add the melted butter, stirring until they are well-combined. Tip the butter-biscuit crumb mixture into the tin and press down firmly and evenly into the base.

In a large bowl, blend the ricotta, crème fraîche, eggs, caster sugar, orange zest and vanilla extract with an electric whisk. Stir in the dried fruit mixture. Pour the ricotta and fruit mixture on top of the biscuit-crumb base in the tin. Tilt the tin slightly so that the top of the cake becomes level. Bake in the oven on a wire rack on a baking sheet* for 40 minutes, or until the cheesecake is golden and wobbles slightly in the middle, when the tin is shaken.

Cool in the tin for 20 minutes, then loosen and remove the cheesecake and base from the sides of the tin. When the cheesecake has cooled completely, chill in the refrigerator until required.

* When I baked the cheesecake, some liquid seeped out onto the baking sheet. Placing tin on a wire rack means that any liquid is able to drain away.

Gluten-free aubergine, mushroom and goat's cheese lasagne

Celery is my secret ingredient in this dish. I think it is a much maligned and overlooked vegetable, by home cooks at least, but, at the same time, I can kind of understand why. It is usually the unsung hero of the mirepoix in professionally cooked dishes and my memory of it, growing up in the Seventies and Eighties, consist of it being just one component of very bland and unimaginative salads... As I reminisce, it’s always a Sunday evening, Wimbledon is on the telly and the curtains are closed to shut out the last rays of the summer sun. Tea-time arrives. A few leaves of lettuce sit lethargically alongside some flabby slices of ham, a tomato cut into quarters and three slices of cucumber. A stringy half stick of celery cowering at the edge of the plate (if the plate were square, it would be in the corner) and a small pile of salt in which to dip the end of said celery stick complete this motley crew. The height of sophistication is a dollop of Heinz salad cream on the side... Eek! So it’s hardly surprising that it took me years to discover celery’s gastronomic delights. Celery and Stilton soup is now one of my very favourites and I think it adds a beautiful savouriness to any dish it’s in.

Gluten-free aubergine, mushroom and goat’s cheese lasagne

This lasagne recipe is a bit of a labour of love but I think is well worth the effort. The aubergine and mushroom ragú needs quite a lot of slow cooking (an hour altogether) so that the flavours combine and the sauce thickens and enriches. If time is an issue, the ragú could actually be cooked the day before because, once it’s bubbling away, it needs very little supervision. It can then be left in the refrigerator overnight. The pasta and béchamel can be cooked and the whole thing assembled and baked the next day. I think any braised dish actually gets better, anyway, if you leave it 24 hours because it gives the flavours a chance to develop and intensify. The ragú could even stand alone as a dish in its own right as part of a selection of mezze. I think it would be delicious served at room temperature, sprinkled with gremolata and scooped up with flatbread (gluten-free, of course).

Serves 4 generously

2 tbsp olive oil
small knob of butter
1 large onion, diced
2 sticks of celery, halved lengthways and sliced finely
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 medium aubergines (eggplant), cut into 1cm cubes
150g mushrooms, thinly sliced
500g passata
3 heaped tbsp sun-dried tomato paste (about 100g)
200ml water
celery salt (optional)
pepper
8 sheets gluten-free lasagne (about 160g)
25g salted butter
25g gluten-free all-purpose flour (I use Dove’s Farm)
350ml milk (either whole or semi-skimmed)
nutmeg
110g soft goat’s cheese, cut or torn into smallish pieces

You will also need a 2-litre capacity ovenproof dish

To make the ragú, heat the olive oil and the butter over a low heat in a large deep sauté pan. Add the onions, celery and a sprinkling of salt. Stir to coat with the melted oil and butter. Cover the pan and sweat the vegetables for 20 minutes or until they are softened and translucent. Add the garlic and aubergines to the pan, stir to combine and continue cooking for 5 minutes. Then add the mushrooms, stir to combine and continue cooking for a further 5 minutes. Stir in the passata, sun-dried tomato paste and water (I usually swill out the empty passata carton with the water first to get the last dregs of tomato out). Simmer with the lid off for 40 minutes or until most of the liquid has been absorbed*. Check the seasoning, adding celery salt (or normal salt), if necessary, and black pepper.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180°C. Parboil the lasagne sheets in a large pan of salted, boiling water for about 8 minutes**. Drain, brush with olive oil so that they don’t stick and set aside on a plate, ready for assembly.

To make the béchamel, melt the butter in a small saucepan. Add the flour and whisk briskly for 1-2 minutes. It should form a shiny, golden and bubbling paste. Take the pan off the heat, and pour about 325ml of the milk in slowly, whisking furiously to break up any lumps that form. Put the pan back on the heat and slowly bring back up to a simmer, whisking all the while. Let the béchamel bubble away gently as it thickens for about 10 minutes, giving it an occasional stir to prevent sticking. Check the consistency (it needs to be pourable like double cream), adding more milk if needed to loosen it. Season with a little salt, some black pepper and a scraping of nutmeg.

Now to assemble the whole dish. Mentally divide the aubergine and mushroom mixture into thirds and spoon the first third into the dish, spreading it with a palette knife or the back of a spoon until it covers the entire base. Now put in a layer of lasagne sheets, making sure that the aubergine and mushroom mixture is covered (it doesn’t matter if the sheets overlap). Repeat with the next third of aubergine and mushroom mixture and the final layer of lasagne sheets. Now spread the final third of aubergine and mushroom mixture into the dish. Carefully pour the béchamel over the top and dot all over with pieces of the goat’s cheese. (So, in sum, you should have aubergine, pasta, aubergine, pasta, aubergine, béchamel, goat’s cheese).

Bake on the centre shelf of the oven for about half-an-hour or until the béchamel and goat’s cheese are bubbling and golden. Serve with a green salad.

* The ragú needs to be dryer than you would think because liquid will continue to come out as the lasagne bakes in the oven. In the past, I’ve stopped cooking the ragú when it gets to how I would like it in the finished dish... and ended up with a dinner plate full of watery sauce and flabby pasta.

** The packet instructions on the brand I use say to boil the sheets for only a couple of minutes before using in a lasagne recipe. I tried this before and ended up eating raw and gummy lasagne hence the extended cooking time.

Gluten-free creamy pesto chicken with pasta

This isn’t quite the post I was planning. I’ve been toying for a while with a salmon and pesto en croûte made with gluten-free puff pastry and I thought that I was going to iron out some irksome problems with it this weekend. Unfortunately, this was not to be. I did at least manage to avert the bane of most bakers’ lives – the dreaded soggy bottom – with a judiciously applied pancake (à la Beef Wellington) and although it tasted delicious (even my glutenista of a husband thought so!!!), it was hardly photogenic. I’m not vain on my food’s behalf but, I think that if you’re trying to entice people into going to all the trouble of buying ingredients and cooking them, then a decent photo goes a long way. But I couldn’t cook it again so soon. Even I can’t eat that much puff pastry in a week, gluten free or not.

So I had no recipe to post that I was entirely happy with.  What’s more, I had no dinner planned for yesterday evening either. What I did have, though, was the rest of the tub of pesto, some crème fraîche and some pasta. All it needed was a quick trip to the supermarket to procure some chicken and, hey presto, the following dish was born. Truly serendipitous. I love it when a non-plan comes together.

Creamy pesto chicken pasta

Serves 2

1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
300ml chicken stock
130g fresh pesto
2 heaped dessertspoons crème fraîche (I use half-fat)
2 skinless, boneless chicken fillets (about 250g), cut into bite-sized pieces
200g gluten-free pasta
Parmesan cheese, grated

Heat the olive oil over a medium heat in a large, deep sauté pan (it needs to be big enough to hold the sauce and the pasta combined). Add the onion and gently fry until softened but not coloured. This should take about 5 minutes. Add the chicken stock and simmer gently for another couple of minutes. Stir in both the pesto and the crème fraîche and bring back up to a simmer.

Add the chicken and allow to gently poach in the sauce for 10 minutes or until cooked through*. Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to the packet instructions in a large saucepan of boiling salted water. When the pasta is cooked, drain and add to the sauce. Stir to combine. Serve topped with freshly grated Parmesan cheese and a green side salad.

* I always cook chicken breast in a sauce in this way to avoid the meat toughening up and going stringy. You could substitute chicken thigh meat for the breast but I would brown this off first, remove from the pan before cooking the onions and add back in once the sauce is made. It may not need such a long cooking time.

Gluten-free orange and cardamom tart in a pistachio biscuit crust

A trip to the doctor’s to get the news from my coeliac screening blood test predictably revealed a negative result. I say predictably because apparently you need to have been eating gluten for at least six weeks prior to testing for the autoantibodies to be detectable in the blood. So I’m currently in limbo, waiting for my GP to check with the gastrointestinal consultant at the Bristol Royal Infirmary to see if the next steps are a gastroscopy and biopsies. Unfortunately, my doctor thinks that I may have to have eaten gluten during the past twelve months for any changes in the villi in my small intestine to be detectable. Potentially a week full of pastry, bread and pasta is rearing its ugly head. In the past, the thought of mandatory trips to Planet Pizza, bacon sandwiches made from tiger bread and Pieminister pies would have filled me with delight. Not this time.

Gluten-free orange and cardamom tart in a pistachio biscuit crust

This recipe takes its inspiration from Delia Smith’s recipe for Key Lime Pie in her book Delia’s How To Cook: Book Two.

Serves 8-10

For the base:
95g unsalted butter
175g gluten-free digestive biscuits
50g roasted, unsalted pistachios (shelled weight)

For the filling:
1 tbsp grated clementine zest (zest 4 clementines)
1 medium lemon, juiced and strained to remove pips and pulp
5-6 clementines, juiced and strained to remove pips and pulp
4 medium egg yolks
397g condensed milk
10 cardamom pods

You will also need a loose-bottomed tin, either flan or springform, with a diameter of 23cm, at least 2.5cm deep and a baking sheet.

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C (350°F)

Start by melting the butter over a very low heat. Using a food processor, whizz the pistachios until they are a coarse powder. Add the digestives and whizz them until they are coarse crumbs. Pour them into a mixing bowl and add the melted butter, stirring until they are well combined. Next, place this butter-crumb mixture into the tin and press it down firmly and evenly into the base. Place it on the baking sheet and bake on the centre shelf of the oven for 10 minutes, or until the crumb base is golden.

Lightly crush the cardamom pods on a board with a pestle to split them open. Scoop out the small seeds inside and crush them in a mortar until they are a fine powder. Place the egg yolks, clementine zest and ground cardamom seeds in a bowl and whisk with an electric whisk for about 2 minutes. The egg should have thickened and be a creamy pale yellow. Add the condensed milk and continue to whisk for another 4 minutes. Pour the lemon juice into a measuring cup or jug and add the clementine juice until it makes 150ml. Pour this into the milk and zest mixture and give another quick whisk to combine. Pour this on to the baked crust and return to the oven for another 20 minutes or until it feels just set when lightly pressed in the centre with your finger.

Remove from the oven, take the tin off the baking sheet and place it on a wire rack or heatproof surface. When it is completely cool, cover with clingfilm and chill until needed. Before serving, carefully remove the side ring of the tin, cut into slices and top with crème fraîche.

Gluten-free chicken pilaf with artichokes and preserved lemons

For several years I lived with pounding headaches, aching joints, a runny nose, fatigue and digestive problems on a daily basis. I popped painkillers as though they were Smarties and had a stash of mentholated 4head sticks on the bedside table, in coat pockets, at the bottom of bags and at the back of desk drawers. The thing is, I didn’t really question what was causing all of this discomfort. I just assumed that the stresses of a long commute and a day of teaching secondary school pupils with learning, emotional and behavioural difficulties were grinding me down.  I left the job but the symptoms persisted. I would wake up in the morning, feeling absolutely fine but, half an hour after a wheat-packed breakfast, I would get that expanding, burning aching in my head which would start at my temples, spread to my throat and make me feel queasy. I would automatically reach for the co-codamol whilst furiously smearing my forehead with menthol. It wasn’t until I decided that it was time I lost the stone and a half of excess weight that I’d been carrying around for far too long and went on the South Beach Diet, which cuts out gluten-containing foods, amongst others, for the first fortnight, that I found out, quite by accident that I was gluten intolerant. On my doctor’s advice, I’ve recently decided to find out if I’m actually coeliac or not. The diagnosis will make little difference to my everyday life, however. I’ve eaten gluten-free for the past two years and haven’t looked back. I’ve never felt so well. And the only thing I now eat like Smarties are, well, Smarties.

Gluten-free chicken pilaf with artichokes and preserved lemons

The taste of the cumin and the lemons take me back to a restaurant overlooking Jemaa El-Fna in Marrakech where I first had a chicken, olive and lemon tagine. Preserved lemons have a fairly strong, medicinal flavour which I love but which isn’t to everyone’s taste. The first time I cooked this recipe, I put in two lemons and the flavour was quite over-powering. The second time, I only used one. The flavour is now far more subtle. I would imagine that a fresher lemon flavour could be achieved through the substitution of preserved lemons for the juice of a fresh one and the zest of half of it.

Serves 2-3 (We usually manage to eat the whole thing between the two of us, but then we’re just plain greedy).

·         Handful flaked almonds

·         2 tsp cumin seeds

·         Medium onion, peeled and finely chopped

·         2 tbsp olive oil

·         2 skinless chicken breast fillets, cut into bite-sized pieces

·         200g basmati rice, rinsed under cold running water until the water runs clear

·         600ml chicken or vegetable stock or plain water

·         5 tinned artichoke hearts, quartered

·         1 small preserved lemon, chopped into small pieces

·         Handful fresh coriander, stalks removed and roughly chopped

·         Salt and pepper

Gently toast the flaked almonds in a dry frying pan over a medium heat until golden brown. This should take about 1-2 minutes. Remove from the pan and set aside in a small bowl. Carefully wipe the hot pan with a piece of kitchen roll to remove any shards of almond and return to the heat. Now gently toast the cumin seeds in the dry pan, still over a medium heat, until they become fragrant. This should take about a minute. Remove from the pan and grind to a powder, using a pestle and mortar.

Return the pan to the heat and pour in the olive oil. When hot, add the onions and cook until soft but not coloured. This should take about 7-8 minutes. Add the cumin powder to the onions and stir. Allow to cook for another couple of minutes, stirring to avoid the onions and cumin sticking and catching.

Add the rice to the pan and stir until all the grains are coated and glistening with oil. Add about 580ml of the stock and bring the mixture up to a simmer. Add the preserved lemon to the pan and allow to gently bubble away for about 5 minutes.

Add the chicken pieces and the quartered artichoke hearts to the pan and continue to simmer until the rice is tender, the chicken is cooked through and all the liquid has been absorbed. If the rice absorbs all of the liquid before it’s cooked, add more stock, a ladle at a time, to keep the mixture moist. This should take about 10 minutes.

Check the seasoning, adding pepper, and salt if required (I find that the stock has plenty of salt in it and I never need to add more). Stir half the coriander into the rice and scatter the remainder over the top, along with the toasted flaked almonds. Serve with a green salad.