Bobotie - a way to make mince interesting!

No doubt there are a million different recipes for babotie, but this one comes from the South African side of the family so I like to think its authentic (though I really have no idea!)

I use my cast iron casserole which can go both on the stove and in the oven.

 

Oil to fry
1 Onion, diced
500g lowfat mince
1/2 teaspoon tumeric
1 1/2 teaspoon medium curry powder
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon peel
juice of half a lemon
2 tablespoons chutney
1 cooking apple, grated
25 grams chopped almonds
2 or 3 tablespoons apricot jam, mixed with a little lemon juice
1 - 1 1/2 banana, sliced
1 or 2 eggs
A dash rice milk
3 lemon leaves
Oil

Fry the onions in oil. Add tumeric, curry powder and mince. Fry until browned

Add lemonpeel and juice, apple, chutney and salt and pepper. Cook for a bit. Add almonds.

Put mixture into an ovenproof dish. Top with jam mixture and sliced banana.

Stir up the egg in a cup and pour over. The original recipe says with a bit of milk, its not really necessary but I find a dash of rice milk does make it go a bit further. Let it soak for a bit. Roll lemon leaves and stick into the Bobotie.

Bake at 180 c for about 30 minutes until set and browned.

July + Stew = Dumplings

Lately I've given up on my slowcooker after some very average results, and gone back to the faithful cast iron cassarole dish. What a relief! My stews are tasty again, and I can put them on in the afternoon, I mean honestly, who has time in the morning anyway?

Yesterday's beef stew was bubbling happily when my Dad dropped by to say hello. I took the opportunity of child distraction to try out some cornmeal dumplings. What an inspiration, they were delish and much enjoied by the test team.

Following on from this success I rebooted the stew tonight and tried the dumplings again, buckwheat this time.

Dumplings

1 c cornmeal or buckwheat
1/2c GF baking mix
2 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
bt of ground black pepper
25g DF spread
1/2c rice milk
I also added some chopped parsley to my buckwheat ones which was nice. Other herbs to compliment the dish would be good, such as rosemary with a lamb stew?

First cook your stew, it needs to be ready, and you make the dumplings just ahead of serving time.

Measure spread, flours and baking powder. Rub it together, I use a wooden spoon then just get in there with my fingers to get it all done. Should look a bit like breadcrumbs when this is done. Throw in salt & pepper to taste, mix it up, then add the rice milk. At first it won't seem like enough milk but just keep stirring, it will come togeher into a nice ball of dough. Ofcourse you can ad a litle more if this isn't happening after lots of stirring, but use a bit of elbow grease first.

Take spoonfuls of the dough and drop ontop of your hot stew. The buckwheat allowed me to roll the dough into little balls, but the cornmeal would not hold together enough for that, I just plopped them in and poked any really sticky out bits with my finger.

Put the stew back in the oven without a lid for 10-15mins until the dumplings are cooked. No doubt this would work on the stove top also, you might need to experiment with lid on/lid off.

On balance I'd say the cornmeal ones were better, slightly crumbly but in a yummy sort of way. Buckwheat turned out a bit more dense and brittle. I think it would be worth trying them again with cornflour instead of baking mix, but don't get me wrong, they were still yummy yum.

Corn Muffins

I've dreamed about southern USA skillet cornbread, but never come across a recipe which screamed BAKE ME! I don't have a skillet for a start...

This weekend we had a roast chook, and I threw the bones and sundries into a pot and made some chicken and vege soup. Included some home grown celery - very proud of that!

Anyway to get to the point, to make this into a meal for dinner, it needed a bit of suport in the carbohydrate department. I started by adding a tin of cannelini beans to the soup, but my genius moment was corn muffins.


1 cup cornmeal
1 cup all-purpose gluten free baking mix
1/3 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup canola oil
1 cup rice milk

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Grease muffin pan or use those floppy silicone ones like me.
In a large bowl, mix everything together, and stir gently until just combined. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups.
Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into a muffin comes out clean.

The key with muffins is to work fast, and mix only as much as you have to - not a single mix more! If you see the odd bit of unmixed flour, just stir this little area a bit until it is wet, and go with it. It will turn out ok I promise!

Next time I would use a little less sugar, and maybe a pinch of cayenne pepper. Josh said he loved them, they tasted just how he remembered corn bread.

Instead of muesli

Dr. Bircher would turn in his grave if I called this muesli, but seeing as how oats are out of bounds, I had to come up with something edible.



I have a big plastic container and I just get out all my ingredients and start layering it up. The carbohydrate base is GF cornflakes, or riceflakes (which are just the same thing made out of rice). I also like to put in puffed quinoa or amaranth, and buckwheat groats. Ideally the buckwheat would be toasted but who has time for that?

I also add layers of flaxseed, coconut, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and sometimes chopped almonds.

Fruit wise cranberries are yummy and sultanas are good, neither need chopping up. Dried apricots and pawpaw are good but require some labour with a sharp knife.

Give it all a good shake.

So, this isn't a recipe as such, more trying to pass on some inspiration. Just chuck stuff in until it looks yummy. Next morning you eat some and this creates space in the container to alter the proportions, or add something else you just thought of.

Curry for toddlers?

Lately miss 18mo has been returning quite a bit of her dinner by throwing it at me. Not my favorite way to eat the evening meal being pelted by bits of broccoli and carrot! So I tred to think of a few evening meals she would enjoy more, and we might find bedtime a little easier if she had a satisfied full tummy.

She really likes Babotie, but it has apricot jam in it, so who wouldn't? I was aiming for something a little healthier than that, but still needed a little sweetness. It worked a treat, and Mum and Dad liked it so much we forgot to take a photo until it was all gone!

Chicken Banana Curry

Makes enough for the 3 of us and Josh's lunch for the following day.

Put on some rice to cook however you like to do it.

1 onion chopped, cook with a little oil in a heavy bottom pan.
Add a few cloves of garlic, crushed or chopped whatever - out of a jar at my house :-)
1 tsp fresh ginger, also out of a jar.
Then, 400g chicken thighs, cubed with
1/2 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp Cumin
1/2 tsp chilli (those jars again!)
1/2 tsp ground coriander seeds
1/4 tsp garam masala
pinch ground cloves
pinch ground cinnamon
pinch ground cardamon
Stir together, coating the chicken and sealing the meat
Pour in a tin of coconut milk.
Add some water if you want to increase the amount of sauce.
Cook down a bit, then when the rice is almost ready add in
2 bananas roughly chopped.

Allow to simmer another 5 mins or so, and serve with some steamed veg on the side.

Buckwheat pancakes

These are a winner, I'll never go back to wheat flour pancakes! I find them very filling and I don't get hungry right away the way I used to after a wheat pancake stack.

Enough to serve two ordinary adults (I always make a double batch for our family of 3 :-)

Ingredients

1/2C Buckwheat Flour
1/2C Cornflour
1t Baking Powder
1 Egg
1T Oil
1C Rice Milk or Soy Milk

Method

Combine dry ingredients. In another bowl mix together oil and milk. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add egg, and oil/milk mixture. Stir till smooth. Cook over a medium heat, the key is to wait until the bubbles pop and the pancake is mostly cooked before trying to flip.

My favorite toppings are jam and banana, or tinned peaches, yum.

Crumble... apple, berry, rhubarb - you choose! (all of the above mixed together)

Some GF people can handle oats, but not my girl so I've had to invent an alternative way to make crumble.

The key to this is the buckwheat groats, it adds a perfect crunchiness you can't beat. If you can't find buckwheat groats or you were hoping to make the crumble RIGHT NOW, then it still works without, just not as good!

Preheat the oven to 180C/350f

Chop up your fruit and place in oven proof dish, add sugar as appropriate eg. lots for rhubarb, not much for apple.

The quantity of crumble mix required really depends on the size and shape of your dish, so just keep adding spoonfuls of this or that until it looks like enough, then add some more because it never is!

For my two individual pie dishes:

3 tab DF spread, melted
1c almond meal
1/4c buckwheat groats
3 or 4 tab GF baking mix or cornflour
2 tab brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

mix it up, should look like wet breadcrumbs. Top all over the fruit, press it down a bit, but not too much, mine is always threatening to escape out of the dish.

Wack it in the hot oven until it smells amazing and you can't wait any longer and is lovely golden brown on top. I find it is waaaay too hot to eat, so have to put some DF GF fake ice cream on top to cool it off! Here is NZ the Lite Licks range is ok.

Sorry no photos, we ate it all up already!

Bread - better than any I have been able to buy

My local supermarket isn't really big on providing a wide selection, but I used to be able to get GFDF bread most times I went shopping. Since then a local bread maker, Burgen, have introduced a GF range. Great! Not great, as every flavour contains milk. Since this big brand is now covering off the GF department, Countdown no longer stocks the other GF breads which were also DF. Long story short I needed to get sorted with a decent recipe to make my own.

Thanks for this one go to my Mother in Law Mary! Recipe is for your breadmaker, though I'm sure you could do it in a loaf tin in the oven.

400ml Warm water
2 tsp dry yeast (I use the Edmonds active yeast in the jar)
3 tab sugar

Place in a bowl and set aside to get the yeast going.

In another bigger bowl place:

2 1/4c White rice flour
1c Brown rice flour
1 1/2 tab Xanthan gum
1 tab salt (yes sounds like a lot but I think it is important as changes how the yeast behaves?)
3 tab milk powder (I use coconut milk powder)

Stir together. Check the yeast mix, by now should be frothy on top. Give it a stir then add to it:

3 tab oil
3 eggs
1 tab vinegar

Pour the wet into the dry, mix it up and place into your bread machine, the machine will try to knead it so don't worry if you haven't mixed it very well. Will look like a freaky pancake batter at this point - don't worry!
Med Crust, I think I use the 750g setting, takes 3 hours.

Make sure you are there to take it out as soon as it is cooked or it will collapse and you will have a very wet loaf which goes moldy quickly.

Variations:

Great results have been with replacing the white rice flour with fine ground cornmeal, or with buckwheat flour. I've used the healtheries brand cornmeal from New World/Countdown etc, and get my buckwheat flour from the organics shop.

You can make this a fruit bread by adding 3 tsp spice (mix of cinnamon, nutmeg etc) to the flours and 2/3c sultanas.
Let me know what other ideas you come up with!

 

I ate that slice still hot with homemade blueberry jam. I even picked the blueberries!