Adventures with Jamie Oliver!

Like many people, I dutifully tuned in Jamie's Christmas Specials with the hope of creating fantastic festive fair. After a few years of preparing lavish Christmas breakfasts which saw me slaving in the kitchen, I watched in envy as Jamie cooked up griddle pan waffle for a breakfast which owing to the decadent hot chocolate it was being dipped in was probably guaranteed to win the hearts of my children on Christmas morning - more so than the cranberry muffins and yoghurt and fruit from last year. Surely it wouldn't work with gluten free flours - I imagined a gooey, stodgy creation which was sure to stick to the pan and end up a mess. However asChristmas drew closer and other preparations took over, the idea of a two pan breakfast stuck with me and I decided to give it a go.

I dutifully followed the recipe, just replacing the self-raising flour with F.G. Roberts self-raising flour - and I liberally coated the pan with olive oil to make sure that it didn't stick. I poured the batter in, and it rose beautifully - I thought it might overflow. The time came to flip the waffle, but I chickened out, it just looked a bit too sloppy on top and I was sure that being gluten free it would stick, so I chucked it under the grill to cook the top. After it turned a lovely golden colour I took it out and flipped it onto a bread board. Guess what - it didn't stick! I couldn't believe it! We sliced it up, drowned it in golden syrup and served it with the really decadently thick European hot chocolate and it was awesome. Nice and spongy and airy - I couldn't believe it was gluten free! Oh, and we still had some beautiful fresh fruit...just to make it healthy!

Happy New Year!

Well, how slack - I just looked at my blog and realized that the last time I blogged was just about a year ago - after planning to be more regular with my blog! I guess it's testament to what a busy year we've had, trying to get the renovations finished, picking up a couple of new jobs and generally looking after the family. Of course this doesn't mean I have stopped cooking, in fact my two eldest boys are now starting to eat us out of house and home and it's tricky keeping up! Jamie Oliver's 30 minute meals have featured heavily, with a bit of tweaking, however I must be doing something wrong as 30 minutes easily stretches to an hour!

However today I put pen to page as I just received copies of the Christmas photos my sister-in-law took with her fabulous camera which made my Christmas dessert look like something from a magazine. Fortunately it also tasted fabulous - Chocolate pavlova dripping with chocolate sauce and covered in chocolate coated macadamias and sultanas. Yum! Please enjoy the photo and I promise to try to be more regular in my gluten free adventures!

Holidays are nearly over!

Time flies when you're having fun....catching up with family...having Christmas....and...trying to renovate your house! Fortunately we survived the holidays with minimal fuss and without the kids killing each other, helped along by some great food. Christmas was a success - my boys are at the age where they generally measure the success of the day by how full their stomachs are. Christmas Eve was just us, and I cooked a yummy turkey with cranberry and walnut stuffing, recipe courtesy of the Taste website - naturally I replaced the bread with gluten free day old bread. This was served with mini pavlova shells filled with cream, fresh berries and mango - yum! Christmas morning was Cranberry Spiced Muffins and fruit platter with home made passion fruit yoghurt, again both recipes from Taste. The muffins are sweet and moist, and work well replacing the normal flour with gluten free self raising flour. These were a welcome treat after all of the energy expended on present opening!

I had all of the family over for lunch and had the traditional prawns for entree, though the weather was really very pleasant for a Queensland summer's day! These were served with a pistachio tarator (no I didn't know what it was either - but look it up on taste.com.au because it was yummy - and a honey almond dipping sauce. Then I made beautiful chicken breasts stuffed with Brie, pistachios and cranberries for a main course. I learnt to make this at the James Street Cooking School and everyone always loves it. I served this with a mixed bean salad and warm potato salad with pancetta. Yum! Finally - the boys favorite desert - choc cherry tiramisu ice cream cake which was in a Super Food Ideas magazine a few years ago. It uses two 2 lite tubs of ice-cream and we end up eating it for days - but it's a big hit.

Other holiday gluten free favourites have included the wonderful mini mince pies from New Zealand company Jon-Jon - I think we bought out Coles and Woolies at Garden City! A beautiful Gluten-Free Ginger Bread house from the wonderful girls at "My Sweetopia" at South Bank. Fast food recipes from the December issue of Donna Hay magazine which were a hit - particularly the Parmesan lamb cutlets! Finally, a great new discovery, Tasmanian author Sally Wise has a gluten free cookbook called "From my Kitchen to Yours", which has a wonderful Jam Drops recipe in it - I can't keep up with the demand! I hope everyone else had as successful a gluten-free holiday time as we did!