Posts tagged as:

soyfree

Easy Summer Salad Recipe

by Emilia on July 14, 2010

Let’s get this blog back into action for a change, shall we. I think that I’ve rested enough after the renovation we did to our home, it was surprising how hard it was and how long it took for us.

I have been wondering what to eat here now that the weather is so hot and humid that you feel a lot like melting, except when you swim in the sea, after that you are cool for about 10 minutes until you feel like you are in a sauna again.

We here in the North are not used to this kind of weather, so it really can take a toll on you. Some days ago it was reported that it was the hottest day in 50 years - can you imagine. I spent most of that day swimming in the sea, tanning on the beach was impossible for more than half an hour, that is, if you didn’t want to feel like you’re melting away into the sand.

Thai foods are a given when the weather gets really hot, curries and the likes are filled with veggies and spices, so you feel good when eating dishes like that. Salads are also a godsend when you feel like you just want to eat something light. I’ve been incorporating both of these things with Thai flavoured salads which are a lot like regular salads, but I flavour them with chillies, lime, coriander and fish sauce - it’s really easy, filled with flavour and it feels cooling in the heat.

Easy Thai inspired summer salad

serves two

-a head of lettuce

-a couple of tomatoes

-a couple of onions

-a bunch of coriander

-two grilled chicken breasts

for the sauce

-3 tbls fresh lime juice (or from the bottle)

-3 tbls thai fish sauce

-1-2 red chillies, seeded and cut into thin stripes (or some dried chilli flakes)

This is so easy and fast, if you have the chicken breasts ready. If you need to cook them, just add some spices to them (I use this dry rub I make, some paprika, oregano, thyme, salt, chili flakes, garlic powder and onion powder). Then cook them in the oven at around 300 F until done.

You can use fish too, some shrimp, beef, almost anything.

You can of course use any kind of veggies basically in this; the idea is in the fish sauce, the chillies, the coriander and the lime juice.

Mix the lime juice with the fish sauce and the chillies.

Wash and tear the salad, cut the onions and the tomatoes, mix them together, cut the coriander and add it.

Pour the sauce on top and add the chicken on top of the salad.

I get a lot of questions on where to buy quinoa flour, psyllium husk, things like that which I use in the recipes. I really never had an answer for this, until some time ago when I started ordering form Iherb. Some of you probably know it already, but I thought that I’ll mention it here too in a post and I will put up a notice in the sidebar about Iherb.

Iherb has an simply amazing variety of products for sale, I for example order all my hair and skin care products from there, some foods that are hard to get by here, and also all my supplements.

This is by the way not a paid advert for Iherb; I don’t think they know that this blog even exists. I have been very happy with them and I do think that it’s worth to mention how good Iherb is.

The site is not easy to navigate at first, at least for me it was not, but you can search for psyllium husk for example by simply adding the words into the search box, you can also search for gluten free products in the same way.

Something worth mentioning for celiacs is their range of probiotics for example; you can find them by searching with the term probiotics. The same goes for multivitamins, fish oil etc.

Using code JUH901 will get you 5 dollars off your first order.

Popularity: 39% [?]

Potato Salad Recipe

by Emilia on July 20, 2009

Potato salads are something I always associate with summer, maybe because they can be refreshing and cooling when they are not made with mayonnaise.

This recipe is something I make quite often during the summer, I love taking it with us when we go hiking, or to the beach, and the best thing about it is that I can make a lot of it – it only gets better after a day or two.

The lemon juice and the basil together give a nice refreshing quality to the salad. Potatoes on their own are creamy in my opinion, so they need something like fresh herbs and the tanginess of the lemon juice to bring the flavours together in a nice contrasting way.

A potato salad like this - cold, cooling and fresh - is my idea of a perfect summer meal when served together with some hot spicy chicken.

Potato Salad Recipe

The vinaigrette here is not a regular one, this one is really very lemony, and I would suggest using less lemon juice if you are not a friend of a very tangy salad sauce.

If you are using new organic potatoes, I would suggest leaving the skin on them.

The recipe is naturally free from gluten, soy, dairy and eggs.

Potato salad

serves 6

-1 kg/ 35 ounces potatoes

- 4-5 spring onions

- 6 tbls fresh lemon juice

-12 tbls good quality olive oil

-3 tbls finely minced fresh basil leaves

-3 tbls capers

- salt and pepper according to taste

Cook the potatoes and then leave them to cool before cutting them.

Mix together the olive oil, lemon juice, minced basil leaves, salt, pepper and capers.

Cut the potatoes and the onions, then mix with the sauce.

Leave to sit for at least one hour before serving.

This is my contribution to this months Go Ahead Honey, It’s Gluten Free hosted by Shirley at Gluten Free Easily.

The theme this month is Make Me a Happy Camper.

Popularity: 60% [?]

Mint Chocolate Cupcakes

by Emilia on June 10, 2009

I haven’t been making cupcakes in such a long time, but this all changed the other evening when I felt a passionate cupcake craving raising its head; I felt like I needed to bake and also I needed to have something with chocolate and mint.

Initially it started because I remembered one of the desserts I ate at Näsinneula restaurant, which was voted as the 8th best restaurant in Finland some time ago. The restaurant is located inside Näsinneula tower and so the dining is rather interesting because you have fantastic panorama views all over Tampere and the lakes surrounding the city. It was actually scary at first because it is so high and I could feel the tower moving a bit, but after a while I got used to it and could focus fully on the food. We ordered the Ninth Heaven menu and thus we got to taste some really good gluten-free chocolate cake with a milk chocolate mousse, ice cream and a truly fantastic mint sauce. The mint sauce was so good with the dark chocolate cake that I needed to try making something at home with those same flavours and I ended up with trying out these mint chocolate cupcakes.

The gluten-free part was no problem at the restaurant and I can highly recommend it to anyone wanting a lovely dinner when visiting Tampere - which a city in the south of Finland. Usually eating gluten-free here in Finland is always easy, but the staff at Näsinneula took it to another level with their care and professional manners. The food itself was just really so good, with all the different elements melting together into a perfect and very balanced mixture of tasty local flavours. The menu had nine different elements in it - green asparagus with hollandaise, scallops served in two ways, jerusalem artichoke soup, pike perch,  blackcurrant sorbet, Finnish Charolaise beef served in two ways, local cheeses served with some cloudberry jam, chocolate cake and finally the meal ended with some local strawberries. The pike perch, the asparagus and of course the chocolate cake were so fantastic that these have stayed in my mind afterwards rather hauntingly.

The other night was one of those times when I remembered the chocolate cake with the mint sauce and couldn’t take it anymore without baking something; I started to go through a Finnish blog called Kinuskikissa -which is by the way very beautiful- and found a cupcake recipe which used cocoa powder and mint chocolate as flavourings. I didn’t have many ingredients at home, no quinoa flour for example, so I decided to use almond meal and white rice flour and it worked out well; the cupcakes weren’t exactly as good as the dark rich chocolate cake with a fresh and tangy mint sauce at the restaurant, but they were nonetheless very tasty.

After the baking I have been wondering if I should use more white rice flour; the flour behaved so well and the cupcakes were delicious. I used a chocolate candy called Pätkis, which is basically a chocolate mint truffle, in the cupcakes, but I am sure that any kind of mint chocolate would work here. The frosting is just regular unsweetened whipped cream;I don’t think that buttercream would be very good here.

Gluten-Free Mint Chocolate Cupcakes

-140 grams/5 ounces mint chocolate

-150 grams/5,2 ounces soft butter

-1dl/ 1/4 cup sugar (or more depending on the chocolate, use more if the chocolate is darker)

-2 eggs

-1,5 dl/ 0,6 cup milk or cream (I used full fat milk)

Dry ingredients:

-2 dl/3/4 cup almond meal (ground almonds)

-1,5 dl/ 0,6 cup white rice flour (0,6 cup means a little bit over half a cup)

-2 tsp (gluten-free) baking powder

-2 1/2 tbls cocoa powder

Preheat an oven to 170 C/340 F.

Chop half of the chocolate into really small pieces and leave half of it as bigger pieces which will later be inserted into the cupcakes.

Mix all the dry ingredients together. Cream the butter and the sugar until they are pale and light. Add the eggs one by one. Add the milk and then mix the dry ingredients into the batter, remember not to over mix. Finally gently fold in the finely chopped chocolate.

Line a cupcake tin with cupcake papers, or grease the tin. Start adding the batter one spoonful at a time, when you have added one small spoonful of batter into the tin, then place a piece of the chocolate which was not chopped so finely into the batter, and finally place another spoonful of the batter on top of the chocolate piece.

Bake for 15-25 minutes, this depends on your oven. Let them cool before serving.

Serve with some whipped cream.

Popularity: 40% [?]