Hurray!

Lately I have been experiencing some good karma. I’m not sure exactly what I’ve done to deserve this recent string of good fortune, and although I’m sure not many of you GFers would be interested to hear the details of my mundane little life, I’m pretty sure you would be interested to know that one of the major fast food chains is offering gluten free food!!! That’s right folks, Domino’s Pizza have officially stolen my heart.  Pizza and movie night just became much less of a hassle. Enjoy.

http://www.dominos.com.au/menu/crusts/

Is it just me or is ‘How to Rob a Bank’ the most boring movie of all time? Really, all the rambling dialogue didn’t distract me from the major flaw in the plot line which is…no way would anyone get cell phone reception in a bank vault. Duh. Anyway, they only upside to the hour or so I wasted watching it is that I managed to fit in 3 servings of this delicious minestrone soup. I love minestrone soup. The secret ingredient is fennel, which gives the soup a fresh tang and is perfect for a cold winters day or if you’re in need of some comfort food 😉 Its also very versatile, you can use whatever vegetables you happen to have lying around.

Warning – you will need a very large saucepan and some spare time to prepare this soup, but it is well worth the effort. Make sure you have all your veg diced before you begin, it will speed up the process 🙂

• Olive oil
• 1 onion diced
• 6 garlic cloves sliced
• 1-2 chillies (depending on your spice tolerance!)
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 2 teaspoons fresh cracked black pepper
• 2 litres of vegetable stock
• 4 potatoes peeled and diced
• 1 medium sweet potato peeled and diced
• 1/4 cauliflower diced
• 1 tablespoon of thyme or oregano
• 1/2 large fennel diced
• 2 zucchinis diced
• 1 red pepper (capsicum ) diced
• 1 stem of broccoli diced
• 1 large can of either peeled tomatoes or tomato puree
• 1 can of cannelloni beans drained and rinsed

Method:

1. Stir fry the onion, chilli and garlic until the onion is slightly brown then add potato, paprika and pepper the leave to simmer.
2. Once the potato is a little brown then add stock, thyme, cauliflower and sweet potato (you can use pumpkin if you prefer but it cooks quicker and should be added later on)
3. Once the potato ect. is soft add the rest of the vegetables (not the beans) and the tomato puree
4. Leave the soup to simmer for at least 30 minutes, then add beans and simmer for another 5 minutes.

I made Christmas cookies last night!

I was a little worried because I didn’t have any self raising GF flour, or baking powder, but after a quick internet search I discovered I could use bicarb soda as long as I included an acidic ingredient. So, here is my gluten free Christmas cookie recipe!

• 2 cups of gluten free flour (I used white wings brand)
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarb
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3/4 cup sugar
• icing sugar (amount depends on how you want to decorate your cookies)
• milk ( to mix with icing)
• food colouring
• 1 egg

Preheat the oven to 180C and lightly grease your cookie tray.

Mix bicarb, lemon and vanilla together, add egg and sugar and mix well.

In a separate bowl beat butter and add egg mix and flour, mix well.

The dough might be a little dry, but if you roll it in your hands for a few minutes the butter will melt and take on more of the flour.

Roll the dough so it is about a centimetre thick and use whatever cookie cutters you have to make Christmas shapes – I did trees, stars and reindeer 🙂

Bake for around 10 minutes and make sure you rotate the tray at least once and bake till you get an even brown colour.

Set aside to cool.

Mix your icing – now here is the trick I only learnt after I made my cookies  – mix a thick batch of icing using icing sugar, a tiny amount of milk and whatever colour you choose. Use a piping bag to ice around the edge of your cookie then make a slightly runnier batch of icing to fill in the rest. This way your icing won’t drip over the edge, but you will still get the nice smooth effect runnier icing gives.

Merry Christmas everyone!!!