Tasty Baked Zucchini's (Gluten Free)

I don't really like zucchini's, and I know a few ppl in the same boat so I thought I'd attempt a recipe that makes them taste good.  So, here's a gluten free, fructose free, vegetarian recipe (with vegan variations) that's cheap, quick, easy to prepare and even I think is really yummy.

Recipe: Baked Zucchini
Special Needs Categories: gluten free, fructose free, vegetarian (vegan variation possible)
Special Needs Translated: no gluten, no onion, no meat (no cheese for vegan)

A non-fructose friendly version before
the cheese was added.

Ingredients:

• zucchini's (biggish ones, room enough to stuff & be a meal but if too big they don't taste good)
• celery
• corn (take off the cob)
• grated sweet potato
• tomato
• garlic
• herbs of your choice (I think I had basil & oregano)
• salt & pepper
• grated cheese

Method:
Split your zucchini's in half, length-ways and scoop out the seeds to create a hollow down the middle.  Take some of these insides and fry them off with the chopped celery, corn, sweet potato, tomato, garlic, herbes and salt & pepper.  Once the veggies have started to soften place the cut zucchini's onto a baking try and spoon the mixture into hollow.  Cover the tray with foil and cook in the oven for ~30 min at 180 deg C.
Once the zucchini's have softened remove the foil, cover with grated cheese (or not for vegan version), place back in the oven and increase the temperature for ~220 deg C for 5 min till the cheese is melted and starting to brown.
Serve on a bed of steamed rice, polenta, potatos (or couscous for non GF version).

Filling variations:

• Onion instead of celery (not fructose free)
• Parmesan cheese stirred through the filling mixture
• Top the zucchini with prosciutto (not vegetarian)
• anything else you want to throw in the filling!

The end product, YUM!  (Again, this is the non-fructose friendly version)

Notes: Often I struggle to get baking trays properly clean (particularly muffin tins), often there's a bit of a residue left behind.  While I think it's just an oil residue, when I'm cooking for someone who is is very gluten sensitive/allergic I'll line the tray with tin foil just to be safe.

Mini asian meatballs

These were a little hors d'oeuvre I came up with for a wine night, really easy and really popular, and now here's a gluten and fructose free version.  No more onion or ketchup manis  :(

Dish: Mini asian meatballs
Special need categories: gluten free, fructose free
Special needs explained: only use gluten & fructose free sauces, no onion

Meatball ingredients:

• mince meat. I typically use pork, chicken or turkey mince, whatever is on special.
• gluten free soy sauce
• brown sugar
• chilli
• coriander
• tamarind paste
• chineese five spice (check the packet, some spices contain gluten or onion)
• garlic

Dipping sauce ingredients:

• gluten free soy sauce
• sweet chili sauce (check it's gluten & fructose free)
• coriander
• tamarind paste
• brown sugar
• lime juice
• corn flour (make sure it is made from corn or maize)
• chineese five spice (check the packet, some spices contain gluten or onion)
• garlic

Method

Nice and easy, mix the meat ball mixture together and put little balls of it on a greased baking tray.  Bake in the oven at about 180 deg C till they look ready (maybe 20 min).  Mix the sauce in ingredients together and serve in a bowl along side the meat balls and don't forget the toothpicks.  See easy.

The meatballs and sauce could be made up ahead of time and simply cooked when they are needed as well.

If you are not making it GF then you could use ketchup manis instead of the brown sugar and some of the soy sauce.  If you are not making it fructose free then you could also put some finely chopped onion or onion powder in the meatballs.

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!

Gluten Free pasty take 2

You may have read about the shenanigans of my first encounter with pastry, well armed with some bought gluten free pastry sheets from Melbourne Food Services, I eventually got around to having another try. So as before:

Dish: Gluten free pastry/pasty
Special need categories: gluten free, low fructose
Special needs translated: no gluten, no onion

Pastry:

• Frozen gluten free puff pastry sheets

Filling:

• Potato
• Celery
• Sweet potato
• Corn cut off the cob
• Carrot
• Mushrooms
• Beef rump steak
• Massel 7’s Chicken stock
• Garlic (crushed)
• Oregano
• Rosemary
• Salt & pepper
• Butter

Method

As a variation on last time I decided to mash my potato to hold everything together a bit more and once again I wanted to pre-cook ingredients to save time and to ensure it was cooked through because it was going to be a bigish pastry.

Preheat oven to 180-200 deg C. (depending on size and oven)

Start by dicing, cooking & mashing the potato. I simply microwaved it in a pyrex dish and mashed with a fork, didn't add anything to it like I would when serving as a side dish.

Next dice all other filling ingredients and pre-cook them, again I used the microwave. I started with just the sweet potato in and added in the things that would take less time to cook as I went. It doesn't matter if everything isn't fully cooked as we are still going to bake it.

Add all filling ingredients except the butter to a bowl and mix through. I added a little olive oil to help things combine better.

When trying to separate my semi-defrosted pasty sheets I had a few breaks, so rather than making a traditional pasty shape I went for an over-sized sausage roll which was super easy and worked well.

Lay the pastry sheet out on a greased baking tray and put the filling down 1/3 of it, leaving some space on the outside edge to join it up. I piled it reasonably high and pushed/shaped it all together a bit as the potato will hold it in place (and everything will shrink when cooked anyway), then put a few small dobs of butter on the top. I used a fork to roughen the pasty surfaces that would be joined together and then folded the rest of the pastry sheet over the top. Spreading some melted butter on the join surface they just get pushed together and then the whole "sausage roll" is brushed with melted butter and place in oven. I think our took about 30 min too cook but it will depend on the size and temperature, because the filling was precooked it should be ready when the pastry looks good.

While it would have gone well with a good chutney/sauce/relish, we were late for a movie so we chopped it in half, wrapped it up in foil and ate as we walked to the cinema :)

Massel 7’s fructose friendly stock

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Update (14/7/2011): Massel to redevelop a 7's Fructose Friendly Formula
I just got an email from Mark at Massel to say:

"We have had many emails from people such as yourself and have now 'heard the call'. To this end I am happy to report that our R&D department is now working on an onion free version to cater for the Fructose Malabsorbtion community."

This is great news! Thanks to everyone that contacted Massel to request the change, and thanks to Massel for their quick action!
In the meantime continue checking your packets as I suspect it will take some time for the new formula to hit the shelves and I'll keep you informed with updates as soon as I know.
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Update (12/7/2011): WARNING.  Massel 7's stock now has ONION in it! The onion (and garlic) is clearly listed in the ingredients but the rest of the packaging is the same so be sure to check.  You may get lucky and find some made with the old onion free formula.  To the best of my knowledge this was the only fructose friendly stock on the market so it might be worth sending an email to Massel to request they change it back.
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To all those who can't eat fructose and missing out on yummy risottos and soups, then Massel 7’s stock is for you! (Thanks to my sister who put me onto this)

I had assumed that this was a specialty item, possibly not even made any more after speaking to a friend who couldn't find, checking my supermarket, and not finding it on Massel's web site. That was till my sister left a comment that said "I found it in Coles Mitcham last week . . . " (or something like that).

So on my next supermarket trip to Coles on Glenferrie Rd (Hawthorn), guess what I found . . .

They seem to come in chicken and beef stock cubes with very little advertising or marketing buzz words on the packet. They are both gluten free and vegan according to the ingredients it does not specify where the 'natural flavours' actually come from. It does not indicate it is fructose free however, the Massel's normal stock cubes have almost identical ingredients BUT they individually list the 'dehydrated vegetables' they contain which includes onion.

• Massel 7's chicken stock: Marine salt,rice flour, vegetable oil, sugar, natural flavors, yeast extracts, vegetable protein extract(soy derived), disodium inosinate and guanylate, herb extract
• Massel Chicken stock: Marine salt, rice flour, hydrogenated vegetable oil, sugar, yeast extract, vegetable flavours, vegetable protein extract (wheat derived), dehydrated vegetables (onion, celery, parsley).

I did find them listed on the Allergy Block web site as; Gluten free, Egg free, Nut free, Dairy free, Low fat, Vegan, Vegetarian, Halal.

So to the best of my knowledge they are 'fructose friendly' but I'd be interested to find some more concrete evidence on this. Drop me a comment if you can help!

Introduction

Welcome to my food blog!

What's this all about?
Well I'm basically just a guy who likes food, can cook a little and particularly likes cooking for friends. Somehow I have ended up doing rather a lot of cooking for people who have special dietary needs such as being wheat free, gluten free, vegetarian, vegan, dairy free, fructose free (or low fructose). This site is all about sharing what I've learned, recipes, handy hits, useful substitutions and things to watch out for. I don't claim to be an expert but I think I do ok.

As a secondary focus I'm also hoping to look into the sustainability of our eating habits, I don't know much about this yet but I do think it is important and look forward to sharing what I learn.

What qualifications do I have?
None, well no formal qualification in cooking anyway. My experience comes from being brought up in the kitchen with a mother that loved to cook, having a sister that did a degree in nutrition and now does allergy research, friends that have special dietary needs and a general interest in these sort of things. Take for example my small group (bible study group), we currently have someone who needs a fructose free meal as well as a vegetarian and I love the challenge of coming up with something that is tasty, interesting, healthy and easy to cook for a group of 10 people. Add to this the fact I was once on a wheat free diet and have a girlfriend who is a coeliac, I've had a bit of practice.

What do you mean my sustainable eating?
Basically I want there to be resources for everyone in the world, now and in the future and from what I've heard, our current eating practices in the developed world can't really continue as they have been if this is to be a reality. I'll be looking at things like the quantity of meat that we eat and the distance that food has to travel to get to our plates.

How often will you post?
Truth be told, I have no idea. Whenever I have an idea and get the chance. The fact is it may not be often but I do hope that this will be an ever growing resource that I hope you will be able to help me with so let me know if you have any ideas!