Friday, January 29, 2010

Stir-fry sauce

One of the big problems with gluten free asian cooking is that almost all sauces have wheat based soy sauce and/or onion powder for those fructose free. I have found a gluten free oyster sauce, but that doesn't work if you are vegetarian or allergic to seafood, there are also vegetarian 'oyster' sauces, but I haven't found a gluten free version. So anyway, I've come up with a bit of a stir-fry sauce the I reckon tastes pretty good, it's only had a few iterations so I will continue to play with it a little.


Dish: Stir-Fry sauce
Special need categories: Gluten free, fructose free, vegetarian, shellfish allergy
Special needs translated: no gluten, no onion, no animal products, no shellfish

Ingredients:

  • gluten free soy sauce
  • little olive oil
  • brown sugar (this is a substitute for palm sugar which looks to be high in fructose)
  • corn flour (check it is gluten free, i.e. made from corn/maize)
  • garlic (contain fructose but usually safe in small quantities)
  • ginger
  • chili
  • tamarind paste (I don't think this is a high fructose fruit)
  • chinese five spice (check the packet, some spices contain gluten or onion)
  • rice vinegar, just a little
  • a little water to make it less rich and go a bit further
Method

Basically it is just a matter of combining everything in a bowl and tasting it to see what you think. I use the brown sugar because I can't use ketchup manis like I normally would and the corn flour is a thickening agent. The tamarind paste is just a fruit paste that give a bit of a 'tang' to the dish, the vinegar does a little of the same. Chinese five spice is a great spice for just about any asian dish, the actual mix of spices varies but typically it is something like fennel, cloves, cinnamon, star anise, cassia, ginger and/or peppercorns. The rest is about as expected I would think. You could also add some onion powder to fill out the flavour a little if it didn't have to be fructose free.

I usually mix this up in a bowl before I start cooking, make it easier to get the flavours right (I used to put my individual ingredients straight ontop of the stir-frys before). When I'm cooking with unflavoured tofu I marinade it in the sauce for a while and just tip it all in together.

Otherwise I think that's about it, mix, match, add/subtract ingredients and flavours till you find something that works. Asian cooking has lots of gluten free options however it often means you have to go back to base ingredients because in many cases, you can't use pre-prepared sauce. Have fun with it!

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

'What's in the fridge' eggy rice

I've been experimenting with some different ways to cooking rice recently after my girlfriend cooked a tasty risotto in the oven in a casserole dish, I'd only every used a saucepan or frypan and had to stir the whole time. Anyway been trying out doing some hybrid steamed rice risotto which have worked pretty well but I had an egg left in the fridge so I thought I'd try and asian inspired variation.

Dish: Eggy rice dish
Special need categories: Gluten free
Special needs translated: No gluten, check all packageing, have included notes for the important ingredients.

  • long grain rice (I used basmati)
  • an egg
  • stock, vegetable or chicken (check it is gluten free, use Massel 7's for fructose free)
  • onion (don't use or substitute for celery for fructose free)
  • chinese five spice (check it's gluten free)
  • sweet potato finely chopped
  • potato finely chopped
  • carrot finely chopped
  • soy sauce (check it's gluten free)
  • tinned tuna (mine was flavoured with lemongrass and wasabi)
Method

Ok so the basic theory is, fry the onion, steam the rice, steam the potato and add the egg at the end.

So, start by frying the onions in a bit of oil, add some garlic if you like.  Once softened add the rice and water till it's twice the depth of the rice, put in some stock (was using powdered), give a quick stir and bring to the boil (adding boiling water will make this happen faster).  Then put a tight lid on, set the stove to lowest heat and set a timer for about 8 min.  The rice will take 20 min to cook, I guessed the potato would take just over 10.

After 8 min throw in the potato and sweet potato, put the lid back on and set the timer for another 12 min.
Once cooked lightly mix the egg, soy and some chinese five spice in a bowl, add the rice and stir through till the rice if fully coated, the hot rice will cook the egg.  The add the carrot and tuna and serve (mix through if you like).

As the title suggest, this is what was in my fridge/pantry, any other veggies could be added or subtracted, for the cooked veggies it's a matter of guess work as to how long they will take to steam.  Some other ingredients to try could be snow peas, beans, chicken, capsicum.