Fructose Friendly Gado-gado

This one is always popular, healthy and works well for large groups since everything is cooked separately and combined at the end.  Having the sauce over the top of steamed potatos and a salad was shown to me by a Tasmanian friend's dutch mother who lived in Indonesia for many years, she didn't give up her sauce secrets but I reckon this one is pretty good!

Recipe: Fructose Friendly Gado-gado (peanut sauce)
Special Needs Categories: gluten free, fructose free, (vegan variation possible)
Special Needs Translated: no gluten, no onion, (no fish or egg)

Sauce ingredients:

• peanut butter (I like crunchy) (check if gluten free)
• gluten free soy sauce
• chili
• garlic
• fish sauce (don't use for vegetarian/vegan)
• chinese five spice (Check if gluten free)
• coriander (dried)
• water

Method:
Really simple, combine all ingredients together in a saucepan over low heat.  I usually microwave the peanut butter to soften it a little and help get it out of the jar, then heat it a little on it's own before adding other ingredients.  When you add the water it usually doesn't look like it will mix in but just keep stirring.  Add the water till you get your desired consistency.  Make sure there's plenty of flavour in there as this is what really makes the dish.  (If I wasn't making this fructose friendly I'd have onion in the sauce too, semi-fine chopped and fried a little before you add the other ingredients.)

now the rest of the dish...

Ingredients:

• steamed rice
• steamed potato (& sweet potato if you like)
• chinese cabbage
• cucumber
• bean sprouts
• snow peas
• other assorted salad ingredients
• hard boiled egg (not for vegan dish)
• fresh coriander

 simply combine on a plate (rice then potato then salad with eggs on the side) and pour over the gado-gado sauce!  You can make a salad with the fresh ingredients or just allow people to pick and choose.

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!

Burritos for small group

Dish: Burritos
Special need categories: low fructose, vegetarian, gluten free
Special needs translated: no meat, no onion, no wheat, no gluten, minimal garlic

Sauce/filling:

• tinned chopped tomatoes
• potato
• sweet potato
• butternut
• broccoli
• cauliflower
• garlic (small amount)
• celery
• corn
• tinned 4 bean mix
• zucchini
• olive oil
• cumin
• chili & paprika mix
• chili
• sugar
• rice wine vinegar
• salt & pepper

Topping:

• tomato
• cucumber
• lettuce
• avocado
• grated cheese
• pickles
• ricotta
• taco sauce (not fructose free)

Wraps:

• white corn wraps
• flour wraps (not fructose or gluten free)

Method

I tried substituting the celery for the onion so I fried it off in olive oil with a little garlic before adding the tinned tomatoes. The potatoes, sweet potato and butternut were chopped, steamed and added to the sauce. The broccoli and cauliflower were also steamed before being added. I used corn that I had cut off the cob because it was on special but tinned corn could also be used. All other ingredients were either directly into the sauce. Remember to make sure everything is chopped relatively small so it cooks through faster and fits into the wrap easily. Note that I've indicated a couple of ingredients that do not cater to all requirements but they are options or alternatives.

Notes

• Don't use tobasco sauce, it contains wheat.
• All taco sauces I could find contained onion and/or wheat.
• Check the ingredients on your spices, sometimes they contain wheat.