The seasons are changing here in Whistler, the snow has melted, the flowers are blooming, and finally our food is becoming fresher, thus inspiring my renewed energy to cook!

Tonight my husband and I walked down to our local shop to select fresh ingredients for a delicious dinner. The result was tastie and I wanted to share with my fellow Gluten Free Foodies.

Pan Seared Steak with a Gluten Free Mushroom Gravy
Select a fresh cut of steak from your local store or butcher, a handful of mushrooms, 1 onion, 1 small carton of cream, a green vegetable (we chose Broccoli) and a couple fresh potatoes.

Peel potatoes and thinly slice with in a food processor. Layer the slices in a baking dish and cover with a teaspoon of chill & garlic olive oil, a dollop of butter and a generous splash of cream. Bake in the oven for approx 45 mins.  Test with a fork to make sure potatoes are cooked through. Top with a small layer of fresh cheddar cheese and back for a further 5mins.

While potatoes are cooking, prepare remaining ingredients – slice mushrooms, slice 1/2 onion and cut broccoli florets.

Heat your fry pan to a medium-high heat. Place steak on hot pan and sear each side to desired tastes. Note – it is important to only turn your steak the once. Once cooked, remove from heat and allow to sit for 5 minutes.

Add onions to the hot pan with a splash of hot water and cook for 3 minutes until onions are slightly browned. Add mushrooms, cream and reduce to a simmer for 10 mins.

Note – to thicken sauce add half a teaspoon of corn flour or arrowroot to 3 tablespoons of cold water, stir into a paste and add to sauce.

Serve on a warm plate with thinly sliced steak covered in a delicious gluten free mushroom gravy with potatoes gratin and steamed brocoli.

Enjoy!

PS. Sorry for no pictures… we ate too quickly

http://www.gluten-free-living.net/recipes/chocolate_pudding.php

This recipe is an absolute gem and a guaranteed hit at any party!!

for added flare, try serving it with our Self Saucing Berries

1. Rice should be cooked the night before and cooled in the fridge. Trying to cook fried rice with warm rice is a nightmare! It must be cold or it will clump.

2. Prepare everything before hand so you can just throw them in the pan once it is hot. That way nothing is over cooked.

3. Use just a small amount off oil to coat the rice, then once you are frying use water to steam the ingredients. Small splashes of water is the key to stir frying.

4. Throw in anything and everything you can think of – corn, peas, ham, bacon, chicken, broccoli, onion, tomato, scrambled eggs… you name it.

These are the ingredients I used today:

1 cup of cooked rice
1 cup of left over stir fry – chicken, bacon, mushrooms, onion, garlic
1/4 cup red and yellow peppers
1/4 spanish onion
splash of Gluten Free tamari soy sauce
3-4 splashes of water
olive oil

ENJOY!!

Last Friday we were in charge of a preparing a birthday cake for our friends surprise party. I was busy working so my hubby decided he would take charge and make a delicious Gluten Free flourless chocolate cake. He did a fantastic job and it was an absolute hit at the party!

Tip: for serving, if you don’t have any nice platters, try covering a baking tray with aluminum foil, then place the cake on the tray and cover in melted chocolate topped with a sprinkle of icing sugar and some fresh strawberries.

Tonight we are catching up with more friends and again dessert is our treat… hmm what will I make? I think that in all this cold weather chocolate should be on the cards again. From looking through our recipes on Gluten Free Living I realise that I have been holding out on you and have not shared my famous Gluten Free Self Sourcing Chocolate Pudding recipe…. hhhmm pudding!!

I created this recipe a few years back and it is always a treat. Stay tuned and I will load the recipe on Gluten Free Living.

Enjoy your Sunday afternoon and let’s get cooking

Today for my work lunch I decided I would use some left over roast beef with some fresh organic ingredients for a yummy open toasted sandwich. This has become my new favourite combo, I can’t stop eating it!!! Here is the recipe..

Roast Beef Open Sandwiches
Glutino flax seed bread – toasted
fresh organic avocado
cold roast beef, lightly salted
slices of fresh organic red pepper
sliced of pickled banana peppers
fresh organic baby arugula leaves (or baby spinach)

Layer ingredients in order as listed and enjoy with an ice cold glass of water.

Tip: If you have trouble buying Gluten Free Bread, this would also be great with grilled polenta or on rice/corn crackers

Enjoy!

Rice and/or Noodles
Place rice in small saucepan with 1 cup of cold water and 2 teaspoons of powdered chicken stock or curry flavouring. Cover and bring to the boil. Do not remove lid at any stage. Once boiling, remove from heat and cool for 10 mins – lid on. Next, place saucepan back on low heat and leave a further 10min. Fluff with a fork and serve.

Place noodles in saucepan and cover with boiling water. Allow to sit for approx 15-20min or until soft. Drain and serve.

Chicken Skewers – Baked then grilled
Dice chicken breast into bite sizes cubed and thread onto wooden skewers. Place on a baking tray and top with fresh garlic, salt and pepper, a dash of chicken stock. Drizzle with olive and bake in the oven on 350F for approx 10-15min. Turing half way through. Turn oven over to broil and grill a further 5 mins or until brown.

* If using wooden skewers, soak in water for 10mins before threading with chicken.

Thai Cucumber Salad
Using a potato peeler, ribbon English cucumber into long strips. Toss with fresh garlic, chilli, lemon juice and olive oil.

Satay Sauce
In small saucepan heat 4 tablespoons of peanut butter, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, ¼ cup Thai sweet chilli sauce, 1/3 cup water, a dash of tamari soy sauce and a handful of slice shallots. Stir until ingredients combined and in a smooth sauce.

Serve Chicken Skewers on a bed of rice and noodles and a cover generously with satay sauce. Serve with cucumber salad and a nice glass of wine.

Enjoy!

To spoil me this Easter, my hubby bought me some delicious Lindt White Chocolate Truffles… I was absolutely addicted to these before becoming Gluten Free. Although excited, my first comments to him were ‘but these contain malt?’ Well it seams not here in north america. He had checked the label and sure enough, there were no Gluten containing ingredients (and no symptoms so far to suggest otherwise)

For him I decided I could not go wrong with the decantant Cadbury Cream Eggs. Although way too sweet for me, they were absolutely no problem for him to polish off.

In other news, on Saturday I decided to bake my delicious Chocolate Biscuit Balls… these are scrumptious, so be warned that it is hard not to undulge on too many.

Enjoy!

NB: Cadbury Cream Eggs are Gluten Free. For a full list of Gluten Free Cadbury Chocolates see Cadbury Australia

My month started out with good intensions, I had so many recipes in mind I was going to noodle up a Gluten Free storm. Of course, as the month went on ‘things’ got in the way. Particularly the fact that I have decided to re-join the workforce! After 12months of working from home and travelling the world, it has certainly come as a shock to the system, but all in all I am enjoying it. Best of all, my new work mates love food. Honestly at lunch times you would think we were on the set of a movie with the spread we put on. Each day we take it in turns making lunch for the group and gradually everyone is learning how to adjust recipes to be Gluten Free. It is wonderful to have so much support and encouragement from people at work.

So here it is…

Gluten Free Suzi’s – March Noodle Recipe
I decided on this recipe as it is actually the meal that we ate the most frequently during March, plus it is the most requested meal when I cook for my friends…. It is quick and easy to make, you can improvise and come up with many variations, and it makes a fantastic lunch the next day ☺

Thai Chicken Yellow Curry

Ingredients

500g chicken thighs, finely sliced
1/2 onion
1/2 leek, finely sliced
1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1 fresh red chilli, seeds removed and finely sliced
1 kaffir lime leaf, finely sliced
1 small baby bok choy
1 cup brocolli, small florets
1 teasp Thai Kitchen yellow curry paste
2 dessert spoons brown sugar
1/2 cup Gluten Free Harvest Sun chicken stock
1 dessert spoon fish sauce
1 440g can coconut milk
1 packet of thick rice noodles

Place rice noodles in a large mixing bowl and cover with boiling water. Allow to sit while preparing curry.

Pour coconut milk into wok, add curry paste and bring to the boil. Once boiled reduced to a simmer, add chicken strips and onion. Simmer. When the onion softens and the outside of the chicken goes white, add remaining ingredients. Continue to simmer for about 5 minutes, until vegetables have softened and taken on the flavour of the sauce.

Just before serving, drain rice noodles and add to yellow curry and gently folding through.

Serve hot and garnish with crushed peanuts or cashews.

Enjoy!

~ This recipe will also work with Thai Kitchen Green and Red Curry Paste ~

gluten free noodle recipe round up

I decided to go with a childhood favourite of mine – Gluten Free Cornflake Cookies. I used one of my Mum’s old tried and true recipes with just a few changes to make it my own. I did some research on the internet and apparently these cookies we quite the popular treat in the 70’s. One women said she had waited to 10 years to find the elusive recipe!

So for all those people out there who were wondering about the delicious cookies they enjoyed in the 70’s.. here it is

Gluten Free Cornflake Cookies

Cookie Baking Tips

- When making cookies in order to ‘cream’ the butter and sugar, the butter needs to be a room temperature. If you are short for time, you can soften the butter in the microwave, but do it on low setting. If you do accidentally melt it (as I did yesterday) you just need to harden it again. You can do this by leaving it in the freezer for a few minutes (or outside in the snow as I often do). If you then forget about it and it freezes, place your baking bowl on the stove hotplace on the minimum setting for just a minute until you get the desired consistency.

- Experiment with your oven. Each oven will cook differently, so if your using a new oven set your alarm for a shorter time so that you remember to check on the cookies more frequently.

- Position baking trays as near to the centre of the oven as possible. Trays should not touch each other or the side of the oven.

- Always place cookie dough on cool baking trays. This will avoid the dough spreading too quickly and cookies becoming thin.

- Cool cookies on the baking tray for a least 5 mins or until they set and you can remove them from the tray without breaking them.

Enjoy!

“All the energy I need for a days snowboarding from a bowl of Gluten Free corn flakes topped with fresh banana, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and maple syrup.”

What a magical day! Except for the alarm going off a 6:45am that is..

This morning we woke to 30cm of fresh snow and perfect blue bird skies. You can feel the excitement building in the house as everyone rushes to get ready for first lifts. I start my morning with my energy fix of Gluten Free corn flakes topped with banana, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and maple syrup. It’s going to be a long day and I need all the energy I can get. We make it to Whistler and are fairly early in the Creekside line up. At 8:30 the gondola opens and we are bursting with excitement to get up the mountain.

We spend the morning carving up fresh lines in the open bowls, enjoying deep powder in the gladed tree runs and laughing at my terrible attempts to get air off some jumps. By mid morning we are beside ourselves with excitement at being one of the first groups down Whistler bowl and Shale slope. Few get to enjoy this long, fast, steep run in waist deep powder… aahh this is what living is all about!! After a few lines down Whistler we take off for a run through Khyber, managing to sneak more of that fresh snow everyone has been search for. It is magical out there. No one around, sun shining through the old growth forest of hundred year old pine trees and fresh snow twinkling in the sunlight… Whistler really is a winter Disneyland!

By midday it is time to head home and indulge in some delicious Gluten Free foods. All morning we have been discussing how great it would have been to have bacon and eggs for breakfast, so we decided to have them for lunch. A perfect treat to fill our bellies and prepare us for a well earned afternoon nap.