Peanut butter layer brownies

Adapted from BBC Food’s Brownies by Darina Allen and Rosemary Kearney and Martha Stewart’s Peanut-Butter Swirl Brownies

Just the other day I believe I was complaining about brownies.  Gluten-free brownies specifically.  They are here, they are there, they are EVERYWHERE!  It is true that almost every chain restaurant in the land with a ‘gluten-free menu’, (for which you may mostly read, “we’ve identified the things on our regular menu that don’t have gluten in them anyway”), will also have a flourless brownie as well.  My local farmer’s market will sell me a flourless brownie as well as every farm shop I’ve ever been to.  It is the easiest option by far, as we all know the vagaries of gluten-free baking!  On the one hand I balk at being charged the same for a ‘skinny’ burger (no bun) to make it gluten-free because I actually want a bun!  I suppose I could take my own and just slap that burger in there at the table, bumping up the cost a bit more.  But I am grateful really that I can eat out at all.  I tried my local pizza chain the other day with their new gluten-free options.  They were ok and the brownie for dessert was perfectly passable.  I saw them get it out of the fridge seconds before they served it, so it was a bit chilly.  Mostly I’m just really, really happy they didn’t glutenate me!  But I don’t really tire of brownies per se, it’s just I like a bit of variety.  I’m trying to work out how to get a lactose-free cheesecake topping on one, but in the meantime here is a peanut butter version.  Much as you may have noticed I’m all about coconut at the moment, peanut butter is my first love.  And when combined with a brownie you get that delicious sweet ‘n’ salty thing going on.  The original brownie recipe that went with the peanut butter bit wasn’t gf and had been described in the comments as being too cakey.  When I make this version the peanut butter sinks and makes a layer.  This is fine by me and is probably because the flourless brownie won’t support the weight of the peanut butter bit.  It’s worth trying to swirl it though, as you do get peanut buttery bits on the top as this sets quite quickly in the oven.  It is worth waiting until the brownie is properly cold before eating it as the peanut butter is more solid at room temperature, so when warm this brownie is a little oily on the bottom.  But they do smell really very good warm, so good luck with that!

Spinach saag

Adapted from Tasty Arbuz’s Spinach Saag

As I mentioned in my beef curry post, I do find some curries are a bit vegetable light.  Sometimes it is possible to bung in more veg, but this alternative is delicious and also satisfies my coconut obsession!  Wonderful as a side dish, this is so nice it is worth trying to get leftovers so you can use some gluten-free flatbread and have it for lunch the next day.  The original called for whipping cream, but by using coconut cream this recipe becomes lactose-free, and consequently also vegan.  It is therefore a good side dish for vegetarian and vegan curries as well as meat ones.  Again I suspect the coconut cream makes this terribly inauthentic, but it tastes really good and that can’t be a bad thing!

Beef curry (with spinach saag and rice)

From BBC Food’s Slow Cooker Beef Curry by Rachel Manley

This is a different sort of curry to that aubergine one that I make with the coconut milk.  I’m sure it is very inauthentic!  It’s probably very British though.  It is the one I do when I’m popping the slow cooker on for the day.  Beef works very nicely here, and I can honestly say I’ve never made it with anything else.  Get a nice chunk of a stewing cut (skirt, shin or chuck are good) and preferably dice it yourself.  Those boxes of pre-cubed meat you can get at the supermarket just called ‘stewing’ beef can be any cut, or a mix of cuts, and they’re usually too small a dice and end up tough.  Use a local butcher, farm shop or trusted box scheme if you can.  Feel free to adjust the chilli up or down to your preference.  I make this fairly mild as I’m usually feeding it to C.  She likes this one because it is very tomatoey, and that’s just how most toddlers roll.  I’ll post the spinach saag accompaniment next as I’ve veganized that and, if I’m honest, I could just eat bowfuls of that just by itself!  I may have a made a curry without coconut milk, but that doesn’t mean it won’t make an appearance somewhere in the overall meal…  I find some curries are a bit lacking in the vegetable department, even though the tomato, garlic and onion do count.  I like a veggie side dish for very meaty curries and although I usually end up making some sort of dhal, the spinach saag is very delicious indeed and is relatively quick.

What we did last week

A small handful of pictures of recipes in progress, life, and the troublesome feline…

As I haven’t done one of these for a while, this is more like ‘what we did the last few weeks!’

Night out! Saw this…

Crab apple blossom & blue skies

In the veg patch AGAIN!

Flowers in the pond

Baking disaster!

Day out. C was with me, promise.

All photos are the copyright and property of sensitive flour and are not to be reproduced in any format or in any medium without permission.

Burnt jam BBQ ribs

Adapted from Space Wildschwein’s BBQ Glazed Ribs

A few years ago I harvested the first cherry plums that the tree in my garden had produced since I’d moved in to the property. I love plum jam and it was very delicious.  However, one particular batch I was finishing one evening was just on the verge of setting when I took my eye off it.  I was probably a bit tired from all the jam making!  It caught on the bottom and started to burn.  Quickly I jarred it and hoped in the morning the smokiness would be less noticeable.  My wishful thinking was not rewarded unfortunately and the smokey jam was as bad in the morning.  No toast or cake would benefit from this preserve and I had 11 small jars of it!  Not to be deterred I approached the internet and started searching with gusto.  To my joy I found just the thing I was looking for.  A legitimate use for burnt jam.  Now I’m not suggesting you purposely burn a batch of jam just to make these ribs, but I’ve seriously considered it a few times!  The day we ate the last plate of ribs from that batch of burnt jam was a sad day.  However, you can replicate the flavour with a half teaspoon of liquid smoke in the mix or by finishing the ribs on an outdoor BBQ. My point though is that if you ever burn your jam a bit, don’t throw it away because it is good for something.  And I do love it when good comes out of a bad thing.

Kholrabi and apple coleslaw

So Spring has finally turned up in dear old England, but it’s got its summer hat on.  The unthinkable has happened and we’re actually having nice weather over the May bank holiday weekend.  Some might even say it’s a miracle.  Was it worth all the snow though?  I’m going with yes!  Consequently some of us have been cracking out BBQs for the first time this year.  I feel there’s been some major grilling going on this weekend up and down our fair country.  I give you, therefore, a cheeky little coleslaw accompaniment filled with delicious raw veggies.  Good for the actual vegetarians and also the meat-eaters to give them some nutrient balance!  I like this coleslaw for two reasons – one it has apple in it, and I LOVE apple in salads and so do the kids usually.  It broadens the appeal in my opinion.  Secondly, no one really knows what to do with a kholrabi, yet they are so easy to grow they turn up in vegetable boxes here until they’re coming out of your ears.  You can never have too many kholrabi recipes in my opinion, just to keep up with the supply of them.  You can also make this a couple of hours ahead and chill until it is needed which is handy if you’re wrestling other things on the actual BBQ.

Lemon-glazed olive oil and courgette loaf

Adapted from Sarah Leahey Benjamin’s Crunchy Lemon-Topped Courgette Cake in The Telegraph

The village fete season is upon us and some will be required to produce something for the cake stall.  Undoubtedly Lady Featherstonewaugh will be bringing something spectacular, but here’s your secret weapon. A loaf cake says rustic country charm. No gloss, no glitter.  But if you make it taste really special then it might just sneak the prize with taste alone.  If you don’t think you can compete with decoration (and I’m hopeless) this is the cake for you.  Understated in looks, amazing in taste.  If you’re not a fan of olive oil then this isn’t the cake for you as the flavour really shines through.  It is also a very moist, rich and delicate cake.  You’ll need to serve it on a plate with a fork or suffer a lap full of crumbs!  However, a confirmed sponge cake hater I know thought this cake delicious and ate two slices, which is unheard of.  If you’re worried about green flecks in the crumb from the courgette, feel free to peel the dark green off before you grate it.  I guarantee no one will even know it’s in there!  I can’t make any claims to the healthiness of this recipe, what with all the sugar in it, but the olive oil and ground almonds go some way to offsetting that.   Not a cake for the kids this one really but very adult and perfect for serving at an afternoon tea, alongside the finger sandwiches.

There will be a short pause…

while I glutenate myself.

I’d be more cross but it’s too ridiculous and I’m too tired from being unwell to jump and down too much.  But here it is, a cautionary tale.  I buy a lot of flours from my ‘local’ Asian supermarket (actually online from Bristol, but there you are) and I’ve not had a problem yet with gluten.  I expect to a have a problem with contamination at some point, but as previously mentioned (in a post long ago) superfine rice flour is just not available in the UK any other way.  Neither is sweet rice flour (well Bob’s Red Mill is from one place at four times the price) so I’m prepared to wing it a bit, see if I get sick, take note and move on.  This isn’t ideal but I guess the alternative is not to make certain things, and that’s just not for me.  Part of my coping mechanism is to try and have normal things.  Anyway, I’ve had a whole month of wellness, eating out, travelling around, by being as careful as I can without bringing my own food.  I was therefore ready for a fall I guess, but it is rather galling that I’ve done it to myself.  From British flour, sold in a packet written in my language, from a British website I’ve been using a lot and who I thought wouldn’t do me wrong.  But it turns out it was me that was wrong.  I am the trusting fool.

So here’s how it happened.  I went to said online store and bought a kilo of brown rice flour, from a webpage that says it is gluten-free.  Well yes, brown rice flour is naturally gluten-free but this flour wasn’t actually gluten-free.  A bit like how orange juice is naturally non-alcoholic until you add vodka to it, and then it’s actually not that non-alcoholic after all.  Apparently this subtlety is lost on the store selling the flour.  They confirmed that the flour I had bought was milled and packed in a place that also does gluten grains.  They said if I’d wanted an actual gluten-free flour I should have looked at the photos of the packets, as one of their offerings from a different supplier says gluten-free on the packet.  The fact that the webpages of both products say the same thing, ‘gluten-free’, and are in a section of the website titled ‘gluten-free flours’ is seemingly irrelevant.

So I suggested that to prevent someone else making the same mistake, and also getting sick, they might want to add a note to their product description, along the lines of ‘this product is milled and packed in facility that also handles wheat, barley or rye’ and they refused.  Apparently they are devising a “gluten scale” which they will apply to all their product descriptions.  So customers will one day, when they implement it, really know what they are buying.  I guess until they label which things are zero gluten on their scale we will just have to scrutinise their photos of the packets to see whether the manufacturer is making a claim to gluten-free status.  Their website, however, will continue to say that all their brown rice flour is ‘gluten-free’ because naturally it is.  Even if in actuality it is not.  Please insert your own expletive here.  As for their gluten scale, well I’d really like to know what shape it is, because I’ve got some ideas I’d love to share with them on where they can stick it.

That is all for now.  I expect normal service to be resumed shortly.

Jam coconut sponge

While I was away visiting the parental units in Dorset we spent some time at the beach.  C enjoyed digging in the sand/pebbles and my parent’s dog, Martha, enjoying chasing the ball along the shoreline.  Happiness all round.  It also just so happens that there is a fine fish cafe nearby where we stopped for lunch before heading home.  As well as several naturally gluten-free options on the menu (I had a baked Dover sole with boiled new potatoes and salad, yum, yum), they also had not one, but two, gluten-free cakes in their dessert cabinet.  You can just stop by for tea or coffee and a cake, and they do breakfast, but I’m off at a tangent.  There was the ubiquitous gluten-free brownie.  I do love a brownie but because it is so easy to do gluten-free it does get a bit repetitive (yes, I know I should be more grateful, I really do).  But they also had a gluten-free carrot cake.  My stomach did a little dance of joy!  Not that I had any in the end because I was too stuffed from the fish.  But you know, it seemed above and beyond the requirement (stand up and take a bow, Hive Beach Cafe).  However, they also had a cake that wasn’t gluten-free but gave me a sudden rush of nostalgia.  If you’re from the UK, eating school dinners in the 70s and 80s at least, then you must have had this?  Soft vanilla sponge, seedless raspberry jam, and desiccated coconut.  Simple, but pretty, and delicious.  The table of four behind us had a serving each.  And I was a bit envious.  But no more!  Here it is – perfect with a cup of afternoon tea in the sunshine.