Category: recipes

Easter Hot Cross Buns

Hot cross buns are an integral part of the Easter festivities – being on a wheat free diet shouldn’t exclude you from enjoying them.

DSCF1295modaIngredients
350g Brown Wheat/Gluten Free bread flour
2¼ Teaspoons xanthan gum
4½ Tablespoons castor sugar
1½ Teaspoons cinnamon
1¼ Fresh grated nutmeg
¼ Teaspoon of salt
3 Eggs
3 Tablespoons of olive oil based spread
1 Teaspoon vinegar
280 ml warm water
¾ Teaspoon sugar
3½ Teaspoons of dried fast acting yeast
125g Sultanas

To make the cross

Wheat free brown bread flour

1/2 egg (use the other half to glaze the buns.)

Method

This mix produces a very stiff dough so a powerful mixer with a kneader tool attachment is needed

Weight out the flour, xanthan gum, castor sugar, cinnamon, freshly grated nutmeg and salt into a bowl, mix the dried ingredients well.
In another bowl add the warm water, and sugar – dissolve and add fast acting yeast and leave till a foam forms on the surface.
Add the eggs, butter and vinegar to another bowl and beat and add the yeast mixture
Set the mixer to a slow speed to start and begin to add the dry ingredients to the wet and when all the ingredients are added mix well.
Add the sultanas and mix well with a spoon.
Quickly drop about 60g of mix into a greased bun tray and leave in a warm place for 30 minutes to rise.

Once risen, mix the cross flour and add a cross to each bun. Glaze with half an egg. Cook in an oven gas mark 6, 200 degrees C till risen and cooked through.

Serve and enjoy!”

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Best consumed within 24 hours of baking – I am sure you won’t have a problem with this bit! I have not added any candid peel to the recipe as I don’t like it but you could add some if you do.

 

Jules_GastroRD2 Comments

Another AGM and slaw salad

I am preparing for another IBS Network AGM tomorrow, I can’t believe its three years since I attended the first one – we have achieved lots of things since then, the Self Care Plan and now free access to all, new website, two Wellbeing days and lots of meetings. Now for the next 12 months!

Slaw salad
½ courgette
1 carrot
1 bag of rocket
1 bag of radish
2 tablespoons of light mayonnaise
3 dessert spoons of pine nuts
Salt & pepper

Method
Grate carrot, radish and courgette and squeeze out any excess water.
Mix the mayonnaise with the carrot, radish, courgette, pine nuts, rocket and add salt + pepper to taste.

Simple!

This recipe was made originally with buckwheat but large amounts of this grain can be problematic for the Low FODMAP diet. The best advice is to use a good variety of grains in the diet so you are not relying on one type. Updated 22.11.14

Jules_GastroRD2 Comments

Haddock Florentine with mustard roasted carrots (gluten free, low lactose, Low FODMAP)

IMG_1776It’s grim ‘up north’ today, the weather is grey and dismal at February’s threshold, still winter then? Few frosty mornings have occurred to evidence winters grasp on the landscape, just sodden foliage and waterlogged boggy moor – a relentless morass. The trees are coated in a thin layer of moss and everything is damp and dismal – great weather for ducks, but pretty uninspiring to everyone else! The ‘mood’ of the woods brings to mind one of my favourite poems by Rudyard Kipling, evoking feelings of nostalgia at its reading. It’s haunting theme I feel is more about sadness and loss, and I am often reminded of it whilst wandering in the woods around West Yorkshire –

The Way Through the Woods

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods …
But there is no road through the woods.

http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/bookmart_fra.htm

Summer is some way off – need something warm and tasty bring comfort and lift the mood? This is a really nice fish recipe for using up any stale or spare gluten-free bread (if you have any that is!) Otherwise you could use shop bought gluten-free or rice crumbs, which is more easily available to you. It is warm and filling and not too hard on delicate malfunctioning digestive systems. Fish is not cheap these days but this dish works well with smoked river cobbler too which will help with the cost, tinned spinach is also a useful standby to use. If you suffer from bloating from resistant starches you could make the dish without the breadcrumbs if you wish.

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Ingredients

1/2 packet of gluten-free/wheat free bread crumbs

2 smoked haddock or river cobbler fillets

1/2 pint of lactose free skimmed milk

3 teaspoons of corn flour

10 g of margarine

1 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg

25 g Gruyère

12 g of parmesan

1 tin of spinach

Method

Make the sauce, melt the margarine and add cornflour mix to a paste and slowly add milk till all the flour has been incorporated and add grated nutmeg, Gruyère and salt to taste. Mix till thickened, cool.

Wash the spinach and layer in the bottom of an oven proof dish, cut the skin off the fish and add a layer on the top of the spinach. Coat the fisn layer with the cooled sauce. Add salt and pepper to the dish.

Sprinkle breadcrumbs on the top of the sauce and cover with the grated parmesan.

Cook in a preheated oven at gas mark 5 or 180ºC. Serve with mustard carrots (roast carrots with a small amount of garlic infused oil and grained mustard.)

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Jules_GastroRD

Tapas

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This recipe is inspired by tapas dishes, usually filled with lots of garlic and onion – not great for people who are avoiding these ingredients. I hope you enjoy the recipe and the views of Barcelona!

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1) Spanish omelette.

This is a layered egg and potato omelette – minus the onions, but no worse because of it. It is probably best eaten warm, although if you don’t have a problem with resistant starches you could have it cold with a green leaf salad perhaps.

Ingredients

4 large eggs

4 potatoes

1 teaspoon of paprika

Oil/margarine to grease the dish, to prevent the omelette sticking to it.

Salt + Pepper

Method

Slice the potatoes thinly leaving the skins on for a little extra fibre!

Beat the eggs and add salt + Pepper

Rub margarine around your cooking dish and sprinkle around the paprika.

Par boil the potatoes and cool (don’t allow them to go too cold if you have a problem with resistant starch)

Add layers of potato and egg.

Weight the dish as it cooks so the egg penetrates all the layers.

Cook in a moderate oven till the potatoes and egg are cooked through.

2) Roasted paprika peppers

Ingredients

3 peppers – I like to use yellow and orange peppers as they look so nice but you can use any colour of pepper you feel like.

1 tablespoon of garlic infused olive oil

1 Teaspoon of smoked paprika (I used hot, but you can choose the heat of your paprika depending on your symptoms)

Salt + Pepper to taste

Method

Slice the top off the pepper and remove the stalk, slice the pepper. For the main body of the pepper again slice it but remove any white pithy material from the inside.

Add the oil paprika and seasoning and roast till soft – really couldn’t be simpler!

Low FODMAP, gluten free (check paprika contains no contamination) milk, lactose and fructose free.

Jules_GastroRD1 Comment

Tomato free moussaka – low FODMAP

DSCF1197modMoussaka is one of my favourite dishes, in my humble view it has to have cinnamon included – and lot’s of it. You might feel that adding a spice used in sweet dishes in the UK sounds strange, but it rounds off the flavour really well. It can be a high calorie dish particularly when lamb is the main component but it is possible to reduce the high fat load. I may be performing moussaka sacrilege by suggesting that it can be made without tomatoes, but I feel the essential flavours are included, so the dish doesn’t miss much by not using them.

Ingredients

2 medium aubergines

1 tablespoon of garlic infused olive oil

4 potatoes

500 g lean lamb mince

2 teaspoons of cinnamon

1 teaspoon of asafoetida

2 teaspoons of dried oregano

1 pint of skimmed lactose free milk (Yes you can get it now!!!)

75 g grated strong mature cheddar

2 eggs

200 ml of red wine

1/2 teaspoon of gravy browning

100 ml of water

4 teaspoons of cornflour

Salt & pepper to taste

Method

The method is time-consuming but I don’t eat this dish regularly, I usually have it on special occasions so it is worth making an effort to make it well.

1) Dry fry the mince and add cinnamon, asafoetida, oregano and gravy browning. Drain off the cooking juices and allow the mince to cool. Put the cooking juices in the refrigerator till the drained lamb fat has gone solid, scoop off the fat and throw it away.

2) Pour the remaining cooking juices in a frying pan, add red wine, water and cook. Mix 2 teaspoons of the cornflour with a little water then add to the gravy, cook till thickened.

3) Slice the aubergines into 4-5 mm circular slices, sprinkle with olive oil and roast in the oven till brown. Cool.

4) Slice the potato to the same thickness as the aubergine and par boil for 10 minutes – do this just before you are ready to assemble the dish, you don’t want them to go cold.

5) Grate the cheese, pour the milk into a pan and add the cheese and the rest of the cornflour (mixed with a little water.) Cook till thickened, cool and add the eggs – mix well.

6) Add a layer of aubergine, potato, meat – add gravy. Continue to build up the layers till the ingredients are used up. Pour the cheese sauce on the top.

7) Cook for 1 hour at gas mark 6 (200°C), or until the potatoes are soft and the top has browned.

Serves 6

Jules_GastroRD4 Comments

Gluten free bourbon cream biscuits

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Ingredients

2 egg yolks

160 g of gluten-free plain flour

120 g margarine

180 g of golden castor sugar

2 heaped dessert spoons of gluten-free cocoa powder

90 g of plain chocolate – gluten-free

30 g of low-fat mascarpone

Method

Cream together the margarine and sugar.

Add egg slowly and beat (if mix starts to curdle add some flour.)

Sieve dry ingredients and add slowly to the biscuit batter, this should be slightly dry to allow shaping.

For filling – melt chocolate and add mascarpone to it to make a stiff mix – stick biscuits together with cream filling.

Use gluten-free flour containing rice flour as this gives the biscuits a nice crunchy texture. Eat one as a treat – you can freeze them if you wish! 🙂

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