Potato Rosti

I had some left over sweet potatoes (someone needs to stock mini sweet potatoes so they're not so tricky to use for single and coupled people) so I decided to make rosti. Also rosti in restaurants always seem to have onion in them :( so I've been meaning to make them at home for a while.

Rosti are similar to hash browns, and let's face it any combination of potato and frying is always delicious. I made these for dinner so I added some tuna and corn to make it more of a meal (and this was all I had in the cupboard, if i had bacon, bacon would have certainly been added, yum). When I decided to look up rosti recipes I noticed they used egg to bind the potato together, I used some grated parmesan to melt mine together, so I'm not sure how these would go veganifying them, if you were to make vegan rosti, I would suggest either baking them or cooking them on low for around 20 minutes and flipping them very gently (but I still wouldn't guarantee they wouldn't fall apart) you can also try the plate-flipping method.

Like all my recipes, I encourage experimenting and making these to your own tastes/food requirements. I made these with the only food I had left in the house one night while my partner was out, and I wanted something easy to make for myself. You can leave out the tuna and corn, and serve them traditional and simple and serve them as a side dish for breakfast or dinner. Some variations I'll be trying out another time will be bacon and cheese or plain white potato and rosemary.

Ingredients:
I medium sweet potato, or three small white potatos

1/2 cup of plain flour (I used Orgran gluten free flour, but any type of flour should work)
1 egg (optional)
three quarters of a cup of grated parmesan
small can of tuna
small can of corn
half a teaspoon of dried basil
salt and pepper to taste
tablespoon of oil or butter for frying

If you are using white potato, boil your potatos skin on for 7-10 minutes, or cook them in the microwave so they are 3/4 cooked. Drain and let them cool before removing the skins, then grate the potato. If you're using sweet potato, just peel and grate the potato. White potatos need more cooking than their delicious orange brothers, so it's recommended to pre-cook them before frying.

In a mixing bowl combine grated potato with all your other ingredients, make sure your ingredients are really well mixed through, the flour can clump because of the moist potato, so be careful.

Heat oil in fry pan, then spoon tennis ball size spoons of mixture onto the pan. With a spatula squash mixture so it is nice and flat, and cook for about 7 minutes each side. Very, very carefully turn your rosti over in the pan (particularly if you don't use egg, it's very easy for it to fall apart). They take a few batches to get through all the mixture, so after frying put them in an oven proof dish and keep them warm in a 150C oven (this also helps to dry them out and keep them stuck together so they don't fall apart).

Enjoy

Smoothie Ideas

Julie had an awesome post about home-made breakfast cereal earlier this week. I thought I'd continue the breakfast trend because breakfast is really really difficult.

My favourite breakfast these days is a great big smoothie! Yum!

Occasionally I use icecream or frozen yoghurt in my smoothies, but my regular basic everyday smoothie doesn't have icecream. Instead I use (some) frozen ingredients! I like to have my smoothies with about one fruit and one vegetable. And by vegetable I generally mean celery, but occasionally spinach or parsley.

So first you'll put in your smoothie ingredients. I try to use about half frozen, half fresh. If everything is frozen you're going to want to go low on ingredients or else eat your result with a spoon (note: this is also awesome).

My (not anymore) secret ingredient for maximum deliciousness is frozen celery. You heard me. When I buy a bunch of celery I chop it up and chuck it in zip lock bags. The combo I'm using today is half frozen celery, half fresh banana. I'll often use frozen bananas if I'm not using frozen celery.

I also love berries and of course any kind of fruit works if you're into that kind of thing.

For something super green you can also go for spinach or kale and/or spirulina powder.


Penultimately, you're going to want some kind of milk, or milk substitute. My favourite is Almond Milk but try Soy, Rice, Oat or regular dairy. You can also use fruit juice if there's a juice you can tolerate. I've also tried with just water but... meh, never lead to much deliciousness.

Last - a generous pinch of salt (optional), or a spoon of honey/malt syrup/golden syrup if you've got a sweet tooth.

Blend and poor. Today I sprinkled some cardamom on top. It was actually kind of amazing.

If you can eat oats I have found a spoonful of rolled oats can give a smoothie a lovely texture, and if you want more of a protein hit a spoonful of peanut or nut or seed butter can be absolutely magical.

What do you like in a smoothie? Is celery and salt just too weird for you?

Granola/Toasted Muesli

Finding a fructose-friendly breakfast cereal is particularly difficult. There are now plenty of gluten-free and wheat cereals made commercially, but most (almost ALL) are sweetened with apple or pear juice. Muesli is a good option for avoiding wheat, but so many have dried fruit. Making your own at home is really, really easy and it means you can customise it so it suits your tricky eating needs.

Don't eat gluten? Fear not, If you don't eat oats you can try substituting with rice flakes and/or corn flakes or puffed rice. Or go grain-free and use only nuts and/or seeds.

Don't eat nuts? Use more cereals and only seeds, or if you can eat dried fruit add it at the end to the cooled, cooked muesli.

This recipe uses rice malt syrup to sweeten and toast the muesli. Rice malt syrup contains less fructose than brown sugar and golden syrup which are traditionally used to sweeten and toast muesli. But if it is good enough for Nigella, it's good enough for me. Rice Malt Syrup is available in most Coles supermarkets in the health food section, or in healthfood stores. (I've never found it in Safeway/Woolworths, but they might have it - or ask them to order it in).

This is the batch I made this weekend, but like I said, you can change your ingredients so it isn't the same all the time. Just keep the general ratio of dry ingredients and wet ingredients the same.

Ingredients:
300g Oats (or other cereal flakes)
300g Nuts/Seeds. I used almonds, pinenuts, pepitas (pumpkin seeds) and sunflower seeds. Other options are hazelnuts, pecans, brazil nuts, cashews, macadamias, walnuts, sesame seeds. Whatever is seasonal/available/affordable.
2 teaspoons cinnamon
Pinch of salt
3 tablespoons of melted butter or vegetable oil (A lot of granola recipes I looked at used Sunflower oil)
1/2 Cup of Rice Malt Syrup/Brown Rice Syrup.
1-3 teaspoons of vanilla paste. I use 3 because my partner and I LOVE vanilla and I wanted a delicious vanilla hit, but if you're not a fan, leave it out or just use less.

In a large mixing bowl combine the oats, nuts, seeds and spices. Mix together so they are well combined.

In a small saucepan melt the butter, rice malt syrup and vanilla paste.
Pour the melted butter/sugar mixture onto your oat mixture and stir until well combined.
Line two large baking trays with baking paper, and spread the mixture evenly onto the trays.

Bake at 170C for 40 minutes to 1 hour, turning every 20 minutes to avoid it burning.
The mixture should look slightly golden when it is finished. Take the trays out of the oven, and allow the mixture to cool on the trays. When it's cool put it into an air tight container.

Serve with any milk or yoghurt, or even just eat it on its own as a snack.

If you have any questions, or you have some suggestions for additions to this recipe, or a breakfast cereal recipe of your own please leave a comment

Truffles

Because I prefer to avoid a lot of sugar, desserts are particularly challenging. I find that chocolate with a 70% or higher cocoa content contains very little or no dairy, and has much less sugar than regular milk chocolate (particularly 85% chocolate, it is quite bitter(and very delicious)), so most of the desserts I tend to make are based around using very dark chocolate. I recently discovered how simple and easy truffles are to make, and they look particularly impressive, so they are a great gift idea, or party food.

For Elise's birthday we made Rosemary and Salt Truffles. You don't have to flavour them if you prefer a nice plain chocolate hit. But you can make some really interesting chocolate flavours which is fun.

I made my truffles by combining this recipe and this recipe.

Basic Truffle Recipe:
100mL cream (I used lactose free cream, which is available at Coles in the cold dairy section)
100g very dark chocolate (you want to use at least 70%, you want that really rich chocolate flavour). I use Lindt 85%
Cocoa for dusting (or you can use icing sugar, coconut, or dip them in melted chocolate)
Optional: flavour

If you want to flavour your truffles you can infuse the cream. This is done by adding your flavouring and scalding the cream (heating it up to the point just before it boils). Infusing works best with a solid flavour, it's not recommended to use fine powders. I used one stick of fresh rosemary which gave the truffles a really nice flavour. Other flavours you could try are vanilla bean, cinnamon stick, lavender, tea, chilli, mint etc any thing you can think of. Once you've scaled the cream with your flavour, use a fine sieve and pour your cream out, and discard your rosemary twig (or other flavour).

Method:

Break your chocolate up into pieces and put in medium bowl. Heat your cream in a saucepan over the stove (or in the microwave), infuse the cream with your flavour(s) if you want to (I used rosemary). Once your cream is nice and hot (almost boiling) pour the cream over your chocolate and stir until the chocolate is completely melted and you have a nice smooth consistency. Optional, at this point I added 1tsp of vanilla bean paste and large pinch of coarse salt. Smooth the top of the chocolate mixture and leave out to cool to room temperature (usually takes a couple of hours). When your mixture has cooled use a couple of spoons to make even-sized balls (they won't be completely round at this stage, just try to get them even in size). 

They look messy, but it we'll make them pretty after they've set in the fridge for about an hour. 

When they're firm, bring them out and use your hands to roll them into balls. The fridge helps to set them so they keep their shape when you roll them. 

Roll them in some cocoa powder and put them into mini patty pans and store them in the fridge.

Delicious!

Basics - Salad Dressing

If you're any kind of tricky eater, you'll probably know that things that come in jars can often be a label-reading minefield.

It's summer here in Australia right now and I don't know about you but I do love myself a great big salad in summer. I used to claim to hate salad dressing but it turns out I just can't bear the taste of vinegar which is one of the main ingredients of most dressings. It turns out, though, you can pretty trivially make your own dressing and just leave out or substitute anything you don't like or can't tolerate!

If you're already an expert on salad dressing, feel free to skip this one.

I tend to mix my ingredients in a small bowl and then use a whisk, or you can use an old vegemite jar (or similar) and then shake it up.

1 part oil - my favourites are extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil or sesame oil
1 part acid - I tend to use lemon and/or lime juice, but vinegar works brilliantly if you like it. A nice balsamic seems to work if you like that sort of thing
Lots of Salt & Pepper!

Your quantities will depend on how much salad you have to cover, and how damp you like it. I like my salad to be positively drenched, myself.

Once you've got your basic dressing down pat you can start getting more adventurous. Try adding pomegranate juice, orange or apple juice, tahini, crushed nuts or seeds, or vary the proportions of oil and acid. Delicious!

And if you're a super tricky eater you can pare it down even further - you don't need to go without entirely.

A swig of olive oil, a spoonful of lemon juice or just a shake of salt or pepper can make all the difference to what might otherwise be just a big pile of leaves.

Coming Soon: Making salads that aren't just a big pile of leaves.

Fruit & Vegetable Delivery

I don't know about you, but I often find going to the supermarket to be a lot more difficult than I feel like it should be. I don't drive so getting there, getting back and transporting everything takes up a lot of time and effort and sometimes it's easier to order takeaway or dine out.

Of course those options are expensive and if you have restrictive dietary requirements, may not work so well or may become repetitive!

Something that I found improved my life, and especially the quality of food I was eating, was getting my groceries (especially fruit & vegetables) home delivered! These days I get my fruit and vegetables in a box once a week and then go to the supermarket to pick up odds and ends. 

Aussie Farmers Direct (Australia wide, but not all areas)

I used AFD for several months until I moved house and unfortunately they don't service the area that I'm in. I ordered my meat and dairy as well as fruit & veg.

Unfortunately AFD don't have the facility to customise the 'mixed box' options for their fruit & veg. If you've got fruit/vegetable restrictions (such as being low FODMAPs) (and you don't have other household members who'll eat whatever you don't want) then you're better to just pick the vegetables you want/like. You can set up recurring orders either weekly or fortnightly - and you can even set up two alternating fortnightly orders which means you get a little more variety.

AFD were happy to deliver my food while I was at work and would just leave it by my front door.

Sydney Fresh (Sydney only)

When I moved to Sydney I moved to an area which isn't serviced by Aussie Farmers Direct so I had to look elsewhere and I've settled on Sydney Fresh. 

They do fruit & veg only, no meat/dairy, but their options for the Fruit and Vegetable boxes are much better. You can choose the proportion of Fruit and Vegetables - All of one or the other, half and half or 25%/75%. There's also a list of fruit and vegetables which you can select as "Favourite" or "Never" so you can make sure they don't send you any of your problem foods while still getting a variety of seasonal foods. If you prefer to just pick your own vegetables then you can also use that option.

Like AFD I don't have to be home for the delivery - they just leave it by my door.

Organic Angels (Melbourne Only)

I haven't used this service myself, but one of my tricky-eating friends has and recommended them to me. Like Sydney Fresh you can set your preferences for the mixed boxes to fit your requirements. I know my friend has said it works well for her low-FODMAP needs.

I know there are a bunch of other services but those are the ones I've used or heard anything about. You'll probably need to look to see what's available in your area. But if you've dismissed box-delivery out-of-hand there is hope as many of them do allow you to customise what you do or do not get in the boxes.

Have you had Fruit & Vegetables delivered? What kind of options or preferences do you get? Let us know in the comments!

Gluten free pasta

Pasta is one of those great easy go-to meals. It's quick to make after a long day at work, and you only need a few simple ingredients to make a delicious meal. Gluten-free pasta has improved dramatically in the last few years. It used to be gluggy, tasteless and after cooking either still raw or completely falling apart.

I've recently starting eating San Remo Gluten free fettuccine {you can find it in the pasta section of the supermarket}. It tastes almost as good as wheat pasta, and doesn't crumble or break apart like other GF pasta can. My only complaint is it has a tendency to stick together, so I recommend putting a good tablespoon of oil in your boiling water before you add the pasta. It does unstick itself a bit by the end of the cooking time (8-10 minutes) but not completely.

I also like Orgran's Buckwheat pasta {you can find it in the health food section of the supermarket}. It's a much heavier pasta, if you like wholegrain/wholemeal pasta you'll like this one. It has a darker colour, and a heavier texture. When you're cooking don't over stir it as it can break apart a little during cooking, it doesn't stick easily so it doesn't require much stirring.

Tricky eating pasta ideas:

Onion free bolognese*
Instead of dicing an onion, cut it into quarters and tie it into a medium sized muslin cloth. Make sure the cloth is secured tightly. Add this to your tomato sauce, the flavours of the onion will come out of the cloth and into your sauce without the fructose filled onion flesh. After the sauce has finished cooking, scoop out your cloth and dispose of the onion.
Confession: I've never make onion water this way, like most people I don't have muslin cloths lying around, and I tend to meal plan day to day. Instead I've cut an onion into large pieces and put it into one of those metal vegetable steamers that look like a flying saucer (one of these). After putting an inch of water into the bottom of a saucepan and steaming the onion for 10 minutes, I threw the cooked onion out** and poured the onion-y water under the steamer into my dish.

*Concentrated tomato is not recommended for fructose sensitive people, so be careful  making tomato-heavy dishes. Experiment eating small amount of tomato first to make sure you won't be sick.
**I actually didn't throw it out, I cut it into small pieces and added it separately to my pro-onion eating friends' bowls.

Not eating dairy? Or tomato?
Here is my favourite pasta dish

OIive oil pasta:
Cook your pasta according to directions, drain and put the dry pasta into a large serving dish. (I'm lazy and like to avoid extra washing up, so I put it back into the saucepan I've just used). Add a generous couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil (use the yummy fancy stuff if you've got it) and a generous amount of salt, and pepper to taste.
Add 2-3 of your choice from the following:
Few tablespoons of chopped fresh herbs (I love parsley, basil and/or sage)
Grated parmesan
Chopped boconccini cheese
Lightly grilled haloumi cheese
Tinned tuna
Chopped cherry tomatos
Fried bacon
Olives
Lightly toasted pinenuts
Steamed or roasted diced pumpkin
Left over meats (roast chicken, ham etc)

Mix into your pasta, add some extra olive oil so it spreads evenly over the pasta if you need to. This is a great dish when you don't have a lot of time to cook, and it's fun experimenting with different flavours so it's not the same every time.

Enjoy!