In which our hero cooks a traditional English dish, and experiements with a festive favourite!

Howdy folks!

So as it's the festive season and all, we're going to have a recipe double-header! First off, an old English favorite, Cottage pie!

Wanna find out how this awesome dish was made AND find out how you can enjoy a festive mince pie whilst staying gluten and dairy free, find out after the jump!



So first off, let's take a look at the Cottage pie.  Now, from what I can find out online, this dish didn't travel all that much, but Shepard's pie did. The only difference really is the meat you use, lamb for a Shepard's, beef in a cottage.  The trick with these back when they were originally made was to be a way of using leftover veg. But I used a fairly specific recipe.

For the meat and veg base:

Minced beef (about 500-600g)
Carrot (about 200g)
Mushroom ( about 100g)
Onion (1-2 medium)
Red wine (about 250ml, can be substituted for tomato paste if you prefer)
Gluten free stock (either beef or veg, either is fine, about 500ml)
Garlic (powdered is ok, fresh is always better)
Celtic Sea Salt and Black Pepper (to your taste)

Steps to making this are fairly easy,  first, cook the minced beef till brown in a little oil.  I actually don't recommend draining it for this particular recipe, but you can if you prefer.

Now, dice and add the carrot, onion and mushroom, then cook on a medium heat for 5-10 mins, then add the wine, stock and seasoning and let everything simmer for 10-20 minutes.  You'll end up with something that looks a little like this:

Now for the crust, you should actually have this going the same time as letting the above cook, just to make sure the temperature of both is similar.

Now your crust can be entirely mashed potato, but personally I prefer a bit of a mix, use:

2 Parsnips (medium sized)
Turnip (about 200g, more is ok too, it just makes the crust a little less soft)
3-4 large potatoes.

There's no real trick here,  peel and chop the veg, boil it for about 20-30 mins, until soft.  Then mash it all together and add to the top of the mixture above.  In the picture above I grated a little hard goat's cheese onto it, but that can be skipped if you want to.

Now, place the whole thing into an oven at about 170c for about 10 minutes.  Then enjoy!

This is a pretty healthy dish all things considered, but it does contain carb and protein, so go careful on portion sizes.  I wouldn't worry too much about the alcohol content though, there's a very small amount for a dish that can serve 4-6 people, and it's mostly cooked off anyway.  Now, onto desert!

So, although my above message mentioned mince pies, I was fibbing a teeny bit.  Everyone remember when I did the pumpkin bread, and I said the mixture would probably work a little better for muffins? Well, I made a few changes and did just that, only with a bit of a festive twist....Mincemeat Muffins!

This recipe is REALLY simple, and a shout out to the Coeliac Society of Ireland's website for giving me the basics of it.

Here's what you need:

100g Soy margarine (or other non-dairy equivalent)
100g Stevia artificial sweetener (for those who don't follow this, I really recommend ONLY using Stevia in terms of artificial sweeteners)
1tsp vanilla essence (always double check to make sure this is gluten free, not all are)
200g Rice Flour
1tsp baking powder (again, check for GF)
1tsp mixed spice (check for GF)
4 medium organic eggs
6tbsp mincemeat (check for GF)

So yeah, a lot of label reading if you haven't done this before, the good news is that this is hardly even a recipe at all.  Once you have your ingredients, pre-heat an oven to 190c.  Then put all the ingredients together into a food processor and blend until the mixture becomes light and fluffy.  Prepare a muffin tray with some papers, separate the mixture into them evenly (I got about 12 of the above size).  Cook for 15-20 minutes and leave to cool for 5.   That's ALL there is to it!

The good news is, these can be enjoyed relatively guilt free, there's not a huge amount that's terrible for you in them, and they can be frozen too!  I still wouldn't recommend more that 1 or 2, but it might be difficult to stop yourself after you try them, who says baking needs gluten and dairy to make it tasty!

See you all on my next blog! Peace!