Lorraine Pascale!

Okay guys, here's some exciting news.

A week or two ago, one of my favourite chefs, the beautiful and talented Lorraine Pascale, asked for her Twitter followers to tell her their 'inspiring stories'. Having been through a tough time over the last few years, I decided to email it over and a couple of days ago, I received an email confirming her website was going to feature it!

Having excitedly told my husband, my Gran, my Dad and both my cats (who were very supportive, I'll have you know), I've been waiting in reserved patience ever since. But today it's up! My story and a link to my blog is there to be seen by any one of Ms. Pascale's loyal followers.

Eeeep!!!

Here's a link to the story: Living My Life for ME, not M.E.

If you haven't seen Lorraine Pascale's website already, it's a great one to check out here.

God Bless The Chickpea! Two reviews.

As much as I enjoy cooking, I'm always on the lookout for something new and interesting to eat that I can buy from a local shop. This is partly because I'm on the committee of the Bournemouth & Poole Coeliac Support Group, so I like to find new things I can recommend to our members when I produce the newsletter. But it's also because, for me, there are few things more exciting than something new to try.

So just imagine my joy when I came across these little beauties in our local Makro (and yes, there are two missing...*ahem*...:

 

These falafels are just one of the new options on offer from the Great Food Braver With Flavour range, which includes:

• Moroccan Falafel 
• Mediterranean Falafel (pictured) 
• Sweet Potato Pakora
• Original Falafel
• Spinach and Pine Nut Bites

 I decided to try the Mediterranean Falafel, which I paired with the Tesco Finest Slow Roast Tomato Houmous, pictured below.

The falafel can be eaten cold straight from the pack or you can heat them up for 8-10 minutes at 180 degrees C. You can also heat them in the microwave for 2-3 minutes, making them perfect for a working lunch.

I tried them cold first, splitting one open to see the inside, where I could see pleasingly large chunks of chickpea still intact. The immediate flavour is a little spicy, without overpowering the flavour of the other ingredients. The texture is dense and crumbly, which means they fall apart when you chew, but can be a little messy to eat if you don't want to look too greedy by stuffing a while one in your mouth in one go!

But it's when you heat them that they really start to shine. The crumbly nature is reduced and the heat from the spice is brought out, along with the flavour, which really does burst into life on the tongue. Of course, all falafel should have some form of accompaniment, so I dunked them in the houmous, which, if anything, helped bring out the flavour any further. Tomato is a great side for most savoury foods, and this houmous proves the point. I'm sorry to say that the entire pack you see pictured at the top was scoffed down in one go, along with most of the houmous (the remainder of which will last in the fridge for 1 day after opening, so will be used for fresh sliced veg tomorrow).

You can buy Great Food's Braver With Flavour products in Asda, Tesco, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsburys and Costco, at varying prices (the falafel were £3.99 in Makro but £2.40 in Tesco). For more information, check out their website: Great Food.

Step-By-Step To Perfect Banana Pancakes

A few weeks back, I posted my recipe for the perfect banana pancakes. Since then, I've revised and improved the recipe, so it's possible to get an even better result. So if you want to try something new for Shrove Tuesday, give these bad boys a go!

Ingredients

135g gluten free self-raising flour (I used Dove's Farm but there are, of course, others)
200ml semi-skimmed milk
2 large eggs
20g melted unsalted butter
3 large ripe bananas

Method 

Put the self-raising flour into a large mixing bowl. Gluten free flour tends to be extremely light, so you shouldn't need to bother sieving it (sometimes, coeliac disease makes life a lot easier!)

Throw in the milk and both eggs. The milk can be cold, but the eggs should be at room temperature. 

Cut off 20g unsalted butter 

 

 

Melt the butter. You can do this in a saucepan, but it's much easier to blitz it for 40 seconds at full power in a microwave. 

Pour the melted butter into the mix SLOWLY. It's tempting to chuck it in all in one go, but doing so will chill the butter and you'll get tiny lumps of solid butter in the mix. If that happens, the pancakes will be too firm instead of light and fluffy. So take your time with this.

 

Time for the bananas! Now, it's tempting to throw bananas out when they look like these two, but actually, the skin goes black long before they're bad on the inside. These guys were perfect for these pancakes.

Bananas that are just ripe will also work perfectly well. I took the last banana from this bunch.  

The riper the bananas, the easier they are to mix in because you don't need to mash them first (see how easy this is!?). Just lob the ripest bananas straight in. Less ripe bananas can be added a bit at a time, while the machine is mixing. Just break off a chunk of banana and drop it in the batter.

Once you've mixed it all in, the batter should reach this consistency. See the way it's dripping off the beater? It should be quite runny like this, but not be watery at all. If it seems a little thick, pour in a little more milk (slooowwwllly!) while mixing until the batter is looser.

One of the biggest mistakes, when making pancakes, is the heat on the hob. This is the setting I use every single time I make pancakes, and I begin heating the pan on this setting about 10 minutes before I want to cook the pancakes. Have you heard of the 'first pancake' rule? It suggests that the first pancake is always a throwaway because it's a bit rubbish. You can avoid wasting good batter by properly heating the pan first.

Next you need to grease the pan. I use Flora Cuisine but ultimately, you can use any form of butter or spread. The pan should be hot enough by now that the butter will melt and bubble like this, smoking a little at the same time. This means the pan is good and hot. Perfect timing! Once it's melted, use a couple of folded pieces of kitchen roll to wipe it all round the pan. You don't want to put pancakes in grease, or they'll be oily.

When you're ready, use a ladel to pour the batter into the centre of the pan. The ladel should be almost full for a bread plate-sized pancake but you could make a few smaller 'Scotch-pancakes' instead for children.

See all those teeny bubbles in the batter? These should appear after about 20 seconds and they tell you that it's time to flip the pancake. It will also start to firm up and change colour a little around the very edges. I find it's best to use a metal spatula or fish slice for this. Be confident, slide the tool under the pancake in the middle and....FLIP! (Note, there's no real point in trying to flip the English pancake way. Although it's distinctly more fun, it'll knock air out of this pancake and probably make a lot of mess, as there will still be liquid batter on the top.)

And this is what it should look like on the top. It should start to puff up a little as it cooks on the other side. It will take a little longer to cook on the bottom...roughly an extra 30 seconds, but you can always flip it to check and then flip it again to cook it a little longer.

To keep the pancakes hot while you're cooking, it's a good idea to have the oven on at 100 degrees C / 225 degrees F / Gas Mark 1/4. 

Et voila! The perfect American-style banana pancakes! Ready to top with Nutella, golden syrup or even a freshly stewed fruit compote.

Have a great Shrove Tuesday, everyone!

MASSIVE Pre-Gig Nerves! 

Hellloooo and welcome to another post! 

Well, I'm officially less than two weeks away from my very first attempt at selling my own products and guys, I have to tell you, I am bricking it! 

Every time I think I have everything completely organised and sorted (public liability insurance, food hygiene certificate, self-employment registration, etc), someone comes along and says 'You know, you should probably make sure you have this sorted' or 'Did you think about this?'. And of course, that leads me to a lot of face-palm moments. Which leads me to a lot of need to eat chocolate and drink tequila. But I digress. 

So...here's the list of things that I have left to sort, as of this afternoon: 

• Pick up filing cabinet (insurance insists all docs are in a 'fire-resistant cabinet'
• Set up a business bank account and PayPal account to go with it
• Write terms and conditions for orders
• Confirm price-per-product and make up laminated signs for stall 
• Do I need basic bookkeeping? (GOD, I hope not!)
• Buy a sellotape dispenser
• Buy food handling gloves so I don't stick a finger in a cupcake by accident 
• Practise making millionaire's shortbread and choc caramel cheesecake again
• Make a shopping list and yes, BUY everything on the shopping list 
• And, oh yes, actually bake everything for the stall! 

Doesn't look so bad, does it?

And yet, my excitement is still tempered by fear. What if nobody wants to buy anything? What if people don't like the things I bake? What if I short-change everyone and drop the food when I try to put it in bags for them? What if I forget the bags altogether!? Or I run out of change!?

Of course, the truth is, I can't reasonably take care of all of these problems, so it's probably better to focus on little things. Starting with mint chocolate chunk cookies!

Now, I'll make a quick confession here - I really, really don't like mint. But, I hear that most other people actually really like it. So, these bad boys are a chewy dark chocolate cookie loaded with dark chocolate and chocolate mint thins, with a teaspoon of peppermint extract to bring out the sweet, sharp minty flavour. Verdict: they need a little more mint but these will be popping up as a purchasable item in the near future!

Keep an eye out for increasingly panic-stricken blog posts as the next two weeks proceed (and please, if you have any tips for keeping calm, let me know!).

DoughNOTs

Put the 'Doh!' in Doughnuts

  

It is a great disappointment to many coeliacs (myself included) that it is widely impossible to find gluten free doughnuts. 

For a while, Tesco sold their own 'ready to bake' gluten free doughnuts. They were reasonably small bricks that could be easily used to commit violent crime, but were at least filled with a sticky raspberry jam. The one saving grace for these edible weapons was that heating them up DID soften them...but not if you followed the heating instructions. 'Place in an oven heated to 160 degrees C for 10 minutes', they implored. Anyone following these instructions would have been greatly disappointed, and I learned the only way to make them really soft and tasty was to heat at between 170-180, and for 20 minutes, rather than 10. 

Unsurprisingly, Tesco withdrew their jam doughnuts within 18 months or so and have never so far attempted to provide an alternative. 

The Wheat Free Bakery (http://www.wheat-freebakerydirect.com) was the next company (and so far one of the only ones) to have another bash at doughnuts. My Father insists that on his first taste, they were soft, squidgy and virtually indistinguishable from their gluten-containing counterparts. So I was a little disappointed when I ordered some and they felt rather like quoits (anyone remember them?)

 I'm sure you'll agree, fun to play with as a child; not so tasty as an after-dinner treat! 

Bearing all this in mind, I should have suspected that doughnuts would not be the easiest of things to create. But what can I say? I'm an optimist!

To be honest, I felt like I was betting on a losing horse right from the start. The recipe I was using (taken from the Rachel Allen Bake! book) called for 450g plain flour and only 25g butter. The instructions said to 'rub butter into the flour by hand until the mixture resembled breadcrumbs'. Well, I didn't hold out much hope for that with only 25g butter to go into the battle with, but off I went. Predictably, no breadcrumb-like texture emerged, but on I ploughed, determined - for once - to follow the recipe exactly to start with.

It didn't get any better. After mixing the egg, milk and water, I had mix glued to my hands and the dough had gone incredibly dry. I added water, which helped a little, but the overall result was still a very dense dough.

Still following the instructions, I attempted to knead it but, well, have you ever tried kneading a fully-inflated football? Because that's what it was like. I ended up breaking it into individual pieces to knead. I made one big ball of it afterwards, and placed it in our airing cupboard to prove for 90 minutes.

The good news is it had actually risen! Yay!! But after re-kneading it, breaking it into balls and proving for a further 30 minutes, they hadn't actually grown at all. Not a jot. They still looked like slightly over-sized golf balls. Hmmm.

At this point, I'm afraid I decided to call it quits and not bother wasting the oil trying to cook them. It wasn't really worth it.

However, I'm not giving this one up. Next time, I shall try a specifically gluten free recipe for doughnuts and see how that works out. EVERY recipe I've seen (with the exception of the Rachel Allen one - I'm quite upset as I'm a fan of hers) requires much more butter, egg, milk and water, despite using much less flour, whether it's a gluten free recipe or not. So I'll try it again soon and if it works, I will provide a picture of the finished product. Since I wasn't able to do that this time, here's a lovely picture of a funny cat instead. Enjoy!

Valentine's Day is Upon Us

I'm going to let you in on a secret here. Are you ready? 

Okay...*whispers*...I LOVE Valentine's Day. 

Alright, you know I can see you rolling your eyes, don't you!? 

Let me explain. For a painful five years, I went to an all-girls school and, unattractive, shy little frizzball that I was (if you don't believe me, there are pictures, I'm sorry to say), I had to watch, wide-eyes green with envy, as the popular and pretty girls took possession of HUGE beautiful bouquets of flowers that, frankly, could rival the Chelsea Flowers Show. In fact, the only time I ever received so much as a card in my pre-wife days was aged nine. It was addressed to myself and my twin sister, Nicola, and the sender bashfully admitted the next day that his Mum had made him include my name just so I wouldn't feel left out. Well. That worked. 

Of course, all this meant that by the time I met my now-husband, I HATED V-Day. I wanted to smack every loved-up couple I saw and as for those stupid roses, well, I shan't say where impulse wanted me to put them. 

In fact, the very first Valentine's Day after I met Rich was a bit weird. We'd only met a few short days before and far from being 'snuggle-bunnies' (YUCK!), we were incredibly awkward around each other. He still laughingly tells of sitting next to me at a pub lunch with work colleagues that day, watching me nibble at my chips 'like a squirrel'. At that point, I couldn't imagine letting him see the way I normally eat! 

Those days are now, thankfully, long behind us and I now gladly shovel down my chips with both hands and, if available, a foot (just kidding about that last part). No more green-eyed monster for me. I'm pleased to say he doesn't buy me roses, knowing I detest them for thinking they're so much better than all the other flowers. Instead, he just does something - and it changes every year - to really make me feel special. Equally important, I do my best to reciprocate. 

With that in mind, this Valentine's Day, I decided to turn my baking focus to making something edible but romantic - and SO much better than an edible g-string...*shudder*. So here they are: my dark chocolate V-Day cupcakes, with a decadent chocolate truffle centre and a light, creamy vanilla buttercream on top. 

 Remember this Valentine's Day weekend, that the day doesn't mean spending a fortune on flowers, meals, jewellery or anything else. It doesn't even mean you have to be in love. Who needs that pressure if you're single?! Just take the opportunity to tell someone, anyone in your life, that you love them, and maybe bake them something really delicious. You could even decorate your handiwork together for extra fun. And who knows what you could do with all that leftover buttercream?!

The Latest Addiction Sweeping The Nation!

Okay guys 'n gals, we need to have a talk. This is very important so I need your FULL attention. That's right, TV off, silence the kids, put the dog in the garden and focus.

We need to talk about a very serious problem that's sweeping across the country. The world even! By this point, I believe it may already have reached pandemic proportions and is a huge threat to your time, your money and possibly even your relationships. This is an addiction that simply must be addressed. Recipe collection.

Okay, I know it sounds pretty tame, but hear me out. Yesterday, excitement overwhelmed me as I headed off with my (very patient) husband to the 20% off sale at Waterstones. First off, they NEVER have a sale that applies to everything in store. EVER. Secondly, it was the perfect opportunity to invest in a new cookbook. Yes, that's right. Invest. Because I do see every new recipe as an investment.

'Not ANOTHER cookbook!' my husband cried.

'What do you mean, ANOTHER cookbook?' I was hurt. Wounded even! Does he not realise the absolute, all-encompassing brilliance of cookbooks?

'Babes, you already have a bookshelf full of them in the dining room. You've run out of space for other books in the spare room, and you rarely make any of the recipes anyway! What's the point when you can get them all for free online?'

After I'd finished giving him what we affectionately call 'the evils', I calmly pointed out that there is no such thing as 'enough' when it comes to recipes; that I may not directly use the recipes themselves all the time, but that they serve as inspiration for the recipes I create and intend to sell as part of my business. Oh, and that there must be some room somewhere. Has he checked his wardrobe lately?

Of course, he's sort of right. I've always been a bibliophile (that's a fancy word for someone who spends too much money on books they don't necessarily 'need'). But my recipe craze has reached epic proportions of late. I have a large recipe box, stuffed with recipes torn out of magazines. I have shelves and shelves of cookbooks, which I puruse from time to time, searching for inspiration, but otherwise don't often reach for. And I have now happily agreed to take my (lovely) mother-in-law's cookery magazines off her hands when she's finished with them.

The last of those was met with yet more cries from my husband of 'NOOO!! Not MORE recipes!!!' As my mother-in-law cheerfully handed over the latest 4 from her own collection.

Despite this, I did go and buy another cookbook yesterday afternoon from the Waterstones sale. Marian Keyes' 'Saved By Cake', since you asked. It was £3 off on top of the 20% sale! What was I supposed to do? Hmm?! Anyway, I've done my usual thing already of poring over all the recipes in detail, then sticking a little post-it tab on every page where there's a recipe I want to try. It's a running joke with my in-laws that I do this and that with catalogues I fold the pages over to mark the recipes. But it's very efficient! Honest!

The truth is, I probably should stop. Do I really NEED another cookbook? Or another cooking magazine stuffed with recipes? Honestly? Probably not. But it's cheaper than gambling and it's healthier than drugs (don't do drugs, kids). So for now, I guess we'd better start looking at building another bookshelf. I wonder if there's space in the shed??