Hemp Cream of Celery Soup (Thermomix)

The following is adapted from the Cream of Celery Soup at the thermomix forums. I've changed it so it's dairy free and uses less coconut milk drink in making the roux. I've partially done this by adding hemp seeds to the soup mix before blitzing to give creaminess and omega 3's and protein. Pumpkin or sunflower seeds would also work and are cheaper than hemp seeds, although I find they need soaking beforehand or they taste a bit strong. You can follow the original recipe using either real, soy or coconut milk drink if you prefer, this is just a little thriftier if you need to use specialist non dairy, non soy milk.

Ingredients
1 bunch celery, chopped
1 onion, quartered
1 small carrot, chopped
1 small potato, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
boiled water up to thermomix half mark.
100ml shelled hemp seeds (add later)

For the Roux
1 heaped tablespoon dairy free spread
2 tablespoons gluten free flour
100ml Kara Dairy Free Coconut Milk drink (or soy, almond or other high protein non dairy milk. Rice milk won't work for this)

Making the soup:
Put the soup ingredients, minus the hemp seeds, into the thermomix bowl, and cook on 100C for 20 minutes on speed spoon.

In the meantime, make the roux as follows:  Melt the butter in a pot on the hob on medium heat (you don't want the spread to fry, just melt), when that's done, add the flour and stir gently with a whisk. Add the coconut milk and keep whisking. Turn the heat up to medium high and keep whisking until a thick sauce develops (the roux should coat the back of a spoon) then switch off the heat and move the pan off the heat source.

When the soup is done cooking in the thermomix, add the hemp seeds, then cover the lid with a tea towel (to prevent any splashes) and slowly move the dial up from 1 to 9 for 1 minute. The thermomix will shake about a lot and the tea towel will feel hot, so maybe use two. carefully remove the lid, then add the roux mixture to the soup, cover again and mix on speed 3 for 10 seconds.
Season to taste, and enjoy! This is a very creamy, comforting soup and you'd never know it was dairy free.

White Bean Pasta

This is one of my go-to budget midweek meals. Cannellini beans don't have a strong taste, so are perfect for absorbing the flavours of the herbs and stew they are cooked in, and yields a simple, tasty and comforting dinner served over some white rice, or brown rice gluten free penne pasta.  Since it's my go-to midweek meal, brown rice pasta hits the sweet spot of being high in fibre, but fast to cook.

Now, while the meal itself is a doddle to put together on the evening, it does require a bit of prep and foreplanning, but since I'm a mealplanner, that's ok!

This recipe feeds four, or 2 with plenty for leftovers the next day.

Ingredients:
1 cup cannellini beans, rinsed and soaked overnight.
3 cloves garlic.
1 bay leaf
A good swig of dry white wine or white sherry (optional)
1-2 tablespoons tomato paste (or a can of chopped tomatoes if you prefer)
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon basil
salt and pepper to taste

Method:
Wash and soak the beans overnight. In the morning, they need to be boiled for 10 minutes.
Now, if you're not using a slow cooker, it'll get interesting, cos they need to be simmered for 1.5 hours. It's a lot easier to put the beans, bay leaves, herbs, boiled water and garlic into the slow cooker for 3 hours on low, using an electric timer.
That way when you come home, you can tip out the water and they're ready to use in your recipe.

Important note on slow cookers and quantity:
Make sure you fill the slow cooker between halfway and three quarters full, or use a small heatproof bowl inside a too large slow cooker to contain the beans so that the slow cooker doesn't cook too fast. If you don't have a suitable container or a smaller slow cooker, don't despair, just adjust the cooking time either longer (if the slow cooker is too full) or shorter (if it's too big).

That evening: Pour a little olive oil into a frying pan and add the drained contents of the slow cooker. Add the sherry, tomato paste and add more herbs as well as salt and pepper to taste and simmer on medium heat. I like to put the pasta on at the same time, as they are both ready in about 10 mintues.

Slow Cooker Lamb Tagine

I used to make tagine from a pre-made paste I'd buy in the co-op and my housemates would act like I'd lovingly re-created grandma's tagine. I hate to tell you this, but people in the Gulf don't cook tagines. But I liked the taste of the meal and since it was a hit I decided to learn how to make "the real" thing. The following is the adaptation I like the best so far. I think apricots balance the tartness of the black olives and impart a lovely sweetness to the rich, slightly spicy sauce.

I have a tagine pot (a gift brought back by one of my loveliest friends), but you know by now I like dumping things into the slow cooker so I can forget about it. Unless you forget to check that the slow cooker plug is switched on and come home to a still raw meal, in which case I can recommend you:
a) laugh
b) pour yourself a big glass of wine
c) put the mixture into a lidded pot or tagine in the oven for an hour, starting at 200c for the first 20 mins and then lowering to 180C for the rest of the time.

The wine/olive oil and balsamic vinegar act as a marinade so the meat will still be tender. Since this happened during an English January and our apartment is cool during the day, it wasn't a big deal that the meat was on the counter all day.

You can buy harrisa paste pretty easily in most supermarkets now. Barts do a blend, or you can check out your local ethnic store for the more fiery type, or you can get adventurous with your blender and make your own.


Ingredients:

• 500g lamb, diced
• glug of olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic
• half a jar of olives, drained
• 1 onions, sliced in rings
• half a cup of chopped dried apricots/peaches (rinsed and soaked in a little boiled water for ten minutes) 
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp corriander seeds
• 1 tsp ginger powder (fresh ginger is better if you have it, about half an inch, chopped fine)
• 1 cup red wine. I like shiraz, for the spiciness and body.
• 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
• 1 beef stock cube, crumbled.
• 1 teaspoon harissa paste.
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• half a cup of chickpeas, soaked overnight and boiled for ten minutes first.

Method:
Coat the meat with the harrisa paste and a little olive oil and the balsamic vinegar. Then add everything else and stir. Put in the slow cooker and cook on high for 4 hours.
At the end of cooking time, add about a tablespoon of gluten free flour to the sauce to thicken. Serve with rice or millet (for a couse couse substitute)

It seems like a lot of ingredients, but once your used to what goes into this dish it all comes together really fast. You can use dates instead of apricots if you prefer. This is one of my favourite meals ever. I find the tastes of sweet, tart, fragrant, and meaty balance out so well.

Gluten and Soy Free alternative to A1 Sauce

Sunday is more like a Day of Prep in this house :-/. However, I remind myself that getting stuff ready on a relaxed Sunday is better than than doing them when I really need them in the middle of the week. When I'm invariably starving, sleepy and cranky. So since once of this weeks recipe's calls for A1 sauce and I can't find out without soy sauce in it I hit up google for the following recipe, which I've adapted based on what I have in my fridge and to exclude soy. Clue: I'm out of O.J.

This recipe looks really far off the linked recipe, but this is because I'm creating a soy-less alternative to soy sauce at the same time. 

"Almost A1 Sauce" Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons cranberry suace
• 1/2 cup raisens. Rinsed very well 3 times. 
• 2 tablespoon dijon mustard
• 2 tablespoons heinze ketchup
• 1/4 cup white vinegar
• 1 teaspoon tamarind paste (this gives it that slightly sour taste)

Soy alternative Sauce:

• 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 2 teaspoons molasses
• 1 cube beef stock (shitake stock would also work well
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 clove crushed garlic
• 5 drops ume plum seasoning
• 100ml hot water

Method:
Add  all ingredients above into a sauce pan and simmer gently for 5 minutes. When time is up allow to cool, then blend, then pour into jars. Of course if you have a thermomix, you can heat and blend it up while it's still hot.

Pork Chops and 'Creamy' Mustard Leeks

It was one of those days where I'd forgotten entirely to check my oh-so-cleverly worked out meal plan, and the day I decide the "prep" column would be added to future meal plans. I'd forgotten to soak the cashews for making cashew cream.

Quick Cashew Cream:
Pour freshly boiled water over the cashews, and cover with a lid to keep the steam in. You'll see some small bubbles arise as the cashews absorb the hot water. Leave for 20 mins and go about the other steps for the recipe then follow the usual cashew cream method.

Ingredients:

• glug of olive oil
• 2 pork chops (no bones)
• 3 leeks
• 1 tablespoon Jam (I used apricot)
• 2 tablespoons dijon mustard (always check it's gluten free)
• 1/2 teaspoon dried sage
• salt and pepper
• white sherry or cider (check it's a brand that is gluten free) or apple juice. I found the co-op have a good own brand sherry that's gluten and casien free.

Cut the leeks so that the white and green parts are separate. Then slice very finely so you have half moons of the white and finely chopped green parts. Put a glug of olive oil into a frying pan on medium high heat and add only the green parts of the leeks along with the sage and a little salt. Stir every once in a while until it gets soft.
Now add the white parts of the leek and turn the heat down a little more and leave to soften, string gently from time to time. When they're soft, add the dijon mustard and the jam to the leek mixture with the heat off (the pan will be hot enough). Stir to combine everything, and set the mixture aside, covered.

Season the pork chops, turn the frying pan back on to medium high heat and fry on each side for 7-8 minutes on each side. While this is going on, it's a good time to blend the cashews into cream.

When the pork chops are looking like they're cooked through, add a glug of sherry (about 100-200ml) or cider/apple juice into the pan to deglaze. This will create a brown sticky gloss over the pork chops. Let it cook down to a sticky texture and turn the pork chop over to glaze the other side. Remove the pork chops from the pan and switch the heat off, then add the leeks back to the still hot pan, along with the cashew cream and stir everything together so the leeks are coated in cream (which will brown with the remains of the glaze). I find that cashew cream tends to boil down much faster than soya or real cream, so I prefer to work with the heat switched off since it's still pretty hot. If you're using soya cream, feel free to proceed as usual.

Serve pork chops over a bed of the creamed leeks. We served this with rice and instantly knew the recipe was a keeper! The jam really helps add sweetness to the leeks and offset the dijon perfectly.

Allergy Cooking: Reducing Time and Costs

I've recently surrendered to meal planning for the week ahead. With multiple food allergies, it takes me longer to put together than my guru in organisation, but the benefits are that I don't need to spend time each day googling ingredients I know we have and considering which of the results is:
a) cheapest in terms of ingredients we may need to buy
b) most nutritionally balanced for me
c) least repetitive flavour wise.

Writing up a weekly menu is also an easy way for me to know what needs to be added to the grocery list and stops us from buying items 'in case we need it'.

Here's an example of this weeks menu plan 'in draft' . In one column are the recipes and their sources (book title and page number or urls) and in the other are items this recipe will need. This second column forms the basis of our shopping list, which once completed I paste into mysupermarket.co.uk's 'quicksearch'.

Mysupermarket compares prices per gram on all items including those on special offer, and shows you which items you can save on if you're happy to make a substitution. Now, I may not  be willing to swap the calcium enriched orange juice for regular for example (I need all the Calcium sources I can get!), but I'm more than ok to swap brands of olive oil or herbs or chicken thigh brands, so overall, this is a great tool to help you stick to a budget.

Once that's done, I re-edit my draft into a three column meal plan. The columns are now "recipes", "prep", and "groceries". The prep column is usually for reminding me (or mr Umami) to soak beans or nuts when they are called for. You can see that the dried chestnuts need a lot of prep before showtime and we definitely don't want to forget that until the day of cooking! The last column is for items bought during the week. Again, this helps us plan the groceries better and keep tabs on costs.

I like to share mine on Google docs with Mr Umami so he can  put his 2 cents in on the menu, add items to the midweek grocery expenses or get dinner ready on days I'll be home late. It also helps me to be able to look in on 'the plan' from time to time.

Factors I consider when planning my meal plan:
A good tip to save on meal costs is to try and include more veggie meals or use beans, legumes and pulses to pad out meat. We aim to have two veggi meals per week and to use the slow cooker as much as possible since our OWL monitor has worked out that even with the slow cooker on for 4-5 hours on low, it's still cheaper than running the oven for 1.5 hours AND it allows Mr Umami to focus on his writing instead of having to get up and check that stuff isn't burning. Another important factor in my meal planning is to have enough lefotvers to take to work for lunch the next day. I don't want to be making two meals an evening.

Think this could work for you? Try These Resources:

• I'm an Organizing Junkie: menu planning. This site has downloadable templates for menu plans and grocery lists. What I especially like about the grocery list is that it's divided up by supermarket section. Nothing's more dangerous to your budget than wondering aimlessly around a supermarket! 
• Google Docs templates: you can find templates for meal plans and shopping lists here.
• A Year of Slow cooking: I have both Stephanie's books since her family are gluten free and her recipes helped me so much when I  was starting out my gluten free life. It's so much easier when the recipe has a built in substitute for things like hoisin sauce. I still prefer to link to her blog articles in the meal planner though. 
• Able and Cole recipe: un-facy but very delicious ideas for use of veg in our vegbox, from parsnip soup to lovely rosties or butternut squash curries. Veg is always allergy free for me and getting a box delivered means I won't just stick to what I consider to be 'superfoods', which means I'm less likely to develop intolerances to veg. Over xmas, I lived off my veg box alone, making soups and rosties every day. I didn't feel bored at all. Just happy with how little cooking I was doing for a change. This year I'm trying to include two soup days in the meal plan to give myself a break. 
• Nutrition data: This is where I found out that mushrooms, even simple white ones, are packed full of protein and other important minerals and make a totally great protein source in meals, and that black eyed peas, in addition to being a thrifty fiber rich protein, are also a source of calcium and high in iron. Since I need to watch my nutrition quite closely, this site really helps.