Chocolate & Coconut Tarts - the taste of paradise

I had been meaning to post something for Shirley's GAHIGF (grain free, nut free dishes) all month and then suddenly here it was, May 31st - looking at me accusingly from the calendar. Shirley Braden is one of the gluten free blogosphere's most wonderful ambassadors -  a kinder, more supportive soul you couldn't wish to meet.  How could I let her down by not contributing to my own blog carnival?

I have been teaching and recipe testing many things that I can't post here because I need to pop them in a book - I long to share them with you none-the-less! However, most of them contain grains or nuts, or both. So I've gone back to an old classic and I may have missed the deadline, but at least it's here. 

I give you the taste of paradise - coconut and chocolate - in a chewy, bittersweet, grain and nut free treat. If you can find carob molasses for the ganache, it brings a malty gooeyness that I really love (Nick has a horror of carob molasses, so pick your camp I guess?). You can make these tiny and serve as canapés or into a large tart and slice. I like mine as an individual portion - something I can curl my arm round protectively and growl if anyone comes near. Although I do think that ganache is the very best thing to pour into them, you could also fill with fresh tropical fruit and a drizzle of cream or coconut milk.

Chocolate and Coconut Tarts

Coconut Crust

1oz (30g) Dessicated Coconut

4oz (105g) Coconut Flour (or grind desiccated coconut till fine)

1oz (30g) Tapioca Starch or Arrowroot

1 Large Egg White

1/3 cup (80ml) grape mollasses or maple syrup

Few drops of lemon juice

Ganache Filling (fills four or five tarts)

1 1/2oz (45g) 70-80% Dark Fairtrade Chocolate

1/2 cup (125ml) Double (heavy) Cream or Coconut Milk

1 tbs (15ml) carob mollasses or maple syrup

Preheat the oven to 160C fan assisted or 170C without. Generously butter 8 holes of a muffin tin.

Making the crust:

Measure all the ingredients into a bowl and beat together until a very sticky dough forms. Spoon it evenly into the 8 muffin tin holes that you buttered and press the mixture up the sides with your fingers to form little tart cases. Any thin bits, just squidge some of the mixture over to ensure you have evenish coverage. Bake them for about 8-10 minutes until the top edges are starting to turn golden brown. Leave in the tray for a few minutes once out of the oven and then gently remove to a cooling rack. When cold, either fill with ganache or fruit and cream, or freeze and then pack into a box when frozen.

Making the ganache: 

Simply chop the chocolate and heat the cream and carob molasses/maple syrup in a small pan until it is steaming but has no bubbles. Off the heat, add the chocolate and leave for a couple of minutes to melt, then stir until smooth and pour into the coconut cases. If you would like something more like a whipped truffle that you can pipe into the cases, just allow the ganache to cool and then beat with a hand held mixer until lighter in colour and buttercream consistency (don't over whip) before piping into the cases.

This is my submission for Go Ahead Honey it's Gluten Free, hosted by Shirley Braden of Gluten Free Easily

Gluten Free at Ashburton Cookery School

Yesterday was my first teaching day at the Ashburton Cookery School - a deliciously well oiled machine of a place! It's an exciting new strand on my bow, because I was teaching trainee chefs and sending them off out into the world to spread the word about wholesome gluten free.

It's so important that chefs understand more about food intolerance, allergies and coeliac disease. Not purely to keep those of us who are blessed with sensitive tums, safe while we eat - but for their own culinary development. It's good to get the message across that gluten free needn't be a compromise, because it can be something in itself. Chefs can be ambassadors for the many different grains available to everyone - not just coeliacs! They are the clever people who can experiment with cakes made with starchy vegetables, pastries that have a unique flavour because of the different flours, nuts and fats used, breads that taste of something other than rice flour and potato starch.

Around the world people are eating gluten free grains as a matter of course - Injeera bread in Ethiopia (teff), Sorghum porridge across Africa, Buckwheat blinis in Russia, Maize tortillas in SouthAmerica. People don't eat these foods because they suffer food intolerance - they simply use what grows around them, and their diet is the better for it. Western diets have relied for too long on wheat flour and we all need to spread out net as wide as we can, to catch all those varied flavours, textures and nutrients.

The chef school at Ashburton was run like the best of kitchens - clean, ordered, light and full of laughter. After a day of teaching I always long for a kitchen porter in my own kitchen, because chefs get to do the fun cooking bit, without all the onerous washing up! The trainee chefs were a delight - bright, polite and able, full of interesting questions that set me thinking and cheffy tips about how to finesse my rustic style.

I wish them well, wherever they end up cooking. I know that if you happen to eat at one of their places, you'll be sure of a warm welcome and a good gluten free meal.

The school also runs a wide range of courses for the public. Visit the Ashburton Cookery School website here.

Pin It Forward UK

Pinterest how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

You know that feeling you get when you crack open the freshly minted spine of  new magazine? Interiors magazines are my poison - but yours may be something else, food, fashion, gossip? The point is that I love the act of settling down with a new magazine, untouched by any other hand but mine, propped on my elbows, a cup of assam in one hand and my belly on the sheepskin rug.

However, I am often disappointed by what I find there - I hope to graze on images of interiors that I love until my greedy eyes are sated. But what I find is a mix of uninspiring and the odd gem, that sometimes appears to be a bit less sparkly the more I look.

At least this was the case until I discovered Pinterest - an online scrapbook of images pinned by people like you and me, from around the globe.

I'm a visual person - actually, I think we all are. I love to look at images of things that delight me as much as I love to read well written articles and listen to mind expanding radio. I love reading blogs - but I just don't have the time to trawl through all that information. So if I love something and want to look at it later, I can pop it on a Pinterest board (the modern equivalent of a newspaper clipping) and come back to it later (with my cup of assam).

But I'm also a bit of a magpie, so I can use these boards as a way to collect all those shiny things that delight me and pop back every few days to have a look and gloat over my treasures. I have a board of inspirational home images that satisfies my craving for interiors magazines (and with the money saved, I can probably buy something new for the house!). My Primal Food board makes me feel as though I've chased down a bowl of wild greens with chicken broth and wild pigeon pie - plus it links me to all those other primal bloggers that I love, and a few I didn't even know about.

Of course I have a Gluten Free Baking board where I post interesting looking recipes, images from this blog and links to my courses. It's become part of my communication repertoire - like a visual tweet.

I guess Pinterest is a little like Facebook - without the feeling that you're wasting your time. You're building something here! A treasure trove, a recipe box, a font of inspiration for those days when it just isn't flowing.

During the design process for a new venture I'm setting up (very hush hush at the moment) I used the secret board facility to post images for my colleagues in Bahrain and London to see - and they posted images and comments for me. It worked fantastically! In a few days we had achieved what many meetings and 'mood boards' would have done, with the minimum of fuss. Try it yourself!

Suffice it to say that I'm a convert, a devotee even. I would recommend Pinterest to anyone with the smallest particle of visual sense to start creating their own online scrapbook - toss those expensive magazines in the bin.

Check out my Gluten Free board here and sign up if you haven't already done so. You won't regret it.

To check out the next blogger in the Pin it Forward campaign visit Sarah at Maison Cupcake or check out her deliciously sugary boards here

Greek Olive Oil - Direct from the producer!

It's not often I get a request to review a product I can honestly say is 'real food'. As a result, product reviews are few and far between. However, when I'm asked if I would like to try some olive oil, or a local veg box, maybe a new type of free range sausage or a whole-grain flour I leap for joy - pleased to be able to do my bit to remind the world that it's not all supermarkets, ready meals and packet mixes out there. When Pelia asked me to taste their olive oil and let them know what I thought - how could I say no?

Olive oil is great stuff! Full of monounsaturated oleic acid that reduces levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol in the blood. Olive oil aids absorption of lycopene from tomatoes, has antibacterial qualities, tonifies the liver and may even keep you regular!

It's important not to overheat olive oil as it is only moderately chemically stable. Unstable fats cause inflammation in the body and should be avoided at all costs. So add your olive oil to food after it has been cooked, or stir a little into your tomato ragout at the end of cooking. If you are gently roasting meat, fish or vegetables (160ºC or lower) then use olive oil for this - otherwise, use a stable fat such as duck fat, lard (also high in oleic acid) or coconut oil that can survive the heat.

I'm generally a fan of Spanish olive oil. I like the extra virgin unfiltered stuff, deep golden green and cloudy, sweet, buttery and fruity - without the pepper kick you get from an Italian olive oil. Pelia is a Greek Olive oil sold in 3 litre packs direct from the producer. It's cold pressed from manaki olives and has a light olive gold colour.

When I tasted it I was reminded of kalamata olives - although these are black and fruity, the oil shares some of the walnut flavour you find in the olives. It's light, creamy textured and with very little acidity - which is great if like me you don't appreciate an oil that burns the back of your throat! High on grassy, seedy flavours in a way that is specifically Greek, I found it was beautifully balanced by my sweet / tart cherry tomatoes at breakfast this morning. Quite moreish actually...

If you're looking for an oil that tastes really distinctive, without the challenging aspects of some more worthy brands, I would visit the Pelia website and check it out yourself. Salad weather is surely on the way and you want to be ready with your olive oil and lemons to celebrate its arrival!

Gluten Free at River Cottage - last minute places on next week's course!

Quick! Hurry, hurry! We've had two last minute cancellations on next week's gluten free day at River Cottage!

Bear in mind if you are hesitating, that this course has been fully booked for well over a month, June's course is also closed and May is going fast. If you are hesitating about booking a place for yourself or a loved one - do it now!

If you have a gluten intolerance or coeliac disease, it's a day that could change your life. We don't just churn out the same old gluten free staples - I'm talking wholegrain, traditional method, real food here people!

The feedback I usually get is that participants leave the day with their head full of new information, excited about getting in their kitchen and baking up a storm. We cover much, much more than just gluten - the whole gamut of food questions are there to be pounced on with delight and tossed in the air like a seal with a ball.

Can you afford not to book a place?

x x x

Coffee and Walnut Cupcakes - Comfort Food

Before we had Finn, we would buy the papers of a weekend and spread them over the breakfast table, whilst our hands cradled cups of coffee and crumbs lingered on our fingers, well into the idle morning. I unashamedly bypassed the serious news sections in favour of the magazine and Nigel Slater's weekly food column - comfort food was his speciality. One weekend he wrote a piece on coffee cake accompanied by a gorgeous photo of a messy forkful, all walnut crumb and soft buttery icing.

I made that cake every chance I got - whenever some comfort was needed. The cake never failed to bring a smile through even the worst of times. It was my tender cake blanket, that I tucked around us and kept the world out of the kitchen just a little bit longer. The recipe was folded and smoothed again and again, sticky with coffee splashes and finger prints.

Recently, Finley fancied looking through my old recipe books at bedtime - the ones that are full of gluten and sugar, but I keep anyway because I love to have them on my shelf. We oohed and aahed over sticky desserts and buttery pastry, truffles and tortes. Then out fell a loose sheet and Finley snatched it up, uncreasing its long folded pages to reveal a very faded recipe for coffee cake - the very one I had probably folded up the year before he was born and consigned to the shelves with all the rest.

I let out a sigh and told Finn all about the cake and what it meant to me. He stroked the furrow out of my brow and told me that I could make a coffee cake if I liked - detailing all the ways I could make it without caffeine, sugar and wheat. What a boy.

After my Aunt's funeral I had a real urge for something treaty. Something buttery and moreish, with crumbs that would stick to my fingers and lips. I remembered the coffee cake and knew that this was exactly the sticking plaster I needed for my sore heart.

I made cupcakes because, somehow, they are even more comforting than a cake to me. Just looking at their frosted tops, adorned with a perfect walnut half makes me feel complete.

I made them without refined sugar, or grains, or caffeine - because I don't want to feel high, just nourished.

x x x

This month's Go Ahead Honey, hosted by Alta of Tasty Eats at Home is all about Comfort Food. This is my contribution. If you would like to contribute something, please post it as soon as you can and email the link to Alta. You can use an old post if you like - just update with a link to Alta's blog.

If you are following SCD or GAPS - these are a very advanced food as they contain lots of dates and coffee. Don't even attempt to eat them until you have been clear of symptoms for 3-6 months and accompany with a dose of probiotic!

Coffee and Walnut Cupcakes (makes 6)

Walnut Cakes
80g Dried Dates - finely chopped
20g Palm Sugar (optional & leave out for SCD)
130g Ground Almonds
3 Large Free Range Eggs
80g Salted Butter
80g Walnuts
1 1/2 tsp Gluten Free Baking Powder (1/2 tsp bicarb for SCD)
2 tsp Vanilla Extract
2 tsp Lemon Juice

For coffee cake and icing, replace vanilla extract and lemon juice with four tsp of very strong cold coffee. I prefer a walnuty cake and coffee icing.

Preheat oven to 160ºC. Pop six paper muffin cases into a deep muffin tray.

In a food processor, blend dates, palm sugar and ground almonds until they are like coarse bread crumbs.

Add butter, eggs, baking powder and vanilla - or coffee - and blend again until smooth, creamy and paler in colour.

Add walnuts and lemon juice (or leave out for coffee) and blend again until the walnuts are coarsely chopped into the mix.

Spoon into 6 muffin cases, half fill the empty holes in the tray with water and bake for 25 minutes, until golden and well risen. Cool on a rack.

Date and Coffee Buttercream

Make some very strong coffee using 1 heaped dessertspoon of ground coffee and about 150ml of boiling water. 

Cook 45g dried dates in 100ml of the coffee until almost all the liquid is absorbed. Cool completely

Blend coffee dates with 60g salted butter and 1 tsp vanilla extract until creamy and pale.

Ice the cakes and top with a perfect walnut. Keep in a cool place or refridgerate - they won't last long.


http://www.tastyeatsathome.com

Màire

Just over a week ago my mother's sister was taken ill very suddenly. Before we could make our way to Glasgow, she was gone. The cancer we thought a nasty memory had crept about her lungs and liver, silent and deadly. 

Death carried Màire peacefully away in his tender arms, to who knows where? All he left was her body, spent and relieved. Spared a long vicious struggle by some sort of mercy.

We made the long journey from our disparate locations and converged in the little flat that she shared with my uncle. Surrounded by her paintings and photos, little trinkets gathered from around the globe, her presence lingered like scent - catching as I swallowed over the lump in my throat.

I hadn't seen my aunt in years. Thinking that I had time, I let the spring and summer roll round year after year. We raised Finn, built our house and filled the time in between with a hundred little things. I sent Christmas cards and always thought fondly of her. 

I remembered the time that she arrived from  some airport on my birthday, bearing some purple eye shadow as a gift. I guess I was six or seven. I looked at my mum - a staunch feminist - wondering if this gift was ok? Màire laughed as she apologised for the funny gift, and yet it was so thoughtful of her! She thought of me between security and the sky, remembering that a gift - any gift - is better than turning up empty handed. 

I loved that eye shadow.

At Màire's cremation her daughter and husband spoke beautifully of her life and talents, her warm heart and eclectic tastes. I read Kalil Gibran, crumbling into messy tears in the last stanza and squeaking out the final phrase. Their strength humbled me.

I felt angry with myself for missing out on more time with her, simply by imagining that my life was already too full for a few trips to Glasgow. Regret welled up in my sore heart as I sighed through the journey back home.

After a fitful night, tired and tearful. I resolved to act differently in future. My huge, diverse and wonderful family are out there, all that is required of me is to reach out and touch them.

Thank you Màire for reminding me how precious life is. I wish you a safe journey wherever you're headed and know that they'll be glad to see you when you get there.

Love,

Naomi x x x