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!