Cruel and Unusual Geography

Half our household is on a hardly-ever-have-gluten diet. It probably should be a gluten-free diet, but once in a while it’s a treat to have “normal” fish and chips, or have a bowl of breakfast cereal that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

While it’s possible to buy all sorts of gluten-free breads these days, it is expensive, and other (more severe) allergies make many breads unsuitable. We often bake our own, and have tried a number of different recipes and pre-mixes. Recently I’ve been experimenting, and have come up with a recipe that my son describes as “weird, but really nice”. It is a moist loaf with pretty good (for gluten-free bread) keeping qualities and a mildly nutty taste. (My son is anaphylactic to several types of nut, so never gets to taste them. That’s probably why this bread tastes odd to him.)

Here’s how I make it: Continue reading

Here’s a simple recipe for home-made ice cream that is very quick to make, doesn’t require any unusual ingredients or machinery, and is suitable for almost all diets. It’s dairy-based, so not suitable for those allergic or intolerant to dairy, lactose and the like, but is great for people with nut, egg, wheat/gluten, and other common allergies.

Vanilla ice cream

375ml (1 tin) evaporated milk
¾ cup icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Beat the evaporated milk until it is light and fluffy. I can usually achieve about 1.5 litres of volume, and oddly get more bulk when the egg beaters are on medium instead of flat out. Add the icing sugar and beat until well mixed. Add the vanilla, mix through quickly, pour into the freezing container and freeze until set. Enjoy.

That’s all. This recipe produces a light and versatile ice cream (see alternative recipes below) with a very creamy taste.

Notes

This recipe relies on everything being very cold. Some time before you start set your freezer to the coldest it will go, chill the ingredients (especially the milk) and freeze the mixing bowl and whatever you’re going to set the mixture in.

Having everything cold helps the mixture to freeze quickly and avoids it “falling” — it can sink in the middle and form a hard layer at the bottom if it doesn’t freeze fast enough.

Alternative recipes

Here’s a couple of alternatives that have proved popular in our house:

• Strawberry ice cream: replace the vanilla with a handful of strawberries (pulped and beaten well through the evaporated milk, so as to leave no icy chunks) and 2 teaspoons of strawberry essence.
• Caramel ice cream: replace the sugar and vanilla with ¾ of a 395g tin of caramel. You can buy tins of caramel, but I prefer to make my own. Take a tin of sweetened condensed milk, remove the label, and simmer it (unopened) for a good 3 hours. Take care to ensure it doesn’t boil dry!

Ingredients notes

In New Zealand the evaporated milk is usually the Carnation brand. In addition to milk this contains Carrageenan (from seaweed) as a thickening agent, but nothing else.

It used to be difficult to find gluten-free icing sugar, but most brands seem to have gone gluten-free in recent times.

We know many people who use artificial (vanilla “flavoured”) essence, but personally I just can’t bring myself to use anything but the real thing. Maybe I’m kidding myself, but I think it tastes better.

Following on from my last two recipe book recommendations, here’s an Australian book that’s proving really popular.

Although it comes from the West Island, this cookbook is popular in New Zealand.

The Friendly Food cookbook is well laid out, and comes from the folks at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Allergy Unit where they know a thing or two about food allergies. Alongside the recipes there are helpful tips on living with food allergies, making this a good resource for the newly-diagnosed and a nice gift for parents of allergic children.

I don’t reach for this book as often as I do for the Edmonds and the NZ Food Allergy Cookbook, but that’s possibly more through force of habit than anything else.

The other day I wrote about how the Edmonds Cook Book is easily adapted for some types of allergy-free baking. However, making substitutions to adapt “normal” recipes to allergy-free diets can be a challenge, especially when you’re starting out and learning how to prepare food for an allergic person.

The New Zealand Allergy Cookbook has been written by New Zealanders with New Zealand ingredients and tastes in mind.

I’m a bit of a fan of the New Zealand Allergy Cookbook. It has some great recipes — everyone in the house loved the Straw Cake —and is really clear about the allergens in each recipe. Every recipe has a list of the allergens it is free of, so if for example you have a child with both nut and dairy allergies it is easy to see if a particular recipe is suitable for them.

If you’re starting out on the “allergy journey” this is a great resource to have in the kitchen with you. It’s also nice-looking enough to make a good gift.

When we first started having to cook and bake for allergy-free diets we were just inventing recipes out of thin air. The results were often pretty awful, but thankfully the kids seemed happy with what they got to eat. Finally I realised that most “normal” recipes can be adapted to an allergy-aware diet with just a little modification.

After over 100 years, the Edmonds Cook Book can still be relied on for good kiwi baking.

For example, a lot of baking that calls for eggs can be just as good with the eggs left out, or with a tablespoon of cooking oil substituted for each egg. You can get away with this where the egg is a small part of the recipe — there’s no way I can make an egg-free pavlova or souffle.

Gluten-free cooking and baking is pretty straightforward with the gluten-free flour substitute I use.

I’ve realised what almost every kiwi has realised before me: the recipes in the Edmonds Cook Book are as reliable as any you’ll find anywhere.

With half of our household on a gluten-free regime we can’t use “proper” (i.e. wheat) flour for baking cakes and biscuits as we’d like. We’ve tried a number of commercial alternative flour mixes with variable results, and have come back to making our own. Here’s what I use:

For each cup of flour in the recipe, use ⅓ cup tapioca flour, ⅔ cup rice flour, and 1 teaspoon of Xanthan gum.

I prefer the brown rice flour. It handles and tastes the same, but has more fibre and vitamins.

The secret ingredient is really the Xanthan gum. It may seem expensive, but you only use a little at a time and it really does make all the difference. Without it gluten-free flours are sticky and unpleasant to handle, biscuits run out flat, and breads are dry and crumbly. While Xanthan gum won’t make the gluten-free flour behave or taste exactly like wheat flour, it brings it close enough to make recipes work.

Important tip: mix the Xanthan gum with the other flours before adding to any wet ingredients, or it just won’t mix in properly.