Café Reka @ New Dowse

As I'm short on time, here's a pre-prepared post I've had sitting around for a little while. Another café review! Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of the food! (I must have been too hungry.)

We went out to the New Dowse in Lower Hutt to view an exhibition of street art, primarily stencils and skate deck design.


Common Ground Exhibition at New Dowse


But I'm not here to write about the exhibition, or the gallery. Instead, I wanted to mention Café Reka, the gallery's eatery, which I had the opportunity to try.

As mentioned on the website, the café has a number of gluten free options, both counter food and items marked on the menu. Some of these were also vegetarian. I spent some time deciding between the salads on offer, or pancakes. My sweet tooth often tries to sway me, but I know that I would more often prefer a savoury meal - so I went with the salad.

I had: Courgette and fennel salad with blue cheese and hazelnut (and a fancy dressing that I forget). Rhubarb, banana, and honey smoothie.

Evaluation: Salad was the best eva!!!!! Excuse my enthusiasm, it was so good! Yum. I wish I could remember what the dressing was, because that really made it. But the crunch of hazelnuts, unusual in a salad, and the beautiful blue cheese... The smoothie was ok - though I'm not sure that they made it with yoghurt and no milk like I asked them to, it just didn't seem that thick... But oh! that salad, it was really quite special.

Fig Tree Café

A couple of months ago I bought an Entertainment Book, with the idea that having a bunch of vouchers would prompt me to try some cafés and restaurants that I wouldn't otherwise have tried. One of the first vouchers I noticed was for Fig Tree Café, in Heretaunga. This café is local to my grandmother, and I had heard her speak its praises before. I had also read a review in a local magazine which mentioned that they had gluten free options on offer, so I was quite keen to get out there and try it.


Fig Tree Café


I organised a little family lunch out there. When we arrived, we were pleased to have booked, as the place was packed. Of the counter food, a vegetarian frittata was marked as gluten-free. I could get that by itself, or with a salad and bread option. I asked if they had gluten-free bread, otherwise could I have two salad choices instead. I didn't really expect them to offer gluten-free bread, but they did, and when it came out it was seriously good - soft and fluffy on the inside, and good and crispy on the outside. It was definitely a very fresh bread, not the heavy shelf-stable packaged bread I somewhat pessimistically expected. The frittata itself was good too, which I had with greek salad and a fresh carrot, apple, and ginger juice.


My Frittata and delicious bread



Food to my left and right (neither GF nor vegetarian!).


For desserts I had even more options - they offered gluten-free chocolate torte, ginger slice, and pavlova. I ordered chocolate torte and swapped a bit with my grandmother for some ginger slice. Both were good, but the chocolate was my favourite - less sugary but definitely richer than the ginger.


Yummies!


Fig Tree Café, located in an old chapel, offers an unusual and pleasant dining venue. They also offer a range of deli goods, and host a BookCrossing Zone. It seems that the frittata is their only regular savoury gluten-free dish - however the fantastic gluten free bread and range of sweets on offer makes the café worth a visit. (Um, unless you're vegan :( - I think even most of the salads had cheese!)

Cookbook Case Study - Dal and Jaggery Payasam - Quick and Easy

I had to make a special trip to buy the mung dal (split mung bean) required for this recipe. A visit to Moshims made me yearn to live in a suburb like Newtown, with its rich cultural diversity and local ethnic grocery stores.

Some days later, while researching the cooking time for whole bkack gram (black lentils), I discovered that mung dal comes in two forms: split, or split and skinned. The variety I had bought was not skinned - and though the recipe was non-specific, I suspected skinned mung dal was the intended type of dal for the recipe.


Split mung dal


Not worrying too much about it, I started cooking the dal. As soon as I mixed the boiling water with the soaked dal, many skins started to float to the surface. Seeing my opportunity, and not wanting to eat a dessert with mung bean skins scattered throughout, I took the dal off the stove and started to scoop out the skins with a tea strainer. I spent quite some time stirring the dal to agitate the skins into a swirling vortex, and scooping them out before they sunk to the surface of the dal again. Once there were so few skins that this task diminished in its returns, I put the dal back on the stove to continue cooking.


Mung dal with some skins removed


Jaggery, or palm sugar, I already had on hand from a recipe I'd made some time ago. This sugar comes in cake form - mine were so hard, perhaps from absorbing too much water in their long storage, that my small grinder struggled with them, and I decided to grate them by hand. (It turns out that this was probably unnecessary, if I had only managed to break them into chunks, the moisture from the dal and coconut milk would have dissolved them with little effort.)


Piles of grated jaggery



Grinding cardamom seeds



Putting it all together


After grinding some cardamom seeds, I mixed all the ingredients together, and heated for a few minutes. Expecting a thick, semolina-like consistency, I was surprised that the dessert was more like a thin porridge. The taste was very sweet, with a hint of cardamom - but the coconut cream taste was disguised by the sweetness of the jaggery. The recipe called for a cup of jaggery, or to taste. I think next time I make this dessert, I would use between 1/2 and 3/4 of a cup to make the dessert slightly less syrupy. Next time, also, I would prefer to use split skinned mung beans, though the skins did not bother me while eating the dessert - and I do have a few cups of mung dal left in the pantry.


Dal and Jaggery Payasam



Same payasam, different angle!


I had enough leftover to last me another couple of days. The dal was good as a dessert or sweet breakfast. I liked it best served over chopped banana, and with a drizzle of extra coconut cream over the top.


Dal and jaggery payasam with banana and coconut cream

Adopt a GF Blogger - Simply... Gluten Free's Ricotta Lemon Pancakes.

Since we moved from Newtown, we pretty much never go out for brunch in the weekend anymore. Even if we still lived there, I'm not sure there would be as much available to me now that I'm gluten free - though I'm sure Pranah could do something. This constant lack of brunch leaves me craving syrupy pancakes with fresh fruit, or other brunchy goodies.



This month, Adopt a Gluten Free Blogger is hosted by Faking it Gluten Free Style, to take the pressure off Sea at Book of Yum, who has a couple of busy months coming. I've been watching this event for some time, but this is the first time I've participated. I picked a blogger that I've only recently been introduced to, Carol, at Simply... Gluten-Free. Carol has many extremely tempting recipes, especially under the 'desserts' label.

Because of my recent lack of brunch, the recipe I was drawn towards was for Ricotta Lemon Pancakes. I've only made gluten free pancakes once before, and I was drawn towards this alternative grain-free version, held together by beaten egg-white.


Ricotta Lemon pancakes with persimmon, banana, tamarillo, and maple syrup.


I'll admit, I had a bit of trouble with the recipe to start with. My first two pancakes stuck to the pan, and turned into scrambled eggs!


First attempt - oops!


Sadly, my enamelled cast-iron fry-pan is not living up to its non-stick reputation. I switched to teflon at that stage, and only had to contend with my stovetop and its lack of temperature control.


Finally - pancakes!


Things went much better from there on!


Neil's pancakes with persimmon, banana, and maple syrup.


They were really good with the fruit and maple syrup. Without, they were more omeletty than pancakey. Their texture was great, nothing like the tough gluten free pancakes I've made in the past. Definitely one to keep in the books for a day when I don't mind beating eggs!

White Chocolate Mud Cake (Guest Post)

My friend Selina is getting married soon, and is starting to think about flavours for a wedding cake. While not she is not gluten free, she is considering offering a gluten free option for the likes of me! That's seriously nice :)

I had the privilege of being used as a guinea pig for her experimentation with gluten-free baking. I gave her all the tips my inexperienced head held, and she gave me cake. First, about a quarter of a cake, iced and all, which I snacked on at work, and second, the remaining half cake, frozen and un-iced, to eat at my own leisure. Good deal, I must say!

I asked Selina to provide a few words around her experience baking the cake, and her being a bit of a novelist, I decided to give her a guest post spot! So, baking gluten free in her own words:

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White Chocolate Mud Cake

Introduction:
With a wedding approaching in 9 months I wanted to try out a few different flavours of cakes. I had thought of a white chocolate mudcake as a lighter alternative to full normal-chocolate mudcake as the groom to be is not a fan. After a quick google search I came across this recipe - http://www.exclusivelyfood.com.au/2006/07/white-chocolate-mud-cake-recipe.html and the instructions seemed relatively straightforward - and the picture looked yum. One major note is that I have at least one gluten-free friend [That's me!! - Sarah] who will be at said wedding and wanted to attempt both versions to compare. This recipe had been tried and altered for gluten free by an additional blog poster and I wanted to give it a go (not being a regular baker) I thought I may as well launch in and make my first cake in about two years and the first in my current oven.

Going Gluten Free:
After two trips to the supermarket and about half an hour contemplating gluten free flour/baking powder by myself and with Sarah, I had everything I needed. The original gluten-free conversion in the blog posted recipe above said that they replaced the flours with the same amount of bakers mix, I used Orgran Flour and Gluten Free Goodies Baking Powder. It also suggested mixing up macadamia nuts, but when I looked at the price I could not justify it. After discussing with Sarah about what the nuts do in recipe I went home with a couple of ideas. Another recipe which discussed converting a White Choc mudcake into gluten free used sour-cream to help in the mixture, but I wasn't quite sure how it would go in a different recipe (and I liked the look of the one I used more). In my kitchen I decided to put in an extra egg in order to provide a bit more stick.

Thoughts on baking/comparisons to standard mixture:
The GF mix was definitely a bit more eggy - and needed a bit more stirring to get to the right consistency (due to the extra egg), also not helped though because I forgot to put the milk into pot with everything at beginning and it took a bit to get in at end when mixture was warm :-). Taste wise the mixture pre-cooking (I'm a sucker for cake dough :-) and I always feel like if its nice when it goes it it's a good guess of how it will be at end) tasted pretty much the same as the standard mix. I should also note the gluten free mixture was overall a bit more runny and a small amount dripped out of bottom of my spring-form tin while in oven as my baking paper hadn't gone far enough up the sides.

I was warned that the finished product might look a bit more crumbly and brown than the standard cake, and this was correct. Once cooled half of the cake went straight into freezer and the other half was iced with ganache. My fiancé and I (both not gluten-free) had some of the gluten free version as it was first made and it tasted real good. I would say it tasted almost exactly like the standard one but not quite as 'muddy' - but my partner probably actually preferred it (seeing as he doesn't like the sticky-type mud cake feel).

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Thanks Selina, for the cake and the post!. Here are my own comments, emailed to Selina after tasting the first yummy bit of cake:

Dense and pleasantly chewy (not dry or overly crumbly) - possibly because of the extra egg to hold it all together. Delicious ganache, and none of it too sweet! Very very moreish...... Now I have to resist scarfing it all down!!
:)
Good stuff! (I was going to wait a little later before trying it, then I thought I'd better try a bit off the edge - as it was the outside bit that you said might be tough, I also had to try a little square from the middle!. The outside was a little chewier but definitely worth eating as well ;)

And here are my various photos of the cake:


This is the only piece of cake that made it home when Selina gave me the first quarter.



Look how yummy it looks - this is the (just under) half of the cake that had been frozen - I liberally iced it with white chocolate and sour cream icing.



I invited my mum over for tea and cake. The small pink bowl holds the leftover icing, which we later ate on pieces of 80% dark chocolate.

Cookbook Case Study - Cardamom mushrooms and pot-roast rice - Quick and Easy

Here's what my version of the cookbook looks like!:


Quick & Easy: Vegetarian recipes from around the world for Western Kitchens


I decided this time to make two recipes from the book at one time, mostly because neither would do alone as a main dish. I made the mushrooms with cardamom, and com chien (pot roasted rice). Both recipes were also vegan!

The mushrooms are chopped up and mixed with cardamom, ginger, and lemon. These were really simple to make (especially with an assistant!), and were so tempting to snack on while they sat in their bowl waiting for their time.

This is what the mushrooms and cardamom looked like before I put them on to cook:


Very exciting photo of chopped mushroom and spices!


As the mushrooms went on to cook, I started the rice. Basically, the rice is fried in peanut oil before boiling water is added and the rice is steamed. Simple! However, reading the instruction "pour in the hot water, which will immediately boil" should have hinted that perhaps I should be somewhat cautious during this step...

Here's a picture of the mushroom cooking. If you look closely, you may see rice scattered around on the bench, that was not there in the previous photo. This is evidence of the rice leaping out of the saucepan to burn me! Evil rice.


Mushroom cooking; and spilt rice of treachery


Basically, I must have had the heat too high. Pouring the recently boiled water into the rice which had been fried in peanut oil for some time, there was an almost explosion of oil, water, rice, and steam. Pulling my hand away, not even having finished pouring all the water in, the dish started to boil so vigourously that the rice and water formed a series of geyser-like spouts that reached over twice the height of the top of the saucepan itself. It was seriously scary - and due to our slow to change temperature stovetop, I had to be brave enough to pull it from the heat to stop it all ending up on the bench.

I ran my fingers under the cold tap for as long as I could stand - nowhere near ten minutes, it's impossible to do that! The I put aloe vera gel on the sore bits, to try and cool them down, as per photo:


Burned fingers


You can't really see that they're burned, probably because of the flash, but they were! They were a bit swollen (less wrinkly than normal!), and about two and a half weeks later (yes, it's taken me a while to get around to writing this), I couldn't figure out why my fingers on my left hand were peeling. It wasn't until I started writing this post that I made the connection, and realised they had peeled exactly where I was burnt. I've never had steam burns before, either. Strange!

Anyway, despite the burns, the meal turned out quite tasty. I served the two dishes up with roast parsnip (idea first taken from Veganomicon I think, but I just make them however, now).


Com chien, mushrooms with cardamom, and roast parsnips


The mushrooms were less cardamommy than I expected, but very very tasty. The treacherous rice had a nice and rich, subtle flavour, and good texture because of the oil. I think the rice was even better as leftovers. However, for anyone using this technique, be really careful, and don't use too much heat!