Cooking with Kumara: Flourless Four Fruit Muffin Bites {Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Secret Vegetables}

Once upon a time, I made a delicious batch of chocolatey rich brownies with a secret ingredient: a little orange kiwi favourite called kumara.  Starchy tubers like kumara can be a great substitute for flours, and are a more nutritious alternative to gluten free flour blends.  It can sound a bit crazy - and I get very sceptical looks and comments every time I use them, but you'll just have to trust me on this one.  Those brownies speak for themselves.  Now for reasons unbeknownst to even me, I haven't featured the kumara brownie on this blog (yet!) but keep your eyes peeled because it's a recipe you'll want to write down and treasure for ever.

In the meantime, here is another kumara recipe.  This one is a yummy, filling, bite-sized muffin with a little something different in each chew.    This is definitely a muffin rather than a cupcake, and probably sits at cafe-style-carrot-cake on the savoury to sweet spectrum. As for the name: "flourless four fruit muffin bites"...? These little morsels are crammed with goodness, including banana, apple, dates and kumara! Now, I know kumara isn't technically a fruit, but come on, don't you love that alliteration?! I used mini-muffin silicone moulds to make mine, but they could also work as jumbo-sized muffins for an on-the-go breakfast option, as long as the cooking time was adjusted.

These muffins are gluten and dairy free, but remember to warn guests about the nuts, nut butter and seeds if you have allergy-prone friends.

Flourless Four Fruit Muffin Bites (makes 24 mini muffin bites)

Valentine's Day Menu for Dummies: Three Course Meal (affordable, gluten free, grain free option)

So, I thought with it being Valentine’s Day, it would be an ideal time to put together a “date night” menu.  Since I’m livin’ la vida solo, most of the recipes I post are “serves one”, but I wanted to post something a bit special and different.  Below is a “serves two” three course meal that is affordable, easy to make, and just a little bit fancy.  You can do a lot of the prep ahead of time, especially with the dessert, and it would be easy to bump up the servings to cater for your triad/group date/Galentine’s Day Party/etc.

Here is what the menu looks like:

Starter
Moules Marinière Avec Une Petite Salade

Main
Leek & Bacon Risotto

Dessert
Black Doris Plum and Dark Chocolate Parfait

Doesn’t that sound super fancy? The recipes are fairly simple to follow and use ingredients that are easy to find and in season this time of year. The whole menu is gluten free, and I’m also giving you a grain-free option for the main course, just in case. 

Allons-y!

EHOB Part 4: Making Stock From Scratch

It would seem that "bone broth" was right up there in terms of 2015's health food trends. I have seen the savoury liquid lauded as a cure-all, which is not surprising considering its mineral and protein content and its long history in the human diet.  It is a little bit much,  though, to see simple ol' stock hitting the superfood health-claim trifecta: it apparently heals the gut, detoxifies the body, and reduces cellulite! Gee whiz, that's a reputation to live up to isn't it? I can't find much in the way of scientific evidence to support these bold claims (not surprising!), but that doesn't mean I'm not a big fan of homemade bone broths and stocks.

Having homemade stock at hand is a cheap and delicious way to add a bit of pizazz to your home-cooked meals and - despite what is suggested by the number of complex recipes passed down through generations and uploaded to the internet - it's a pretty forgiving dish for a new chef. Stock makes a great base for soups and sauces and you can use it to cook rice and quinoa; it also does well solo as a warming drink on a cold day.  It is indeed nutrient dense, much more so than shop-bought stock, and the benefits in nutrition and flavour so far outweigh that of, say, stock cubes, that it should be a no-brainer to make your own if you can!

You only really need three things handy for a DIY stock: bones, water, and a big pot. Everything else is extra but will help make the resulting stock more tasty.  Let me break it down for you.

Chicken Quesadillas + Homemade 100% Corn Tortillas

Ok, it took a little longer than expected but I'm getting there with the chicken recipes!  The first is a gluten free quesadilla recipe made using home-made tortillas.  You heard me: home-made! It's sounds more daunting than it should, and as with anything made from scratch, it is worth the little bit of extra effort.

I first taught myself how to make tortillas after I chanced upon some tortilla flour in a bulk food store.  The flour used to make tortillas and corn chips is different to anything I've worked with before; it's called masa harina and it is made from corn. It's prepared very differently from corn flour or polenta: the corn kernels are treated with an alkaline solution that, basically, affects the cell walls of the corn in such a way that it is able to form a dough when mixed with water. The chemistry is quite interesting to read about if you're into that kind of thing but the main takeaway is that you can't sub in regular corn meal!  I haven't seen masa flour in supermarkets, but I have seen it at Bin Inn and in online stores so it's not too hard to get hold of. 

Making my own tortillas was an awesome culinary breakthrough for me, since I have had trouble finding 100% corn (i.e. wheat-free) tortillas that aren't also crazy expensive, and because I love making any kind of food from scratch!  These are not hard to make at all, and while it might take you a bit of practice to find a technique that works for you to get the tortillas thin and flexible, eating the "practice" tortillas is not something I'd complain about in a hurry! If you get any real duds (fingers crossed no!), maybe a too-thick tortilla that won't bend or a too-thin tortilla that breaks apart, you can always cut them up and fry or bake them with some olive oil for home-made corn chips.

I am only using my phone's camera to visually document these recipes and the light was fading fast so I didn't get the greatest snaps, however I wanted to provide photos to show you what the dough should look like and to better demonstrate how I roll it out.  I assure you the final product is much prettier in real life, and regardless, you musn't judge a book by its cover, nor a quesadilla by its amateur photographic representation.

Gluten Free Chicken Quesadillas (makes 10, serves 2)

EHOB Part 3: Make 9 Meals With One Chicken!

As noted in a previous post, last week my local supermarket was selling size 16 whole fresh chickens for $9 (the standard price for a chicken that size is around $15).  The weight of a size 16 bird is approximately 1.6kg, so you’re paying about $5.60 per kilogram at the sale price, which is a very good deal indeed. Buying a whole chicken is one of my favourite budgeting hacks, since you can get a lot of use out of the meat and bones. I can usually make a standard bird last for six chicken dishes and three or four servings of soup. And I want to share with you how I do it!

The first thing you need to do of course is cook the chicken.  There are a couple of ways to do this (slow cooking, barbecuing, beer can method, the list goes on…) but I think the safest and easiest is to roast the chicken in the oven.  Most whole chickens actually come with roasting instructions on the back of the bag.  Let’s be honest, it’s a pretty simple task, and I don’t think giving you a recipe for roasted chicken is a good use of our time! However I can give you a couple of tips to make sure this simple task doesn’t become a hilarious story about that time you failed at roasting a chicken!

My first tip is, and I have mentioned this before, cook a couple of things in the oven at once.  This could be a baked fruit dessert, a loaf of bread, or some veggies to go with the chicken.  Heating an entire oven takes a fair amount of electricity and therefore costs money at the end of the month, so cook as much as is sensible while the oven is hot.  I was asked recently if cooking more than one thing in the oven greatly affected the cooking time. The short answer is not really but it depends. The temperature and humidity differences are negligible and the general rule of thumb for cooking time is “it’s done when it’s done” not “remove from oven after 33 minutes and 15 seconds”!  If you’re making temperature-sensitive dishes like pastries and soufflés, then it can be an issue but generally speaking, and for most household cooking, it’s not something you need to worry about.

Choc-Top Banana Bread (gluten and grain free, with vegan option!)

This recipe is one of my favourites. When I was on an elimination diet a few months ago, I put a call out to friends for an allergy-friendly banana loaf recipe to keep my baking hands busy. I was, and still am, very new to cooking without regular flours and none of the recipes I could find online made rhythm or sense to me.  The recipe I use now is adapted from one I was given during that time of crisis.  The original was okay, but I'm a perfectionist! I've made this loaf a fair few times now and have managed to get the recipe just right for me. I've also been able to experiment with ingredient-swapping so you don't have to! Below are options in case you need to make this loaf suit your dietary or lifestyle needs. The base recipe is grain and gluten free, and I have tested it using different types of milk and replacing the egg with flaxseed gel. If you aren't familiar with using flaxseed as an egg replacement, I found this article on a vegan baking website extremely helpful in understanding how it all works.

No Fuss, No Grain (Banana) Pancakes

I love pancakes with all my heart, and have written about them at great length in a previous post.  In my searches to find a good, healthy, preferably grain-free, pancake I've found that the internet only seems to host recipes sitting at extreme ends of a very odd scale. On the one hand, there are ingredients lists typical of many gluten free endeavours: five kinds of flour, two or three raising agents, and at least one kind of gum you can't pronounce. On the other hand, there are those who oversimplify: one or two ingredients, boldly going where no gluten free chef has gone before!

I have to admit that this recipe for banana pancakes sits on the latter end of the spectrum, and is offspring of the dreaded "two ingredient miracle pancake". You know the one.  Headlined by bold claims like "these really work!", "won't burn in the pan!" and "so quick and easy!". I had expectations of that recipe.  I read tips on paleo and gluten-free forums. I tried, internet, I really did. The trick is to use ONE egg. No, three! The pan needs to be extra hot! Extra low! Use lots of oil, no oil, try adding baking powder, maybe there's something wrong with your spatula?
How about, maybe, there's something wrong with your recipe?

pancakes made with mashed pumpkin, sweetener, and cinnamon

The "two ingredient miracle pancake!" is a myth and I am here to debunk it. You can not make pancakes with a banana and an egg.  After a very small amount of tweaking, and the addition of a few pantry staples, I found a ratio of ingredients that works every time and perfected a flipping technique that's simple and effective. A bonus with this recipe is that you aren't stuck using bananas! Other starchy vegetables, like pumpkin and kumara work really well too, so you can have a bit of variety in your breakfasts and desserts. I recommend added a bit of stevia and spice if you go down that route as bananas offer a lot in the way of flavour and sweetness, but knowing you can sub in other veggies gives you another means of using up leftovers!
The below recipe serves one, and makes a complete breakfast, packed with proteins, fats and carbohydrates to keep your appetite at bay all morning.