Comfort food

Yesterday was a grey, cool day, and I was feeling rather low thanks to my chronic illness, which flared up again recently. Mid-afternoon I found myself craving old-fashioned British style comfort food from my childhood. The craving was so strong I could almost smell and taste my grandmother’s wonderful treacle tart, which seemed to hover just the other side of my window glass.

Coming from British background, and with a Scottish grandmother who cooked most of our meals and was a dab hand at perfect light pastry, our food was solid, hearty meat and vegetable dishes, followed by the most delicious cakes and puddings, pies and tarts imaginable.

Shaking myself awake, I considered what comfort food I could have, given that I can’t have treacle tart, for a myriad of reasons connected with the dietary restrictions of my illness. Plus the fact  that a whole treacle tart is way too big for one person!

So I went browsing through my recipes, and knowing that I’d be finishing the last of the delicious garlic and rosemary roast lamb - a comfort food I wrote about before – I decided on basic baked egg custard, creamy but not bland, making good use of the oven, which could reheat the lamb and roast vegs under the custards.

Baked egg custard was staple pudding of my late 1950s childhood, and I learnt to cook it by the time I was 10. It’s high in calcium and protein, plus vitamins A, B, C and D, phosphorus and zinc from the eggs. When I had my children, it was a regular pudding, being nourishing and easy for small children to eat, while remaining delicious enough for adults to enjoy. It also went well with home-bottled or canned fruit. Of course that was a pudding for four of us, so in recent years I’ve adapted it to make two single servings.

Here’s my version of the classic Baked Egg Custard

For 4 people:

4 eggs
2 cups milk*
½ cup cream**
3 tablespoons sugar,
1 teaspoon vanilla essence***
nutmeg for sprinkling

Notes
*Any milk you prefer; I use soy, it’s a matter of taste, although almond or oat milk might be rather thin-tasting.
** If omitting cream, replace with another ½ cup milk
*** Since we didn’t have vanilla beans back then, I’m happy to keep using proper vanilla extract. If you prefer the pod/seed trick, infuse them in the slightly warmed milk for 10 minutes before adding to the beaten eggs and sugar.

Grease a 4-cup size dish and stand it in a larger baking dish. 
Beat together the eggs, sugar, cream and vanilla essence, until they are well beaten.  Warm the milk to blood heat, and pour into the egg mixture, whisking them all together.

Pour the custard mixture into your dish and top with ground or grated nutmeg. Fresh nutmeg smells divine as you’re grating it, and the ‘megs’ keep in an air-tight jar forever. Carefully pour cold water into the larger baking dish, to bring it halfway up the sides of the inner dish.

Bake in the middle of a 150C (300F) oven for about 40 minutes, or until just set. It’s easy to overcook – take the custard out while still a little wobbly, as it will firm up.  If your oven is fan-forced, set the temperature 20 degrees cooler. 

To make individual servings, divide the custard mixture between 4 1-cup ramekins, stand in cold water as before, and bake for 25-30 minutes until just set.

Boiled Chocolate Cake

Still on comfort food, here’s a rich, most, almost fudgey chocolate cake, still using the basic ingredients of the 1950s and early 1960s, before cake mixes and chocolate chips. It’s a tweaking of one put out decades ago by Cadbury cocoa. Like all my baking, this can be made with gluten-free flour.  Just take care when mixing the flour in, as it’s harder to mix through completely than wheat flour.

1 cup water
1 cup sugar, white or raw
¼ cup soft brown sugar
125 gm (4 oz/½ cup) butter
½ cup cocoa
½ teasp bicarb (baking soda)

1½ cups SR flour, or plain (all purpose) flour and 3 teasp baking powder.
2 eggs lightly beaten.

In a large saucepan, place the water, sugars, butter and cocoa. Heat this mixture gently, stirring until the butter and sugar have melted and the whole mixture comes together as a glossy dark brown liquid. Then bring to the boil and simmer for two minutes.  Take it off the heat and immediately stir in the bicarb (baking soda). The mixture will froth up, which is why you need a large saucepan to contain the volume. Leave to cool for 20-30 minutes.

 Meanwhile, heat the oven and grease a 20cm (8 inch) cake tin. Sift together the flour into a large bowl, beat the eggs.
When the cocoa mixture is cool, alternately stir in the sifted flour and eggs and mix together until blended, but do not beat.
Pour into your greased cake tin, and bake for 45-50 minutes, or until a skewer poked in the centre comes out clean.*
Leave cake to cool for 10 minutes in the tin, before turning out onto a cake rack.

* I bake this in a square Pyrex casserole, so I reduce the oven temperature by 10 degrees, to prevent the cake overcooking. It will also go on cooking in the Pyrex for a little  longer after it’s taken out of the oven.
  

Buon appetito!

She'll Be Apples!

We don’t hear it said much now, but when I was a child, “she’ll be apples!” was a common comment. It means “everything will be fine; it’ll be OK”. My home state, Tasmania, was known as the Apple Isle, as we grew the best apples in Australia, and regularly exported them to Britain, Europe and Japan. No wonder I love apples so much!

Way back in January I promised you more apple recipes, and now the winter solstice is almost upon us, here are some warming apple recipes. For these you’ll need cooking apples – Grannie Smiths or whatever the equivalent is in your neck of the woods. I’ll start with the easiest – basic stewed apple, as stewed apples or applesauce form the basis for many cake recipes, as well as going really well with pork, bacon and vegetables like kale or cabbage.

Basic Stewed Apples

4 large cooking apples, peeled, cored and roughly sliced

Enough water to cover slices in a medium sized pan

2 tablesp sugar, or the equivalent in honey (to taste)

1 inch” piece of ginger, peeled and julienned (thin strips) (optional)

4-6 whole cloves (optional)

1 stick cinnamon broken roughly into pieces (optional)

Peel of half a lemon, cut roughly (optional)

Squeeze of lemon juice (optional)

A lot of these ingredients are optional, depending on what spiciness you want for your stewed apple. At it’s most basic, I put a few bits of lemon rind (pith & all) from a recently squeezed ½ lemon, in with the apple slices.

Pour in just enough water to cover apples, bring to the boil & turn down immediately to a very slow simmer. Don’t go far from the stove, stewed apple cooks very quickly! When the slices are soft enough to mash with a spoon or fork, remove from heat and take out all spices and lemon peel. Allow to cool slightly, then stir in sugar or honey. Adjust sweetness to taste, and add lemon juice for a better flavour.

To make applesauce, simply mash or puree your stewed apple.

Baked Apples

A winter treat from my childhood, these are almost as simple to make as stewed apple, and are perfect with cream, icecream, or as my Scottish grandmother used to serve them, with bright yellow custard made with custard powder.

4 large cooking apples (makes 4 serves, or 2 for 2 greedy people)

1/3 cup of chopped dates, sultanas or any dried fruit

2 tablesp brown sugar

½ teasp ground cloves or cinnamon (optional)

Butter

A shallow baking dish large enough to hold all four packed close together.

Thoroughly butter the dish for the apples. With an apple corer (a nifty gadget available from most kitchenware stores), carefully remove the core from each apple. Cut off a little from the base of each core to make a plug; fit the plug into the apple it came from for the best fit. Then with the point of a sharp knife, carefully score all round the equator of the apple. This stops the skin bursting as the apple cooks.

Stand the apples in the baking dish. In a small bowl, mix together the sugar, spices, and dried fruit. Spoon carefully into the apple hollows. Top with a small knob of butter. Pour about an inch (2.5cm) of hot water around the apples. Cover dish with a sheet of baking paper or foil

Bake in preheated oven (180C/350F) for 15-20 minutes. Remove cover and bake another 10-15 minutes until the apples are soft. Don’t worry of some of the filling runs out the apples; the hot water makes a light syrup with the sugar, butter etc.

Note: If you have something else cooking in your oven, such as a roast or a casserole, put the apples on a lower shelf and cook for a while longer.

Apple & Sultana Loaf

An old-fashioned ‘teacake’, Apple & Sultana Loaf is perfect for afternoon tea, toasted or warmed and spread with butter and accompanied by a pot of your favourite tea. It’s also a good standby for packed lunches or between meal snacks. This loaf can be made in two ways – with diced raw apple or with stewed apple/applesauce.

1½ cups self-raising flour or plain (all purpose) flour & baking powder to make SR

1 cup sugar

1 teasp ground cinnamon

½ teasp ground cloves

2 eggs, lightly beaten

125 gm (4 ounces) butter, melted

2 large cooking apples, peeled, cored & diced

I cup of sultanas.

About a tablesp of milk or water, if needed

Sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl, toss in the apple cubes and sultanas, and stir to coat fruit with flour. Add the cooled melted butter to the beaten eggs, then stir this liquid into the dry ingredients. Add the extra liquid if the mixture is too stiff. Do not overbeat, just mix well.

Spoon into a greased and lined loaf pan (23x13.5x7xcm; 9x5½ x2 3/4 inches) and smooth the top. Bake at 180C (350F) for 40-45 minutes, or until skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool for at least 10 minutes before removing from pan. Leave to cool completely before cutting. Sadly,fluten-free flour will not rise as beautifully as wheat flour!

Note: You could try using eating apples instead of cooking ones for the raw apple version, but they don't always cook as well.

Variation: replace raw apple with 1 cup unsweetened stewed apple (or reduce your sugar) . Mix the melted butter and the beaten eggs into the stewed apple, then proceed as before. This variation may take a little longer to cook.

Buon Appetito!

Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn!

Now that the debilitating migraine-inducing humid summer weather is (hopefully) finally gone, and autumn has officially started with end of Daylight Saving, I can enjoy sharing some more food and nutrition ideas with you. I promised more apple recipes in my last post, but not today. Today, in salute to the end of summer, I give an easily adapted leek frittata, and pear and raspberry bread.

Leeks are available all year round, but psychologically, feel more like an autumn food to me. Others may disagree, but it's when the heat and humidity start to ebb that I remember the pleasures of leeks. Related to garlic and onions, leeks offer all the health benefits of garlic, including antioxidants and antibiotic properties, but are milder and sweeter in flavour. Leeks were favoured by the Egyptians when they were building pyramids, and the Welsh have a leek as their national symbol. Perhaps it's the Welsh in me from my grandfather that makes me love the leek!

Pear and raspberry bread has become very popular on the Sydney cafe scene, so I determined to make some myself. I don't claim this recipe as an original so much as an amalgam of the various recipes I found on the web. Mine uses frozen raspberries, as fresh ones have such a short season and are ridiculously expensive, unless you live in a raspberry growing area, or have raspberry bushes in your garden. Frozen raspberries are not as delicious as fresh picked ones still warm from the sun, but they are an adequate substitute that you can have year round. Raspberries have good levels of Vitamin C, even the frozen ones. My only gripe with the frozen ones is they go purple when baked!,

So, to the recipes:

Leek Frittata
The name 'frittata' is a bit of a misnomer, as I actually bake it in a 26x16x5cm (10x61/4x2inch) pyrex lasagne dish. It's an adaptation of a frittata recipe from the early 90s; I gave up trying to fry it, as I always made a mess! The beauty of this recipe is you can substitute the cheese with whatever you have in the fridge or feel like eating - extra tasty cheddar, Swiss, fetta, whatever takes your fancy. Ditto with the zucchinis. I often swap them with celery, a flavour that goes well with leeks. You can also substitute the herbs. I like dill, but try oregano, marjoram or tarragon. Be adventurous!

• A good slurp of olive oil
• 3 small leeks or 2 large ones, thinly sliced
• 2 medium zucchinis (courgettes), julienned (matchsticks)
• at least 1 clove of garlic , chopped fine
• 5 eggs lightly beaten
 • 11/2 cups milk, or milk and yoghurt blend
 • 4 tablesp freshly grated Parmesan cheese (NOT the packaged powdered stuff!)
 • 4 tablesp of another cheese, cubed (cubes can be as large or small as you like)
 • 2 tablesp plain (all purpose) flour with a good pinch of baking powder
 • salt and pepper to taste (white pepper is better than black in this pale dish)
• 2 teasp dried dill

Sauté the leeks in the oil, until starting to soften, cover and cook on low for 10 minutes. Add your garlic and julienned zucchini, stir, and cook covered for another 10 minutes. If substituting celery for the zucchini, sautée it with the leeks, and make sure all vegetables are very soft before you do the next step.

Tip into a large bowl and leave to cool. When cool, mix in the cheeses and herbs.
In a large bowl or glass jug, mix the flour carefully with a little of the milk to make a smooth paste. Stir in the beaten eggs. Add the rest of the milk and the seasonings, stirring well to eliminate any lumps.

Spread the cheesy vegetable mix over the base of your oiled dish, pour in the milkand eggs, and stir gently until well combined.

Bake in the middle of a 180C (350F) oven for 25-30 minutes. at the 25 minute mark, test with a skewer to see how close to cooked it is. It should be slightly runny in the middle. If so, turn the oven off for the last 5 minutes to avoid overcooking.

Leave to cool completely before you attempt to cut it; this allows it to firm up.

Sue's Gluten-free Café-style Pear & Raspberry Bread
This is yummy toasted and spread with butter or smooth ricotta, and makes a great breakfast loaf. (Toast under a griller, not in a pop-up toaster - it will stick and burn.)

• 4 medium cooking pears, peeled, cored and grated or chopped fine.
 • 1 tablesp lemon juice
• 3 cups plain (all-purpose) flour
 • 1 teasp bicarb (baking soda) and 1/2 teasp baking powder
 • 3/4 cup melted butter
 • 3 eggs
 • 2 teasp vanilla essence
 • 2 tablesp milk
 • 1/2 cup frozen raspberries (or fresh, if you can)
 • 3/4 cup sugar, preferably brown, but raw or white are good

Grate or chop pears and toss in the lemon juice to prevent them browning. make sure all the juice from the pears goes in the bowl.

Sift together the dry ingredients. Whisk together the eggs, milk and vanilla, add the melted butter and whisk until blended.

Pour the liquid into the dry ingredients, add the pears and mix until combined, but do not overmix. Fold in the raspberries.

Pour batter into a greased and lined large loaf pan and smooth the top. Bake in 180C (350F) oven for an hour, checking with a skewer at the 55 minute mark. You might need to reduce the temperature a few degrees if the top is browned but the inside is not yet cooked.

Leave cake in its pan for at least 15 minutes to cool and firm before removing it. Place on a rack to cool completely before cutting.
Buon Appetito!

The Aussie Apple for Australia Day

Musing on Australia Day about what is the typical Aussie fruit I thought bananas – no; mangoes – no; pineapples – no; Granny Smith apples – yes! The Granny Smith is the apple Australia gave the world. It’s great for cooking with, ultra-reliable, and it’s also crisp, crunchy and slightly tart – perfect to bite into on a hot summer day.

Apples are not seasonal in high summer, but with controlled atmosphere storage, (cool storage), we can have crisp, juicy apples pretty much all year round. And with the new, smaller, varieties of what my family call “Granny Miffs,” (a N-W coast Tasmanian pronunciation), you can have big ones for cooking and small ones for munching.

As a proud Tasmanian, I always understood the Granny Smith originated in the apple-growing areas of the Huon Valley, a self-seeded tree, mutated from apples tossed out by early settlers or explorers, (maybe even Bass & Flinders during their circumnavigation of the island), and discovered by a local woman, the eponymous ‘Granny Smith’, some time in the 1830s or 40s, long before her NSW namesake claimed the triumph. Alas, I can find no documentary evidence to back up this lovely legend! You can read about the ‘real’ Granny Smith here.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away

Granny Smith’s great-granddaughter Edna Spurway certainly thought so. She lived to 101, and was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald as attributing her longevity to “good genes and lots of apples”.

What we now know is some of the reasons why a daily apple is so good for our health. Some 85 different studies have found that apples’ high levels of powerful antioxidants help protect the eater against cell-damaging free radicals, which could contribute to various cancers, cardiovascular disease, T2 diabetes and even asthma.

It’s amazing, but one standard apple contains more antioxidant power than one orange, half a punnet of blueberries or a cup of strawberries. Apples also contain useful amounts of calcium, potassium, iron and zinc, and on top of all that, they’re low GI. Plus, it’s much easier to walk out the door biting into a crisp juicy apple, with the juice spurting down your chin, than to eat the equivalent amount of strawberries or blueberries on the run. Even an orange has to be peeled!

Granny Smith – the world’s favourite cooking apple

I’m not sure if that’s 100 per cent correct; there maybe some regional apple varieties in other parts of the world that cooks swear by, but in Australia it’s certainly true. So, to the recipes:

Granny’s Apple Crumble

No, not Granny Smith’s, but my version of how I think my Scottish grandmother made apple crumble. She was an excellent cook, but she never shared her recipes, so when I came to make apple crumble for my young family after she'd died, I had to recreate it from taste memory, (with a little help from the English Women’s Weekly on rubbing the butter into the flour).

4 large green cooking apples
3 or 4 cloves, or ¼ teasp ground cloves
½ - 1 teasp ground cinnamon
About ½ cup of water.

Thinly slice the peeled and cored apples, place in a large saucepan with the spices and cover with the water. Be sparing with the water, you don't want the apples to become too sloppy. Stew gently until they are only just cooked. Stir in just enough sugar to taste – not too sweet. Put stewed fruit into a large oven-proof dish or lasagna dish.

Topping:
125 grams (4 oz) butter or margarine
½ cup of soft brown sugar
1 cup of plain (all purpose) flour
1 cup of instant rolled oats (quick cooking or microwaveable oats)

In a large bowl put the flour and the butter, cut into tiny cubes. Rub the butter into the flour using your finger-tips, until the mixture is like small breadcrumbs. This is messy work, but quite fun, and the rubbing action aerates the mixture. (Don’t use a food processor unless you’re absolutely pushed for time!) Stir in the brown sugar and the rolled oats, keeping the mixture as light as you can.

Spread the topping over the stewed apple; try to use a dish that enables you to have quite a thick crumble topping. Bake at 190C (375F) for 25-30 minutes, until crumble is golden brown. Serve warm or cold with cream, yoghurt or icecream.
Serves 4

Options: You can vary the crumble topping by replacing the oats or about 1/3 of the flour with coconut or any crunchy breakfast cereal. Using gluten-free flour and removing the oats makes it safe for coeliacs and people with gluten-intolerance. You could also replace the apple with any other stewed fruit or even tinned (canned) fruit or frozen berries, but then it wouldn’t be a traditional apple crumble! But still delicious.


More apple recipes to come!

Buon Appetito!

More Gluten-free Festive Baking

I finally got my act together and made two batches of Burnt Butter Crisps, complete with the chocolate dollop on top. Here they are:



A colleague was talking about gluten-free biscotti, and I remembered I had a recipe for Christmas almond bread, which really is biscotti with an English name. Here’s the recipe:

Christmas Almond Bread

Like the Piparkakut, this needs forward planning, as the bread rests for a week before the final baking It may be too late for Christmas Day, but you can have it ready for Boxing Day, as something not sweet or chocolaty. Or as a New Year’s Eve nibble to go with the bubbly.

4 egg whites
125 grams (4 oz) caster sugar (superfine white sugar)
125 grams (4 oz) plain (all-purpose) flour, sifted
125 grams (4 oz) whole blanched almonds

Beat the egg whites until stiff, stir in the sugar, and beat well, like making meringue. Fold in the flour and the almonds.

Bake in a greased and lined loaf tin at 180C (350F), for 30 minutes, or until a skewer poked in the centre comes out clean. Turn out onto a cooling rack, and when completely cold, wrap in a clean tea towel or foil and store in the pantry for a week.

With a very sharp knife, slice the loaf as thinly as you can. Cut each slice into fingers. Spread on a baking tray and toast in a low oven (66C, 150F) for about 20 minutes until pale golden and crisp. Store in an airtight tin. These keep for a long time, unless all eaten over the holiday weekend!

Have a wonderful festive season! More good food ahead in 2012.

Gluten-free Christmas Goodies

I was all fired up for a session of baking Christmas biscuits – not cookies, because these spicy delights are crisp and slightly chewy, not soft and cakey. But I ran into a problem, or rather two:

1: I couldn’t decide between making the Finnish ginger snaps (Piparkakut), which recipe I pulled from someone else’s cooking blog a few years ago, or my daughter’s variation on burnt butter crisps.
2: I didn’t have all the ingredients needed for the Piparkakut, nor enough gluten-free flour and sugar for both. Drat!

So, instead, I’ll give you the recipes for both, and after I’ve been to the supermarket and bought supplies, I’ll post a photo of whichever Christmas biscuit I decide to bake. They are very easy to make, and both recipes work well with gluten-free flour.

These spicy biscuits are perfect as little gifts, or just another sweet nibbly on the Christmas table. I’m not sure if they’re suitable for Hannukah, but if they are, that’s great. They’re also lovely at other festive occasions, or just for when you want something sweet and spicy.

V’s Burnt Butter Crisps

½ cup (100 gram) unsalted butter
1 cup castor sugar
1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped into sugar, or 1 teasp vanilla essence
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup plain (all purpose) flour
¼ teasp cinnamon
½ teasp cardamom
½ teasp nutmeg (optional)
2 or 3 grinds fresh black pepper
pinch of salt

I’ve been calling these ‘burnt’ butter crisps, but actually, the trick is to brown the butter without burning it. Put the butter in a small, heavy saucepan, let it melt and continue to cook, watching the whole time, until it browns. Leave to cool slightly.

In a large bowl put the sugar and vanilla. In another, sift the flour and spices together. Pour the browned butter over the sugar and mix well, then stir in the egg. Add the sifted flour and spices, and mix until blended thoroughly.

Drop by teaspoonfuls on biscuit trays (cookie sheets) lined with baking paper. Put them about 2 inches apart to allow room to spread. Bake at 180C (350F) for about 12 minutes, or until edges are turning golden and the tops have begun to crinkle. Let cool on the trays for a few seconds, then remove and cool completely.

You can serve them plain like this, or go for the chocolate option. Alternatively, make one batch plain, one batch chocolate-topped and offer them together.

The Chocolate OptionMelt a handful of good dark, semisweet chocolate chips in a double boiler, or a heavy based saucepan over another pan of boiling water. Take off heat, stir in an extra ¼ handful of chocolate chips, stirring until they melt. Drop a dollop of chocolate on top of each biscuit and allow to set.

Finnish Ginger Snaps (Piparkakut)

These take a bit of planning ahead, as the dough has to rest in the fridge or somewhere cool for at least 12 hours (and up to 2 days) before baking.

125 gram (4 oz) golden syrup or light molasses
2 teasp cinnamon
2 teasp ground ginger
1 teasp ground cloves
Rind of 1 orange, finely chopped
150 gram (5 oz) salted butter
150 gram (5 oz) sugar
1 egg
1 teasp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
500g (1lb, 2 cups) plain (all purpose) flour


Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl, then beat in the egg.

In a small pan, combine the syrup and spices and bring to the boil. Allow to cool slightly, then add to the butter/sugar/egg mixture and stir well.

Sift the flour and bicarb in to mixture and mix into a dough. Cover and leave in the fridge for at least 12 hours.

Pre-heat the oven to very hot –250C (480F). Divide the dough into quarters and roll out very thinly (approx. 2mm or ¾inch). Cut with a biscuit (cookie) cutter into rounds, or stars, trees and other Christmas shapes, and place on a baking tray. Bake for 5-6 minutes until golden brown. Leave on tray for 5-10 minutes to cool before moving them to a cooling rack.

Nutritional value

These festive biscuits are not super healthy or brilliantly nutritious. There may well be microtherapeutic benefits from the spices. But they don’t claim to be super foods. Just cheery, spicy, seasonal treats from the Northern European midwinter to this year’s chilly Australian summer.

Buon appetito!

Gluten-free Baking

I had a query from a follower of Eat Well Every day, who said wistfully that she loved the sound of the ginger and almond cookies, but was afraid to make them as she has been advised to eat gluten-free, and wasn’t confident about substituting.

I know exactly her problem! I’ve been trying to eat gluten-free for some years, and have had to take it seriously in the past 12 months, once we discovered I have one gene for coeliac disease, and therefore can’t tolerate gluten. To compound the problem, as part of my diet to keep me strong and healthy while suffering ITP, I’m also on a lowish-carb diet and avoiding all grains (as much as possible).


So I can reassure this person – and anyone else with a gluten-tolerance problem – that every cake and cookie, quiche or slice I put up on this blog has been made gluten-free.


Gluten-free pear and almond loaf


Is it hard to substitute when cooking gluten-free?

The honest answer is yes – at first. I was fortunate in having a good friend who is both a nutritionist and married to someone with coeliac disease, so she was very experienced in cooking gluten-free. She passed on some basic cookie and cake recipes, which I still use. From them, I got the basics of substitution.

The main problem is that gluten-free flour does not respond in the same way as wheat flour. It has much less body without the gluten, and often doesn’t rise as well, take up the same amount of liquid as wheat flour, or cook in the same time. Some flours, like rice flour and corn flour (corn starch) are very light. Soy flour, on the other hand, is quite heavy, and has a strange smell, which fortunately disappears in cooking. Soy flour and besan flour (chickpea flour), another heavy one, are best combined with lighter flours.

So you experiment. Be prepared for failures, or more likely, not quite perfects. Once you get the hang of it and find a flour or combination of flours you like, gluten-free cooking is just as much fun and the results as delicious as cooking with wheat flour. (I say wheat, because that’s mainly what flour is, but if you’re avoiding gluten, don’t forget to by-pass rye and oats. No more rolled oats, but brown rice flakes make a perfect substitute.)

Commercial gluten-free flours

Commercial gluten-free flour mixes, while more expensive than wheat flour, are fairly easy to find at your supermarket or health food store. Before I had to avoid grains, I found a commercial mix of rice flour, soyflour and tapioca quite good, although it was rather lumpy and needed sifting two or three times.

Now I use Orgran all-purpose flour, which is made from maize starch (corn flour), tapioca flour, rice flour and guar gum. It’s a lighter mix, and the ratio of rice flour to other ingredients is lower. I don’t usually endorse commercial products, but I’ve found this mix very easy to use, with consistently good results.

For some recipes, such as the pear and almond cake, and the next recipe, I add a bit of extra body by substituting with a couple of tablespoons of besan flour.

So, to the recipe: Beetroot Chocolate Brownies

This is my take on Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall's Chocolate and Beetroot Brownies. I was quite taken by his idea of treating beetroot as a fruit, and copied the recipe a couple of years ago, before I got serious about baking gluten-free. Now I've modified it to omit the wheat flour.

250g (10oz) dark chocolate (preferably 70% cocoa solids), broken into pieces, or dark chocolate chips
250g (10oz) unsalted butter, cut into cubes, plus more for greasing
250g (10oz) caster sugar
3 free-range eggs
150g gluten-free flour (1½ cups), plus 2 tablespoons of besan flour
baking powder (baking soda) to make flour mix rise
250g of beetroot, boiled until tender, peeled and grated or chopped very fine
A 20x30x3cm (8x12x1 inch) baking tray (known in Australia as a Swiss roll or lamington tray)

Turn the oven on to 180C (350F). Put the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl or jug, and put on a lower shelf in the oven to melt. When partly melted, stir, and put back for a few more minutes to melt completely.

Meanwhile, beat the eggs and sugar together, and in a separate bowl, sift the flours and baking powder together. Cut or grate your cooked beetroot.*

When the butter and chocolate are melted, mix them, a little at a time into the egg and sugar mixture. Then fold in the sifted flour very gently, and lastly, the beetroot. Do not beat, just mix together gently.

Pour mixture into a greased and lined tray, smooth the top, and bake in the top of the preheated oven until just cooked. According to H F-W “a knife or skewer pushed into the middle should come out with a few moist crumbs clinging to it. Don't be tempted to overcook them!”

He says 20 minutes should be long enough. However, whether because of the g-f flour, the fairly large eggs, or a slightly lower oven temperature, my brownies took 30 minutes. Test every few minutes after the 20 minute bell.

Leave to cool in the tray before cutting into squares. Makes 24.

*To cook beetroot: Scrub gently under cold water, but do not cut roots off or peel the vegetables. Put in a large pot with plenty of water, cover, bring to the boil, then simmer for 30 minutes, or until tender. Allow to cool slightly, then, protecting your hands with rubber gloves, slip the peel off and remove the roots.

Buon appetito!