Low Fodmap, Gluten free, low lactose pancakes

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According to Wikipedia’s reference for Shrove Tuesday pancakes represent the sun in pagan mythology and eating them gave power, light and warmth of the sun. Pancakes were also a way of using up rich food before the fasting of lent in the Christian religion. Either way these delightful disks are a treat with sweet or savoury fillings and I like the association with the life giving sun when it has been so cold recently. Enjoy….

Ingredients

3 large eggs

50 mls Lactose free milk

100g of wheat free, gluten free flour

Pinch of salt

Spray oil

Method

Weight out the flour into a mixing bowl and add the eggs and a small pinch of salt.

Mix well and add enough milk to make a thin batter that coats the back of a spoon.

Pour the batter into a measuring jug.

Heat the frying pan and spray some oil – pour in enough batter to thinly coat the bottom of the pan and move the pan till the batter is even and pour off the excess back into the measuring jug.

Cook for 30 seconds maximum till dry and and flip over the pancake to cook the other side.

Serve warm with lemon juice and sugar (traditional way) or anything that takes your fancy!

 

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Gluten free low lactose crumpets – better to make these at home!

This recipe is really easy to make and is gluten-free, low FODMAP and low lactose. These are really nice to enjoy toasted with a little free from spread (and jam if you wish) on a cold winters day after a long walk in the countryside! It was really cold outside when the pictures below were taken but the benefit of being outdoors is the atmospheric sky and moss-covered surfaces – showing that winter is really here!

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Ingredients

300 g Gluten free self-raising flour

1 teaspoon of dried yeast

2 eggs

3/4 pint of lactose free milk

Salt + pepper

Method

Remove the eggs from the fridge and leave to warm to room temperature. Heat the milk till luke warm (body temperature.) Weigh out the flour and add the eggs, milk, yeast salt and pepper. Mix well and leave somewhere warm for the yeast to begin to rise, heat a frying pan and using spray oil to fry and using a cooking ring sprayed with oil place this in the pan and fill the ring with 1 cm depth of batter, you should see small bubbles forming on the surface of the crumpet. Lift up the cooking ring turn the crumpet over and cook through. If you are avoiding yeast then try a little more baking powder in the batter instead.

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Wheat free couscous stuffed peppers and Living well with IBS

Please watch and share ‘Living well with IBS’ (irritable bowel syndrome), a film made by Vicky Grant, a researcher at the University of Sheffield, and Gemma Thorpe, a professional filmmaker. Vicky has lived with IBS for over 30 years; here she talks about her experiences and the experiences of others, as portrayed through the storytelling workshops she runs through the Knowing as Healing project.

One of the recipes developed for the video is the one below – a perfect choice for meatless Monday!

Ingredients

150g of wheat free couscous
200ml of boiling water
60g of green olives
60g of hazelnuts*
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of mild paprika
10-12 strands of fresh coriander
Grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
4 slices of wheat free seeded bread
4 teaspoons of garlic infused oil
Five orange peppers.
Salt to taste.

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Weigh out the maize couscous and add the boiling water and cover – leave to stand for 5 minutes.

Add the oil to a pan and add chopped hazelnuts and add cumin, cinnamon and mild paprika and toast the nuts.

Mix the nuts and spices with the couscous and add chopped olives.

Wash and cut the peppers in half fill each with the couscous.

Crumb the bread and add lemon and fresh coriander and sprinkle this mix on the top of each pepper.

Use aluminium foil to cover the peppers while they cook and cook till pepper is soft 20-10 minutes at gas mark 5 or 190°C. Remove aluminium foil for the last 5 minutes to toast the breadcrumbs. Watch out for other recipes soon!

*Hazelnuts do contain some FODMAP but are used in very small amounts in the recipe – if you wish you can omit them if problematic or if you are on the exclusion part of the diet.

Serves 10 – serve with some Low FODMAP salad as a light lunch

Saffron Simnel Cake

Saffron Simnel Cake

This recipe can also be downloaded from the IBS Network website

http://www.theibsnetwork.org/what-we-offer/recipes/

It is a different take on the traditional Simnel cake – without marzipan as this might provoke symptoms if you have IBS. A small slice of this is nice to have on Easter Sunday, many people may find that Easter eggs are too much to tolerate, particularly if you suffer from lactose intolerance. Saffron can be excluded if you don’t like the taste.

Ingredients

240g of self-raising wheat free/gluten-free flour
1 flat tsp of cinnamon
1 flat tsp ginger
2 tbsp ginger syrup
4 eggs
200g of milk free margarine
Large pinch of saffron
150g of golden castor sugar

Method
Pour approximately 1 tablespoon of boiling water on to the saffron and set aside to cool.
Weigh all other ingredients into a mixing bowl, add saffron and liquid mix, mix well.
Place in a paper lined seven-inch baking tin and bake at gas mark 6 220ºC for 45 minutes – 1 hour until a cake skewer comes out clean, when inserted into the centre of the cake.
Decorate.

DSCF1294modOther posts that you might find useful at Easter:

https://clinicalalimentary.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/easter-hot-cross-buns/

https://clinicalalimentary.wordpress.com/2013/03/31/easter-meal-roast-spring-lamb/

If you can tolerate marzipan you might want to try this recipe instead

https://clinicalalimentary.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/easter-with-food-intolerance/

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.

 

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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