Foodie Friday - Pimped Up Gluten Free Macaroni Cheese

Macaroni Cheese is probably one of the worlds favourite comfort foods, and it's easy to see why. You've got protein, and carbs in one easy to eat and easy to make meal. One of the problems of eating a predominantly wheat and gluten free diet is the lack of variety. Go into any supermarket and your overwhelmed by the varieties and shapes of pasta on display. Look down the free from aisle though and your lucky to see 3 or 4 varieties, spaghetti, fusilli, shells, and maybe lasagne if your lucky

Yes, I know you can make macaroni cheese with other pasta shapes but its not really the same. Thankfully things are changing - Amy's Kitchen produce a very, tasty gluten free, frozen macaroni cheese, and Heinz have now brought out a small free from pasta line which includes, drum roll, macaroni.

To the best of my knowledge it's only available in Asda and Morrisons but it's worth tracking down for that authentic macaroni cheese. This is my slightly pimped up version but you can make it as basic or as complicated as you like

Pimped Up Gluten Free Macaroni Cheese

500g Macaroni

100g Butter

100g Plain Flour

1 Pint Milk

1 tsp Mustard (Optional)

200g Grated Cheese

Salt and Pepper To Taste

Ham, or Chorizo, or Salami or Roasted Peppers, or Sun Dried Tomatoes, or Caramelised Onions

(Optional)

For The Topping 

2 Sliced Bread

1 Clove Garlic

150g Grated Cheese

1. Cook your pasta as per the packet instructions. I'm using a full bag of Heinz Gluten Free Macaroni.

2. Now it's time to make your topping, put your bread and your peeled garlic clove into a food processor,

and zap until you have breadcrumbs. Then mix in your grated cheese and set aside

3. Preheat your oven to about 180 C Cheese sauce time - there are lots of different ways to make this but the easiest way and the way that seems to work best with gluten free flour is this one. Put your milk, butter and flour into a large pan over a medium heat and keep stirring.

It will take a little while but it will start to thicken eventually. When your sauce starts to coat your spoon or whisk, add your mustard - I'm using smooth English mustard here but you can use what you like or leave it out.

Then add you grated cheese, I'm using a combination of Red Leicester and Mature Cheddar, and continue to stir until your sauce is thick and bubbling, then season to taste.

4. Then drain your pasta

and put it back in the pan, then add your vegetables, ham or chorizo. I'm using cooked Quorn Chorizo sausage which vegetarian and yummy! Then add your cheese sauce, reserving a little for later, and stir everything together.

5. Pour your pasta and sauce into a large baking dish, I'm using my lasagne dish here, and pour the remaining cheese sauce over the top

Finally sprinkle your pasta evenly with your breadcrumb mix, and bake for about 25 minutes

6.After 25 minutes or so your breadcrumbs should by golden and your macaroni cheese should be hot and bubbly.

It's best served warm so leave it to cool for a moment or to before serving.

This recipe will easily serve 6 people alongside a salad, or you can do what we did and keep it in the fridge, and reheat it the next day, either in the oven of the microwave

Obviously you can just make a plain macaroni cheese with no topping and no additions but I like the different flavour additions to what can be a rather bland dish. You can obviously add what ever you have in the fridge and whatever flavours that you like, but I like the heat that the chorizo brings. I also think that this would really nice with some of the vegetable additions that I've suggested, especially the caramelised onions.

Are you a macaroni cheese fan? Let me know in the comments x Happy Eating x

Foodie Friday - Ratatouille Pasta Bake

It's been a bit cold, and breezy over the last few days and according to the weather forecast it's set to continue at least for the next free days. Brrr, when it's cold I love comfort food and more often than not that means carbohydrates. This recipe contains one of my favourite things - pasta, Although I'm now a gluten and wheat free chick it doesn't mean that I can't enjoy a starch fest. Here it's combined with another one of my favourite things ratatouille. This traditional French and Mediterranean stew, uses all kinds of fresh vegetables, and the taste takes you right back to the med, sipping Orangina in the blazing sunshine - perfect, and exactly where you want your mind to take you at this time of year.

Ratatouille Pasta Bake 

For The Ratatouille 

2 tbsp Olive Oil

or

5-10 Sprays Fry Light Olive Oil or Garlic

3 x Cloves Garlic

2 x Onions

1 x Courgette 

1 x Aubergine

1 x Green Pepper 

1 x Red Pepper

4 x Tomatoes

1 x Tin Chopped Tomatoes 

1 tbsp Tomato Puree

Salt and Pepper To Taste 

For The Topping 

2 x Slices Bread

150g Cheese

1 x Clove Garlic

250g Dried Pasta

1. First of all the ratatouille, roughly chop the garlic, and put it into a large, cold pan, turn the ring on and cook for a minute or two.

In the meantime chop your onions into half moons. I'm using red onions but you can use what ever you have.

Add the onions and the garlic to the pan, and cook for around 5-10 minutes, till they're just starting to soften.

2. Now for your tomatoes, I don't particularly like the skin in cooked food because it can be a bit chewy so I remove it. All you do is score your tomatoes, with a sharp knife, and then pop them into a bowl of boiling water for about 5 minutes or so.

3. By this time you onions should be starting to soften and look translucent

Roughly chop your courgette into half moons and add them to your onions, and cook for a minute or two.

4.Them chop your aubergine into similar sized pieces and add it to the pan. Cook for about 10 minutes to the vegetables are starting to soften.

5. Next de-seed your peppers and chop them into similar sized pieces, add them to your pan, and cook for a few minutes.

6. Now it's time to get messy, carefully remove your tomatoes from the boiling water and give them a rinse in cold water to cool them down a bit. If you have silicone oven mitt use just to be on the safe side as they will be a bit warm. Then just peel the skin off the tomatoes, it should come off really easily.

I'm not a huge fan of the seeds, so I remove those too.

Then roughly chop the tomato flesh and add it to the pan.

7. Again cook for a minute or two then add your tinned tomatoes and a dash of water

and then add your tomato puree, and cook for at least 15-20 minutes till it's darkened, and thickened slightly and the vegetables are all soft

8. Pre heat your oven to about 180 C, and put your pasta on and cooks as per packet intstructions. I'm using gluten free penne but you can use whatever shape you like.

9. While your waiting for your pasta and ratatouille to cook, it's time to make your topping, you could just cover it in grated cheese but I personally love a crispy breadcrumb topping. You can do this by hand if your were desperate but I just put the bread, a roughly chopped clove of garlic and the cheese into a food processor

and then zapped it, until it's all combined and crumb like.

10. When your pastas done, drain it and mix half of your ratatouille into it

Then pour it into a large baking dish, I'm using my lasagne dish here x

Then top it with the rest of the ratatouille 

and your cheesy, garlic breadcrumbs.

11. Put it in the top shelf of the oven for around 20 - 30 minutes until the sauce is bubbly and the breadcrumbs are golden brown. How long it takes depends on your oven so keep an eye on it.

Voila - you could easily get 4-6 servings out of this recipe, but it will keep in the fridge for a couple of days, all you need to do is thoroughly reheat it in the oven to keep the topping crisp or the microwave for speed.

Of course the ratatouille recipe would be great served with just plain pasta, rice or a jacket potato rather than making it into a bake. You could also add some herbs or chilli, or even a bit of red wine to pimp it up a bit. Whatever you do though, I would at least try making the ratatouille portion of this recipe. It's a really happy recipe, the colours are so bright and cheerful, and the fresh, taste makes you think of summer, even when it's cold outside x Hope you enjoy x Happy Eating x 

Foodie Friday - What I Ate In July

July was a month where I ate what I wanted, when I wanted it. When I look back at some of the things that I ate in July it honestly doesn't look as though I ate that badly, and I genuinely don't think that I did. As I said in Monday's post I think it was more about snacking and portion control. Given the heat I also ate quite a bit of ice cream that I haven't mentioned here and I also make a crucial mistake and discovered the wonder that is Cadbury's Dairy Marvellous Creations Banana Caramel Crisp - bad move! So minus the ice cream and chocolate, here's what I ate in July.

First up savouries and something that I'm having again tomorrow, naughty nachos :) I love nachos so much I make a huge batch of homemade salsa which I pour over tortilla chips, top with grated cheese and bung in the oven for 20 minutes. Not the most healthy dish but quick and easy.

I also made be favourite Double Potato And Halloumi Bake, only using feta and mozzarella instead of the halloumi. Alas no pics because they didn't come out too well but the leftovers were mixed with a bought (sorry!) pasta sauce, and some gluten free pasta, to make a quick pasta dish.

I ate a lot of pasta in July, probably more than I have in the rest of the year put together but I've missed it. I'm a huge pasta fiend! One of my favourite pasta dishes ever is macaroni cheese. When I'm in a rush I love the Amy's Kitchen Rice Mac And Cheese, which you get from must major supermarkets. I'm not a huge lover of ready meals but I would definitely recommend the Amy's Kitchen range of vegetarian and gluten free meals for quality and taste. This time though I fancied making my own, so using Heinz Gluten Free Macaroni, I made a huge batch to see us through a few hot days.

After I posted this on instagram a few people asked for a recipe, well to be honest it's so easy that it doesn't really justify a recipe. All I did was cook the pasta, and whilst the pasta was cooking I made a basic gluten free cheese sauce (just a combination of butter, milk, gluten free flour, seasoning and grated cheddar) which I then mixed into the cooked pasta, and a packet of  Redwood Vegan Chorizio Sausage Chunks. I then poured the lot into a huge baking dish, and topped it with a homemade breadcrumb topping made from gluten free bread zapped up in the food processor and mixed with more grated cheddar, garlic granules, and chilli flakes and then baked in the oven till crispy and bubbly.

Me and Mummy Lou devoured this full baking dish full over the course of 3 days It kept really well the fridge and heated up easily in the microwave. I imagine it would also freeze really well too The only thing was the topping went a touch soggy but it still tasted great.

Something else that I made in July was wrap pizzas. I am seriously in love with the Warburtons Newburn Bakehouse Gluten Free Wraps. I particular love them stuffed with salad and hummus but on this occasion I made them into pizzas, topping them with some veg, some tomato puree, and some cheese.

Yes, it's curry loaf again :) Again I made this with pimped up golden vegetable rice, and baked beans only this time I threw a handful of sultanas into the mix for good measure. Really enjoyable as per usual :)

In July my momma had a meat craving! Bless her she's so good and eats more veggie food than meat these days but sometime she just craves burgers, so we headed to Chiquitos to take advantage of the lunch menu. I had the halloumi salad which is incredible, my love for the squeaky cheese hold no bounds! The one downer this time is that they were out of the cranberry and mint relish so I just had basic salsa, never mind it was still yummy.

Mummy Lou got her usual cheeseburger and salad but I fancied being a bit naughtier so I got a portion of sweet potato fries for us to share - so, so good and something that I will definitely order again. After all that Mummy Lou still wasn't satisfied lol, like mother like daughter I guess so we moved on to the dessert, where we both had a portion of the Golden Nugget Cheesecake (alas not pictured) but it's basically a vanilla cheese cake stuff with chocolate and plain honeycomb - being good I left the base which Mummy Lou was more than happy to eat :)

When it came to sweet things through July I tried to be good but July was the month where I discovered the amazing Gower Cottage Gluten Free Chocolate Brownies..

Mmm so good, squidgy, chocolate morsels that you can't event tell are gluten free. You can read my post on them here, and I'm sad to say that my box is now all gone :(

I was a little bit god as you can see here though and I did have mine with some fresh summer fruits. My mum paid a couple of visits to the local fruit farm and bought a mountain of freshly picked strawberries and a couple of punnets of raspberries.

I may have demolished the raspberries but the majority of the strawberries were for jam. My mum loves making jam and she made about 16 lbs of strawberry jam!!! A few jars will go to friends and relatives but otherwise we are well stocked for the winter :) So far I've had some on top of ice cream and on top of some gluten free digestives with some cream cheese to make my own mini cheesecakes, in August though I can definitely see myself making some scones to have an albeit healthy version of a cream tea.

Speaking of home baking Mummy Lou also tried a bit of an experiment and made a chocolate and vanilla marble cake stuffed full of the lightest, fluffiest, butter cream you have ever tasted! So good!

That's just about it bar a couple of Costa Raspberry And White Chocolate Creamy Coolers, and one of my newest loves the Starbucks Banana Yogurt Frappuccino

So that was my July, I really want to try a bit harder to eat more healthily in August but at the same time I also want to experiment a bit more with my cooking, I really think that mixing it up a bit will make a huge difference diet wise, so if you have any healthy, vegetarian recipes hit me up x Thanks for reading and happy eating x