Low GI muesli

A visitor recently was kind enough to compliment my home-made muesli.  It isn’t something you expect anyone to notice, breakfast cereal.  So I appreciated the remark, and here's the recipe as a way of saying thank you.

Breakfast is probably my main carb meal most days.  Unlike most commercial mueslis which contain oats and wheat, this is based just on oats, and has no dried fruit either.  So it has a fairly low glycaemic index, although please note, it’s not nut-free and would only be gluten-free if made with gf oats.  It isn't exactly low-carb, though leaving out the dried fruit makes it much lower-carb than normal shop-bought muesli.  But what it is is a good filling breakfast, with slow-digested carbs and plenty of fibre, plus some healthy fats and and a small amount of protein from the nuts and seeds.

I make this with jumbo oats when I can get them.  They cost a bit more than ordinary porridge oats, but not a huge amount, and the texture is vastly better.  

You will need:

Porridge oats or jumbo oats or gluten-free oats

Oatbran (optional - I don’t think gf oatbran is widely available, though logically it must exist)

Flaked almonds

Broken or chopped brazil nuts

Hazelnuts, preferably roasted

Pumpkin seeds  }

Linseeds            } - (or a ready-made seed mixture, like H&Bs “Omega mix”)

Sunflower seeds}

Take a large glass or clear plastic storage jar with a tight-fitting lid (I use a two litre Kilner jar).  In it, put the ingredients in layers, starting with the seeds and nuts.  Exact measurements don’t matter, but I would aim to have thicker layers of seeds and thinner layers of nuts; maybe 1½  to 2cm of each of the seeds and 1cm of each of the nuts.  I like to vary it; this batch, for example, is a bit heavy on the sunflower seeds.

You want the seeds and nuts together to fill about two fifths of the jar.  Next, fill the jar almost to the top with oats and finish off with a couple of tablespoons of oatbran.  

Now empty the whole lot into a large bowl and stir together thoroughly.  

Spoon back into the same jar and you’re done. 

Serve with milk or plain yoghurt, and added fresh fruit if you want. 

Pancakes

It's Shrove Tuesday, so obviously pancakes!  I made this basic mixture and split it in two, tonight.  I added parmesan to about two-thirds of the mix and made that into two pancakes which I served with stir-fried asparagus and tomato and some garlic; then I added coconut, and some vanilla essence, to the last third and made a rather chunky dessert pancake which I had with a dab of cream cheese and some cinnamon.

Low-carb pancakes

1 oz/ 25g/ ¼ cup No 1 baking mix

1 oz/ 25g/ ¼ cup oatmeal or oatbran or gluten-free porridge oats or desiccated coconut

1 egg

3 tablespoons water

Stir dry ingredients together, beat in egg and water and leave to rest for 30 minutes.  Cook like normal pancake batter, using a little vegetable oil in a frying pan or omelette pan over a medium heat.  Serve any way you like.  I like to have these as a breakfast treat, with some fresh fruit and a dollop of low-fat cream cheese or some thick yoghurt.

The mixture doesn't flow as easily as a normal batter so you'll need to spread it out gently in the hot pan, using the back of a spoon.  You'll also probably need to cook this mixture slightly longer than a regular wheat-based batter would need.  The version with coconut makes a slightly odd-looking batter but it cooks okay and has a pleasantly crunchy texture once done, and a sweeter taste than the oaty version.  

This makes a moderately thick batter that will give you 2-3 pancakes using a 20cm/6” omelette pan.  Use less water if you want to make small north American style pancakes, or more for a thinner batter and thin crepe-style pancakes (but NB the coconut version won’t work as a crepe, I think the batter’s too bitty).

Add a dessertspoon of grated parmsan cheese for a savoury pancake; very tasty filled with grilled or fried vegetables, tuna or (for a mega-cheesy version) slices of cheddar.

Low-carb short crust pastry; second attempt

I had another try at this over Christmas, tweaking the proportions and the method slightly, and managed to get a pastry that would roll out, although it's still very short and crumbly.

3oz/ 75g wholemeal flour
2oz/ 50g No1 baking mix
2 1/2 oz/ 65g butter or margarine
Cold water

Use the usual method; mix the dry ingredients, rub in the fat and work in enough water to bind into a firm lump.
Add the water slowly; once the mixture will hold together in a ball check if it will roll out without falling apart.  If it's too dry it will crumble and fray into pieces before it's been rolled anywhere near thin enough.  If that happens, crumble it up and add some more water and try again.
Try to avoid adding much flour to the rolling surface.  The pastry may stick a little and need to be removed from the counter with the edge of a knife blade, but if you flour it heavily it will just get even drier and more crumbly.  Bear in mind also that you'll probably need to re-roll trimmings several times, as it doesn't roll out particularly thin.
I know all of this man-handling of the pastry would not be acceptable with regular short-crust, but it worked okay with this recipe and the results weren't leathery at all (and made more-than-okay mince pies).

No-added-sugar mince pies

1 quantity of low-carb pastry, see above
1 small tart eating apple or 1/4 of a large cooking apple
About 3 tblsp commercial mincemeat - no-added-sugar if possible (Infinity Foods make one)

Roll out pastry and use to line the cups of a shallow greased patty tin (I have an ancient 9-pan one with patterns in the bottom, probably originally intended for madelaines but fine for small tartlets).  Core and chop the apple leaving the skin on.  Fill half each pastry case with mincemeat (approx 1 tsp per case) and then top-up with chopped apple.  Re-roll the pastry trimmings again to get lids, wet these on the underside and stick down onto the bottom cases and the fruit filling; pierce a small vent in each one with the tip of a knife blade.
Bake at Gas 6/ 200C (180 in a fan oven) for 15 - 20 minutes or until just starting to brown on the edges.  They'll probably bubble over as they cook, so remove from the patty tins as soon as they are out of the oven to prevent them sticking.
In the photograph, the thing on the left is what my family always call The Lump; the leftover pastry trimmings rolled round the leftover chopped apple bits and baked.  Shame to waste them after all!

Low-carb short-crust pastry - first attempt

I've been meaning to have a go at inventing a pastry recipe for ages.  Last night I had a try, and the results were surprisingly succesful  There's room for improvement, texture-wise, and it isn't gluten-free; but it is high-fibre and low-carb (about half the carb load of regular pastry) and it made a perfectly acceptable shell for a quiche, so overall I feel that's a good start.

Ingredients

3 oz/ 75g/ 3/4 cup No 1 baking mix (recipe for that is here)
3 oz/ 75g/ 3/4 cup wholemeal flour (I'm using spelt at the moment as I like the flavour)
3 oz/ 75g butter
Cold water

Method

Method starts pretty much as normal.  Seive the flour, mix thoroughly with the baking mix and rub in the fat quickly and lightly till the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.  Add enough cold water, splash by splash, to bind the mixture together and gather it into a ball.

This is where things stopped being normal.  The lack of gluten in the baking mix meant the dough didn't have the same ability to stick together as a regular short-crust pastry would.  It took more water than a regular pastry recipe before I has a mix that would bind at all.  But then the very different kind of stickiness of the milled linseeds in the baking mix started to react to the water, and the dough suddenly became quite odd in texture - the least-unpleasant word I can find for it is slippery - and turned a rather unappetising greyish colour.

I looked at this and thought various less-polite forms of "oh bother".

I'd already prepared my quiche filling (1 onion, cooked in a little veg oil, mixed with 1 chopped fresh tomato, 2 eggs, 3 oz/ 75g grated strong cheddar, some milk, salt and pepper and 1 tsp wholegrain mustard), so I figured I'd better do my best with this mixture, and try again another time to get something that looked and behaved more like conventional short-crust pastry.  I was anticipating eating something leathery in the extreme, though.  Still, all food is food (sometimes in the world of experimental cookery you have to say this to yourself!).

I slapped a sheet of baking parchment into the tin, in case that rather wet mixture decided to stick, and then I tipped the mixture onto this, and smoothed it out and pushed it up to the sides by hand.  As the linseeds continued to absorb more of the moisture, the mixture seemed to grow stiffer and less slimey, and I was able to get a rather rough and untidy-looking case shaped.  I poured in the filling, topped it with a bit more grated cheese and stuck it in the oven at 150 degrees C (it's a fan oven by the way).

35 minutes later I took it out, and discovered that despite my worries I'd produced a perfectly succesful, robust, tasty pastry case.

I'd eaten half before I thought to take the photos...

Because the pastry was rather wet and slippery when made, I can't see how this would work for the kind of recipes where it needs to be rolled out and cut. I need to work out how to arrive at a result that is firm and holds its shape enough to treat conventionally like that.

But until it came out of the oven I fully expected to end up with a supper that tasted as if it was made of plasterboard.  So to end up with a pastry case that was crisp and flavoursome, kept its shape, and held a standard quiche filling without leaking, pleased me no end.

I'll be working on improvements to the texture and will report any successes here.

Sugar-free garlic & chilli dipping sauce

Last Friday evening I had an overwhelming craving for a Chinese takeaway.  Of course, unlike Chinese home cooking, your average Chinese takeaway is pretty high in starch and sugar, and certainly not diabetic-friendly.  Compromise; a packet of veggie spring rolls from M&S, and some prawns which I marinaded and stir-fried.  And to replace the wildly sugary commercial sweet chilli sauces I cooked up my own.  The flavours aren't remotely authentic (it's more of an asian-hispanic fusion) but it's incredibly simple to do and pleasantly spicy, and it does the job.  Low-carb, low-calorie, and gluten-free unless you do the oatbran version.

1 medium tomato, finely chopped
2 tsp Marigold stock powder
1/2 cup boiling water
1 tsp mild smoked paprika
1/2 tsp chilli powder
2 cloves garlic, crushed or v finely chopped
3-4 tsp tamari
1-2 tsp cornflour or oatbran

Mix all the ingredients except the cornflour together in a small pan and heat for about two minutes, stirring.  Add a small amount of cold water to the cornflour to make a paste, stir into the tomato mixture and cook just until it clears and thickens.  Decant into a small bowl and get dipping those prawns!

Can also be made in a small bowl in the microwave; cook in 30 second bursts and stir between times.

If using oatbran (lower GI but obviously not gluten-free), add this by sprinkling it in slowly directly into the sauce; no need to mix to a paste first.  It may need slightly longer to cook afterwards and won't be a clear sauce, but will thicken just fine.

No 1 Low-carb Baking Mix

A lot of my recipes are based on this; a gluten-free low-carb mix that gives a nice flavour and a reasonably open texture in baking.  And, as the White Knight says in “Alice”, it’s my own invention.  It keeps well for a month or so in a screw-top jar, though I wouldn’t recommend storing it much longer than that as the fat content could make it go rancid.  I mix up a batch of this and then use it up over the following weeks.  

Like all my baking, this uses ingredients that are easily found provided you live in or near an urban area with a health food shop.  Dried milk is very widely available and, at least in the UK, you can normally buy all the slightly more unusual things at Holland and Barrett and most independent health food shops.  And I’m sure all of them can be ordered online.

The one big problem with Baking Mix No 1 is that it isn’t nut-free; the secret ingredient of a lot of my gluten-free baking is ground almonds.   I’m still working on the challenge of a nut-free version; early attempts have not been terribly successful but I will share any breakthroughs, so watch this space.  It would be nice to be able to bake a cake that both my brothers would eat...

Ingredients

3 oz/ 80g/ scant 1 cup soya flour

1 ½ oz/ 40g/ heaped 1/3 cup dried skim milk powder

2 oz/ 55g/ heaped 2/3 cup ground almonds

5 ½ oz/ 150g/ 1 ½ cups linseed meal aka ground flaxseeds

Method

Empty into a bowl and stir together thoroughly, pressing out the lumps in the soya flour, then spoon into a storage container with a good tight screw top.  Makes 12 oz/ 325g/ 3 ½ cups.  Keeps for a couple of months in an airtight jar.