Category: Gluten Free

Purple basil and sunflower seed pesto

Purple is the new green/ green is the new purple… something like that…

Ingredients

Pesto recipes are always “to taste” – use a little bit of what you have and work around how pungent the herbs are and what you have in the kitchen. Here is what I did with this really strong, sunny number:

  • 2 large bunches of purple basil, leaves carefully wiped with a damp cloth
  • 200g sunflower seeds (I often use sunflower seeds in pesto as a perfectly good healthy alternative to pine nuts and considerably cheaper)
  • 100g parmesan
  • 200ml extra virgin olive oil
  • 3 fat cloves of garlic
  • The zest of half a lemon pared

How To

Blend the ingredients all together in a blender into a thick paste. I like to still retain some texture – a little bit like “crunchy” peanut butter.

The uses for pesto are almost too numerous to list but start with the obvious: pasta and gnocchi and then think crusts on chicken and fish and then spread on crackers and fresh bread….

Brownie with “Visinata” cherries

Old school, chocolately, sticky and moist – and did I tell you that you only need one bowl to make it in? Chocolate love it is.  Add handfuls of your favourite things like tipsy cherries, nuts or bits of biscuit to create your “signature brownie” – this has has sozzled cherries in it which are left from the making of “Visinata” the traditional Romanian cherry licqueur.

Gizmos

1 deepish tin – work out the volume math thing – lined with baking paper and brushed with melted butter

1 heavy base very large saucepan – a Le Creuset is absoluetly perfect – preferably with curved edges

Ingredients for a 14×9 x 1.5 inch tin

200g dark chocolate 70% cocoa min

250g butter

5 eggs (4 very large ones)

2 tsp vanilla extract

200g plain flour (or gluten free mix – Brownies are very good made with GF flour)

30g cocoa

400g sugar

1tsp salt (I never put salt in my baking but here I do)

How To

If your cake batters usually turn out like glue then Brownies are your thing because “glue” is what is needed here

Melt the butter and chocolate in your saucepan very gently and now remove that saucepan from the heat

Quickly add the eggs and whisk them in with a fork

Add all the dry ingredients until everything is incorporated and the mixture is like glue

Arrange any ingredients you want to add in the tray eg sozzled cherries and pour over the batter. Let it settle.  You can help it by spreading it with a knife dipped in hot water (so it does not stick as you spread it).

Bake at 170C (160C if you have a fierce fan assisted oven) until a toothpick comes out clean – approx 25-30 minutes

Best eaten 1 day later if you can resist.

Lazy leftovers fruit cake…a cake for all times

A gloriously laissez faire affaire full of bonhomie and warmth. It has its roots in the frugality of Nana’s war time fruit cake when eggs, butter and sugar were scarce. This was simply what you did for the generation that believed throwing away food was “the work of the devil”. Fast forward to these food sensitive times and we have a right on “recycled vegan low GI GF  gateau” oh trendy dears. Whatever its name..it is a cake for all times in every sense – judging by the number of second helpings this Easter and enthusiasm from the marauding feline contingent too.

 

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