Gluten Free Christmas Part 2: Breadcrumbing

 A life-affirming Zoom call last week helped to give all participants some advice on life and how to live it. It also gave me some inspiration to try a bread sauce recipe, a sauce that one of the participants will not eat their Christmas Dinner without.

The fog had closed in again. It was like the toxic, clingy, misty, web in the recently re-discovered nineteen sixties Doctor Who noir classic "The Web of Fear". The fog gave the impression that touching it would result in something nasty. It was certainly not a day to travel very far and so I cheered myself up by cooking an early Christmas Dinner which featured my friend's Bread Sauce recipe.

The night before, following our Zoom call, I had a downloading spree and obtained the Bonus EP Tracks for the Queen albums that were re-issued in 2011. It was a good opportunity to do this before Amazon ban the use of many types of credit cards, including mine, on 19 January. 

At any time of year the music of Queen gives inspiration to smash it at parties or in sporting events, while in winter time it takes on the extra dimension of showing how the band members were able to feed of each others' stress in tough times to make something special. That's a lesson we can all learn from if we have the winter and the Christmas Blues so as we can turn potential hard times into something good. 

Suitably inspired by collections of rarities including "I Go Crazy" from the re-issue "The Works" and kick-ass live versions of some of the songs from the re-issue of 1982's criminally underrated "Hot Space", I tackled the bread sauce as part of a special Festive Sunday Dinner.

The ingredients for this Bread Sauce are as follows:

One Chicken Oxo Cube- crushed heavily. 

One Hundred and Twenty Grams of Gluten Free Breadcrumbs. 

Two Tablespoons of Boiling Water.

One Onion, diced and lightly fried for around ten minutes. 

A pinch of Nutmeg.

A pinch of All Spice. 

Two Sprigs of Fresh Thyme.

A teaspoon of White Pepper. 

A pinch of Garlic Salt. 

Point One Litres of Oat Milk. 

The way to make this sauce is to mix the crushed Chicken Oxo, Boiling Water and Breadcrumbs together into a paste in a measuring jug.  

After that's done add the Onions, All Spice, Nutmeg, Thyme, Garlic Salt and White Pepper and stir these in. 

Then add the mixture to a sauce pan and stir on a low heat while gradually adding the milk. When the milk is stirred in serve. With my meal I served it with Pigs in Blankets and Chicken Breasts marioneted in homegrown herbs from my local farm shop together with steamed carrot and frozen peas as well as some cabbage that was still growing in my garden. 

The sauce added a new dimension to my early Christmas Dinner as it is savoury with a touch of sweetness and in that way encapsulates in one recipe what the taste of a traditional Christmas Dinner is really like. I can well see why my friend insists on having this with all her Christmas Dinners. 

Gluten Free Christmas Part One: The Pies Have It

 Often associated with the festive period, Mince Pies have been a staple sweet dish for some time in midwinter. Today's blog recipe gives a modern twist on these type of pies that does not include gluten.

The fog had rolled round the park and even the next village, with its Comptonesque Council Estate, could not be seen. There was a sense of claustrophobia and already it seemed a little dark in the house even though it was just 2pm. In the lounge and the conservatory, coats and shoes not belonging to me rested in their usual places, just as they had done for a couple of years. They were seemingly half complete without their owner. Looking at them made me think the house was like one where one of the occupants had just passed away before Christmas and the survivor had not been able to bring themselves to move the items away. 

Against this backdrop it was easy to feel like I was on a journey dark places, and yet I had much to be happy about. I had somewhere to go for Christmas, lots of friends to meet with via video link or outdoors with the Dogg and my team and I had achieved much, against the odds, at work during 2021. 

Whatever happened next, it was time to get into the Christmas Spirit. Remembering that consuming more than one meal containing gluten in a week makes my mind do strange things, I resolved to make some Gluten Free Mince Pies. 

On the player was something upbeat in the shape of Meatloaf's 1993 comeback "Bat out of Hell Part 2: Back Into Hell". The video for opening "I Would Do anything for love (But I won't do that)" seems to feature someone hurriedly driving a car to a deserted house where once someone well-loved lurked. 

So to the recipe which goes like this:

200 grams of Gluten Free Plain Flour.

125 grams of Unsalted Butter. 

A jar of Mincemeat. I used some non-gluten free Mincemeat strongly flavoured with Port. 

A tablespoon of tap water. 

The first job was to cut the Butter into small cubes and add it to the mixing bowl. Then came the Plain Flour. I rubbed these ingredients in until I saw that they had formed golden breadcrumbs. 

After that I stirred them together using a butter knife and dropping in a tablespoon of tap water to help bind the mixture together. 

The thing with Gluten Free Pastry is that it is often moister than normal pastry and harder to roll out because it sticks to the rolling pin. The best approach is to knead it flat using some spare flour to grip and then chill the rolled out pastry in the fridge for half an hour. After that it is easier to use it. 

I followed this approach and after chilling the pastry I cut circles out of the pastry and placed them in greased bun tins and added the Mincemeat. I then covered them more pastry to form small pies. 

The mince pies were then placed in the oven and cooked on gas mark 4 for 20 minutes. 

So what was the difference between these mince pies and ones with gluten in? Well the pastry had a lighter taste and with the use of more butter there was a more golden colour to the pastry. They were certainly an interesting diversion this Christmas and one worth taking. 

Dim Sum We

We recently visited a restaurant in Nottingham called Man's which serves traditional Chinese Food. It mixed the bizarre, battered crunch of chicken feet with heaps of real noodles, fried turnip squares and the famous Dim Sum. It was a trip that inspired me during a weekend of downtime in October to make some Dim Sum of my own. Here's how it's done.

The night before I had experienced cultural delights with my fellow cricket team mates at the local curry house for our end of season night out. I realised it was time to step out of my traditional weekend cooking dishes of the last couple of weeks to make the Dim Sum.

The ingredients used were:

For the pastry:

• 200 grams of Gluten Free Rice Flour.
• 8 tablespoons of cold water. 

For the filling:

• 200 grams of cooked prawns. 
• 200 grams of Bamboo pieces.
• One home grown Cayenne Pepper sliced thinly. 

For the dip:

• Three tablespoons of Soy Sauce.
• Three tablespoons of Sesame Oil.
• Three tablespoons of Rice Vinegar. 

On quite heavy rotation was the Smiths compilation "Louder than Bombs" . It's a collection that gathers together a number of singles, b-sides and other outtakes into one very listenable and surprisingly hummable package. The best Smiths compilation by far.

So to the method, it goes like this:

1. Slice the Cayenee Pepper, Prawns and Bamboo thinly and fry them lightly in Sunflower Oil for ten minutes.

2. Make the dough by gradually stirring the Rice Flour and water together until the mixture is soft enough to knead together without it breaking up. 

3. When the dough is soft, pliable but not too sticky, roll it out onto the worktop until it forms a wide and flat circle. 

4. Cut the dough into pieces and wrap it round clumps of the Prawn Mixture to create dumplings the size of golf balls.

5. Mix the Soy Sauce, Sesame Oil and Rice Vinegar together in a small serving bowl.

6. Steam the dumplings for five minutes prior to serving.

For the authentic dining experience this Dim Sum dish is best sampled by using chopsticks to dip the dumplings into the bitterly savoury dip while the pastry makes the meal surprisingly filling.