Gluten Free Challenge - Roast Chicken With All The Trimmings

This week was my daughter's birthday - the tricky bit about her sleepover was that one of her friends must have a gluten free diet and the plan was to do roast chicken with all the trimmings. I never realised how much gluten stuff we use. Flower for thickening the gravy, breadcrumbs in the stuffing, sometimes even a dusting of flower for roast potatoes. So this is what we had:

Actually the stuffing is missing in this picture, but we'll get to that. So here we have crispy Black Kale, Butter Bean mash and roast chicken.

To do the chicken I create a spiced "butter" based on butter, olive oil. garlic powder, salt, pepper, some mushroom powder and paprika.

The butter bean mash is based on a recipe idea of Jun Tanaka. I sweated off some garlic, shallot, thyme and rosemary in olive oil. I the added 3 tins of drained and rinsed butter beans and pureed the lot and re-heated it just before serving.

The crispy kale is following an idea of Ian Garten's. You simply rip it into shreds, and rub it in olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder and give it a about five minutes in the oven at approx 200C.

As to the stuffing I actually forgot to serve it initially, which is why it's not in the picture. I mixed a bunch of parsley, with rosemary, thyme, salt pepper, one egg, Heck's Fair & Square, and quite a few chestnuts that we froze after last year's chestnutting.

When doing the gravy I remembered reading in one of Heston Blumenthal's books that you can use Xanthan Gum to thicken gluten free sauces, so that's what I did.

Everybody loved it and had seconds and my daughter's friend especially loved the idea of being allowed to eat the stuffing for once.

Home Made Sauerkraut

Back in November I posted a "German Dinner" article. For that we simply used shop bought sausages and Sauerkraut. At  times it can be quite difficult to find a nice Sauerkraut in UK shops. Browsing the Internet I found "How To Make Homemade Sauerkraut in a Mason Jar". They claim that you simply shred one white cabbage, rub salt into it, add Caraway and let it ferment for a week. My first thought was that is surely cannot be that simple, but then I am always keen to try things out. So I did and tonight we tested it out:

It was absolutely delicious! Everybody had seconds ;-) Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Earle by Simon Rimmer

 Last night I went to Simon Rimmer's Earl in Hale with some friends. We kicked the evening off with an Espresso Martini - just to get thing started...

For starters we had Chicken Liver Parfait with Pork Scratchings

and King Scallop with Baby Squid.

Both were excellent and the squid was the crispiest I have ever had. For mains we had pan fried Cod Fillet, Leek and Potato Terrine, Crispy Baby Leeks, Roast Salsify, Crispy Pancetta, Cockle and Dill Citrus Cream Sauce...

...pan fried Sea trout, Roast Cauliflower Puree, Crushed New Potatoes and Peas, Citrus Creme Fraiche, Roast Cauliflower, Samphire, Spinach and Cream Sauce...

...and lastly pan fried Venison, Jerusalem Artichoke Puree, Roast Artichoke, Fondant Potato, Pickled Cauliflower, Balsamic Pearls, Crispy Smoked Bacon and Roasting Juices

All super delicious!

For desert we shared Raspberry Cheesecake, Eton Mess, Mini Meringues, Grated White Chocolate, Citrus Raspberry Gel, Raspberry Ripple Ice Cream...

...Salted Chocolate Tart, Caramel Sauce, Salted Caramel Ice Cream...

...and Artisan Cheeses, Handmade Biscuits, Carrot Chutney, Grapes and Celery.

Absolutely everything was perfect without being over the top and the staff were super observant, charming and professional. All in all a great night out.

New Ingredient

I didn't get a chance to try it, but it looks like the Crown Plaza at Manchester Airport have found a new ingredient for the room service menu...

Valentine's Dinner

After travelling for the lat few weeks, I finally had the chace to do a bit of cooking for Valentine's.
I was informed that it was delicious ;-)

From one of my trips to Paris, I brought back some escargot, which we had as the starter..

While the star of the main course was beef I loved finding this one while doing the mushroom side dish.

Perfect for Valentine's.

The main was fillet of beef topped with foie gras de canard with confit of figs. The sides were mushrooms (as you might have guessed from the previous picture), romanesco cauliflower and a reduction of red whine and cherry tomatoes.

We just didn't need any filler to go with that. Particularly as the desert was...

Fig with a honey & yogurt dressing with pistachios and Greek honey.

Let me know what you think.