Potato Rosti

I had some left over sweet potatoes (someone needs to stock mini sweet potatoes so they're not so tricky to use for single and coupled people) so I decided to make rosti. Also rosti in restaurants always seem to have onion in them :( so I've been meaning to make them at home for a while.

Rosti are similar to hash browns, and let's face it any combination of potato and frying is always delicious. I made these for dinner so I added some tuna and corn to make it more of a meal (and this was all I had in the cupboard, if i had bacon, bacon would have certainly been added, yum). When I decided to look up rosti recipes I noticed they used egg to bind the potato together, I used some grated parmesan to melt mine together, so I'm not sure how these would go veganifying them, if you were to make vegan rosti, I would suggest either baking them or cooking them on low for around 20 minutes and flipping them very gently (but I still wouldn't guarantee they wouldn't fall apart) you can also try the plate-flipping method.

Like all my recipes, I encourage experimenting and making these to your own tastes/food requirements. I made these with the only food I had left in the house one night while my partner was out, and I wanted something easy to make for myself. You can leave out the tuna and corn, and serve them traditional and simple and serve them as a side dish for breakfast or dinner. Some variations I'll be trying out another time will be bacon and cheese or plain white potato and rosemary.

Ingredients:
I medium sweet potato, or three small white potatos

1/2 cup of plain flour (I used Orgran gluten free flour, but any type of flour should work)
1 egg (optional)
three quarters of a cup of grated parmesan
small can of tuna
small can of corn
half a teaspoon of dried basil
salt and pepper to taste
tablespoon of oil or butter for frying

If you are using white potato, boil your potatos skin on for 7-10 minutes, or cook them in the microwave so they are 3/4 cooked. Drain and let them cool before removing the skins, then grate the potato. If you're using sweet potato, just peel and grate the potato. White potatos need more cooking than their delicious orange brothers, so it's recommended to pre-cook them before frying.

In a mixing bowl combine grated potato with all your other ingredients, make sure your ingredients are really well mixed through, the flour can clump because of the moist potato, so be careful.

Heat oil in fry pan, then spoon tennis ball size spoons of mixture onto the pan. With a spatula squash mixture so it is nice and flat, and cook for about 7 minutes each side. Very, very carefully turn your rosti over in the pan (particularly if you don't use egg, it's very easy for it to fall apart). They take a few batches to get through all the mixture, so after frying put them in an oven proof dish and keep them warm in a 150C oven (this also helps to dry them out and keep them stuck together so they don't fall apart).

Enjoy

Smoothie Ideas

Julie had an awesome post about home-made breakfast cereal earlier this week. I thought I'd continue the breakfast trend because breakfast is really really difficult.

My favourite breakfast these days is a great big smoothie! Yum!

Occasionally I use icecream or frozen yoghurt in my smoothies, but my regular basic everyday smoothie doesn't have icecream. Instead I use (some) frozen ingredients! I like to have my smoothies with about one fruit and one vegetable. And by vegetable I generally mean celery, but occasionally spinach or parsley.

So first you'll put in your smoothie ingredients. I try to use about half frozen, half fresh. If everything is frozen you're going to want to go low on ingredients or else eat your result with a spoon (note: this is also awesome).

My (not anymore) secret ingredient for maximum deliciousness is frozen celery. You heard me. When I buy a bunch of celery I chop it up and chuck it in zip lock bags. The combo I'm using today is half frozen celery, half fresh banana. I'll often use frozen bananas if I'm not using frozen celery.

I also love berries and of course any kind of fruit works if you're into that kind of thing.

For something super green you can also go for spinach or kale and/or spirulina powder.


Penultimately, you're going to want some kind of milk, or milk substitute. My favourite is Almond Milk but try Soy, Rice, Oat or regular dairy. You can also use fruit juice if there's a juice you can tolerate. I've also tried with just water but... meh, never lead to much deliciousness.

Last - a generous pinch of salt (optional), or a spoon of honey/malt syrup/golden syrup if you've got a sweet tooth.

Blend and poor. Today I sprinkled some cardamom on top. It was actually kind of amazing.

If you can eat oats I have found a spoonful of rolled oats can give a smoothie a lovely texture, and if you want more of a protein hit a spoonful of peanut or nut or seed butter can be absolutely magical.

What do you like in a smoothie? Is celery and salt just too weird for you?

Basics - Salad Dressing

If you're any kind of tricky eater, you'll probably know that things that come in jars can often be a label-reading minefield.

It's summer here in Australia right now and I don't know about you but I do love myself a great big salad in summer. I used to claim to hate salad dressing but it turns out I just can't bear the taste of vinegar which is one of the main ingredients of most dressings. It turns out, though, you can pretty trivially make your own dressing and just leave out or substitute anything you don't like or can't tolerate!

If you're already an expert on salad dressing, feel free to skip this one.

I tend to mix my ingredients in a small bowl and then use a whisk, or you can use an old vegemite jar (or similar) and then shake it up.

1 part oil - my favourites are extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil or sesame oil
1 part acid - I tend to use lemon and/or lime juice, but vinegar works brilliantly if you like it. A nice balsamic seems to work if you like that sort of thing
Lots of Salt & Pepper!

Your quantities will depend on how much salad you have to cover, and how damp you like it. I like my salad to be positively drenched, myself.

Once you've got your basic dressing down pat you can start getting more adventurous. Try adding pomegranate juice, orange or apple juice, tahini, crushed nuts or seeds, or vary the proportions of oil and acid. Delicious!

And if you're a super tricky eater you can pare it down even further - you don't need to go without entirely.

A swig of olive oil, a spoonful of lemon juice or just a shake of salt or pepper can make all the difference to what might otherwise be just a big pile of leaves.

Coming Soon: Making salads that aren't just a big pile of leaves.

Gluten free pasta

Pasta is one of those great easy go-to meals. It's quick to make after a long day at work, and you only need a few simple ingredients to make a delicious meal. Gluten-free pasta has improved dramatically in the last few years. It used to be gluggy, tasteless and after cooking either still raw or completely falling apart.

I've recently starting eating San Remo Gluten free fettuccine {you can find it in the pasta section of the supermarket}. It tastes almost as good as wheat pasta, and doesn't crumble or break apart like other GF pasta can. My only complaint is it has a tendency to stick together, so I recommend putting a good tablespoon of oil in your boiling water before you add the pasta. It does unstick itself a bit by the end of the cooking time (8-10 minutes) but not completely.

I also like Orgran's Buckwheat pasta {you can find it in the health food section of the supermarket}. It's a much heavier pasta, if you like wholegrain/wholemeal pasta you'll like this one. It has a darker colour, and a heavier texture. When you're cooking don't over stir it as it can break apart a little during cooking, it doesn't stick easily so it doesn't require much stirring.

Tricky eating pasta ideas:

Onion free bolognese*
Instead of dicing an onion, cut it into quarters and tie it into a medium sized muslin cloth. Make sure the cloth is secured tightly. Add this to your tomato sauce, the flavours of the onion will come out of the cloth and into your sauce without the fructose filled onion flesh. After the sauce has finished cooking, scoop out your cloth and dispose of the onion.
Confession: I've never make onion water this way, like most people I don't have muslin cloths lying around, and I tend to meal plan day to day. Instead I've cut an onion into large pieces and put it into one of those metal vegetable steamers that look like a flying saucer (one of these). After putting an inch of water into the bottom of a saucepan and steaming the onion for 10 minutes, I threw the cooked onion out** and poured the onion-y water under the steamer into my dish.

*Concentrated tomato is not recommended for fructose sensitive people, so be careful  making tomato-heavy dishes. Experiment eating small amount of tomato first to make sure you won't be sick.
**I actually didn't throw it out, I cut it into small pieces and added it separately to my pro-onion eating friends' bowls.

Not eating dairy? Or tomato?
Here is my favourite pasta dish

OIive oil pasta:
Cook your pasta according to directions, drain and put the dry pasta into a large serving dish. (I'm lazy and like to avoid extra washing up, so I put it back into the saucepan I've just used). Add a generous couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil (use the yummy fancy stuff if you've got it) and a generous amount of salt, and pepper to taste.
Add 2-3 of your choice from the following:
Few tablespoons of chopped fresh herbs (I love parsley, basil and/or sage)
Grated parmesan
Chopped boconccini cheese
Lightly grilled haloumi cheese
Tinned tuna
Chopped cherry tomatos
Fried bacon
Olives
Lightly toasted pinenuts
Steamed or roasted diced pumpkin
Left over meats (roast chicken, ham etc)

Mix into your pasta, add some extra olive oil so it spreads evenly over the pasta if you need to. This is a great dish when you don't have a lot of time to cook, and it's fun experimenting with different flavours so it's not the same every time.

Enjoy!