GFCF Recipies

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This is a thread where people can post gluten free + casein free recipes and ask questions, and get tips. So there is no reason why anyone has to loose out in terms of good food.

Bo'Kho

First recipe is fairly easy going. It is not easy easy but moderately easy. It called Bo'Kho or Vietnamese Beef Stew. I'm going to post a lot of Asian recipes because those are the cuisines that are traditionally gluten free and often casein free too. Bo'Kho is a really lovely rustic, flavoursome stew. It is meant to be soupy as many Southeast Asian stews are. There are a number of variations out there. Some of them put way too much tomato or things like potatoes to make it more like a western stew. As far as I'm concerned if you are going to do that you might as well put green peppers and call it Hungarian.

This is my take:

1. Mix beef in a bowl with fish sauce/soy, 5 spice, ginger, garlic, brown sugar, lemon grass and bay leaf. Use your hands if necessarily. It needs to get coated on each piece. Cover bowl with a cloth and allow to marinate for at least 30 minutes.
2. Set aside the bay leaf and lemon grass and sear beef quickly over high heat in a 'casserole pot' with some oil. When browned on all pieces remove beef and residual juices.
3. On a medium heat cook onion in some oil for 5 minutes and then add tomato and cook for 1 minute.
4. Add beef, star anise, cinnamon, chilli, lemon grass, bay leaf and water.

Now there are two ways from here on in...

Traditional method:

1. Bring to boil and simmer for 1 hour and 30 minutes. You can do this over the hob on low or in a preheated oven of 190 Celsius/convection oven 170 Celsius /gas mark 5
2. If you want to eat the next day/later you can allow it to cool here
3. Back on hob for remain 30 minutes. Add carrots after fifteen minutes. The meat should be nice and tender/flaky due to cooking slowly. If it needs a little more water, add some. It should not be thick or dry, it should be more like a broth.

Pressure cooker method:

1. A pressure cooker can take only a third of the time to cook things in some cases. In this case we are not going to over keg it because you can easily ruin food by over cooking in a pressure cooker. As it is, it is pretty efficient we are more then halving the time. I mentioned a 'casserole pot' before, well your casserole pot could be the pan part of the pressure cooker... less to wash up. Anyway for this recipe we are going to cook in in the pressure cooker. Make sure you read the instructions of how to use it. I put min on setting 1. Just remember that you must have at least 3 cm depth of liquid in the pressure cooker. Compressed air is a hell of a lot more dangerous than steam. Most pressure cookers are 'ultra safe' nowadays but you can't be too careful. After complete, turn off heat, release the steam, open when safe.
2. If you want to eat the next day/later you can allow it to cool here
3. Add carrots. Back on hob for remain 15 minutes, maybe less. You don't want overcook the meat (try it). The meat should be nice and tender/flaky due to cooking slowly.

Carrots wise, I don't know why but some people like to add carrots at the beginning of a stew. This is pointless unless you want them to be like mush and no taste. They will cook fairly quickly in strips. I like them with a little bit of bite and still sweet. There is no reason why you couldn't cook them separately, if that is easier.

Finally...Place in bowls and garnish with Thai basil/basil leaf and coriander.


Enjoy...

I’m doing desert next… Yes I know it is 10pm

Any Japanese food would probably be milk and wheat-free. I eat a lot of stir-frys with rice. To me it's not about recipes, it's about picking a meat, veggies, rice and then pairing the combo with a good sauce. Sometimes I make my own sauce, sometimes I buy a jar of like Tikka Masala sauce from the grocery store, but the sauce makes the meal imo.

Incorrect. Not only are Japanese noodles 100 percent wheat, but there's also soy sauce which has wheat in it.

I guess I never eat noodles so I didn't think of that. Soy sauce is easy to find gluten-free though. They also make rice noodles, I've seen them at the grocery store, but I never eat noodles anyway so I wouldn't know if they're any good.

My husband still prefers soy sauce but I use fish sauce almost exclusively when I cook. There are rice noodles, which are good. Though I like potatoes with curries.

Here is desert:


This is a Gary Rhodes recipe, which is odd because it is not that difficult. He is still my favourite chef, but the amount of detail in his recipes can get the better of you. Not OTT food just attention to detail. I used to bust a gut trying to reproduce some of them. Anyway I have simplified this one some more, it has optional extras that you don't need/want to know about. I only cooked for one I will explain the recipe for one and four.

Grapefruit Sabayon

Ok anyone have trouble separating yolks? Basically you want to make a hole in the side of the egg by holding the egg length ways under your palm and then striking a thick rimmed bowl laterally across the egg from around 2 inch/5cm. No need to hit it too hard. So long as there is a hole that is slash shaped you are doing ok. Don't do too much, just move you hand so the egg is over the bowl. Then you just need to wait so most of the egg 'white' slowly oozes out. It is quit viscous but that actually helps pull most of it out together. Then you need the hold the eggs so your two thumbs are along, just inside the slash and your index finders are touching underneath. Then turn your two hands slowly outwards hinging on your two index fingers. You may be able to hold it half way open and some more egg white will ooze out. You want to slowly tilt the eggshell as on so that that the egg yolk ends up in one half of the egg shell. Then get some kitchen paper and hold it taught over a cup (you could have this already prepared using an elastic band to hold it in place). Put you eggshell half with the yolk against the paper and slowly tilt it so the egg yolk rolls out onto the middle of the paper. Let it stand there for a moment or two as the egg white gets absorbed by the paper. Then slowly tip into a ramekin or dish for later use.

Ok the recipe:

1. Use a small sharp knife. Cut the two ends of the grapefruit(s) off revealing the flesh. Then cut round the side in strips to get rid of the rest op the peel. Try to cut off any remaining pith.
2. Over a bowl to catch the juice, cut close on each side of the white lines in order to segment the grapefruit and remove segment carefully. Segments don't have to be perfect so long as you have some flesh and get rid of the pith you are doing ok.
3. Once completed squeeze the remaining grapefruit core, and any strips you can get juice out of.
4. Place the grapefruit flesh on (a) shallowish dish(es) spacing evenly.
5. Put the juice and sugar in a small saucepan on medium heat. For 4 people simmer till reduced by half. For 1 person you want to reduce by a third if that, if anything you might add a dribble of orange juice if it get it gets too think. You are literally just dissolving the sugar in the juice. It should be a little bit syrupy by still fairly liquid.
6. Put stock syrup in a bowl with egg yolk(s), Grand Mariner/Cointreau and corn flower. Your bowl should be bigger than your saucepan and rest slightly inside called a 'bain marie'.
7. To use the 'bain marie' put a deep cm of water in the saucepan and heat to simmer on low. It must not be too deep that it will lick the bottom of the bowl or it will scramble the egg.
8. Place the bowl over and using a whisk, preferably electric or with and handle and gears. Start whisking. If you just have a hand wish then put your back into it.
9. The sabayon mixture needs to triple ins size. It shouldn't take longer than 8 minutes for 4 or 3 minutes for 1.
10. Then poor the sabayon mixture slowly between the grapefruit slices on the dishes(s) so that the sabayon mixture so the circumference is about 1.5 cm to the edge of the dish and not less. You don't want to completely cover the grapefruit bits they need to stick out for presentation. If you have some mixture left over you can put it back on the bain-marie and eat it later. You can also use the egg whites for things like meringue type things, etc
11. Now the tricky bit. You need to lightly 'grill' these dishes so the sabayon mixture just goes golden. This is extremely quick. If you have a cooking blow torch you can just move it over for a few seconds and done. Using an oven I turned it to grill and had the sliding tray/platform form about 3 inches away from the element with the door fully open and the temp around 130 Celsius. Then I put the dish in waited a few seconds, pulled it out checked it, turned dish it 45 degrees, put it back in and repeated till it was just golden and lightly caramelized, not burnt. It will not take long!! !. That is why you need to be there and keep checking or it will burn. If you have more than one dish then do one at a time.

Note: Many alcohols are grain based. Beer, most vodka, gin, whiskey the list goes on. Wine and fruit/sugar cane/sugar beat spirits are gluten free. You can only really be sure of wine, plain rum and brandy if you are at a bar. Grand Mariner and Coitreau are brandy based with orange peel flavourings. However the "Yellow Ribbon" Grand Marnier, which is very rare in North America is cheaper/lower quality and based on grain alcohol. You want the “Red Ribbon”. If in doubt don’t use.

Yes I noticed that some people use way too much soy sauce, but that doesn't make it more authentic or tasty. It just makes it really salty and you can’t taste he ingredients as well.

I'm going to do some basic curry recipes and explain three main Indian curry areas : dry, rich/fruity, thick/saucy.

@Mage this will cover 'sauces' you can used with various ingredients. Although not all curries are the thick/saucy. Tikka masala is two things. Tikka is actually the dry marinade for the chicken you can't have both in one jar that is impossible. Masala was added to chicken tikka and chicken tikka masala was invented in the UK. The story is somebody sent the tikka back because it was too dry. This is likely because dry curies are not usually eaten on their own their eaten in combination with rich and saucy curries, though ordering from a menu that can happen.