Have a jar or two of Candied Quinces in your larder, some whipped cream or ice cream and you’ll have a delicious dessert on the table in an instant. Or use them, as we’ve done, in our Quince and Almond Cream Cake, or our Candied Quince and Ricotta Cake. Try replacing the rhubarb with Candied Quinces in our Rhubarb, Orange and Almond Tart ….
I make a lovely honey mousse – yes, I know I shouldn’t be saying it myself – but it has a really luscious but melting texture..
n the lead-up to a wedding in the family, (catering for a completely gluten-free reception for 40 people, but more of that later) my husband came home with some shopping, beaming, because he’d managed to score 14 punnets of beautiful strawberries for $7.50...
I’m very lucky to live near the Sydney fish markets. I try to time my shopping to avoid the weekend rush and the madness of the carpark, but in the middle of Chinese New Year...
Versions of moussaka have been made in the Levant and the Balkans, in Egypt and Turkey and Greece for who knows how long. Proof of its popularity. But do we need another one? Well, this Mushroom and Lentil Moussaka has no gluten. It has no meat. It has no potato. The eggplant is grilled not fried ….
If you don’t mind chopping the odd onion in a good cause, this Caramelised Onion and Gruyere Tart recipe is an exceptionally handy one to have in your repertoire, not just because it fits right in as an entrée, light lunch, late supper, or even picnic fare.
Better still, it’s a fabulously flexible affair.
For a start you can use your own favourite pastry or follow the recipe for our Gluten-free Cream Cheese Pastry.
For a vegetarian version, just leave out the speck or bacon.
No crème fraiche on hand? Fresh cream will do just as well.
Or you have cheddar in the fridge but no gruyere? Cheddar is good.
Go on, give it a go ….. no excuse now.
Rosie
CARAMELISED ONION AND GRUYERE TART
Serves 4-6
½ quantity Gluten-Free Cream Cheese Pastry
White rice flour for dusting
60 ml extra virgin olive oil
30 gm unsalted butter
100 speck or bacon, cubed
800 gm brown onions, peeled and finely sliced
Pinch dried chilli flakes, or to taste
1 tablespoon good quality balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons thyme leaves, chopped, plus extra sprigs for garnish
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon honey
60 gm Gruyere cheese, grated
2 large eggs
200 gm crème fraiche
Salt and pepper
Roll out pastry in between two sheets of baking paper, dusting with a little white rice flour, if necessary. Line a 28cm loose-bottomed flan tin with pastry. Allow to firm up in the fridge for half an hour before blind baking. See here for blind baking instructions.
In a large frying pan, heat the olive oil and butter over a medium heat. Add the onions and speck or bacon and cook over a low heat, stirring often, until very well cooked and a rich, golden colour.
Add the balsamic vinegar and thyme, turn up the heat and cook, stirring constantly until evaporated 1-2 minutes. Add the honey and stir well. Turn off the heat. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Allow to cool.
Preheat oven to 200°C.
Spread the onion mixture evenly over the base of the blind baked tart case. Sprinkle half the grated Gruyere cheese over. Whisk the egg and crème fraiche until well combined and season with salt and pepper. Pour over the onion mixture. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top.
Place the filled tart in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the crème fraiche mixture is just set.
Garnish with sprigs of thyme and serve with a crisp green salad.
While we all have our favourite foods – the ones we tend to polish off with a little too much gusto – variety is good too, particularly as far as nutrition goes. These days, for instance, it’s not too hard to find a passable loaf of gluten-free bread. But one of the great benefits of home cooking is that we can make ourselves all sorts of things we can’t go out and buy ….
Making pastry can be a tricky undertaking at the best of times. Cooks talk about having ‘pastry hands’. Indeed, hot hands, air temperature and even humidity can have a role in success or failure. At the Coeliac’s Revenge we’re pretty good with pastry and really love making and eating it. So when tasked with producing some excellent gluten-free pastries we were up for the challenge ….
This update on the old Pease Pudding of Northern England is a very loose riff on the original. Instead of dried yellow split peas, soaked and boiled in the stock of a ham hock, this version takes bright green peas, aromatics and spices and turns them into beautifully light but very tasty semi-souffles ....
Jan’s daughter-in-law, Zoe, came up with these fabulous Walnut Crispbreads. They are quite rich and make a delicious base for all sorts of canapés. We’ve topped one with goats’ cheese and tobiko (flying fish roe) and the other with gravalax, pickled cucumber and dill and mustard sauce but the toppings will only be limited by imagination and what’s on hand in the fridge ....
When I was a small child my dad used to eat little, foil covered sections of processed cheese and I loved it too. He also ate blue cheese and I hated it. I couldn’t understand why he’d choose to put something so disgusting in his mouth. Many years later while in France I stayed with a woman who took my culinary education very seriously .....
Rosie had been to Lario International, the Sydney importer of fabulous and unusual Italian products, and was showing Jan and me her purchases. There was some beautiful olive oil, a bottle of pomegranate balsamic vinegar, an exotic jar of pine bud syrup and a small jar of light green paste. We were given a taste to determine what it was. A pesto of some sort? No. Salsa verde with a difference? No ....
