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You are here: Home / Archives for Gluten-Free

LIGHTNING CURRY

January 13, 2016 by natalie Leave a Comment

IMG_3377This is a super-fast post, because I can’t seem to string together more than 15 minutes in front of the computer these days.  I also slashed the tip of my thumb open on my mandolin making the sprouts recipe earlier this week and it hurts to type.  This recipe was a rip-roaring surprise of a success last night and the 2, 5 and 7 year olds ate ADULT portions of it.  Crucially for children, it is mild, but far from dull as it is very aromatic.  I know my kids are not the norm, but I believe that if you expect a lot from them, they will deliver.  I held my breath with my back turned as they first tucked in, and lo and behold, they did not complain, far from it!

I will come back and replace my iphone pics with high-res. photos to accompany this recipe when I next make it as this one doesn’t really do it justice.  I instagrammed yesterday evening’s results and whole load of people asked for the recipe.  I ate the leftovers for lunch today with my husband, it was so tasty, although I confess it was spiked with chillies for our palates and worked wonderfully too.  You know something is good when you eat it several meals in a row with no complaint.   I think you could substitute the chicken with sweet potato or tofu and make it veggie… I’ll give it a whirl and let you know. 

I call it lightning curry as:

  1. it can be made in a flash (literally the time it takes to cook the rice)
  2. it is like a dazzling lightning bolt of golden energy beaming right in to your winter kitchen, eradicating doom, gloom and viruses.
  3. it can almost qualify as a non-vegetarian detox style dish and is most certainly healthy if not vegan therefore is could technically be part of a weightloss programme (“lightening”, geddit?)

The short, basic formula for any easy, fast curry is as follows:

  1. chop everything before hand
  2. make  a curry paste with herbs, spices and roots in a chopper (or use shop-bought)
  3. fry onions (a bit like soffritto)
  4. add paste to onions
  5. add meat or main star ingredient to onions
  6. sear main ingredient to seal in flavour before adding liquid
  7. pour in liquid (be it stock, water, coconut milk)
  8. bring to boil
  9. THEN add tender veg (or else they will become mush)
  10. turn off heat and season
  11. garnish well with something pretty and colourful eg. chillies / spring onions / coriander (cilantro)

The detailed version, for this curry however, is:

LIGHTNING CURRY

Print this recipe
natalie
January 13, 2016
by natalie
Category Gluten-Free Mains Uncategorized Veggie Headliner Act
The curry in the photo was a mild version in its original incarnation, but it morphed in to a spicy one once my husband and I were having it as left overs on day 2. If you like heat, then use chillies. If not, this is a great recipe, as unlike when I use quality, shop-bought Thai curry pastes, you get to decide on how spicy you want it to be.
The cooking time of the rice (if you use a rice-cooker) is more than sufficient to get on with the rest if you use a chopper to mince up all your spices and roots etc.
We use a rice cooker a lot in our house - I used to think they were just another unnecessary piece of kitchen kit, until my husband brought one into my life after being converted to its wisdom during a stint living in Asia. In actual fact I have grown to really appreciate this gadget very recently on discovering that I can cook dried beans or split peas in a fraction of the time and even then, they no longer give me bloating nor do they retain that grassy, overly "al dente" chalkiness that can make them so unappealing. The other advantage is that I can be on the school run or whatever, while the rice-cooker bubbles away, basically leaving it to get on with things. If I have understood correctly, a rice-cooker is not a pressure cooker, but the seal in the rice cooker somehow amplifies the cooking speed and thoroughness.
Secondly, if you want to prepare ahead, you could chop your meat and marinate it in half the spices as much as a day in advance if you fancy (I did not, and it was still wonderful). The other half is best fried over with the onions and the marinated meat/spice mixture then added.
Whenever you cook meat, be sure to let it come to room temperature before cooking as otherwise it will clench up like a scared mollusc and end up tough and chewy. The thermal shock on the muscle-fibres makes them shorten, whereas if you don't subject, it to unnaturally extreme spikes in heat, it yields and becomes tender. With this in mind, remove your meat from the fridge at least 15 minutes before you want to throw it in the pan.
Persons
6
LIGHTNING CURRY

Notes

A little note on alliums:
I like large shallots as although a little more expensive, they have wonderful flavour, keep better, are less watery, you can use a small one when a whole onion is not required (without that mouldering half-onion sitting on the countertop for a day or two) and they are a massive time-saver - they brown very swiftly and evenly (being less watery), and in terms of their shape, they are also so slim that they are easier to chop up: I half them length ways and slice them lengthways again into large matchsticks, along the stripes of the shallot and then pile them up and chop them perpendicular to these stripes, several shallots at a time. I find you have to swivel and turn onions and flip them over by dint of their depth and this is a faff to me. My eyes water terribly with onions so this cuts out precious minutes of hassle.

Ingredients

  • 500g bag Brown Rice (I used Organic Germinated Brown Rice "GBR" called Gaba Jasmine-Green Rice from Ocado, as apparently GBR is much more digestible and I also find it more flavoursome)
  • 4 chicken breast or thighs if you prefer (boneless for ease of chopping)
  • 2 medium onions or 5-6 shallots
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1/4 tsp salt approx. (strewn across the onions during cooking)
  • 2 heaped tbsp coconut oil
  • For the Curry Paste
  • 1 level tbsp coconut oil
  • a few wisps of blade mace
  • 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
  • 1/2 tsp nigella seeds
  • 6-8 cardamom pods
  • 1 tsp coriander seeds
  • 1 tsp garam masala
  • 6-8 cloves garlic
  • 3-inch piece of fresh ginger root (approx)
  • 2x 2-inch pieces of fresh turmeric root (approx)
  • 1 tsp turmeric powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt and a few turns of pepper
  • 2 fresh chillies - optional (IF NO KIDS ARE EATING : ) )
  • For the body of the "gravy"
  • 3 fresh tomatoes / a cup of passata / ends of your pasta sauce (I used the latter for speed and wont of opening a whole new bottle of passata)
  • 500ml / 1 pint approx. chicken stock or water or a mix of both
  • half a head of cauliflower (chopped in to little florets)
  • half a head of broccoli (chopped in to little florets)
  • 300g approx. Greek yoghurt (or to your taste) - I use 1-2 cups as a rough guide
  • salt if more necessary to your palate
  • Garnish / Final Touch
  • fresh chillies (optional), sliced
  • Fresh coriander, chopped - to taste
  • Spring onions, chopped - to taste

Instructions

  1. The most important thing to not hold things up is to get the rice on first. If you have a rice cooker, pour the bag of rice into the chamber, run cold water over it and discard the water until it is no longer cloudy. To speed things up in an unorthodox way, I like to pour boiling water over the rice to speed things up as I am impatient. Otherwise the classic Asian way of judging the measure of water in which to cook rice is to spread your open hand and lean it on the levelled rice and pour cold water in up to the point where the water laps at the middle joints of your fingers: it is full proof. (I will post a photo of this in the post). If you have no rice cooker, use whichever method you like to cook it and then turn to the meat.
  2. Remove any sinew and veiny / gristly bits from your meat and roughly chop it in to chunks slightly larger than Toblerone triangles. Put this aside.
  3. Now get to chopping your onions / shallots (see my notes on onions / shallots below, if you care).
  4. Put your coconut oil in a large, heavy based pan and heat till liquefied. Throw in the chopped onions / shallots and bay leaf and stir till evenly coated and sizzling gently, season with a little salt and pepper. Turn down and allow to go golden.
  5. While the onions are mellowing (you only need to stir occasionally if the heat is not blazing), get on with making your root and spice paste (basically your curry paste).
  6. Peel and roughly chop all the roots, peel the garlic and throw these and and the various seeds / spices into a blender or chopper and blitz with some water from the hot tap or kettle and coconut oil (to help bind). It will be a bit lumpy and granular and ever such a little bit fibrous, but this is not a problem once cooked through.
  7. Once the onions are just beginning to caramelize, add your spice and root paste to the pan and stir it all together, turning and lifting, till the onions are a blazing golden-yellow. Keep stirring! The onions and spices will at first try to stick to the bottom of the pan (I never use non-stick) but this will subside as the onions and paste release their moisture further. If you are concerned, just add a little water to the pan to aid mixing / prevent sticking.
  8. The paste should no longer appear so gritty, and before the onions begin to burn (2-3 minutes), throw in the chicken chunks.
  9. Let these go white all over, turning every now and then until their outers are "sealed" by the heat. Only when uniformly seared all over, you can add your liquid (stock/water combo) and tomato. Turn up the heat and once simmering, lower the heat to maintain a steady, gentle simmer and allow the meat stew a little (10-15 minutes).
  10. While the meat cooks and tenderizes, chop up your vegetables and only once they are all chopped up in one batch, add them to the meat / curry pan and turn so they are covered with the curry liquid.
  11. Turn off the heat, and when slightly cooled (a couple of minutes later), stir in the yoghurt.
  12. Serve on your rice and garnish with spring onions and coriander. It is a real vision to behold.

Tags

broccoli,
cauliflower,
chicken,
coriander,
cumin,
curry,
garam masala,
garlic,
ginger,
nigella,
onion,
scallions,
shallot,
spring onion,
turmeric,
vegetarian,
yoghurt,
yogurt
© 2025 Recipes property of www.WoodsmokeandWildStrawberries.com

Filed Under: Gluten-Free, Mains, Uncategorized, Veggie Headliner Act Tagged With: broccoli, cauliflower, chicken, coriander, cumin, curry, garam masala, garlic, ginger, nigella, onion, scallions, shallot, spring onion, turmeric, vegetarian, yoghurt, yogurt

Sugo al pomodoro classico (classic tomato pasta sauce)

November 3, 2015 by natalie 3 Comments

Sugo rosso classico

Sugo rosso classico

 

Classic tomato sauce aka sugo.  

There is no reason any non-native Italian shouldn’t be able to make an authentic, reliable, tasty, easy go-to pasta sauce.  I advise you to just shrug off the casual snobbery / subtly xenophobic tendency that fellow Italians have, where they are deeply suspicious of any other nationality making anything from their classic culinary repertoire.

This classic red sauce will cause disagreements in every household and by my estimation is probably the primary source of initial rifts between daughters-and-mothers-in-law as there are as many recipes for it and opinions on it as there are families in Italy.   Often but not exclusively, each family hands their recipe down from mother to daughter (and of course sometimes son, look at Bottura, Carluccio, Contaldo, Locatelli et al) in this way for generations.  it’s not a secret recipe usually, it’s just a basic survival skill in all families an a very polarizing one at that.  IMG_2360Some don’t diverge from a minimalist, purist version (tomato, olive oil, garlic and salt and maybe (oooh!) a single basil leaf) – my friend Ute calls it “sugo finto” in her house (which means “fake sauce” and recommends this particularly with fresh, seasonal summery tomatoes – I will provide her exact recipe soon… others will only approve of a soffritto base and then the addition of tomato.  To give you another example of a totally valid yet surprising departure from the majority of recipes – from a bona fide, card-carrying Sicilian friend of mine, Elena who is a paediatrician living in the UK called her mother in a panic when pregnant in order to get the exact recipe for her sugo such were her cravings.  She used to make her own (just one of her mother’s variations) but the nostalgia component was insurmountable as she craved a particular recipe which had no soffritto or oil at all involved in the cooking.  Controversially Elena’s mother’s recipe involved boiling the tomato and carrot and celery and onion without the initial frying off, just the combining and boiling of all the ingredients and the addition of fresh, raw extra virgin olive oil just before serving….

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Filed Under: Gluten-Free, Mains, Recipe Vault, Recipes, Starters, The Abruzzo... the most underrated region of Italy, Tips, Tricks and shortcuts, Veggie Headliner Act

The BASICS: How to cook pasta

October 16, 2015 by natalie 2 Comments

IMG_8030Apologies to anyone who doesn’t require these pointers but I do get asked frequently for the genuine, Italian method for cooking pasta.  I do find that many of my non-Italian friends get little things “wrong” and this does make things trickier / less reliable in terms of outcome.  My best friend in Italy, Ute who has the family run restaurant has whole banks of water on the boil, in the way that Brits would have deep-fat friers constantly on the go with wire baskets bubbling away, except in Italy these contain hot salted water.  Gluten-free vats are set aside to be left totally free from wheat contamination and this is now becoming the norm in Italy.  The tips below may seem to only define minor differences between the happy-go-lucky most cooks employ, but they make the difference between authentic tasting pasta and slop.  Trust me.

Here we go:

  1.   Use a larger pan than you think (at least a c.3L pan for 500g [ie. one pack] pasta)
  2.   Use more water than you think (fill the pan 3/4 full) and be prepared to top up the water from a kettle or boiling tap if the water looks overly cloudy or gloopy or simply insufficient if need be
  3.   Salt well (eg. at least one heaped tablespoon of salt for a pan that size) – you will get a hang of doing this by eye. I do it by throwing in a hanful of sea salt or one swirl of fine salt
  4.   Do not bother with adding oil etc. to the boiling water, if you stir it properly (and this is the only true way to avoid it gumming together) then it will turn out well
  5.   Be prepared to stir a lot in the first 5 minutes to prevent the pasta from gluing itself together and to the base of the pan
  6.   If you are cooking ‘long’ pasta (spaghetti, linguine, tagliatelle, fettuccine, bucatini, capelli d’angelo, chitarra etc.) then stand over the pas with a large wooden fork and twist the long stems into the water until they are all covered up and stir until flowing freely under the water with no clumping.
  7.   Remove the pasta before it is really cooked through to your desired bite level (very ‘al dente’ for me) and, crucially DO NOT OVER DRAIN it, leave a small puddle of cooking water in the pan (about 2-3 tablespoons) so that when you tip the pan, a corner of water can be seen.  This is because the pasta will keep on cooking and absorbing the water until you eat it and it can become ever so dry and stodgy in that time unless you pre-empt this.  Alternatively you can drain the pasta very cursorily (so it is still sopping wet) leaving plenty of milky-looking cooking water aside in case it is needed, until you dress the pasta and combine it properly with the ‘sugo’
  8.   OPTIONAL: you can stir in a tiny drizzle of olive oil if you are afraid of it sticking but only if there is a delay between cooking the pasta and adding the sauce.  In Italy most health conscious families tend to add fresh olive oil just before serving as it is healthier uncooked and is almost always a welcome addition
  9.   Lastly, a trick I see used at my bestie’s restaurant is to complete the cooking of the pasta with the sauce in a large sauté pan so that the pasta and the sauce “fuse” and really combine.  You can either do this in the boiling pan if your sauce is pre-made, or add your pasta to the sauce sauté pan which is still cooking away on the stove alongside the boiling pasta.  Not only does this allow me to serve pasta that is hot enough but more importantly it allows the flavour to penetrate the pasta and to perfect the “cuisson/cottura”, ie how al dente the pasta is.  This last step is not necessary but it does make a real difference.

NOTE:  I rarely if ever see a mound of naked boiled pasta with a pile of sauce pooled in the middle.  This is a bastardization of our way of serving that has been propagated by countless commercial pasta sauce adverts and is a method that Italians never use.  We might lightly stir in a sauce and then serve a blob in the middle for effect upon serving but that is it.  No-one is seasoning and stirring in their pasta on their plate as if it has been plopped there by some two part pasta dispensing process, it is messy and doesn’t allow the flavours to meld.

Now you know.

Filed Under: Gluten-Free, Recipe Vault, Recipes, The Abruzzo... the most underrated region of Italy

The Basics: Soffritto, my umami – how I love thee, let me count the ways!

October 3, 2015 by natalie Leave a Comment

IMG_1902I can’t keep up with writing up the volume of things that I think can be useful / interesting to share on here.   Sometimes I master something new and I think – wow, what took me so long?  There are countless other elements like broths and stock, and bread dough that I can pull together and which make the rest of my cooking more tasty, more flexible, more interesting.  It is definitely a confidence thing, being able to make any kind of soup, sling any fish of any size and shape in the oven and to not have to consult a  recipe book or double check the correct oven temperature, the ability to eye progress and adjust,  how to pre-empt ‘doneness’ by bearing in mind the residual heat a dish contains before you serve it…  At last, turning 40 a month from today, I actually have that elusive ‘feel’ for things – both in the kitchen and without.  It is as if the culinary trajectory runs parallel to other elements in life:  you become seasoned with a patina of firsthand exposure, layer upon layer of trials and tribulations borne of personal effort, time and experience that not matter how beautiful and fresh the greenness of youth may be, it simply cannot match it.

Recently I realized that I can make caramel by eye, and a few months back I mastered something that seemed so unfamiliar and Anglo/French and faux-grand that I thought it would be fiddly but it really wasn’t: roux and by extension, béchamel.  Then my friend Brooke said: “i feel I could do with a real intro in to the basics… like how to make a roux, or a soffritto as these things crop up all the time…”.  So I’m going to include this and many others on here, with hyperlinks so that you can refer to these recipes when they crop up as a subset of another recipe.  I would also be very open to suggestions (grateful) at what to include in the basics section, as I think different families and cultures have a particular “house style” and a different way of approaching things and therefore everyone has their ‘essentials’ list.  My take on cooking is that to be a successful intuitive cook (ie. someone broadly competent and comfortable in the kitchen), it helps to learn some of the extensive culinary alphabet.   For me, coming at this cooking lark from a definitely Italian angle, soffritto is definitely one of the basic building blocks.

Soffritto is one of those things that Italians assume everyone beyond the confines of Italy must familiar with, as it is a ‘starter’ and enhancer of simply so many dishes.    I use soffritto to make variations of “shepherd’s pie” and “cottage pie” that I would otherwise never be tempted to make for my family.  My childhood memories of eating Shepherd’s pie and its relatives, is one of a dark and muddy 2 dimensional gristly meat base taking its colour from bovril or bisto granules.  We do use stock cubes in our house, and Bouillon powder, but there is nothing that can compare with the savoury and wholesome tang that comes from frying over a little pile of diced vegetables.  The classic soffritto I am referring to is basically a sepia take on the Italian flag:

  1. Celery (green)
  2. Onion (white)
  3. Carrot (red – sort of!)

I have often heard that celery is rich in umami and this must be why it is a key vegetable in soffritto.  Apparently Parmesan is also rich in umami (no wonder Italian food is so addictive and why I end up using so much of these ingredients in my own cooking).  Anyway, carrot has sweetness, as does onion once golden, and combined they produce that perfectly synergistic collision of several of three of the five key tastes once you throw in seasoning ie. sweet, salty and umami.   According to Wikipedia:

Many foods that may be consumed daily are rich in umami components. Naturally occurring glutamate can be found in meats and vegetables, whereas inosinate comes primarily from meats and guanylate from vegetables. Thus, umami taste is common to foods that contain high levels of L-glutamate, IMP and GMP, most notably in fish, shellfish, cured meats, mushrooms, vegetables (e.g., ripe tomatoes, Chinese cabbage, spinach, celery, etc.) or green tea, and fermented and aged products involving bacterial or yeast cultures, such as cheeses, shrimp pastes, fish sauce, soy sauce, nutritional yeast, and yeast extracts such as Vegemite and Marmite.[26]

Many humans’ first encounter with umami components is breast milk.[27] It contains roughly the same amount of umami as broths.

There are some distinctions among stocks from different countries. In dashi, L-glutamate comes from sea kombu (Laminaria japonica) and inosinate from dried bonito flakes (katsuobushi) or small dried sardines (niboshi).

It would seem that most food cultures try and access that umami perfection but I had never consciously realized that the flavours I am drawn to most (many of the apparently eccentric elements in my store cupboard such as dashi, bonito, kombu, and less eccentric more widespread ones such as fish sauce and yeast flakes)  are precisely things that boost flavour in this category.  Umami is said to ‘magnify’ taste, which to me seems like a cook’s cheat, a way to just make things taste more, taste better.  Retroactively I feel less of an obsessive saddo for making my own fish stock and faffing around pouring it in to my baby weaning cubes and freezing it for future use as in fact I am just lusting after umami in my cooking.  To me it makes the world of difference but I get it that for a lot of people making stock is just a bridge too far in terms of hassle sometimes…  In which case I highly recommend soffritto as it gets you a lot of the way there in terms of amping up the taste of many a dish.

A soffritto can also contain garlic and chilli, (especially in Abruzzo) and in Italy we often use celery leaves rather than the stem.  This is probably due to the fact that the celery you find there is much more leggy and hardy, over all much greener and more wiry (when you buy it at a real market) than the water-rich, virtually albino variety found further north.  For this reason you may find that your frying time varies, depending on water content.

Lastly, when I make a pasta sauce for the kids and I want to morph it in to something more compelling and more dashing with heat and oomph, I will often slice up a clove or two of garlic and give it a gentle fry with some fresh chillies (or dried if that’s what you have to hand) and then heat the sugo up in the two-ingredient soffritto before adding to the pasta.  Soffritto is also the key to tomato sauce, most of my risotti, the key to making an amazing Ragù and basically anything you care to make with mince. Look no further:

IMG_2348

Slice off one edge to stop the carrot rolling then slice the removed edge and the remaining carrot into 3mm-deep slices…

 

IMG_2349

In turn flip the slices on to their sides, slice them up lengthways in to matchsticks and then once more slice these matchsticks crossways (perpendicular) to create tiny chunks…

IMG_2332

cut the stems of celery in to pieces roughly 10cm long and one inch across, then ribbon these in to long matchsticks as you did with the carrots…

IMG_2345

then slice these crossways into small cubes

IMG_2346

remove the core of the onion, peel it and flip it over for slicing finely…

IMG_2347

chop the slices perpendicular to the onion layers and little chunks will be the outcome

IMG_2352

place the vegetables for the soffritto into a heavy-based pan and fry gently in enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan and coat the veg… be sure to add the garlic once the onion starts to turn golden, not before or it will burn and ruin the flavour.

 

The Basics: Soffritto, my umami – how I love thee, let me count the ways!

Print this recipe
natalie
October 3, 2015
by natalie
Category Gluten-Free Pantry and Suppliers Recipe Vault The Abruzzo... the most underrated region of Italy Tips, Tricks and shortcuts Veggie Headliner Act
This recipe is a soffritto that would be suit a sugo that would serve c. 10 people (made with 2-3 x 700g bottles of passata). Simply halve this amount for a regular 2L saucepan size.
You don't need to weigh your veg unless you want to, it may be helpful first time around, until you 'get you eye in'. I know a large handful of each vegetable is a good measure for me, and should occupy most of the bottom of the sauté I use, once dropped in and spread thinly and evenly across the breadth.
Sorry to delve in to detail with the chopping technique, but it makes a whole word of difference to your speed and outcome. You could of course use an electric chopper appliance but it doesn't make cubes, it makes little chiselled pieces of varying size so your veg don't fry very reliably. I have done this many a time with no qualms, when horribly pressed for time.
Prep Time
10 minutes
Cook Time
5 minutes

Ingredients

  • 4 tbsp olive oil or 2-3 heaped spoons of coconut oil 'cuisine' (the odourless variety) or high-smoke point neutral oil of your choice.
  • 1-2 sticks of celery (70g approx or about 5 tbsp once chopped finely)
  • 1 medium carrot (c. 70g)
  • 1 small onion or large shallot (c.70g)
  • 3 large cloves garlic
  • additionally some people add herbs at the early stage or make preserve raw soffritto veg all prepped in jars with herbs, I will explain how to do this in a separate recipe.

Instructions

  1. You can start by pouring a thin stream of your oil or measuring out enough oil to cover the base of your pan well.
  2. No need to turn on the heat until your veg are all finely chopped (except the garlic)
  3. Take your celery and pare it down in to roughly 10cm lengths about 1 inch (2-3cm) wide (see photos in soffritto post) as this will make chopping it much faster and more systematic.
  4. With a sharp knife, slice through it lengthways, following the long fibres visible in the celery, slicing about every 3-4mm or so if possible. In places where the celery is thick, you may need to turn some of these slices over a quarter turn and slice them down their length again, in order to give them a square (rather than rectangular) cross-section.
  5. This is so that when you spin these long thin matchsticks round 90° to cut them crossways, they turn in to tiny cubes not rectangular prisms. This ensures they brown evenly rather than sweating on side and burning on another.
  6. Do the same thing with your carrot(s). Slice a sliver off its length so that it can sit without rocking.
  7. Then cut them into 3mm slices lengthways. These should now be long rectangular slices almost the same width as the diameter of the carrot (minus the part you pared away intitally) and about 3mm in cross-section.
  8. Flip these slices standing up on their side, over a quarter turn so that they lie flat and slice these flat fat slices in to 3mm matchsticks lengthways again. Turn these matchsticks round 90° and chop through them in to tiny fine orange cubes.
  9. For your onion, peel off any dry outer layers of skin, slice lengthways from hairy root to leathery top and then peel off the outer, fiddlier layers until you reach the first of the fresh, juicy unblemished onion layers.
  10. Remove the heart of the onion (see photo) to ensure the acrid, sulphurous quality of the allium is toned down. I do this by scoring a deep pyramid around the root and lifting out the flame-shaped bulb that attaches to it.
  11. Do the same to the other half.
  12. With the onion lying flat half down, pungent core removed, leathery top to your left (if right- handed) control the opposite outer edges of the onion with your fore-finger and thumb of your free hand. With your knife-wielding hand, slice horizontally from the tip of the onion to the base, the onion top and your hand combined, will ensure the onion stays together instead of fanning out in to a mess.
  13. Then as you did with the other veg and slice perpendicularly through the cuts you have made. The onion layers will break up along with your slices to give fine white onion cubes. Perfect!
  14. Turn on your heat and when the oil is warm throw in your finely chopped soffritto vegetables.
  15. Stir regularly to avoid sticking and uneven colour.
  16. While these are slowly going golden, peel and finely slice your garlic (don't chop as the greater surface-area will make it burn faster if you do)
  17. When the onion is turning from transparent to a light golden colour at the edges, slide the garlic in to the pan with the other veg, and stir.
  18. Do not let the garlic burn (ie. it must be lightly crispy and yellow not brown in colour) or else it will taste horribly bitter and ruin your dish.
  19. Proceed with your dish of choice!
© 2025 Recipes property of www.WoodsmokeandWildStrawberries.com

You can also, if you are the kind of person who in your more manic moments likes to batch cook and store for a rainy day, you can make an industrial amount and preserve it in jars…

All you do is up the quantities of the above veg in proportion, (you might want to skip the garlic as then you have the option of adding it without too much hassle when needed), salting it (1 part salt to 4 parts veg, in weight –  1:4).  In Italy they often advise the following:

1/2 kg rock salt

1kg carrot

1kg celery

1kg onion

2 tbsp fresh parsley / thyme (I don’t recommend basil as it doesn’t keep well at all so is best added fresh).

… Make sure these are, as ever, all finely chopped and then sprinkled with the salt and allowed to sit for 10 minutes in a large bowl.   The veg are then strained and patted dry and then mixed with olive oil so as to be thoroughly coated, and then spooned in to glass jars (sterilized if you prefer, but I never bother) and covered over with more oil.   Make sure you bang these jars firmly on a tea-towel on a work surface to allow any air-bubbles to escape, then top up again with oil, so that unlike an iceberg, no single point of the soffritto mix is surfacing above the oil. Close with a lid and store somewhere cool such as a cellar or fridge or shed for a month or more.  When my aunt does them they keep for months!

As you use the jars, but perhaps don’t finish them, simply top them up with more oil to create an air-seal and continue to store.  Voilà!  Next time you are making something on the hoof, no faffing with peeling and chopping, two heaped tablespoons and you’re done.  Just be sure not to add any more salt to your final dish as the preserving salt will be quite potent.

Filed Under: Gluten-Free, Pantry and Suppliers, Recipe Vault, The Abruzzo... the most underrated region of Italy, Tips, Tricks and shortcuts, Veggie Headliner Act

Going through the motions and Trio of Cauliflower and Broccoli Cheese

September 29, 2015 by natalie 6 Comments

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Although not many of you like to comment on here in person, (perhaps I have shy friends?  Perhaps I am too vehement and I scare you off with my diatribes?)  but I do get an awful lot of lovely feedback and also requests (via facebook, dm, sms and in person) from friends and acquaintances to share recipes of things which I share on Instagram.  And it has been soooo gratifying to be on the receiving end of these.  Especially so because I felt so sheepish sharing anything at all at the outset.  I mean, does anyone care?  I feel like these days everyone feels that their opinion counts, regardess if they have any credibility / expertise in the field and (worst aspect of all) there being no barrier to entry.   Anyone can have a blog or be on Twitter or whatever – so you never know if you are just another annoying bit of static clogging up someone else’s life or whether there is a place for your contribution/perspective.  I find this a horrifying thought.  Normally I am (was) one of those lurkers just abstaining from joining the other lemmings navel-gazing and sharing it on the ‘interweb’.  Sharing anything on Instagram – which I am relatively new to – I began to do reluctantly and purely as a stopgap, because I realized that I cook so much but am unable, due to time constraints, to publish it all on here.  A mere fraction of it is actually written up and thoughtfully presented – perhaps about 5% of what is bubbling away under this roof any given week.  Until I started snapping away at the stove and on my worktop, I never actually realized how much weekly cooking that amounted to, and that was only the stuff I remembered to shoot.  It is also a reminder to me that I am, in some way, being productive even if it often feels the reverse.  Instagram has also served as a surprising testing ground for what people are interested in eating and cooking for themselves: the feedback is instant and is shaping this blog in its infancy, which feels very positive in that it is living in the moment, it is current.   Although it often results in the derailment or postponing of planned posts, it does divert me towards not just what I think may be, but what really is appealing to others and this in turn is exciting as it means engaging with a quiet community, despite the interaction not being face to face.   It also means things are new and surprising, and topics organically arise rather than being fabricated.  When I was writing this unpublished blog (for my sanity and the kids’ posterity) back in the Spring, I shuddered at the thought of having anyone peek into the chaos and intimacy of my daily life.  But then my good friend Daphne, over one of my lunches, piped up with “what is the point of a blog if there is no audience? I mean, isn’t that the point? To share and react and have a dialogue?”.  On the other side of the coin there is my husband who is extremely private and sceptical albeit very encouraging towards me, (I mean he got me into this blogging lark in the first place) who always needles me good-naturedly by referencing the famous tree falling in the forest – when no-one is there to hear it has it really fallen?   eg. does the food we eat have any value if it is not Instagrammed, if noone is there to virtually see / “like” it?  Ultimately we both know we enjoy the food and eat this way regardless of our audience but it is key to not become a slave to outside approval.  They both have point.

With children to please – and, contrary to what it may appear I often don’t please my children at all with my culinary offerings – you can see why every micro-hit of appreciation from others is so addictive, so eagerly lapped up!  My husband, who is trying to get me to unplug from technology at night and to be more present (I see his point and appreciate his concern for my welfare) doesn’t see that most of my mum-friends are most active at night when their time has fewer demands upon it and that they, or rather we rely on our cyber-friendships because we are a fellowship of mutual supporters, mothers struggling against the relentless “rinse and repeat” of daily child-rearing.

And this is the thing that I have come only very recently to understand:

…Our lives are lived in tiny modest, little increments, not attention-seeking flashes of public, marketable glory.  Going repeatedly through the motions, whether they are “please hang up your coat” or “please eat your broccoli”, “have you finished your homework”, “please go and practise” – much like the Tiger Mom’s rule of 10,000 hours, eventually means that after apparently countless, relentless, seemingly empty and unappreciated gestures made in the hope of shaping your precious charges, these seemingly ineffective gestures, suddenly appear to have garnered value.  Except it hasn’really been sudden at all, we just suddenly notice it, that is all.  It has been the slow growing fruiting of our labours, we don’t immediately see the fruits of our labour or the progress we are slowly making.  It may feel soul-destroying during the apparently invisible growth period because it appears that nothing is happening – we can all hear our enemy voice “what is the point?” and then, it suddenly catches up, just when you are at your lowest ebb and feel like throwing in the puke and tear-stained towel.   Yoga is like this, also parenting and perhaps also giving birth…and they are three of the most rewarding things in life that I can think of.  It is almost like a retroactive sprint that occurs to restore your faith in humanity after months, years of apparent going through the motions, of mindlessly repeating yourself of trying and trying and returning to the coal face.  It is not dissimilar to when your first kid is not able to read and you sit there with them, countless bedtimes, and yet you think at the outset:  “will he / she ever get there?”. With your first child you can’t even picture it.  Same with potty training and sleeping through the night.  Looking at your child and not seeing them grow on a daily basis doesn’t mean they aren’t growing, it is simply that for those closest to them, those in the eye of the storm, the changes are too subtle, too minute, to be easily detectable, but they are cumulative, they are real and they are there.   But then maybe the season changes and you find yourself dusting off a pair of long unworn winter trousers and – it seems to have happened so suddenly – those trousers are just too small.   There are tiny little increments in which we are living that are easily ignored or overlooked and which are in great contrast to the constantly revolving door of high-impact-instant-gratification-goldfish-sized-attention-span-heavily-filtered-overly-styled nuggets we are becoming accustomed to when scrolling on social media.   Our obsession with instant gratification is making a chasm open up between “IRL” (in real life) ACTUAL living, breathing moments our and our online personae.  No wonder we feel like our efforts are failing when they aren’t.  We are too busy actually living and not necessarily documenting our own lives.  AND THAT IS A GOOD THING!!  The naked eye, much like the soul, doesn’t always see the progress being made and I have to remind myself of this.  Scrolling back through my 70-odd instagram pictures lets me enjoy the otherwise immediately extinguishing trail of phosphorescence that is bringing up and feeding my lovely children.   I used to love (and still do) any tv show that indulges me with ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots or accelerated time lapse photography of things being improved (Changing Rooms, Extreme Makeover, America’s Next Top Model etc.) it is like crack to me, someone who is constantly frustrated by all I don’t feel I achieve in one day.   It is a hard line to walk, this dipping one toe in to social media and documentation, while the other toe is in the other camp, actually being present and doing without appreciation or thanks or yardsticks.  There is a febrile sort of tension that many of us are struggling with:  the living vicariously through technology on the one hand and the being present, the actual living of the very moment in which we exist.  Then again feeling the need to immortalize, create umpteen time-capsules for every precious experience because everything feels so fleeting, when only a couple of generations before us, our very own ancestors were lucky if they had a family story passed on from mouth to ear or a single dog-eared photo of their wedding day or loved one.  We no longer seem to appreciate the minutae of daily drudgery, or harbour the notion that it could have any positive elements.  Well I am trying to, I want my kids growing up knowing how to make their own beds, do the dishes and sort their own laundry and manage their affairs.  The thing that keeps me cooking (…documenting, photographing) is that I do honestly enjoy creating something beautiful, and then connecting with others emotionally through it.  It may take time but for me it is not work, it is play.  This is the antidote to all the other pressures and niggles of life.  I can make things look appetizing (because to me they are) but it is not a fabrication, it is just a little tweaked with a filter here or there, in reality, with the smell and shared with my beloved it is even better.  Just as it’s hard to find the middle ground between virtual and present, it can also be hard to be positive and not annoying, authentic but not boring and moany (plenty to bore with and moan about).  I don’t want to create a moan-blog, nor an airbrushed one… I have a post pending following a terrible evening last week, and I can’t bear to read it and am not sure anyone else will either.  Much like me sharing my terrible pregnancy snap however, chances are that, when I find the right tone (not the tone I adopted while hammering the keys in anger) I may share it too, because I have a blatant contempt for the overly curated lives represented on most social media and blogs.  This is one of my favourite articles right here on the subject.  I clearly have acquaintances like this and in the spirit of my very own basest of rubber-necking instincts I can’t bear to unfriend them because I cannot resist the so totally un-self-aware post-modernism, the black humour that they provide, the contemptuous grunts and guffaws they elicit from me.

Anyway back to the task in hand:  Souped up Broccoli/Cauliflower Cheese.  One very pertinent, interesting and thought-provoking interaction was thrown up by my instagram proffering of this broc-cauli cheese baked dish.   It followed a thread initiated by an old school friend on Facebook, to whom I shall refer as NG, that had us all wading in.  She had made a frankly gorgeous-looking ‘Spinach, ricotta, dolce latte & Parmesan gluten free lasagne’. She captioned it with : “Took me ages. And I bet all my coins that the children won’t eat it ???”

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this is a piece of it here direct from her picture…

I mean who in their right mind, wouldn’t eat this?  the answer was:  “Well one ate it, the other one did the ‘I don’t like it!’ without even trying it”

For those who feel like a lone soldier battling it out with your kids, here is the rest of the thread.  If you just want the recipe, skip to the bottom…
ME: some things you just do anyway because if you wait for acknowledgment / appreciation you will be forever disappointed. The fact is that you are awesome! Start as you mean to go on. LOTS of my stuff gets rejected. It is a slow battle of attrition. If your expectations are low then that is what they will stretch to!
NG: I needed to hear that today!! Xxxx
ME:  I think people assume that because I cook certain things for my kids that I am just lucky with them… the fact is that I get really down sometimes and after a knock back I try to get up again. I feel like it is another part of my job, to not give in and acquiesce to every whim / barrier. You know what? Enjoy it with your husband. Tell them that’s their choice: bed or lasagna! I have had to send middle one to bed with two bites of supper many a time. In our house trying is mandatory and noone is allowed to make horrified noises or they get a time out. Some days are great and others a nightmare!
NG:  I’m feeling horrible right now as one is screaming for me to make a 3rd meal…. yes I think you’re right …. And I need to be a bit stronger!! X
ME: Just try and stay strong. Tell them that there is one meal and they have to adapt. Has he even tried it? That is the first step. “The new rule is that everyone tries everything they are asked to with no fuss or a time out” It has to be a proper mouthful, chewed and swallowed at our house. At first if it is a totally new unusual thing then I don’t insist they eat the whole meal, but if it is just a permutation of something they like, eg. Pasta baked instead of boiled, then I have no patience and they have to have at least 6 mouthful and we negotiate this number. If it is something I know they should like then I tell them they make no sense and there is a stand-off. EIther they have 30 mins to eat half and if not they go to bed with no pudding or substitutes! Lots of tears for them (and me).…having said that it is fish fingers tonight! : )
NG: I am going to live by this from now on. It’s where I started out and somehow it got lost frown emoticon xx… Natalie has laid the rules out and I am now going to follow them… Tiredness and the daily grind gets to us all I think. At least we all know from the older ones that everything is a phase and everything passes…. Group Hug now! ??
FRIEND OF NG: Looks amazing…tell the ungrateful sods that I’m coming for dinner every night to eat their dinner and they can go to bed hungry!!! x x

This touched exactly on the notion that we try and often feel we fail to get our kids to be good eaters.  I personally think it is an acquired skill, like sleeping and good manners, and that some are naturally easier eaters and sleepers and some a nightmare but that real, positive progress can be made with all of them regardless on all these fronts.   It is the same idea that underpins much new thought on talent vs effort and how we praise our kids.  Anyway, a few days later I had to follow my own advice with the broc/cauli bake…

I had (as usual) been seduced by the veg at the Farmer’s Market (see wistful veg still life photos of last week) and found myself not so much in a chard overkill mode but in broccoli and cauliflower overkill mode.   I confess it does make me feel righteous and wholesome to cart back a trolley full of greens,  (just like putting on yoga pants can make you feel fitter even when you don’t get around to any actual yoga). Since I then feel bad throwing anything left away, I force myself to use it up any which way, and then by necessity it finds its way onto the kids’ menu.

In this instance, all three put up an initial fight but ended up consuming quite a lot but all adults who came in contact with it devoured it.  I will also be repeating this regularly because to quote what I told my son :”broccoli and cauliflower kick cancer’s butt! They are from a family of greens that are some of the healthiest things you can eat and I will keep serving them, even if you complain”.  I then did a little dubbed “kick ass” sound effects with accompanying gestures and he eventually ate 75% of his bowl.  I also held off serving the fish fingers until I had deemed they had eaten a satisfactory amount.  I felt flat but in retrospect, when sitting in bed later that night, I was glad I just went ahead and did it.  I need to keep going through the motions and they will eventually respond!

Now here’s the recipe, admittedly inspired by a Jamie Oliver I saw way back, but with the addition of purple cauliflower and romanesco and pine nuts and anchovies and stuff…  Mmmm.  I will put up some super-duper snaps when I am not rushing next time I make this dish, so for now Instagram ones will have to do… at least they are “before” and “after” shots which, as you know, I personally find quite helpful : ))  As soon as a recipe has no picture, I start to doubt whether I am doing everything wrong – you?  Anyway, whether it is a recipe or teaching your kids how to eat, the trick must be to simply repeat going through the motions, practise, practise, practise and in the end it will all be good!

Here are some pics to help you follow the recipe:

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You can throw parlsey or thyme in to this roux to give it extra flavour…

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Look how beautiful! I forgot that I used purple sprouting broccoli in this version, and it works so well in a baked dish because it keeps its ‘bite’

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The aromatic herbs like thyme and marjoram and oregano are the perfect fit with other strong flavours such as the anchovies or the Comté cheese you can see here…

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This is the buttery, herby mixture in to which I threw the breadcumbs pre-topping…

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the nut, breadcrumb and herb topping, melding together nicely…

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and this is it, pre-oven but already gorgeous with a fine scattering of cheese below and above the nut crumb topping…

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as you can see it didn’t last long enough for me to take an intact ‘after’ shot…

 

Trio of Cauliflower and Broccoli Cheese

Print this recipe
natalie
September 29, 2015
by natalie
Category Food & Health Trends Gluten-Free Mains Parenting and Family Recipes Sides Starters Topics from the School Run Uncategorized Veggie Headliner Act
As with all my recipes, the herbs / veg / seasonings pretty interchangeable! You will see similarities to my chard recipe but you could also use leeks and potatoes for this.
This dish can be "vegetarianised" of course, just skip the anchovies and opt for capers and choose the right, animal-friendly cheese.
Also you can make it gluten-free by using gluten-free bread or skipping the breadcrumbs altogether. It is still utterly fab with just the pine nuts and almonds.
You can also make it nut-free and it will still be wonderfully tasty.
For this recipe, these quantities filled a large oval dish measuring 25cm x 35cm.
I reheated it in the oven the following day and ate as a main dish and since the cauliflower had been left satisfyingly crunchy the first day, it withstood a second heating really well and was still very tasty.
If your kids like it, it also withstands shovelling into a hotpot for school packed lunch the following day.
Basically this is a classic bake recipe in which you fold your puréed broccoli into your anchovy-and-garlic-enhanced white sauce and pour it over the raw cauliflower, top with cheese and crunchy bits then blast in a medium oven.
You will find that the cauliflower underneath the crispy top, will still have a nice bite to it and not be mushy and sulphurous. This is key!
Persons
6
Prep Time
20 minutes
Cook Time
20 minutes

Ingredients

  • For the roux / bechamel / white (green!) sauce
  • 5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
  • 7-8 anchovies
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 pinch of nutmeg
  • drizzle of olive oil to prevent the butter from burning in the pan
  • chillies (fresh, dried / to taste or omit altogether)
  • 60g salted butter
  • 50g spelt or kamut (khorasan) flour, preferably wholemeal
  • 600ml whole milk
  • 500-600g fresh broccoli (c. 1-1.5 large head)
  • a few sprigs of oregano, marjoram or thyme, de-stalked
  • for the main body of the dish and topping
  • 20g flaked or ground almonds
  • 20g pine nuts
  • 4 tbsp breadcrumbs
  • 1 tbsp salted butter
  • 80g strong hard cheese, grated (c. 4 heaped tablespoons - I used Comté and Appenzeller because that is what I had to hand which made it super potent but a mature Cheddar or Parmesan will be just as divine)
  • 1kg fresh cauliflower (one variety is fine but three makes a showstopper! Romanesco, purple and classic white are a great combination)

Instructions

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 180° (350°F / gas mark 4), preferably the fan setting. You can see if the top is browning too much or not fast enough and see how you go. You can always save the day and prevent burning with a self-fashioned silver foil lid if need be.
  2. First, as your oven heats up, get the tedious bit over and chop up your brassicas!
  3. The broccoli can be chopped up fast, the stalky part should be peeled to remove any overly fibrous parts, as it will all be blitzed to a pulp shortly after cooking. The florets cook easily sit will do if you break them up into micro-florets but the stalk should be cut into small pieces about 1 cm cubes or 0.5cm thick slices. Steam or boil these stalks first then when they are tender to the point of a knife, add the florets as this way you retain more vitamins by not overcooking the florets.
  4. Remove the leg and attached florets of the various cauliflowers from the main stem, chop the smaller stalks in to 1cm pieces and break any dense florets up. I try to have no chunk over an inch cubed in size, as it is not easy to fit in the mouth and will take too long to cook. The other florets can be a variety of sizes as this allows for a varying degree of creaminess and crunchiness post cooking.
  5. Combine the raw cauliflowers, season them lightly with salt and pepper and a drizzle of olive oil and transfer them, so the colours are nicely distributed, to the bottom of a greased oven-proof dish.
  6. Remove the broccoli from the heat and blitz to a purée, season and stir in the herb-leaves.
  7. Now for the white (green) broccoli béchamel sauce. As per my other recipes, the usual method applies of frying the garlic and chillies (if you are using them, or switch in the chopped capers instead) in the butter and then once the anchovies have dissolved and the garlic has become translucent (but not burnt!) stir in the bay leaf, nutmeg and ground black pepper and cook it through for 4-5 minutes, until bubbling and foaming.
  8. Whisk in the milk a little at a time until the mixture has a syrupy texture.
  9. Remove from the heat, stir in the broccoli purée and pour over the bed of cauliflower in the baking dish.
  10. Combine the breadcrumbs and herbs in a saucepan with the tablespoon of butter until the latter has melted and soaked through the crumbs.
  11. Stir in the pine nuts and almonds then sprinkle over the top of the broccoli béchamel layer.
  12. Lastly scatter the grated cheese over this and a last fine drizzle of olive oil.
  13. Put in the middle of the oven and let the top "gratinate" and become golden and crispy before removing.
© 2025 Recipes property of www.WoodsmokeandWildStrawberries.com

 

Filed Under: Food & Health Trends, Gluten-Free, Mains, Parenting and Family, Recipes, Sides, Starters, Topics from the School Run, Uncategorized, Veggie Headliner Act

Affogato al Caffé: aka The Sophisticated Dessert shortcut

July 9, 2015 by natalie Leave a Comment

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It is finally Summer.  Even here in London.

The temperature has swung like a like a gravity-defying pendulum from 22°C to 36° and back down again, these fluctuations punctuated with violent, electric, torrential, midnight storms.  At home we have all fallen victim to concatenations of sneezes and nose-blowing, burning eyes and dry, scratchy throats, all five of us, yet managing all the while to fill a decomissioned sand pit in the garden with water, the kids wading in to the icy shallows with levels of pleasure more suited to the most luxurious infinity pool….

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Filed Under: Gluten-Free, Parenting and Family, Puds, Recipes, The Abruzzo... the most underrated region of Italy, Topics from the School Run

Charred Cauliflower, Beetroot and Goats Cheese Salad

July 4, 2015 by natalie Leave a Comment

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Explosive colour and nutrition!

It is clearly Salad Season. It has been stiflingly hot and muggy in the last few days, “The hottest day in 160 years in London” apparently. 36 degrees!

The secret benefit of this weather is that I am less inclined to nourish myself with tea and biscuits.  Suddenly I am all inspired to use kale, kale, kale!  and it doesn’t even feel like work!

The only drawback with this recipe was that I used an oven to roast the beetroot, so it made the kitchen quite hot and stuffy.  A great alternative is to barbecue  by placing around the edges of the grill when the fiercest heat has subsided and just let them come to, until they can be pierced easily, all charred and meltingly sweet.

As ever by dropping the cheese element, it adheres to the NORI protocol and also meets veggies’, vegans’, gluten-free requirements.

Charred Cauliflower, Beetroot and Goats Cheese Salad

Print this recipe
natalie
July 4, 2015
by natalie
Category Gluten-Free NORI Protocol Recipes Sides Starters Uncategorized Veggie Headliner Act
You can either barbecue or simply roast your beetroot. You can barbecue your cauliflower too, or shove it under the grill or dry fry on a griddle. The options are myriad. You could also cook the beetroots earlier in the day and set aside. The flavour is severely muted if you keep them in the fridge thereafter though.
All the greens can be switched up with what is available. I used kale as I had some in the fridge. Rocket or any other deep green leafy lettuces of any description will work well. I reckon even broccoli florets or tenderstem at a pinch.
Persons
4
Prep Time
10 minutes
Cook Time
1 hour, 15 minutes
Total Time
1 hour, 15 minutes
Charred Cauliflower, Beetroot and Goats Cheese Salad

Ingredients

  • 3 medium beetroots
  • 1/2 a cauliflower
  • 200g curly kale or other green leafy vegetable
  • 1 whole, very firm, green-skinned cucumber
  • 3 garlic cloves
  • sprig or fresh rosemary
  • 1 "buche" or "log" of goats cheese OR white flavoursome cheese. (halloumi, feta etc.)
  • 1 50g bunch of Thai or regular basil
  • For the dressing
  • the squished-out inside of your 3 garlic cloves (above)
  • 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  • a squeeze of lemon (according to your taste)
  • 1 tsp Maldon sea salt flakes
  • 3 twists of freshly ground black pepper
  • 8 zig-zags of thick balsamic vinegar (equivalent to about 3 tbsp)

Instructions

  1. Depending on how you wish to char your cauliflower, either turn on your grill or griddle.
  2. Also turn on your oven to 170° for the beetroot.
  3. Strip the green outer leaves and any woody protrusions from your head of cauliflower. Remove any blemishes on the white part, rinse.
  4. Place your scrubbed, topped and tailed beets in a baking pan, drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil, sprinkle with Maldon and a few twists of pepper.
  5. Add your 3, lightly bashed garlic cloves and your sprig of rosemary, torn into mini-sprigs, to the baking pan/ oven dish.
  6. Place in the oven.
  7. With a large, sharp cooking knife slice the cauliflower head in to inch thick (2cm) "steaks". Some small, unconnected pieces of floret will fall away. I like to lightly char these separately at the end and throw them in to the salad. You should have about 4 "steaks" escalating in diameter.
  8. Drizzle the cauliflower all over with good olive oil and sprinkle with Maldon.
  9. Put on a tray under your pre-heated grill or on your griddle or even on a dry hot pan and leave for a good 5 minutes or so.
  10. Check to see how brown it is, turn to char the other side. When blistering in several places on both sides but not burnt, remove and place in a bowl to cool. (If you combine too soon with the leaves, they will wilt and lose their colour).
  11. Wash and strip down your fresh kale leaves. Remove the woody stalks, tear the leaves into roughly 2-3 inch square bits. Spin in a spinner or shake dry and add to your bowl of choice.
  12. Wash and top and tail the cucumber and cut in half lengthways, and then again lengthways to make quarters when cut in cross-sections. This should yield 1-2cm-square chunks. Add the cucumber to the leaves.
  13. Check on your beetroot. The skins should be crisping up beautifully meaning it is time to turn down your oven to 120°.
  14. Chop your cheese into chunks,(NB: if you are doing halloumi, I would suggest adding it freshly fried just before serving the salad by quickly slicing it into 1cm strips and frying in a little oil in a frying pan. Halloumi has a tendency to go quite hard and rubbery if not eaten warm)
  15. Now that the cauliflower is cool enough to handle, break it up into bite-sized pieces and add to the bowl of leaves.
  16. Rip up your rinsed and dried basil and add to the bowl.
  17. When your beetroots can be pierced through with the tines of a fork or a pointy knife, they are done. Remove from the oven, allow to cool and once not burning hot, peel them gently, the skins should be baggy and easy to remove. Slice them and chop in to half lenghtways so the discs of beetroot are small enough to eat without a knife.
  18. Add them to the serving bowl, combine everything and drizzle with the dressing ingredients, stir and as a finishing touch add a few sprigs of herbs and a another zig zag of balsamic.
© 2025 Recipes property of www.WoodsmokeandWildStrawberries.com

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The beetroots were roasted with garlic and I just squashed it and incorporated it into the salad… it’s a great marriage of savoury garlic and sweet beets!

Filed Under: Gluten-Free, NORI Protocol, Recipes, Sides, Starters, Uncategorized, Veggie Headliner Act

Summery Gluten Free Cake

June 22, 2015 by natalie 1 Comment

IMG_0069 (1)I have done this recipe a few times now.  It is really no different to making any other sponge-based cake, despite being gluten free, so it is a brilliant fallback when you have to rustle up a cake with under an hour to spare.  Yesterday’s excuse was that it was Father’s Day, it was also the chance to make it up to a couple of people dropping by who had their birthdays recently.  I was hoping to make it while the baby napped and to get on with all the marinating etc. for our barbecue planned for the evening, but my middle child was being a right grump, provoking his siblings, grinding his teeth, stomping about and generally requiring full attention for the full stretch of the afternoon while my husband enjoyed a pass from me to go and watch the Men’s Final at Queens Tennis Club.  I had been to the market on Saturday and bought a lot of 2 for £4 boxes of berries and being a November birthday celebrator, I am a real sucker for a pretty, ramshackle, summery cake.

…

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Filed Under: Gluten-Free, Puds, Recipes

About

Musings and culinary endeavours of a polyglot mother of three, shining a spotlight on family life and food from the Abruzzo region and beyond.
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